Paths of Righteousness

I am returning to the article The Top Five Passages from Our Top Ten Cities, but I felt I needed share my experiences from the Global Missions Conference. Most of the cities had 1 Corinthians, Psalm 23, Romans 8, John 3:16; yet Singapore had a very different set of passages. This passage comes from one on Singapore's list.


Proverbs 2
The Value of Wisdom
1 My son, if you receive my words
and treasure up my commandments with you,
2making your ear attentive to wisdom
and inclining your heart to understanding;
3yes, if you call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
4if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures,
5then you will understand the fear of the LORD
and find the knowledge of God.
6For the LORD gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
7he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;
he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
8guarding the paths of justice
and watching over the way of his saints.
9 Then you will understand righteousness and justice
and equity, every good path;
10for wisdom will come into your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;
11 discretion will watch over you,
understanding will guard you,
12delivering you from the way of evil,
from men of perverted speech,
13who forsake the paths of uprightness
to walk in the ways of darkness,
14who rejoice in doing evil
and delight in the perverseness of evil,
15men whose paths are crooked,
and who are devious in their ways.

16So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman,
from the adulteress with her smooth words,
17who forsakes the companion of her youth
and forgets the covenant of her God;
18 for her house sinks down to death,
and her paths to the departed;
19none who go to her come back,
nor do they regain the paths of life.

20So you will walk in the way of the good
and keep to the paths of the righteous.
21For the upright will inhabit the land,
and those with integrity will remain in it,
22but the wicked will be cut off from the land,
and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.

This passage is father addressing his son. He is encouraging his son to follow what he has said so that, "you will understand the fear of the LORD
and find the knowledge of God."
The father then goes onto talk about how the wisdom of God is a good thing, pleasant to your soul. How many times have I wished to be watched over by discretion and guarded by understanding? Too many to count has my mouth run away with the unkind or indecent words that I was thinking.
Not only will this protect you from yourself, this wisdom and knowledge of God will protect you from people. These men who are perverse, enjoy doing evil. I sometimes find it difficult to ask people in the work place to stop being perverse. I hate to say that sometimes I join in that kind of talk. I pray the knowledge of God will protect me from joining in anymore; because the next part of the passage talks about a forbidden, adulterous woman. That is not the kind of woman I want to be. She forgets her covenant with God. I wish to share my covenant with God to the world, to my children, and my grandchildren.
My dad recently preached a sermon. One of the things that he said over and over through out the sermon was we must,"intentionally rely on God." This passage in Proverbs refers to path righteousness, paths of life, and paths of darkness. If you go for a walk you have to pay attention to where you are going. You have to look where you are going. If you are just looking at the pretty sky or looking at the pretty tree tops, you are going to stray off the path. What might be unintentional might stray into the intentional of sin. I know that I must intentionally rely on God for my strength by reading His word, praying, joining into fellowship with Him.