Heart and lips

DEVOTION

PROVERBS

HEART AND LIPS

Prov 22:17-21

17 Pay attention and listen to the sayings of the wise; apply your heart to what I teach, 18 for it is pleasing when you keep them in your heart and have all of them ready on your lips. 19 So that your trust may be in the LORD, I teach you today, even you. 20 Have I not written thirty sayings for you, sayings of counsel and knowledge, 21 teaching you true and reliable words, so that you can give sound answers to him who sent you?

NIV

Day two of our look into this discourse. We know we should pay attention and listen. We know we should apply the wisdom of God to our hearts. The reason we should be paying attention and listening is so we can apply this wisdom to our hearts, because it is pleasing to God when we keep his word in our heart and have them ready on our lips. This is our function, our place in both the body of Christ and in the society we live. How can we build each other up until we reach the unity in the faith unless we have the wisdom of God on our lips? How can we have them on our lips unless we keep them in our heart? But the point about having them on our lips seems obvious enough. If we look ahead to the conclusion of this whole saying, we would get the impression we would be speaking this words to God. He is the one who sent us into the world to preach the gospel. We will need to give sound answers to him. That would imply we need to be ready to give him an account of what is in our heart. This would then indicate we need to be ready to tell God we have Jesus in our heart, after all he is the Word. He is the wisdom from God.

1 Cor 1:26-31

26 Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things — and the things that are not — to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God — that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.   31 Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."  

NIV

So our sound answer to God is that we have Christ in our hearts. But also that we would have him on our lips. That is we should boast in him, we should be saying his praises to men. We should be sharing Jesus, the word, the wisdom of God who is in our hearts and on our lips.