Tim and Kathy Keller followed The Songs of Jesus, their excellent devotional book on the Psalms, with a second devotional book, God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life on the Proverbs. I would recommend both of these books for your daily devotional reading. Here are 30 great quotes from God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life:
- According to Jesus, all words—good and bad—are indicators of our heart.
- The more our heart is fixed on the Lord and nothing else for our joy, hope, salvation, worth, and safety, the more our words will resemble wise speech.
- Gossip is like cancer to the body of Christ.
- While God’s door to hear contrition is never shut, our window of opportunity to produce it can be.
- Because only God can truly assess the motives of the heart, we should not think we can judge other people’s motives perfectly either.
- Disagreements become deadly conflicts when you move from rightly pointing out wrong behavior to assuming the ability to completely understand a person’s inner purposes, which is something only God can do.
- To forgive is to refuse to hold people liable for what they have done to us. That is God’s job, not ours.
- When we are wronged, we want to pay them back. Forgiveness, however, is a commitment not to do that but rather to bear the cost yourself.
- The way God controls history does not force us to act. Yet all we do—every one of our steps—is part of his plan. This seeming paradox, while impossible to completely fathom, is supremely practical.
- If you trust God, then as time goes on, both your good times and your bad times will turn you into the kind of person whose plans and decisions are more and more wise.
- Both success and suffering will test you, bring out the worst in you, revealing the rats. They are equal spiritual crises. Will you accept what they show you and change, or deny and repress that knowledge? They will make you better or worse, but you will not stay the same.
- The gospel’s message about our utter sinfulness keeps us from letting success go to our heads, but its message of God’s unconditional love helps us get through any dark valley.
- We do not need to be married to be a fully completed person. Only union with Christ can do that. So never marry out of desperation. You have the only spouse who can truly fulfill you (Ephesians 5:25–33).
- Are your actions consistent with your professed beliefs? Do you repent and apologize to others, including your child, when you have wronged them?
- There is only one thing you should do for all kinds of parents, no matter what they are like and how old you are—honor and respect them. Don’t despise, curse, or mock them, but bless them.
- When the chips are down, in a time of adversity, family members will often stand with you even to the point of great sacrifice. Like Jesus himself, they will walk through fiery furnaces with you (Daniel 3:25).
- If the only motivation for honesty is fear, it is inevitable that you will be dishonest in those situations where there is no fear or possibility of detection.
- The only true solution to the power of money over you is to see yourself rich in Christ.
- The Christian community should model to the world a society in which wealth and possessions are seen as tools for serving others and not as means of personal advancement and fulfillment.
- Are you the kind of person, and is your church the kind of church, about which others in your community might say, “I don’t share their beliefs, but I shudder to think about what this city would be like without them”?
- The world is God’s, and if he has given you more of it to steward than someone else, that does not mean it belongs wholly to you. Like any steward, you must use the true owner’s wealth as he wishes it to be used.
- If you insult and disdain the poor, you show contempt for their creator. If, on the other hand, you are kind to the poor, you are being kind to the Lord.
- A society is as strong as its care for its weakest members.
- Only when you see Jesus dying on the cross for your sins can you lay down the ultimate burden, of trying to prove and justify yourself, of trying to earn your self-worth and salvation.
- True wisdom is not a set of principles but a supernatural person. And we receive this wisdom not simply through acts of the will but through the transformation of our heart and desires by worshiping him.
- The cross shows the upside-down nature of divine wisdom. The way up is down. The way to lead is to serve. The way to get happiness is to seek happiness not for yourself but for others. The way to be truly rich is to give wealth away.
- When the Father sees us, he loves us as if we had done everything Jesus had done. He loves us “even as” he loves his Son (John 17:23).
- Either you worship God or you will be worshiping something else—there is not the alternative of not worshipping. Either you will be looking to God for your significance and security or you will be looking to something else (even if it is your own abilities).
- True wisdom is to accept salvation by grace, and the heart of folly is to try to save yourself. The gospel is the consummate wisdom.
- Jesus became poor, taking our punishment, so that we could get the eternal spiritual riches. Jesus took the condemnation we deserved so we could get vindication.
