Daily Devotional – July 15, 2020

Faith Baptist Church

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Noon to you. Here we are, middle of the week already and halfway through the day.

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I hope you've been having a good week and it doesn't feel quite so much like a hump, you know, as they say, hump day.

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But anyway, I hope your day is going well for you. I was reading in my devotions the other morning in Proverbs 19 and I came across this verse, verse 11, says, good sense makes one slow to anger and it is his glory to overlook an offense.

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Do you get the impression that maybe there's a lack of good sense pretty much in our culture, our society today?

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Good sense doesn't seem to be in great supply. And we see this all over the spectrum, if you will.

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I surely heard the news report the other day of a 24 -year -old woman who was apparently a group of Black Lives Matter protesters were going by where she was.

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I guess they crossed paths or something like that. She was with her fiancé. And they were chanting, you know,

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Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter, and did so right at her. She was a white woman. They were, of course, you know, black.

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And she just responded with, all lives matter, all lives matter.

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And then that led to an altercation and all kinds of yelling and screaming going on.

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And finally, things died down and it's like the parties went their separate way. And she and her fiancé left the area and they were going under a bridge.

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And all of a sudden, one of the people who was involved in that BLM march, protest, whatever it was, shot and killed her.

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Just shot her in the back of the head, killed her, 24 -year -old woman. Why? Because she said, all lives matter.

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Good sense makes one slow to anger. Now, clearly the person who shot her was one who lacked any sense whatsoever.

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Certainly didn't have, oh, I'm sorry. He had bad sense, bad sense for sure.

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And he was not able to be slow to anger. This really does work both directions.

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And I don't want to paint the picture that only one side of these conflicts are the people who lack sense.

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Sometimes the most sensible thing to do is to say nothing and walk away.

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There's another verse in the Proverbs that says, answer not a fool according to his folly. But the last part of that verse says, it is his glory to overlook an offense.

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So yeah, whatever side you're on here, how easily we get angry.

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We can feel it well up within us, right? When that other side of the spectrum says something that just aggravates us so bad.

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And we want to lash out. We want to respond with anger.

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Well, it's your glory to overlook an offense. It's the best thing to do many times just to roll up the window and drive away, or just to walk on by, zip the lip, say nothing.

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Good sense makes one slow to anger. I mentioned the other day about this, um, other scene scenario where, uh, we saw part of a video of part of the altercation between this, uh, woman who came out of the restaurant with a couple of bags in her hand.

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And she accidentally, apparently accidentally bumped a girl who was a teenage girl who was going into the restaurant with her mother.

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So what should have happened there? If there was good sense? Well, if there was good sense and, and, and the mother and, uh, teenage daughter would have been interested in their glory, it would have been their glory just to overlook the offense happens all the time.

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People bump into one another. And on the other side of the coin, you know, what would have been a great scenario is if the, um, the woman who was carrying the bags, when she heard the screaming and yelling of, uh, the, the offended party, if she heard that, if she would have just taken a deep breath, walked onto her van, got in and left, left them screaming, left them yelling, just left.

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Now hindsight's always 2020 and it's easy to armchair quarterback, isn't it? But I guess the thing that I want to emphasize today is, is the truth of this verse that we need to learn to develop good sense, develop good sense so that when some, you feel the anger start to well within you stop yourself before the anger expresses itself, stop yourself and ask what would be the good sensible thing to do here?

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Many times, many times, and maybe we could say most of the time it will be to our glory.

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If we can just overlook the offense, walk on by certainly again, just to make it clear,

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I'm not talking about a criminal offense and something that needs to be dealt with by the, by law enforcement and the, and, and justice and all the rest of that.

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I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a personal offense. It is, it is our glory.

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If when personally offended, I can just overlook the offense and go on.

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Doesn't seem to be a concept that is in great practice in our culture today.

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May we as God's people learn to develop it and be different, be salt and light in this community.

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All right, well let's pray and ask God to give us that sense and give us that kind of control that we can keep our anger under control and we can learn to overlook an offense.

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So Father in heaven, we do thank you for the wisdom of your word that counsels us in these hostile days when it just seems like everybody's angry about something.

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Lord, I pray that you would help us to develop the skill and the patience to overlook offenses and that we would have the good sense to be slow to anger.

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This we pray in Jesus name. Amen. All right, well I hope you have a good rest of your

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Wednesday. If you're in the area and part of the church family,

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I encourage you to come this evening in the midweek service or meeting in the fellowship hall and watching a video series entitled

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Epic, a journey of seeking artifacts of church history and a pretty interesting thing.

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Tonight we're going to go to England, so if you can make it seven o 'clock at the church, you're welcome to do that.