A Fool No More

 

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.” (Proverbs 1:7, NIV)

Throughout the book of Proverbs, Solomon wrote about fear. Fear, as Solomon used it, means to be in awe of and to revere. This awe and reverence occur because of who God is—omnipotent, omniscient, holy, omnipresent, faithful, good, majestic, etc. It also refers to God’s wisdom given to people and their obedience to Him based on what God tells them. Once a person becomes aware of God, that person can either reject Him or accept and obey Him.

Two ways exist to acknowledge the fear of the LORD: rejecting and accepting. (LORD is YAHWEH in Hebrew.) If a person rejects the LORD, then chaos and disharmony enter his heart and life and the world around him. When people acknowledge the LORD and fear Him, they accept Him as God and LORD. Order and calm occur. This order and calm shows by all creation working together with peace. Because God created all that exists, God’s knowledge is ultimate. His wisdom is the greatest. Accepting God as LORD means accepting God and His wisdom and knowledge. It also means living in harmony and peace with God within His ultimate plan of peace, calm, order, and harmony.

Fearing the LORD is the “beginning of knowledge,” Solomon wrote. Since God created all that exists to work at its best and in harmony with the rest of creation, seeking God’s wisdom and learning from Him causes us to gain the best knowledge. This knowledge from God, when obeyed, will cause the best outcome. Fear of the LORD—knowing Him and actively listening to Him—is from where we learn best. We humans can learn by seeking knowledge by reading, listening, watching, and doing. In each of these ways, God can teach us when we seek Him and His wisdom, knowledge, and understanding.

God wants us to seek Him, which we do when we revere Him and recognize He is sovereign. In our seeking, He will teach us as we listen to Him and then live out that new knowledge in our lives. Only God teaches the best lessons by which to live. Living in this way causes us to seek and revere God more, and may lead us to believe in Jesus, His Son. When we trust in Jesus as our Savior, He washes our sins from us, gives us eternal life, and gives us an eternal relationship with God.

Solomon contrasted the person who fears the LORD and receives knowledge and wisdom from Him. He called a fool the person who does not fear God. What fools did Solomon write about? Since he contrasted them with those who revere, learn from and live with wisdom from God, a fool is a person who does not do these things. The fool’s life causes chaos and discord in his life, the lives of people around him, and in his relationship with his Creator—the LORD God.

Solomon taught more about this fool. He said the fool despises wisdom and discipline. He looks down on the wisdom and discipline a wise person gets from God. The fool considers the LORD and His children are insignificant. Because he disconnects himself from God, the source of truth and good, he is amoral. The fool is selfish, disregarding others and harming creation. By doing that, he declares these people have no worth to him; he does not care about them. The fool disconnects himself from God and other people. He cares not for his social or legal standing in the community. The fool chooses not to live by the values and judgments of society, which mirror many of God’s values, ethics, and judgments. This fool possesses self-created wisdom.

Solomon compared the person seeking true wisdom from its source, God, with the person who does not. He called this person a fool. The seeker of God gains true wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. He cultivates discipline, benefiting humanity and nature. The person who seeks God helps keep calm, harmony, and order in his community and the world. He gains a closer relationship with God, then comes to believe in His Son, Jesus. This seeker of God gains his heart’s desire and eternal reward of living with and being in a close relationship with God. The fool becomes surrounded by discord and chaos. His wisdom and knowledge will often fail him and others because it comes from the mind of a fallible. The fool strays from God; intimacy with God eludes him.

What is the remedy for the fool about whom Solomon wrote? Solomon's recording at the beginning of this verse reads, "Fear the Lord." Yes, this fear can include fearing judgment for our sins, but it should not stay that way. For a fool to change, he must arrive at the point of revering God, seeking Him and His ways, and seeking change in his life. He must come to the point of confessing and repenting of his sin and believing in Jesus, the Son of God, as His Savior. When the fool seeks God for His life, he receives calm, peace, and harmony. The past fool will live in communion with his community while caring for them and God’s creation. The once foolish man will fear God, gain wisdom, knowledge, and understanding from its fount—God, and experience peace within himself and with others. He will be God's child, enjoying eternal closeness with God.

God should be foremost in our thoughts. Seeking God will affect our actions, words, and attitude. Taking from Solomon’s thoughts:

1.      Choose to make God and His ways your primary thoughts and let those affect your words, actions, and thoughts.

2.      Gain knowledge of and from God. Grow in His wisdom, a gift He gives to those who follow Him.

3.      Give these gifts back to Him as a service offering.

Your obedience to God is your offering back to Him from His good gifts of salvation, wisdom, knowledge, and understanding.

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these (good) things will be added unto you. (Matthew 6:33, BSB)

Abundant and Pure

 

“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,”

— Philippians 1:9-10

 

Abound means to exceed beyond what is normal. It is to have an overabundance that pours out of the storehouse. In this case, Paul means a Christian. He prayed that the pure love God gave to them would be so great it could not be contained in themselves, but would pour out on people who were around them so they would be blessed, too.

 

Paul also prayed the Christian’s’ pure agape love from God would abound so that they would have godly knowledge from their continual and growing relationship with God. God’s love won’t be evident and overflowing in a person’s life without a growing relationship with Him. 

 

Along with knowledge, Paul prayed the Christians would have a “depth of insight.” He wanted them to have a profound understanding/insight/discernment of their situation through their intellect and by their senses. By this, they could size things up correctly and understand it rightly because of their growing relationship with God. That growing relationship with God brings growth in having His wisdom and knowledge so they can have His understanding/insight and act, speak, and think correctly. 

 

By having a continual and growing relationship with God, a Christian can have overabundant pure, godly love, knowledge, and insight. With these three things, he/she can know what is best, may be pure, and not stumble into sin. All of these can only occur when we have a close relationship with God. They only come from God because only He is pure and sinless.

Love Abounding

 

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight. (Philippians 1:9 [NIV])

            “Love,” some say, “I understand all about it.” Others may disagree and say it confounds them. Love, without understanding its basis, is just another word whose meaning may change with the times. Paul had a particular and perfect standard in mind when he wrote his letter to the church at Philippi.

            The starting conjunction in verse nine requires us to understand what Paul said earlier in the letter. In verse three, he said he thanked God for the Philippian believers and prayed with joy because of their partnership with him in the gospel. Verse six tells us the basis for Paul’s prayer. It says, “Being confident in this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Paul understood God would complete the work He began in them upon Jesus’ return. Because of his close relationship with God, he understood what God begins in a person He completes. God is the basis for love.

            With verse nine, Paul stated what God would perfect and how and why He would complete it. His prayer spoke about the Philippians’ love, knowledge, and depth of insight. Upon looking at these words further, we understand the word “love” comes from the Greek word agape. Agape is love defined by God because it comes from God. Agape love is part of God’s character. Nothing changes it. God’s love is pure, true (Psalm 86:15), faithful (Psalm 107:8-9), and unending (1 Chronicles 16:34) like Himself. John stated in 1 John 4:8, “God is love.” Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 the love of God is patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not proud, not rude, not self-seeking, not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs, rejoices with truth, protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres, and never fails. When Paul wrote in Philippians 1:9, “This is my prayer; that your love may abound more and more,” he meant may the love of God, that overflows abundantly to you from Him, grow in you and overflow more and more from you. The love of God in a believer occurs because that person prefers to love Him above his or herself. This Christian chooses to love God, which means growing to know Him more by listening to Him, studying His word, praying to Him, and obeying Him. Paul prayed the Philippian believers preferred to love God more than any other earthly thing, including themselves, their families, their aspirations, and their stuff. This love, Paul prayed for them, would abound. It would exceed and overflow in abundance from God’s overflowing love.

            This love would abound more and more because of their knowledge and depth of insight. The knowledge Paul wrote about is what they would gain firsthand from a relationship with God because of their preferred love for Him. Paul said this knowledge would come from walking daily in close communion with God. It comes from a growing experiential knowledge about God and from God. God’s love would abound from each believer because of His love for them and his or her love for God. God is the source of agape love and the giver and growth of it. The growth of agape love would cause a growth of knowledge about God, divine knowledge. This knowledge includes who God is, was, and always will be, what He has done, and the relationship each person can have with Him through Jesus. The depth of knowledge Paul wrote about was divine knowledge about God.

            The depth of insight about which Paul wrote is God’s ethical laws. Knowing God’s ethical laws and obeying them is a growth process that leads to purity and blamelessness, sanctification. When a person’s love grows for God and other people, sanctification of the person (growth as a Christian) occurs. Sanctification is the growth of holiness. Holiness comes from righteousness as given by God upon a person’s profession of faith, upon forgiveness each day as a person repents and confesses his or her sins to Him, and as that person strives to live by His ethical laws. God gives the ethical laws and the power to live by them, like He gives His love. God can give ethical laws because He absolutely is righteous and holy. Morality emanates from Him. God enables each believer to love Him more and more and to live with a growing depth of insight into His moral laws. The Christian must seek Him and ask for His strength to stand strong in his or her faith. This standing firm for God grows and shows the person’s love for God and other people. It refines the character of the believer. God gives insight from His moral laws to Christians about what is best. In that action, He refines the person by removing the dross of secularity from him or her. This discerning and purifying is sanctification growth. This process continues until the day of Christ’s return to earth to claim His followers.

            Paul wrote to the Philippian Christians and prayed their love would abound more and more from the source of love, God, and overflow abundantly from them to God and others because of their growing relationship with Him and their understanding of His moral laws. God gives the love that grows and the knowledge of Him and His ethical laws. He enables Christians to have His love and to live morally. God gives the power to live as His child in a sinful world. He is the source for love and morality. Paul wrote a Christian’s abounding love, knowledge of Him, and depth of insight bring glory to and praise of God.

            How far have you walked on the road with Jesus in your discipleship? Did you trust in Jesus and confess your sins, but not return to Him? Did you believe and confess, then get trapped trying to get the best things the world offers? Did you profess faith in Jesus and follow Him with the rest of your life? A Christian’s journey is a marathon. Your commitment to God is forever. Have you been faithful to Him? God’s love is always faithful, true, pure, and righteous. He asks you to keep walking with Him day by day and year by year. Stand firm. Run resolute. Let your love abound more and more in the knowledge of and depth of insight in God. 

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends! (Philippians 4:1 [NIV])

The Stump

Go, and tell this people: Keep on listening, but do not perceive; Keep on looking, but do not understand. (Isaiah 6:9 [NASB])

When the Lord spoke to Isaiah in Isaiah 6, He sent him out to speak to the Israelites and tell them to keep listening, but don’t understand; keep seeing, but don’t realize. Why would God want His prophet to tell people not to see or hear and understand? This seems harsh for the God who wants all people to come to a right relationship with Him. Yet, we must know the story better.

God sent His prophets to proclaim Him, His righteousness, the sinfulness of man, and their need for Him as their God and Savior. He’d done this with the people of Israel many times and never did they continue to follow Him for long. Now, in Isaiah 6, God prepared Isaiah and would prepare the people through him to get to the root of what really matters.

God wanted the people to be insensitive. Does this sound cruel? No. He wanted them to be insensitive to what they heard, saw and thought they knew. Why? Because often we think we know the best thing to do because we’ve seen, heard, and learned. We’ve reasoned the best thing for ourselves and gone on our own paths.

God wants us not to rely on our reasoning. He wants us to know His mind and recognize our sinfulness. The Lord wants us to recognize we can do nothing to get ourselves out of the mire of sin we caused. He wants to strip away everything we think we know and get to the basics, to the root. What, rather, Who is this root? God told Isaiah in verse thirteen. He said, “The Holy Seed is its stump.” The Holy Seed is the Messiah, the Lord Jesus.

All of us think we know what’s best. Before we take the time to ask God what He wants us to do or what is best in a situation, we have it figured out for ourselves. Like with Israel, God wants us to forget what we think we know from seeing, hearing, and reasoning. He wants us to get back to the root of who we are; He wants us to get back to the Holy Seed, Jesus, who saved us.

What decision do you need to make now? Who do you need to talk to this instant? What did God tell you to do that you have not done? Get back to the basic, to the stump, the foundation, of your being, and of your salvation and faith. Get back to Jesus, your Savior. Seek Him and know what decision you should make. Seek Him and know what is best for your relationship. Seek Him, ask forgiveness, and then do what He told you to do. Let Jesus purify you so you will be right with God and will let Him lead you.

The Stump remains.

He is our foundation upon which we grow.

Lord, I am sorry. I have put myself first and put Your guidance behind me. I think I know what is best because I am educated and learned things by life’s knocks. Now I remember I know very little and You know everything. You, Lord, know what is best. I recognize You as sovereign and recommit myself to You. Please, Lord, take my life; I give it back to You. Speak to me and guide me in what You want me to say and what You want me to do. You, Lord, are all-knowing and almighty. You are Savior and Redeemer. Thank you, Lord, for loving me and wanting to guide me. I love you, Lord. Amen.

God-focused: Beginning with Thanks

“First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken throughout the whole world.” Romans 1:8

Paul told the Roman Christians he was thankful for them. He spoke about a people he had never met. Paul expressed thanks for the future-theirs, and his with them.

Paul was thankful the world knew of the Romans’ faith. People heard Roman emperors expelled the Jews from Rome. Since the Roman Christians worshiped in Jewish temples at first, they experienced similar persecution without expulsion.

Paul desired to be with the Roman believers. He was thankful in advance he could enjoy their companionship. Paul anticipated giving them further knowledge of the gospel. He wanted western believers to be able to stand firm in their faith.

Still, Paul didn’t expect only they would benefit from his visit. He wanted to be encouraged by/with them. Surely Paul’s faith was greater than that of the Roman Christians. Yet, Paul said together they would be encouraged mutually. For this, Paul was thankful.

Paul’s travels created home bases for him in the east. He’d never been to the west. Paul needed a home base in Rome. Often growth in faith comes from standing with other believers supporting each other. Christianity is a faith in community. We meet to pray, study the Bible, worship, encourage, and grow stronger in knowledge and faith to proclaim the Gospel. Paul understood he needed a home base for encouragement and growth in faith.

Paul began his letter to the Romans with thanks for them-past, present, and future. We must begin our day thanking God for who will enter our lives-Christians for growth and encouragement or unbelievers to hear the Gospel.

Lord, help us recognize the importance of being in a community of believers and seeking unbelievers with whom to share Your Gospel

Living Enriched Lives

In 1 Corinthians 1:4-8, Paul began his encouragement and entreaty to the Corinthian Christians. He began his letter reminding them of the most important thing – God’s grace is all-sufficient. In these five verses, Paul taught very succinctly the four most important things about God’s grace. Most importantly, he said, God’s grace enriches believers’ lives. We today can and need to learn and hold on to this teaching.

First, remember God’s grace is His loving-kindness and mercy given to a person without him or her deserving it. His grace is more than this though. One Corinthians 1:4-8 is where Paul unpacked it for the Corinthian believers. 

God’s grace enriches a believer’s life in his or her speech and knowledge. He fully enriches every believer in all ways so the believer’s words, speech, declarations, thoughts, meditations, reasoning, intelligence, understanding of God and the Christian faith are deeper, more perfect, and enlarged. The understanding by the believer of God and the Christian faith is so enriched and illuminated he or she explains his or her faith with power.

God’s grace acts in a believer’s life so it is visible. His grace enriching the believer’s knowledge and understanding of Him and the Christian faith spoken and testified with power and conviction leads to the believer’s life confirming his or her testimony of his or her faith in Jesus Christ. Faith in God came from His gift and gave His undeserved grace to the believer. That grace then makes itself evident in the gift of knowledge, understanding, and speech of the believer when he or she that testifies of God and the Christian faith

In addition to these, Paul stated God’s grace gives and shows in the believer’s expectant, eager, and watchful hope for the return of Jesus Christ. God’s grace, which provides salvation and adoption, gives hope for the future expected return of Jesus the Christ, a time when all things on earth return to perfection. His grace affects the mind of the believer, affects the believer’s thinking and hope for present and future times. Living with this evident hope testifies to God’s grace.

Finally, Paul said, God’s grace confirms the believer to the end so he or she is blameless and innocent before God. God’s grace given through the blood of Jesus Christ establishes and makes sure the believer is blameless of sin on the day of judgment and for eternity. His grace seals the believer for eternity.

This statement by Paul seems so small when considered in the totality of his writings, yet it is profound though concise. God’s grace enriches a believer’s life in speech, knowledge and insight so he or she lacks no gift from God. The conviction of this faith and the depth of knowledge and illumination manifests itself in the believer’s life and words to confirm his or her testimony of believing in Jesus Christ. God’s grace gives and shows in the believer’s expectant, eager, and watchful hope for the return of Jesus Christ. Finally, it confirms the believer to the end so he or she is blameless before God.

Have you experienced God’s grace?

Is your life a living testimony to God’s grace?

Like the Corinthian Christians who were divided into factions, we need to remember we must choose to live the life God’s grace put into us so our words and actions show His grace to the world as a testimony so others will want to come to know Jesus Christ, too.

Self - for Him

At a moment in time, just a spark in time, a life begins.

A person's journey begins with a loud cry and then,

Lessons are learned, tussled with, reshaped,

As the point is acquired, digested, related

To one’s self. 

Acquiring, adjusting, moment by moment, a life forms.

Living through days with love, tears, joy, and through storms,

Then taking from each moment, regained,

The lessons make the person, push forward, restrain

In becoming one’s self. 

Mixing, stirring, melding, and growing, a person matures.

Walking this journey takes meekness and vigor,

Then walking forward in time with awareness

The knowledge of other is revealed, made known,

To be fully a self. 

Creating, molding, commanding, and breathing, persons are made.

Self’s journey truly began with recognition of that day,

Of something, someone, greater than me,

Knowledge of Creator, for me He redeemed,

As re-formed for Him. 

Walking, waiting, breathing, and praying, persons are fulfilled.

My  journey began recognizing Him and being still,

Awaiting His plan, His will that day,

Knowledge from Holy God, guidance, leads my way,

As disciple of Him. 

Striving, pursuing, running, and fighting, fulfills not one’s soul.

Journey of knowing begins, continues, makes whole,

While walking forward with Him in life,

Knowing, living,  growing, consecrated life,

Only for Him.

 

Knowledge, a Noisy Gong

1 Corinthians 8

Vs. 6-7: “Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. However not all men have this knowledge…”

Paul is confronting the Corinthian Christians about their disunity again. This time it seems the disunity arose because the Corinthians consider themselves more knowledgeable and wiser than they do other people. Paul has dealt with them about this issue before. The example Paul speaks to them about is the act of eating food offered to idols. Is it head knowledge that should lead when we interact with people or heart knowledge?

Knowledge, solely as knowledge for knowledge sake is worth nothing. Knowledge without the acknowledgement that all knowledge comes from God makes one boastful and proud, arrogant. This knowledge does nothing for others except possibly put others down, beneath one’s feet in the knowledge holders mind, actions, and attitude. Knowledge acknowledged as being from God carries with it the love by which God imparts/shares the knowledge. This is true knowledge, that which shares not only the head knowledge/information, but shares the love from which it was derived, for the purpose of sustaining and improving life and for showing God’s love and care of humanity. Knowledge without this love is, as Paul later says, “a noisy gong and a clanging symbol” (1 Corinthians 13:1).

This passage appears to be about food offered to idols, and for the moment in which Paul is speaking to the Corinthians, this was an issue. The underlying lesson though is the acquisition of knowledge, the holding of knowledge, and the implementing of knowledge upon our fellow human so that they know they are not as knowledgeable or so that they are caused to falter in what they believe. The attitude in which this is done is not love or care for our fellow humans. God’s knowledge, as we saw in chapters 1-3 of 1 Corinthians is wiser than that of humans. His strength is stronger that humans. His power is stronger than humans are. He exercises all of these in means of love toward us because He created us to be in a love relationship with Him. Since true knowledge comes from God, to withhold the love, which was also a part of true knowledge, when applying knowledge corrupts the knowledge and drops the value of it to the levels of humanity. It makes it not as pure and useful as God intentioned. The attitude of the human who uses knowledge without love affects/corrupts its use so that it becomes a prideful thing that reduces the value of the other human(s) to which it was aimed.

Paul uses the situation of a follower of Christ eating meat that was offered to idols. For Christians, we know there are no other gods; therefore, the meat is uncorrupted. However, for a person who is either not a Christian or is a new or weak Christian, eating meat they considered sacred puts a wedge or stumbling block between you and them, and you as the Christian, lose credibility so that they will listen hesitantly and with ambivalence anything you may say about the true God. Your knowledge, though the head knowledge is correct, has lost its heart value and has become only as great as the person revealing the knowledge. The love that the knowledge was originally imbued with was not shared because the person eating the sacred meat did not care to concern themselves with the god-believing person’s culture and ideas of faith.

As believers in Jesus Christ who have received His love, forgiveness, and salvation, we cannot allow ourselves to run over people with our newfound freedom from the constraints Satan put upon us while we walked with the world. We must recognize continually that Jesus came to us in love and we must meet the people of the world with love. Jesus imparted the knowledge of God’s plan for salvation for humankind by words and by the extreme action, giving up His life to die for us. We cannot ignore nor negate this when we live in the world. That would mean we are not living as Jesus lived here on earth. We must at all times live our freedom in and through the love that comes from the Jesus' sacrificial living and dying for our salvation. You see, if God had only “known” how to save us and had not acted upon it, He would have shown Himself to be without love. We know this is not true of God. One of the strongest characteristics we see in God is His love. It is through this love that so many people throughout history have been drawn to God. Because of His love, which is His character, He created us. Because of His love, He had mercy upon humanity many times over the millenniums. Because of His love, He provided a final way for all of us to come into a perfect, sinless relationship with Him. This Way was through the life, death, and resurrection of His only Son, Jesus Christ. God did not divorce love from plan/knowledge. His plan was made because of His love.

With this example, when we divorce love from knowledge, we are saying that our plan is better that God’s plan. We are saying that we know best. The result is that we alienate ourselves from other people with our arrogance. We alienate others from God with our flawed wisdom. What did Paul say? “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21 NASB). It is only when love is the reason that knowledge has power. It is only when love is the motivator that knowledge is true knowledge and wisdom. Love was the reason God created us. Love was the reason that God made another plan for humankind to be in a relationship with Him. Paul goes on to say in 1 Corinthians 1:27-30,

God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, "LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD. (NASB)

When we interact with others and when we impart our knowledge, we have a question to ask ourselves first; am I speaking to be heard and thought to be knowledgeable? If our motivation is to build ourselves up in the eyes of others, love of humankind is not our goal. We have put love of our ourselves higher than our love for God or others. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul tells us what true love is.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous ; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly ; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth ; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails; but now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love. (vs. 4-8a, 13 NASB)

If we truly as living as Christians, we should be living with a heart knowledge. It should be evident in the way we interact with people. Our heart and God’s heart should be one and be visible as we speak and act in this world. If love is not in our knowledge as we act and speak, we are sinning against and harming others. We are also hindering their belief in God by providing a “stumbling block” (chapter 8:9). When we sin against another human, we are sinning against Christ, too (vs. chapter 8:12). We each must come to the point where we consider if what we say or do is imparting the love of God along with knowledge. If we are not considering the other person’s being and place in this world, we are not interacting with them in love. We could cause them to stumble in their search for God or in their growth as a Christian. The old saying carries some truth; it is more important to see and hear a person in their situation, since we have two eyes and two ears, than to speak, since we have only one mouth. The question then is am I relating with others just to be seen as more knowledgeable or as one who loves them and wants to impart true knowledge and wisdom, which comes with love from God?