December 2, 2024 -- Proverbs 15:31-33 -- Accountability in your walk with God

People loved by the Father, in the Spirit's power: Sh'ma ~ hear and obey Jesus!

The ear that listens to life-giving reproof
will dwell among the wise.
Whoever ignores instruction despises himself,
but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence.
The fear of the LORD is instruction in wisdom,
and humility comes before honor.
Proverbs 15:31-33 ESV
 
The original language is quite graphic. First there is synecdoche—one word describing the whole person. The wise one is a man or a woman who is “all ears”. Listening for God, hearing His voice in Scripture, attentive obedience to His Spirit’s directing of the conscience and a committed awareness that the LORD uses godly friends to direct his living. What is that person listening for? Life-giving reproof—that is discipline and instruction, correction and guidance on the way of life.
 
Whoever ignores instruction can also be translated whoever lets go of it. It is as if godly counsel and instruction goes in one ear and out the other. You hear what is good and right and life-giving but in obstinacy you turn away from it, well you are proving you hate your life, and you hate your very soul. Such defiant behavior shows you are refusing God’s promise that you are made in His image and made for glory and excellence according to His purposes.
 
The word “listen” is repeated twice in these brief passages as is the word “reproof”. Reproof, that is discipline or correction, or godly advice is given in response to the words of one who pours out his soul. I find in this passage a pattern for the godly. When you are walking with God it is all too easy to be negligent and brush over one’s sins. To do so is to hate your life and to despise your soul. But when a dear friend, one who with the compassion of the LORD, and great tenderness, speaks the instruction and correction of God into your life, you, wounded though you are, have the Spirit-given ability to hear and respond. The words of God are life-giving and hope bringing.
 
Believers are called to have one, maybe two, dear friends who have the right to speak advice and counsel to them. These siblings in the LORD Jesus share your desire for godliness and the love of life that is available through Christ Jesus. They will be ruthless in exposing faults in you thinking and calling out bad behavior but do so with the kindness of the Gospel which affirms the purpose of doing this is to grow in the fear of the LORD and instruction in wisdom. The friendship is such that you will also be able to see whatever is hindering their walk with God. Unless the people of God are humble and humbled by the Spirit, then pride will close their ears and as verse 29 of this same chapter indicates, the LORD will not hear their prayer.
 
It is fascinating to me that groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and others like it have co-opted the original material of the Bible and made it their own. AA focuses on mutual accountability, which is great, but Christians seem to have drifted from this penetrating, honest accountability among themselves. Perhaps it is too general a statement, but it seems that Christians rarely practice this critical discipline. I strongly advise Christians to find a friend or two and decide to pray together, open your hearts to one another, share the areas of weakness and any tendency to sin, and confess the sins you’ve become entangled with so that you will grow in the fear of the LORD, in instruction in wisdom and humility which is evidence of a life that has as its great focus the joy knowing Jesus and Him once crucified and now exalted at the Father’s right hand in glory.
 
Father, I don’t want my sins and the bad things I keep heading to to block my relationship with You. I want to be a follower of Jesus and one whose prayers You hear and answer. I ask that Your Spirit give me a fellow friend or two who walks with Jesus so that together we can correct and be corrected by one another and by this grow in our obedience to and rejoicing in Jesus. Amen.
 
https://youtu.be/R8mLTdQQXg4?si=RSwlnsrUEvavOvhE Psalm 16 (Fullness of Joy)
 

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