Proverbs 19:19 A man of great wrath will pay the penalty, for if you deliver him, you will only have to do it again.

Do not ignore, or give habitually angry people a pass. You will only keep them bound in their sin, and you will suffer the bondage of being their constant deliverer from the consequences of their own sin. Break the cycle. Men (and some women) who rage all the time – get others to apologize for them. Do not allow it. Let them suffer the consequences so that they might be set free and so that others do not suffer the edge of their wrath continually. Love them.

Spurgeon wrote: “Whenever there is a child of God who has any defilement upon him, and you are able to point it out and rid him of it, submit to any degradation, put yourself in any position, sooner than that a child of God should be the subject of sin.”

Christ does not reject us due to the sin that still needs to be mortified – but neither does He ignore it. His goal is to make us like Himself. And leaving us to continue in our sins unchallenged is not part of that process – confronting us with them in love is. His love will not suffer us to remain in bondage, even if that requires our experiencing the pain of their consequences at times.

What a great Savior we serve!

Proverbs 19:21 Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.

God has a plan. He is moving the cosmos inexorably toward the fulfillment of it. The question is – are we in sync with it or not? If not, no matter how many things we’ve conceived and attempted, all will be lost.  We need to learn to make our plans – around on the foundation of His purpose. And if we do not know His purpose – then we desperately need to find out.

Many is the poor soul who has made their plans for this life – vocation, family, leisure, hobbies, interests, etc., only to come to the end of their days to realize they have given no thought whatever to why they were created, what they were here for, and where they were going when it was all done.

This is central to the Gospel – to bring those made in God’s image back into conscious and joyous harmony with God’s articulated purposes in His Word. To live apart from this is not to live, but merely to exist. To rob oneself of true meaning in life.

Make no mistake, when all is said and done, it is the purposes of the Lord which will be seen to be fulfilled. And so I ask you once again – where are you in respect to God’s purposes? For those alone will shape eternity.

Praise God He does not leave us in our darkness, but calls us out of the darkness into His marvelous light through the Gospel of Jesus Christ!