The Call of Wisdom V: Incline Your Heart

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder and with me again is Teddy, and we are looking at the theme of how to respond to the voice of God or how to respond to divine wisdom's voice.

And we get that from a very particular spot in the book of Proverbs. Yeah, in Proverbs chapter two, verses one through five, we've read it previously, we're going to read it again.

Verse one, my son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding, yes, if you will call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you will seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will know, then you will understand the fear of the

Lord and find the knowledge of God. So, so far, Jon, what we've done is we've had three episodes on this, well, we've had more than that, but we focused on three things.

We've already looked at what it means to welcome the word of God or to receive it into our lives.

We've looked at treasuring the word of God. And then last week, we looked at what it means to bend the ear, or I love how the

Hebrew had it there, to dig out your ear so that you can hear the word of God and the call of wisdom.

So what are we, in this week, we are looking at the end of verse two, inclining your heart to understanding.

And before we get into it, Jon, what does the Old Testament mean when it talks about the heart? Yeah, we've probably spoken about this at some point in the past, but the heart, when, when the scripture deals with the heart, it's dealing with the core of the person, the interiority, you know, that aspect, the soul, the spiritual qualities.

So if we could contrast heart with body, soul and body, you know, it's not merely where my body is on Sunday morning.

Is it sitting in the church? Well, that's great. But is my heart there? You know, is the interior, is the core of my being really engaged or am

I just going through the motions? And over and over from Genesis to Revelation, we find that God is never satisfied with us merely doing what looks like the things he tells us to do.

The heart has to be in it. So the heart is the core. It does deal with our deepest desires, but it's not just emotions.

We think of in as, as modern man, we think of heart as being emotions. Well, I love you with all my heart.

Right. So it's emotions as, you know, contrasted with thoughts and determinations.

So if we think of three different things that we consider as part of the soul, there is the heart or the affections, the deepest yearnings, the value system of a person.

There are the thoughts of a person and there are the determinations, the will, the volition.

So mind, heart and volition choice. Mind, heart and will.

These are never separable in the scripture. What the scripture does divide between is heart and body or interior.

What's going on on the inside of a person and exterior? What's going on on the outside of the person? Those can be separated.

When we talk about a person's life, you're in church, you're going through the motions, you're reading your

Bible. Great, but that's not enough. What about that more significant aspect?

Where's the heart? Where's the core of you in all of this activity? So the

Bible divides between heart and body, the interior and the exterior, discussing both of those, but it does not divide up.

Well, there's will and there's affections and values and there's thoughts. Those are really, though we can describe them individually, those work in union.

They're woven together. So when we talk about heart, we're talking about our deepest yearnings, our value system, our most serious thoughts and our true intentions, the inside of us.

And from that, the Bible says, everything flows. Proverbs 4 .23,

watch over your heart, watch over your thoughts and desires and choices with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.

John Flavel, in his little book, Keeping the Heart, says that from the intellect, you know, down to the deepest desires is a long way sometimes.

You know, we're learning things, we're hearing things. Yes, but to get that deep down into the core of our being where it saturates all aspects of the soul, of our most serious thoughts and our longings and our intentions.

That's a hard process sometimes. It's easy for things that we're learning to stay on the surface.

And we think that because we comprehend them intellectually, then we've got them down in the heart.

John Flavel says, if you can make the trip from intellect to the core of your being, then it's a small step from the core of the being to our hands and feet and mouth.

You know, so from understanding concepts to really having it in the heart, have our heart bent toward that big step from the heart captivated by what the

Bible says to a life altered by what the Bible says, very small step. Luke 6,

Christ talks about the importance of the heart. The good man out of the good treasure of his heart, his thoughts, his intentions, his deepest yearnings brings forth what is good.

The evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth what is evil for his mouth speaks from that which fills the heart.

Um, so again, what really controls the behavior of a person is the spiritual quality of what the

Bible calls his heart. And one thing, if I could add this is kind of one of the motifs that we're seeing in this is that you do choose what you're treasuring in your heart.

And that takes an effort. That is something that you are deciding to do. So when we're talking about, you know, inclining your heart, it is, and we'll get into how, but just to kind of make this point early on, this is not a passive thing.

What you treasure in your heart is not passive. It doesn't just happen. You have to do the effort of making it, you know, of filling your heart with these things so that your heart can be fed by and inclined to them.

Yeah. And if we take those different things mentioned in Proverbs 2, these metaphors of a responsive life to the speaking

God, um, we said in our first week, these aren't necessarily in a special order, and these are a description of the same man really in his responding to God, but he's being viewed from different angles.

So taking all of them together as a whole is what we need to do. And we can't be satisfied to say, well,

I do this pretty well, but I'm pretty weak over here. But as long as I do the second or the first of them, well,

I'm, I'm okay. But it really, it takes all of them. They're all describing a full holistic picture of the responsive life.

When we open the word of God, whether we're studying or listening to it being preached. Now think of the connection between what we've already looked at and the heart receiving

God's words, taking them actively receiving. So God is giving. So the word receive is appropriate, but the

Hebrew word is more often used in the sense of taking. So there's an active reaching out and taking what

God is giving, welcoming it in, treasuring it, keeping it safe, not letting it be stolen away.

Um, then bending my ear, making my ear listen to it and not to everything else.

When we do that, we see that those are all wonderful, but they're incomplete. If the heart, if the core of your being is not involved in the receiving and treasuring and listening to the word of God.

And of course, with what flows, um, crying out for God's teaching and seeking what

God says, like a man would seek for silver or gold. Uh, Jonathan Edwards long ago pointed out, and I think

I probably read this somewhere in John Piper, that it is not enough for the believer to understand conceptually the truths of the

Bible. These great realities that God has revealed, they are to be delighted in, you know, they are to be grabbed hold of.

In a sense, we could say if the heart is inclined to what God is saying in this book, the other things will be there, but it's so helpful to have them listed for us because I find,

I mean, I don't know about you, Teddy, but I find that my heart is often quite warm to God, quite already, you know, inclined to his word.

I'm thankful for a Bible. I'm thankful for the moments in the morning to pull aside and be alone with God.

I'm excited what new things I might learn or old things I might be reminded about.

But it's helpful for me to move from a vague, um, you know, admiration of the

God who gives us this book to some specific expressions of the love for God's voice, like the things that show up before and after.

Yeah, and one of the things that I have found so encouraging, um, you know, John, when I came to the church here, um, coming up on nine years ago, excuse me, there was so much that I realized

I did not know. There was so much that I realized I had to learn about God, and the more that I've learned about God, the more

I've learned how little I really do know him. But one of the fallacies that I bought into in the beginning, and this was just a personal, um, lie of the enemy that he found very effective with me, is

I thought that I had to know more before I could really have a genuine love and appreciation.

And so I was, I was seeking after head knowledge for a long time. And one of the things that I've learned is that my heart could be warmed, and that would lead to a head understanding, if that could make sense.

Yeah, yeah. So the way the Lord deals with this is truth is received. Truth has to be the wood that we put in the fireplace of the heart, you know, that's the fuel.

But as we live on what truths God has been teaching us, it, it does produce a life that is responsive, and it is to the responsive heart that God so, so lavishly teaches more and more, you know, so it really, it's a...

It's circular. It's this vital, yeah, cycle. Yeah, and so the reason I say that is,

I want to be encouraging here, if you're listening to the podcast, and you're thinking, okay, well,

John, that's great for you, because, you know, Dr. John Snyder, you understand these things, so you can come to the

Bible. It is not about how much you do or do not know at this point. You can come to the

Lord and seek Him, and He will be found. You can treasure

Him. Don't wait until you think you've reached some level of maturity, you know, that you have in your mind.

Don't put this off, because you can, through the help of the Spirit, you can obey every one of these commands, including inclining your heart and giving all of that heart, that complete will to the devotion and the worship of Christ.

And John, that leads to, you know, I think a very helpful question that you've got here.

What does it mean? So we understand what the heart is now. What does it mean to incline the heart to God?

Well, I was looking at a Hebrew dictionary, brushing up on my Hebrew, and I was surprised to see that in one dictionary in particular, there were 16 different uses of this one

Hebrew word. And of the 16, I would say 10 really apply in different degrees to this command in Proverbs 2.

So let me run through them, and then we can discuss which ones we find most helpful for ourselves.

The word to incline can mean to spread out. So like spreading out a blanket.

To when an object is spread out, it covers an ever larger area, extending from a source.

Another illustration is a river in the flood season swells to the point that it leaps its banks and starts to spread out over the land around the river, you know, and so it just covers more, it expands.

Or second, to stretch out or to extend, like a person stretching out or extending their hand towards something they long for.

So it's one thing if someone wants to hand you something that you don't really want. Hey, would you hold this for a second?

It's not as if you were standing there watching them saying, I can't wait to hold this for them, you know.

But you look at them, they're trying to juggle too much, you know, they're coming in with the groceries and you think, wow,

I think they carried everything in one load, you know. And they say, can you grab this? Oh yeah, sure.

It's not that. It's seeing something that is so valuable and it is given to you, it's offered to you, and so you stretch out your hand to get it.

A third meaning, to bend down or to be bent down. Now, this is very different.

It's used over and over of a worker, of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, who bend down to put their shoulder under a burden to accomplish the task.

It's used of Samson bending and putting a shoulder to, you know, to the pillars to push them into, you know, to kill the

Philistines at the end of his life. So it's to bend down and to engage yourself kind of wholeheartedly with a task.

Fourth, to turn aside. It's used of a person who is, let's say you're walking down a straight path and, or for us, we would say we're driving down the road, you know,

I just drove to Virginia and back with my wife and our daughter,

Sarah. And we went to Virginia so that I could attend HeartCry Missionary Society board meetings.

And it's a long drive. And Mississippi, you know, and Alabama, they're not the prettiest spots that we drive through.

And then you start hitting, you know, parts of Georgia and, or into Tennessee.

And then when you get to East Tennessee, then, you know, you're in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

And so it becomes really pretty. And then you get into Virginia and it's even more pretty.

And so we're driving and we get to see all these mountains and hills and the scenery that we don't normally see in North Mississippi.

As you're driving, sometimes there will be those places where it's a very scenic spot. And so, you know, a public park, you're driving through the park and it'll say, you know, lookout point, and it'll be a certain type, you know, the name of the mountain that you're on.

And so you pull aside and park and you get off and look. That's the idea here.

You're going along in life and you spot something off the road, off to your right, that is so beautiful.

So astonishing. You turn aside to see what's going on. You can think of Moses going about normal work when he's exiled and he's tending sheep, you know, when he's been kicked out of Egypt, fled for his life.

And then he sees a burning bush that is not being consumed. It's a miracle. He turns aside to investigate it.

Another use, the fifth, to plot, to scheme, to plan.

And this has the idea of desiring something and realizing I'll never get it if I don't start planning.

And, you know, when you want something really badly, nobody has to tell you, now I want you to start thinking about how you're going to get that.

You do it on your own. If it's something you're purchasing, maybe you go online and you read the reviews and, you know, watch somebody open the box and say,

I just got this. And you think, oh, I wanted that. And they open it and say, look how nice it is.

And that's all they do. You know, it's not very helpful. Some reviews are much more helpful. I've had this for a year.

This is how it's performed. But whatever it is, if it's something we desire and it's not something that's easily gotten, we begin to plot and to plan.

How will we get it? What is needed? Our heart bends toward this in our scheming.

Sixth, to be inclined to a certain view. We would say a person has a very strong opinion about something.

You know, this person always wants to talk about this thing, you know, politics or whatever. And whether it's something that people enjoy or something that makes you obnoxious to people, you're probably known in some areas of your life as a person who has really strong opinions about a certain thing or a certain activity.

And that's the way the Hebrew word is used sometimes. Incline your heart.

Be a person who is well known as having strong opinions about something.

It grips your heart. Seventh, to be won over to a certain view or opinion.

Similar to what we just said. When someone convinces you of the value of something and you are won over to their side, to their way of thinking.

So when you come to the scripture, incline your heart. Let your heart be won over to the way

God sees things. If in a certain area, you're still seeing things the way culture sees them.

Number eight, to engage in a relationship and to refuse to let it be broken.

And so that's pretty simple. My heart is inclined toward my wife. Your heart is inclined toward your wife.

Our hearts are inclined toward our children. We enter into a relationship with them, you know, on the day they're born, so to speak.

You know, we hold them. Or before they're born, you know, when they're still in the womb. And you see the changes your wife is going through.

And you know, the first time it's shocking. And you think there's a little life in there. And then the life is here in your hands.

And it's, you know, needy and demanding. And you have connected.

You have engaged in an enduring relationship. Number nine, to remain or rest or to stay somewhere.

That reminds us, you know, John 15, abide in me and I in you. To consciously choose to rest your heart's hungers, your deepest thoughts about things, your value system, your intentions, to rest them in the word of God.

And not to let them continue to run kind of wild from one thing to the next.

And finally, number 10, to entice or be enticed. And the word is often used in a way that is not morally admirable.

So it's used of an immoral woman walking down a street.

It could be an immoral man, but it's an immoral woman. And she's dressed very scantily. And the way she walks and the way she looks at people as she walks by them, it's clear that she is intending to entice them.

She wants them to find her irresistible. And so if you can remove the negative, sinful connotations, it is when we open the word or hear it preached, our hearts are inclined or they are enticed in a pure way to something that is infinitely beautiful.

So there's the 10 ways that the word can be used of the 16, which I think apply to the believer's response to the word of God.

And that's a lot to take in. So if you want to see these written out, because I know for at least for me, a lot of times that'll help, we will have those.

I'll have a link to those in the show notes, and they'll be posted on our blog. So Teddy, which of those do you find perhaps most striking?

Yeah, so for me, the most striking and the most, I think, applicable.

So the one that my mind just kind of jumped to, like, that's something I can do, is number five, to plot or to scheme.

And the reason is, I know me, and I know the way that my mind works.

And I am a type of guy, I have to sit down and think through things very, very thoroughly before I can take a step.

And what I have found is, when it comes to, so my oldest son and I have recently gotten into leatherworking.

And I cannot tell you how deep the YouTube rabbit hole I went when it came to thinking about beginning.

So are you making a big belt, like with, you know, the Western theme? Yep, belts, bookmarks, all kinds of...

Yeah, he gave me a bookmark. He did. He was practicing his saddle stitching and gave you a bookmark from it. So we're working on these things.

And what I have known is, before I can do something, if I just kind of...

I'm not the type that just takes a step and just goes into it and just figures it out as I go. I can't do that.

So when it comes to thinking through how to incline my heart, how to bend my ear, all of the things that we've taught, how to treasure,

I need to not wait until I have my quiet time to think how I'm going to do this.

It helps me to think through, what does it look like for me to treasure the

Word of God? What does it look like for me to approach? And I have even taken to almost a liturgical approach to a quiet time, just to warm my heart.

And there's great resources for that. But it also changes the way that I view it.

The way that I view even coming to the scriptures, because now, because I've taken time to really think through, how am

I going to approach? How am I going to keep these, whatever the Lord shows me in that day, how am

I going to keep it fresh in my mind throughout the day, rather than the parable of the seeds, rather than letting it hit firm soil and the birds come and they take it away.

I find that's what would happen a lot. But because I've now thought through, how do

I correct that? How do I keep it fresh in my mind? It's also become a hobby.

You know, not in an inappropriate sense, but what I mean is the thing I so look forward to now.

Yeah, so a hobby is sometimes is hard work. Yeah. So people like, you know, they spend their whole day working on something.

And if their boss at work had said, I need you to come in and work all day Saturday, and I'm not paying you anything extra, you'd be so upset.

Like, this is my Saturday. But a hobby, you work just as hard, but it's an expression of love.

Right. Yeah, absolutely. And so for me personally, I found the plot scheme to be so refreshingly helpful.

I think one for me that is striking. I think that one for me that's striking is the number three, to be bent down, to bend down the shoulder, to take the load and, you know, in order to accomplish the task.

So get under the task. Don't be afraid of the hard work. I often approach, particularly quiet times, you know, daily times with the

Lord. I do find that I naturally see them as an expression of love, of friendship, of need.

I need Him. I need to listen to whatever He wants to say today. I don't come with a list. He's the

King. He's the Father. I'm the subject and the child. So we sit at His feet and we trust

Him as we're reading. You know, I tend to work through a book and not hop around.

We trust Him to say what we need to hear. And we are listening to whatever

He wants to say. So I have that. That tends to be my normal experience.

Reading the Bible is an expression of desire or love for Him. But the hard work, you know, seeing a passage that maybe is a little difficult to understand, it's going to require me to, you know, stop and really do some digging and thinking and praying.

And it may take more than one day. I can get lazy with that, you know. It's like getting lazy with the, you know, the romantic side of your marriage.

You think, well, yeah, that would have been nice, you know, if I would have given some thought. But that would have taken a lot of time.

And, you know, her birthday could have been a lot better or whatever, you know. It would have been nice to get away. And now

I look back on it. If I had put some more work into it, it would have been sweeter. So sometimes

I look at the Bible and I think, well, that's a hard to understand passage. Let me move on to a passage that's just kind of like low -hanging fruit.

It's, you know, it's like a candy store. And it doesn't require any work on my part.

I don't have to go make the meal. I just see what Tozer said. You know, what did Hudson Taylor said?

Amy Carmichael. John Owen, you know, John Flavel that we mentioned. Let them give me some sweet thing to take.

But to really benefit from Scripture, I must incline my heart. My heart must be bent toward, extended toward, you know, embracing the hard work of doing whatever is necessary to be wholly responsive, to be obedient to what

I'm learning. And not just to sentimentally admire the concept.

I want it to be embraced in all of its applications. So I want to be a doer, a worker with this truth.

And I think that that echo really feeds into number nine as well. To stay or to remain.

I mean, it would be so easy for us to, you know, in your case, to go on to an easier passage or to go on to something that you, you know, maybe you're more familiar with.

And I think for me, that is played out in a different way because, and I know this is the case for you as well, but when you've got five little ones in the house, there is, it is so easy.

And there is no end of the things that need to be done, that are screaming for your attention.

And it does take hard work to stay, to remain.

And also, honestly, we've talked about this before, particularly with bending the ear, you know, being fully focused.

And what I have to do is have two notebooks next to me, one for taking notes and one for those stray thoughts that come in.

But I have found the practice of just staying, slowly reading through the

Word, spending extra time, and even, you know, stealing away when

I can, to simply be with the Lord, to be so helpful.

Yeah. So you are, you're holding the heart in, before the

Lord's Word, intentionally, not letting it be distracted, you know, so that in a sense,

God becomes and His Word becomes the great distraction that distracts me from all the small little voices that tell me that they deserve my attention.

I don't mean your kids. I mean, you know, all the little things out in the world that say, wait, wait, wait, God's nice, but He's one of the 100 things you need to think about.

And so, particularly when you're in the worship service, when you're meeting with the

Lord alone, if, you know, if you're in family worship, to hold the heart here, here is the fountain, you know, find my satisfaction here and don't let my heart run, you know, distractedly to 100 different things.

I'll give you one more. And it's the one you mentioned, plotting or scheming. I think when the heart is fully engaged and responsive to God through His Word, you know, there is that loving scheming that we do to find more opportunities.

So how do I make the most of the time? And so, like you mentioned, planning out.

I think, Teddy, you could have like a whole Amazon store on Teddy's favorite things for the quiet time.

So which notebooks? Yeah, and just yesterday, I got in 10 new notebooks for my fountain pen.

See, we talked about this last week before we recorded. We talked about these notebooks. Yeah, I owe you one. Yeah, you do. I'm gonna give you the one that's messed up.

Of course, I'm happy with that. I'll give you the good one. All right, so I have all these different notebooks, and some are for Psalm 119, the believer in the

Word. Some are for, you know, what God says about the church. And so as I'm reading,

I grab this notebook, and I'm jotting down notes in this one. But then the next passage, maybe, you know, the next day deals with something completely different.

I grabbed that notebook. And so, theoretically, all my notebooks are, you know, in a sense, they're topical.

And they're things I've been learning on these different topics. What it ends up being is I end up putting it all in the same notebook, and then not knowing where I put it.

Like, well, was it in that book, that miscellaneous book? You know, and I forget to go back and write it into the appropriate notebook.

And now, you know, I know that we can use our computers, and we have our files. But I hate to do that. I want to write it. So we could have all that planning.

But another way to think of planning is, how am I going to find time to spend with the

Lord? When I was first converted, you know, God saved me halfway through college, age 20.

And I was there studying for the ministry. But I was, you know, a stranger to grace, really a stranger to Christ.

I just had the Jesus that my parents had. My parents had the right Christ, you know. But my parents Christ, you know, well, they're

Christians. They took me to church. Sure, I'm a Christian. I'm even going to be a preacher. But when

God really opened my eyes, you know, when he conquers us, this plotting aspect of inclining my heart toward him and his word, suddenly it appears, you know, it wasn't there before.

And so I remember in the evenings after getting schoolwork done, which I began to take seriously once I was a

Christian, I used to just hang out with, well, with Chuck, the co -pastor here.

He and I lived together. And we would go do something in the evenings, you know, just go kickbacks, do something.

So I remember starting to say no to those. And Chuck would say, you want to go do this? I'd say, nah.

And he told me, you're getting kind of boring, which hurt my feelings. But I'm still, I guess I'm still a little hurt by it, you know, but I'm going to get counseling.

So I remember saying no to those things because I had planned during the day when

I get done with my schoolwork and after supper, I could read through this portion of Scripture.

And I was excited to carve out some extra time to meet with God in a particular part of the

Bible, or to memorize Scripture, or to meditate on the Scriptures.

One time, this is a completely unimportant thing, but I used, I've always been a bit goofy in this way.

I liked candlelight. And I thought, I'm going to just stay up late, read my Bible by candlelight.

And I had this piece of pottery that held like eight candles. It was a big plate and with kind of a rim.

So I was reading and then I was writing down new memory verses and I was reviewing the memory verses and I passed out.

And then about three in the morning, I hear this noise. And I thought, what is that?

You know, I was living in a house with a bunch of other guys at college. And I sit up and look around and the plate beside me, the candles have melted down and the whole thing is like a little pond of wax.

And I didn't know candles did this, but the whole thing was on fire now. And so if it had not been, you know, if it didn't have edges, it would have just poured out over the table and I would have caught my room on fire.

Set your house on fire. Yeah. So I, you know, I jumped up and screamed and got it out and had to, you know, clean it the next day.

But I wanted, I planned for time to memorize new verses. Another thing

I would do is I would look at the weekends differently and I would say to myself, and I was dating

Misty, you know, who I married to. And I loved spending time with Misty, but if she wasn't in town or even if she was, when

I was first converted, I thought, okay, I can see Misty, but I want some special time this weekend with God.

I'll get my work done and then Friday night I'll go camping. And so I would just pack up all my books and notebooks and Bible and get a tent from a friend and a sleeping bag.

And I'd just go find a piece of property. I don't know who owned the property. It wasn't campground. I would just go out in the woods in Mississippi.

And I grew up in Ohio and Ohio, you know, nature is a little friendlier to you than down here.

Down here, everything poisonous is still running around. So I remember camping out one night and after about three hours being me,

I go stir crazy, like, wait, there's nobody out here but me, you know? And so I've read the Bible and prayed for three hours.

I'm about to lose my mind. So I called a buddy and said, hey, you want to camp with me? He was one of the Christians I lived with.

So he came out and camped. We talked, we prayed. It was a great time. It really was, you know, a time with the

Lord, with a good friend. We woke up in the morning. I looked at his pillow and there was a black spot on the pillow.

I thought, what is that? And I looked at it and it was a black widow climbing toward my friend.

So I screamed, you know, I hate spiders. And I jumped up and down inside the tent.

You know, I about destroyed the tent trying to get away from this black widow and I beat it to death. And, you know, of course, no one got bit.

My friend goes home and after about two more hours, I'm thinking, whoo, I've been out here a long time. You know, I read another two hours.

I prayed another two hours. And so I called another friend, Shelton, a man that was one of the pastors here, recently passed away.

He came out. He was one of the roommates and he stayed with me. And we met, we talked about the

Lord. We read the Bible. We studied, you know, we memorized verses together that night. And the next day we were walking through the woods, just talking about the

Lord. And I kicked over a log that was laying on the ground. I just pushed it over.

And Shelton yelled and jumps behind a tree. I'm like, what's your problem? And I looked down and there's a big copperhead right there.

And so this poisonous snake is there. And Shelton's yelling to me going, don't you know anything? You don't turn over logs in Mississippi.

There's always a critter underneath them, you know? And so I jumped behind a tree and he jumps behind a tree.

Now I had a walking stick and he had a walking stick because we're going through the woods. I had a walking stick that was made out of oak that I had cut and stripped and burned the words, the

Lord, our righteousness on it. It was stout. I mean, you can knock a person's head off with it. And there's me with that.

He had an old rotten stick he picked up from the ground. And so I said to him, get it, kill it.

And it started moving. I'm like, oh, it's going toward the tent. You know, I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight because it's going to, it's going to come after me when

I'm asleep. So the snake starts to crawl over this other big log.

And so he's, he's halfway over this log and I'm like, it's on the chopping block, man, smash it.

And he goes to hit it. And he looks at his old rotten piece of wood. He's like, this isn't going to do anything.

You got the, you got the good one. You hit it. And I'm like, ah, you're bigger. You hit it. And then, so we're yelling back and forth.

And finally he was going to get away. So I jumped out. I hit that snake so hard, you know, it wasn't an anaconda.

I didn't need to hit it that hard. I hit it so hard with this oak staff that it almost broke the, the log.

It was the little log it was crawling over, you know, which was rotten, but I definitely severed that snake in two with this, with this stab.

So those are my funny stories. I planned after I was a true Christian, I began to scheme and plan.

What can I do this weekend to meet alone with the Lord? I'll give you one more illustration that's not silly.

In the UK, when we were living in Wales, we were right in the middle of a city and we had the two little kids at that time and we lived in a little flat.

And so, you know, it was, it was pretty distracting. My wife did everything she could to keep the kids away from me when

I was trying to have a quiet time or working, but you know, the kids make noise, especially our firstborn. So I would get up and before church on Sunday morning, if I wasn't preaching somewhere,

I would take my Bible and throw it in a backpack and a notebook and a pen. And I would start to walk. And I walked over a few blocks in the city to this big cemetery.

It was massive. It covered, you know, a number of blocks inside the city. And it had a giant, you know, wrought iron fence around the whole thing.

So I would go in through the gate and I would just walk through. And of course it was quiet and it was beautiful.

It had old trees and things, and I would just find a big old stump or something.

And I would just sit down there and meet with the Lord. And I would stay there for, you know, an hour or so, just reading and praying before it was time to come back home and help

Misty get the kids ready and go to church. Scheming. Where can I find time to be with Him whom my soul loves?

You know, eager for the gap in your schedule. Looking forward to the weekend because you're going to meet with God and cover a book in the

Bible maybe you've never read. And you're going to learn at the feet of your King. So yeah, scheming and plotting.

Well, there's a lot there. Go ahead. So about that, I think there's one other aspect to plotting and scheming.

And it's related to what you were just talking about. We may not always have the ability to, you know, to walk.

We all have those 10 -15 minute kind of mental breaks in work. John, I know you are my boss.

I take 10 -15 minute breaks. I know you take breaks. But we can...

Now Bob knows you take breaks. That's what's scary. Now the board knows you take breaks. I'm sorry, board. But when we do have those breaks, when we have those kind of, you know, just...

We need something else for our mind to focus on. And it is so easy to use the great modern distraction of social media.

But if we plot and scheme ahead of time that we can say, no, I want to work on memorizing scripture.

I want to review what I read this morning. And it goes back to that plotting and scheming beforehand.

Because if we've already made the decision that this is what I'm going to do when a break presents itself or when

I'm in between tasks, you've already decided what you're going to do. Otherwise, I misuse the break. I mean, not, you know, not a sinful way, just kind of lazy.

And then I look back and think, man, I missed a lot of sweet opportunities. Yes. Yeah. When I worked on a tree cutting company while I was going through seminary,

I worked for a company that cut trees away from power lines and, you know, bucket trucks.

So you go up 45, 55 feet. And I was scared of heights. Somebody entrusted you with a chainsaw. That's what's shocking to me.

Yeah. Well, it was at the end of a long pole and it had the little saw at the end. So I blew out power lines left and right.

There were whole towns that lost power for an afternoon because of me in the early days of learning what

I wasn't allowed to do. So I realized after a while that working in the bucket truck, instead of working the ground crew pulling the limbs away, the bucket truck, if you were busy in the bucket truck, you're busy.

So that made the day go by fast. Everybody else thought it was like nice to sit on the ground because you could be lazy.

But I found that it made the day go slowly. So I thought, okay, well, I'll take the bucket. And the other guys on the crew were like, man, if you want to do it, do it.

You know, they thought they were having the easy job. But I found out that, you know, once I got, once we set up in a spot to get the bucket off the truck and 55 feet up in the air, it usually took a couple minutes, you know, it was a slow plodding lift.

So I brought with me every day a couple of memory verses written on a note card and stuck it in my pocket.

And I would pull them out. And as I, as long as the path was clear and I wasn't underneath lines,

I'd start the bucket truck moving up. And as the bucket climbed, I would have time to read the verse.

And then after I was done cutting, it'd take the same amount of time to go down and I'd read the verse. And I, yeah,

I would plan in the morning for stealing little pieces of time to meet with the

Lord. And it was so much more beneficial than just kind of zoning out and being lazy.

And that kind of connects to what we said earlier, the number three, to bend down and put your shoulder to the work.

I find at the end of a day now, it's very tempting to think, well, I've, I've done brain work all day.

So now is my time. And it's for me. It's not for the church folks.

And I wouldn't say it like this, but it's not really for God. It's for John. And so I'm not going to study anymore.

I'm just going to vegetate. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to watch some British mystery. And, um, and I don't think that that's sinful.

Even Owen talks about unstringing the bow, but we have to be very careful. I thought you were going to say John Owen watch British mysteries.

Oh, well. So you're watching this, but yeah. But I find sometimes

I lose real opportunities because I spend too much time relaxing. When, if I would just make a little effort to bend my shoulder to the work,

I would find, you know, time with the Lord refreshing and not a drag.

And it's different than working, you know, in church work to meet with the Lord, to memorize a verse, to talk with God about the verse as you're memorizing it.

You know, it's very different. And I just get caught in the trap of laziness that says, I don't want to put my shoulder to this heavy burden.

I've done that already today. And that lie, you know, that it will be a burden, it won't be refreshing.

Often I find I embrace that lie and I lose sweet opportunities.

Right. And when we are obedient in that and do pursue the Lord in that, he gives the strength, the strength of overflowing, you know.

Well, as we close one practical application, Teddy will put all of these 10 points in their summaries in the show notes.

You can go to those notes and you can see what we just mentioned in those 10 ways that the heart can be inclined.

What I would suggest is you just make a little bookmark, whether you want to do it on your computer by hand, take some cardstock, make a little bookmark with the 10 different ways the heart can be inclined to God's word.

And, you know, you can fill it out as suits you. But if you have those 10 things and you stick it in your

Bible, then every time you show up at church, every time you're reading it in your quiet time or reading with your family or one of those special times, you just quickly review those 10 little things.

And it helps us to remember there are so many ways to incline my heart.

And it's not just a vague love for and appreciation for God's word.

There's some very practical things that make it a very beneficial response to wisdom's voice.

Next week, we'll look at the next in the list of Proverbs 2, 1 through 4, and that is lifting our voice, crying out to God for discernment and understanding, asking