Baptist_Bible_Believer

Ron Hamilton has entered into hospice due to advanced dementia. The family has been called to gather with him. It is not expected that Patch will be much longer for this earth..

Well, I was a bit younger when I made that site . . . now I'm old enough where homegoing isn't going to be so much to go. When the Lord calls, unless He makes other arrangements the site will no doubt disappear. I've been supporting it myself. I ran out of room on my site so I posted a few books on a different site that has since gone under.

Okay.

On the devotional page I keep getting this message right after I post something and then go back and try to edit it. I can't get the devotion for Profiting With Proverbs to work since yesterday. This comment can no longer be edited. It may have been moved or deleted, or too much time may have passed since it was posted for it to be edited.

Still working on it It doesn't seem to be working.

Still trying to work out this problem

1 Yesterday's devotion didn't post, so I'm trying it again.

“Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice?” (Proverbs 8:1 KJV). In chapter 8, we have a picture of a preacher that is wise to sin, and the discourse is on the fact that we ought to listen to the preacher. Not only that, but Christ is personified—in other words, wisdom is given human attributes. Wisdom in the chapter is going to personify Jesus Christ. How does the Oxford English Dictionary define Personification? “Attribution of personal form, nature, or characteristics; the representation of a thing or abstraction as a person, as a rhetorical figure or species of metaphor.” “Doth not wisdom cry?” Did that young man in chapter 7 die because there was no one to warn him? No, wisdom was crying in the streets. We saw that when we started the book of Proverbs. The young man just wouldn’t listen to wisdom. He listened to wickedness. Do you know what sin is like? Sin is like something that looks good, feels good, tastes good, sounds good—everything’s ‘good’ about it—but then it ends up sour. “O ye simple, understand wisdom: and, ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart” (Proverbs 8:5 KJV). Doing it God’s way is just the reverse. It starts out sour—repentance, rebuke, weeping, getting right, then it starts to get good. Then the heart is full of joy, the heart is full of peace, “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God” (Ro 5:1). Then you get that Holy Ghost leading, guiding, directing; and you start helping folks to get saved, you go to the right church, you start giving to missionaries. Wow! What started out sour starts turning sweet. The world doesn’t want anything sour . . . they want it sweet all the way through . . . but there ain’t nothing sweet all the way through. Nothing. Everything in this world starts out sweet and then turns sour or starts out sour and turns out sweet. Is there any fruit that starts out sour and ends up sweet? Well, yea, all fruit when it is ripe. Bananas are horrible when they are green, but give them some time. Let the sun shine on them a while until they turn a golden yellow – and then there is nothing sweeter! “Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice?” She does. See what God told Isaiah: “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins” (Isa 58:1 KJV). In every age, God has someone preaching for him. In every place, God’s got a witness. Father, we have learned the bitterness of a life without Christ, and we now know the joy and sweetness of being Your children. And yet, we know that we live in a world that does not love You or Your people, so we may be called upon to suffer for Your Name’s sake. As we grow in grace and in the knowledge of You and Your Word, help us to understand that the “sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” Amen

I like that!

Megakudos for the new site format. I love the way it is easier to spot which forums have active threads. You are really working hard behind the scene to make us grumpy old Baptists happy, brother Matt!

“My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee” (Proverbs 7:1 KJV). Why does the father go over and over this godly instruction in Proverbs? Because he is “training up” his son for the future day when he won’t be there to act as his guide and tutor: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6 KJV). There will come a day in every person’s life that only memories will suffice when they need a word of advice from a parent. It is our divine duty as parents to see that those memories are Bible rich and not worldly wise. Oh, friend, this is why we must guard our emotions at all times so that our words are not words of anger and frustration, but words laced “alway with grace, seasoned with salt” which will be repeated countless times in tomorrow’s thought life of our children. No wonder that we live in a world filled with angry men; for growing up all they knew was anger from those whose duty it was to nurture and prepare them for the coming of adulthood, but as anger was all the parent knew, that was all the parent could bestow. Those families that know the Lord and are blessed to be able to name the name of Christ in their home, are doubly blessed to be able to influence the next generation with a legacy of faith. Proverbs uses a lot of repetition. The Word takes it for granted that we do not remember everything we hear, so it says it over and over again. That’s one way we learn—through repetition, through association, and experience—so he says again, “My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee.” In 3:8 it says that if we “keep my commandments, and live” (vs. 2), “It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones” (3:8). Even for a Christian, this is true, for “if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom 8:13 KJV). Words to the wise is sufficient. “Bind them upon thy fingers.” A book is bound, and we talk about that being the Bible. “write them upon the table of thine heart. Say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister; and call understanding thy kinswoman” (Proverbs 7:3-4 KJV). In other words, get as close as you can as you would to your own family. “That they may keep thee from the strange woman, from the stranger which flattereth with her words” (Proverbs 7:5 KJV). Father, impress upon us the importance of guarding our thoughts and our emotions at all times, understanding that the next generation is more likely to remember the wrong things we say. Let us live in such as way that years from now our children will continue to rise and call us blessed, and the instruction that we gave them will, along with the Word of God, be their anchor in this world. Amen.

Sorry I missed this. Praying all is well with pastor Willis and that he is getting some much deserved rest.

I have experienced this first hand. I used to be one of the ones who ridiculed and shunned Christians. But then, once I actually turned to Christ for Salvation I found that those who had been friends before now shunned me. And didn't God replace that old crowd with some true friends! God is good . . . all the time!

“These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look . . .” (Proverbs 6:16-17 KJV). “A proud look,” is the first in the list, therefore, it might stand to reason that it is the worst, but sin is sin is sin. Disdainful arrogancy is an attitude which can creep into a man’s life without him even noticing it. When considering this attitude, one is immediately drawn to a scene where the prayers of two men are related as a parable: “Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:10-13 KJV). Do we ever catch ourselves praying a similar prayer as we look out onto the harvest field? From experience I can relate that there are some mighty pitiful situations out there. Police officers and ministers look on the worst of society at times. Often, the police officer finds himself hardened to what he sees, and at times even uses what we call “gallows humor” to deal with what he finds hard to observe. The minister, or soul winner, does not have this option available to him ever. Of course, we pity the situation, but we must never begin to gauge our own holiness against the lives of others. Without Jesus Christ, God sees no difference in one sin versus another. We are all sinners in Adam as are all men, we are all sinners by nature as are all men, and we have the same iniquities and corruptions in our hearts as other people. The blanket of righteousness that covers us is not of our own making, but it is the pure righteousness of Jesus Christ that justifies us. In other words, we are only a sinner saved by grace. The lost are only sinners not yet saved by grace. Pride was the sin of the cherubic Lucifer that resulted in his designation as Satan, the father of lies. Pride was the sin of the angels, that left their first estate to roam without rudder, or to be chained in chains in outer darkness. Perhaps pride is the first on the list because it is the sin that gives rise to every other sin. “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18 KJV). Father, help us to keep away from pride in our lives, Let us ever be grateful that everything we have is so much more than we deserve. Let us not forget where we were when you lifted us from the miry clay and placed us on the firm foundation of our salvation. Whenever we begin to think that we are better in any way than others that are less fortunate to us, impress us with the need to run to the mourner’s bench and get it right. Thank You again, for loving us, help us to love others through You. Amen.