Category: Chapter Notes

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32CH Lesson 9 – Want A Cookie

#32Chapters

Chapter 8 – “Joy Rx”

Hallerin Hilton Hill

Last week…

Let God coach.  Play your position.

This week’s main point(s).

God wants to give you joy.  Let him.

Chapter Outline

The 36 verses of chapter three are broken into 3 sections.

• Wisdom’s call
• Wisdom’’s work
• Wisdom’s offer

God love us.  He wants what’s BEST for us.  I know you’ve heard that.  But have you felt it?  Have you really felt the gravitational pull of his love, his spirit.

The more I read and study Proverbs the more I see his love and feel the pulling of his spirit.

God loves you!  And he longs to give you joy, real joy.

Once you really get that, once you are sure that THAT’S God’s agenda for you, his words and wisdom take on an entirely new meaning to you.

You will run to Him.  You will heed.  You will accept.  Most of of all you will experience the joy he is literally begging you to take.

Chapter 8 is the continuation of that call.  I was so moved when that hit me on the flight back from Little Rock this weekend.  The pleading and yearning of the first 7 chapters of Proverbs is that of a God in relentless pursuit of his beloved.  You are his beloved.  He gave his life for you.  Not just to save you from your sins, not just to provide pardon and forgiveness and grace.

He gave his life so that you could have life, abundant life.  And when you reach the end of that you get to trade the abundant life he freely gives you for everlasting life.

It is with that preamble that we take a brief look at Chapter 8.

Wisdom’s Call

Every day you are faced with a gazillion choices.  There are many things pulling at us, many things “calling” us.

The call of desire is loud and compelling.  It is tempting.  But Wisdom’s call is equally  loud and if you really pay attention to the call and what is being offered it’s better, way better.

Every day you are left with a choice as to which calls to accept or decline.

Check the caller ID.  See whose calling.

When you answer wisdom’s call you hear:

– noble thoughts

• honest words
• righteousness
• purity
• integrity

God longs for your relationship to be so close, so clear that you recognize his call and you answer joyfully without hesitation.

Wisdom’s Work

Wisdom is declared to have been with God at creation.  The reason that’s so significant and powerful is this:  if wisdom helped create the world, wisdom can help re-create your world.

If God has the power to create, contain and sustain universe(s) then he can do the same for your world.

If the whole world is in God’s hands why not put your world in his hands.  Wisdom’s work is the work of creation.  Remember God longs and lives for your world to be better.  His great mission was to save and reclaim you.  Let him!

Wisdom’s Offer

Wisdom is offering you joy.  We long for money, power and respect because we believe that in the end those “things” will bring us joy.

They won’t.  They can’t.  They are just things.  Ask the billionaire with incurable, inoperable cancer.  Poof!  And you’re gone.

Christ came to bring us joy, deep abiding joy.  That joy that comes from knowing, trusting that everything and I do mean EVERYTHING will be ok.

When you rest in your faith in HIM you find joy.

Listen to the final words of this chapter:

So listen to me; Follow me and be happy.

Practice my discipline and grow wise.

Abandon cynicism and jaded thought.

I bring joy to those who listen;

I bring happiness to those who attend to me.

Find me and find life.

Find me find grace.

Turn your back on me and choose death.

Wisdom is calling you to a life of joy, happiness and grace.

Isn’t that everything you could ever want?

The Conclusion

God wants to give you joy.  Let him!

The Challenge

What’s God’s counter play for your situation?

Grow.  Help others grow.  Be Encouraged.

Wisdom House Publishing

1. 2012 Hallerin Hilton Hill

Below are additional notes.

Wisdom isn’t enough.  I wasn’t for Solomon.  After 2 face-to-face encounters with God he still failed.  True wisdom is trust.  It’s trusting God enough that you joyfully accept his will, word, wisdom and way as your own…without question.

#32Chapters

Last week…

Chapter 3 was a simple call to trust.  Trust God will ALL (100%) of your heart.

This week’s main point.

Trust God will ALL (100%) of your heart.  Always use protection.

Chapter Outline

The 27 verses of chapter three are broken into 3 sections.

• A father’s advice
• A choice between paths
• Protecting your heart

A Father’s Wisdom

We are four chapters in now and Solomon is still pleading with us to embrace or better yet to surrender to wisdom.

Solomon as he addresses us places us in the position of son.   We are sons.  We are family members.  This is a birthright.  The wisest, richest father is not leaving us gold or silver or power…he declares wisdom to be more important.

How does he get to this?  Why has he now moved to making so personal a plea?  Simple: his father.  David did the same thing with him.  David lived such a broken, human life.  Adultry.  Murder.  Deception.  War.    

After a life of the pain that comes from compromise David plead with his son to choose a better path.  He was broken so he knew what brokenness felt like.  He knew that path much to well.

It’s no wonder the enemy has worked so hard to destroy the image of fathers.  If fathers are have no credibility, if fathers aren’t looked up to, if fathers don’t have the ability to speak into their children’s lives then fathers cant leave wisdom as a birthright.

If your father doesn’t have your respect then these words, this example has no impact or relevance.

Here Solomon reveals from his life and the benefit of watching his father’s tortured reign that the most important acquisition is wisdom.  No matter what it cost you to get it you will benefit more than you ever pay.  Wisdom must be THE priority.  

Are you willing to do whatever it takes to find and deploy wisdom in your life?

The Path Of The Wicked

We’re back to those paths.  Here as a wise father Solomon tells us, his long distance sons exactly what to look for in people who are detrimental to your life and survival.

Let’s take another look.  

The wicked do wickedness.  They look for ways to do wickedness and violence.  I don’t think this is limited to physical acts of violence.  Jesus clearly taught that murder is as much a state of mind as an act.

How does Dad tell us to deal with this?  Run, Forest run!  He doesn’t give instructions in confrontation.  He says (a) don’t go near the path (b) if you see it turn around and get the hell out of there.

How many times have you been burned trying to manage your sin?  How many times have you been burned thinking you could find the good in someone who is fundamentally bad?

Don’t go near these kinds of people.  Their path will lead you away from wisdom and away from God.

The Path Of Righteousness

By contrast Solomon is telling us how to identify a better path.  How do you tell the better path?  Light.  Not just the presence of light but growing light.  

How often have you stumbled because you were on a dark path?  What is the lighted path you’ve been avoiding?

Darkness is the sign that the path is wrong.  If you have to do it in the dark, if you have to hide you’re on the wrong path.

Protect Your Heart

At the end of this chapter, this fatherly appeal, Solomon urges us to keep our hearts, that’s where your life, your being, your essence comes from.

Why so much passion in the pleading?  I think it’s because both David and Solomon live portions of their lives with unprotected hearts and experienced the devastation of living with exposed unprotected hearts.  Your heart is hidden by your rib cage for a reason.

When your heart is clogged and doesn’t flow you die.

Solomon gives us 6 instructions to protect our hearts

1. Eliminate gossip and deception.
2. Stop looking for flaws and imperfections.
3. Think about consequences then align your actions with what’s good.
4. When the right thing is known, do it without hestiation.
5. Don’t waiver.
6. Don’t place your foot on the evil path.

The Conclusion

Trust God will ALL (100%) of your heart.

The Challenge

Try simply following the clear direction he gives you from his word.

Grow.  Help others grow.  Be Encouraged.

Wisdom House Publishing

2012 Hallerin Hilton Hill

Chapter 3 is a power-packed essential part of Proverbs.  It contains the pin number for wisdom.

Wisdom only works when you trust God more than you trust yourself.

What I find most amazing is that God would have to convince us that trusting him is a good idea.  That just goes to show you how arrogant we as humans can be.  We (the finite, the creation) have the audacity to doubt God (the infinite, the creator, the sustainer).

In this Chapter offers to give us everything we could every want, from wealth to wellness.  But there are conditions.

We must do 3 things.

1. Trust God with ALL our hearts.  2. Turn from evil.  3. Accept his discipline and correction.

I know you’re ready to accept his gifts, but are you ready to accept his love in the form of discipline and correction?

Below are more notes on this chapter.  The bottom line is simple: TRUST GOD.

Wisdom is a gift from God.  He gives it to those who seek it and HIM earnestly.  You have to want it.  Wisdom is never force-fed.

So this chapter starts with a question.

Will you heed my words and accept my direction?

Your answer to that question determines much you really desire wisdom.

Say yes.

Here are the notes for this weeks lesson.

32CH: LESSON 2 – THE QUESTION IS…

This week we focus on fools.  We define them and then decide what to do about them.  Here’s a hint: stay away from them…LOL.  A complete examination requires that we look in the mirror as well.

Here are the notes:

God has a plan and a path for your life that is magnificent.  His intention for you is great.  He’s committed to giving you abundant life AND eternal life.

The devil does NOT want you on that path.  His eternal death has been sealed.  He wants company.

There are things that take you off the path and there are things that bring you back to the path.

This week we focus on staying or getting back on the path.

Here are the notes:

Here are the slides: