Wisdom from Proverbs 15

Posted by Brance on May 15th, 2005 filed in Proverbs

Today we took a break from the relationship study. Lauren is out of town and we’re waiting for her return. So today we looked at Proverbs 15. We read verse by verse and discussed what we read. We weren’t able to finish the entire chapter. I really enjoyed this discussion. It was a small group and I felt like we really learned some truth from God’s Word. Here are my notes on what we read.

We talked about what a ‘gentle answer’ really is. We looked at the example of Gideon in Judges 8.1-2 and saw that his answer involved praising the person he was talking to. He looked at the good in the situation instead of the bad.

How wise a person is can be determined from what they say. A fool ‘gushes’. In other words, he talks faster than he thinks.

We don’t want to be responsible for crushing someone’s spirit. Especially considering that God will see it.

That word ‘pursue’ mean to chase, hunt, follow eagerly with haste. That is how we are to be towards righteousness. How often are we ‘eager’ to be righteous? Many times we do what we know is right, but only because we are supposed to, not because we want to. Yet God sees the heart and the intent.

Another verse about watching what we say. We decided that this verse was telling us that to say the right thing at the right time is wonderful, but that the other side of that is that saying the right thing at the wrong time is not good. We need to be careful of what we say.

The word ‘despises’ means to reject as if there was little value. We talked about how important discipline is. If we ignore it then we are placing little value on ourselves. I spoke to Lauren on the phone and talked about this verse with her. She pointed out that it could mean self-discipline. We need to discipline ourselves to do what is right. If we don’t, it causes us to have a low opinion, or self-worth, of ourselves.

That’s not every verse we discussed, but it’s all the notes I took.