Wiser Choices
Where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint; but blessed is the one who heeds wisdom's instruction. Proverbs 29:18, New International Version
The opposite of vision, warns Mike Ashcraft, is not blindness but scatteredness. When he looks to Proverbs 29:18, then, he sees the reason why the people perish, not listlessness but lack of focus in one paramount direction.
Without discipline, the desires of the moment reign in turn. Without a central idea of our purpose submitted to the God Who made us, no external, man-made cues are going to keep us from chasing the latest gratification we think will make us happy.
The secret to concentration, coaches Howard Hendricks by way of Ashcraft, is elimination. Time and experience, if we reflect on them, teach us what is not worth pursuing, what doesn't yield results. Concurrent with this realization, so often, is the new mercy of God which allows us to put the wisdom gained by wrong choices into action.
With our humble reflection, though, we will lurch from one option to the next, attracted by promises of what's "new" and repelled by the people we get in the habit of blaming for disappointing us. Might we, instead, heed the voices of wisdom God places in our lives, and, where a little wiser than yesterday, be brave enough to warn those who come behind us where satisfaction does NOT lie.
The opposite of vision, warns Mike Ashcraft, is not blindness but scatteredness. When he looks to Proverbs 29:18, then, he sees the reason why the people perish, not listlessness but lack of focus in one paramount direction.
Without discipline, the desires of the moment reign in turn. Without a central idea of our purpose submitted to the God Who made us, no external, man-made cues are going to keep us from chasing the latest gratification we think will make us happy.
The secret to concentration, coaches Howard Hendricks by way of Ashcraft, is elimination. Time and experience, if we reflect on them, teach us what is not worth pursuing, what doesn't yield results. Concurrent with this realization, so often, is the new mercy of God which allows us to put the wisdom gained by wrong choices into action.
With our humble reflection, though, we will lurch from one option to the next, attracted by promises of what's "new" and repelled by the people we get in the habit of blaming for disappointing us. Might we, instead, heed the voices of wisdom God places in our lives, and, where a little wiser than yesterday, be brave enough to warn those who come behind us where satisfaction does NOT lie.
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