(Print by TillyClaires)

(If this looks like deja vu... it is because I posted on the wrong day! I pulled it and today is where it belongs.)

The Lord has gifted me with the desire to mentor women. I meet weekly (almost) with one younger woman and we go verse by verse through God’s Words. We pick a different book of the Bible once we have finished one. It is a slow process, some chapters we can finish in one session, some take two, some have taken longer. The goal is to apply God’s Word written well over 2,000 years ago into our lives and show how it still is relevant and useful to us today. Now we are working through Proverbs.

That is my joy… to watch God open women’s eyes and hearts to His Word and to be privileged to be a part of the process. The first week in Proverbs 1 we saw how God emphasized that we should seek wisdom and knowledge. That we should follow “her” (wisdom is referred to as a woman… don’t think too highly of it….God also uses a woman as an adulteress who leads us down the wrong path).

Proverbs 2… pretty much says the same thing. As does Proverbs 3, 4, 5...etc. They all basically tell us that wisdom is what we should seek and follow and stay away from the path of the wicked. As we discussed how God repeated and repeated the same concept, just with a little variance each time, we realized how very important it was for Him to continue to emphasize the same concepts.

I wanted to share with my friend why God would continue with what could be considered monotonous repetition. We talked about how “they” (whoever “they” are?) say that we need to hear things 7-10 times before it sinks in and we discussed how God took the concept a step further in each chapter, affirming what we had learned and adding to it.

Then the word popped in my head… Rototilling! (This is my favorite part of mentoring because it is when I feel closest to the Lord… He just pops things in there for me to use!) I like word pictures and try to use them whenever possible. Jesus gave us the example of word pictures by teaching us with the parables. (If He in all His wisdom knew we learn best that way, then I better follow His lead.)

Rototilling! You take a piece of hard ground and rototill it. The first round you break the soil into large clumps and it is a bit more absorbent than it was. The second round it improves but not until you have worked over that ground repeatedly is it broken and sifted enough to plant the seeds for successful growth. That is what God is doing in Proverbs… He is rototilling our minds. Proverbs is one giant mind rototiller that prepares our mind for God's seeds to take root.

by Phyllis Ducey
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Yesterday for our Scripture Sunday verse, Sue (MYSAVIOR) kindly and honestly shared with us about an incident where she trusted a fellow Christian to do work for her. She found the person to be untrustworthy which cost her personally as well as monetarily.

Not that Sue was not wise in her decision making but it brought to mind the verse where Jesus states that we are to be "shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves" (Matt 10:16). So then I started researching that verse which in context refers to Christ giving instructions as He was sending the disciples out to preach. The word shrewd in this verse means "wise". This prompted me to see all the uses of the word wisdom in the Bible. (I have in the past done studies on wisdom verses a fool... a study anyone can do by reading Proverbs and is well worth spending time in.) I found there to be 215 wisdom related verses in the New International Version. Must be pretty important to have that many references.

What does being shrewd as a snake mean anyway? For me I think of the snake that lured Eve in the Garden of Eden. He was shrewd by working on her ego and manipulating the truth. Aren't many of us guilty of what is commonly referred to as "white lies" where we manipulate the truth? Doesn't truth get blurred?

We need wisdom to guide us in truth and in our lives. But like truth, I get the sense that what works for me is considered wise. What is best for the moment is what is best for me. But is that what wisdom is about? Or is that man's wisdom? Below are some of God's view of wisdom.


I think that wisdom is a word we rarely refer to anymore but should be one of our personal goals. God's tells us He will grant us wisdom if we ask. And when we see that it is pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere... what more could we want?

Wisdom sometimes comes to us at a price. In her post, Sue followed God's wisdom in how she worked out the situation with the person who did not perform his carpentry as he professed he would. But unfortunately, she also learned a lesson that I learned a long time ago, just because we are Christian, we may not be always practicing it.

I remember one time I was working for a Christian man and we were going (with others) to a Christian seminar to showcase some product. When not working we got the opportunity to attend some of the programs which had awesome speakers. One I attended encouraged us to be in prayer and fast during the weekend. I thought it a good idea and did. I also was working extreme hours and had been very frustrated with my boss about several things that weekend. I felt justified in my frustration but did not control it well. At one point I totally (and inappropriately) blew up at him! Really blew.

Here I was a Christian... I was fasting and praying... but I lost total control and was focused on accomplishing a task that I felt he was not following through on as he promised. That was my problem not his. I was not behaving in the way a "Christian" should. Unlike Sue's example, I was not following God's wisdom as she did... otherwise I would have been peace-loving and considerate.

As with everything, God is gracious and allowed me to learn a lot about myself from that event. One thing was that I learned I do not function well when I fast that possibly my blood sugars drop and my thinking is not as clear as it should be. I kind of shocked myself at my outburst, so I learned to be understanding of others when they have them. Maybe there is some underlying issues that effected that person in the circumstances. Understanding and wisdom go hand-in-hand. One of my personal goals is to continue to search for it... how about you?