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357 | Conversations - Proverbs 13 - Walking Wisely · The Woman at the Well Ministries Podcast

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Music.
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Hello, friends, and welcome back to another podcast of Woman at the Well Ministries,
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where we believe that all of us have to come to Jesus like the woman at the
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well in John chapter four.
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Our highest priority is making God real in your life.
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Whether you are listening in our app, in your favorite podcasting app,
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or on our website at watwm.org,
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we invite you to sit down with us as we look to the scriptures to learn more
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about God and to strengthen your daily walk with Jesus Christ.
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Living her life for Christ. She's a happy girl.
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Music.
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She's a happy girl.
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In this episode of the Woman at the Well Ministries podcast,
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join Kim Miller and Erica Close in a conversation as we walk with Jesus.
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In today's conversation, we continue a series on the book of Proverbs.
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In today's podcast, we're discussing the lessons learned in Proverbs chapter 13. Hello, everyone.
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My name is Erica Close, and I am here with Kimberly Miller.
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Hello, and thank you for joining us in this broadcast of Women at the Well Ministries
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as we take a close look at Proverbs chapter 13.
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I'm excited to dig into Proverbs chapter 13, and today I'm going to ask Kim
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if she would like to start off and read for us the first half of Proverbs 13.
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A wise son heareth his father's instruction, but a scorner heareth not rebuke.
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A man shall eat good by the fruit of his mouth, but the soul of the transgressors shall eat violence.
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He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life, but he that openeth wide his lips
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shall have destruction.
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The soul of the slugger desireth and hath nothing.
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But the soul of the diligent shall be made fat. A righteous man hateth lying,
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but a wicked man is loathsome and cometh to shame.
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Righteousness keepeth him that is upright in the way, but wickedness overthroweth the sinner.
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There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing. There is that maketh himself
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poor, yet hath great riches.
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The ransom of a man's life are his riches, but the poor heareth not rebuke.
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The light of the righteous rejoiceth, but the lamp of the wicked shall be put out.
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Only by pride cometh contention, but with the well-advised is wisdom.
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Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished, but he that gathereth by labor shall increase.
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Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.
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Whoso despiseth the word shall be destroyed, but he that feareth the commandment shall be rewarded.
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The law of the wise is a fountain of life to depart from the snares of death.
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Good understanding giveth favor, but the way of transgressors is hard.
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Every prudent man dealeth with knowledge, but a fool layeth open his folly.
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A wicked messenger falleth into mischief, but a faithful ambassador is health.
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Poverty and shame shall be to him that refuses instruction, but he that regardeth
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reproof shall be honored.
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The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul, but it is abomination to fools to depart from evil.
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He that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.
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Evil pursueth sinners, but to the righteous good shall be repaid.
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A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children,
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and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.
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Much food is in the tillage of the poor, but that is destroyed for want of judgment.
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He that spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.
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The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul, but the belly of the wicked shall want.
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There are so many things in Proverbs chapter 13.
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One of my absolute favorite verses that just always has stuck with me in God's
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word is coming out of Proverbs chapter 13, and that's verse 20.
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That he that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.
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That is one of my absolute favorite verses and just speaks to the power of who
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you surround yourself with.
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And I think that is a verse that we can all take to heart and we should all listen to.
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It matters who's speaking to you. Absolutely. It matters whose words you're
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listening to and heeding.
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And so many of the verses in all of the Proverbs, and again,
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in this proverb, Proverbs, are about wisdom and where wisdom comes from.
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And this very first verse says, a wise son heareth his father's instruction,
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but a scorner heareth not rebuke.
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Wisdom is hearing, and wisdom is listening, right?
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When we talk about the book of Proverbs, it's all about wisdom,
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and it's all about, to me, all the places where we can obtain wisdom,
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all the ways that we learn to follow the Lord so that we have wisdom.
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And this chapter starts out by saying we hear things, right?
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We hear wisdom from our parents and we take it.
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And that is one of the ways that we gain wisdom.
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I love how he talks about as you move forward into that.
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And he speaks in verse 3, it is, where he says, He who guards his mouth keeps
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his life, but he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.
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That's what he's telling us when he says, He that keepeth his mouth keepeth
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his life, but he who openeth wide his lips shall have a destruction.
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When we just start speaking and we don't really take thought about what we speak,
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we bring destruction to ourselves.
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Absolutely. Wisdom is hearing and listening.
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Listening wisdom is often keeping your mouth shut right when
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there's just when it's not the right time for you to
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speak or when there is just when what you need to say or want to say is it's
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just not the appropriate time he that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life i think
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that verses two and verse four in a lot of ways go together right it says that
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a good man shall eat good by the fruit of his mouth.
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So many things in our life, so many of the ways that we are provided for have
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to do with how we live our life.
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The Lord is more able to bless those who are following after him.
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And even if we are not blessed with much financially, we still need to live
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a life that the Lord can bless and that the Lord can provide for and provide into.
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We are all asked to live a life that the Lord has an easy job in blessing.
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And so often that is the life of obedience.
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And in verse 4, verse 4 is about how we live our lives.
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And in the previous two Proverbs, we've often seen these two words,
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the sluggard and the diligent.
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Those words just keep coming up.
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So clearly they're words that we need to know and words that we need to focus
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on. But this chapter says, The soul of the sluggard desireth and hath nothing,
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but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat.
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God wants us to be diligent in doing his work. And whatever it is he asks us to do, that's his work.
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And when he says to be made fat, that means he gives us increase.
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And we want his increase, because his increase more than the world's increase
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will draw us ever closer to him. I love in verse 5 that he talks about a righteous man hates lying.
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That's somebody who's consistently righteous.
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They don't like lying or deceit because there's no truth in it.
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And Jesus is truth and a righteous man is all about Jesus. So he's all about truth.
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But a wicked man comes surely to shame.
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Verse 6 follows that, and it talks about how the righteousness of a man is what
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keeps him upright in the way.
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Keeping him upright in the way, to me, means staying on the path,
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staying on the straight and narrow path that the Lord asked for us.
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But it also says the wickedness overthroweth the sinner.
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Verses 4 and 5 are all about how sin is trying to take you over.
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Right sin is always going to try to overtake the
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believer and make them think that not following.
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The lord is the best thing when we know that is
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not not the right thing when we move on into verse seven we get into a little
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bit more about about our money there is that maketh himself rich yet he hath
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nothing there is that maketh himself poor yet hath great riches in verse eight
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the ransom Ransom of a man's life are his riches,
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but the poor heareth not rebuke. Right?
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Riches, which can be considered a blessing at times, can also be a snare.
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And the reality is these verses say that the riches can be, are of this world,
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right? They could be, they can be called for.
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They could be called for to pay off a debt.
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They can be called for because there's a disaster and suddenly you need, you need to have money.
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So you can have all this money saved up, but something happens and then you
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need to spend it, right? they are fleeting.
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They're not going to last forever, and we certainly know that they can't be taken with us.
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And when we make ourselves rich, we really have nothing.
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When our richness comes from living a life that God has ordained for us,
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that He wants us to live, that's where true riches actually come from.
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So I think in verse 7, we are directed to reflect on the fact that there are
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a lot of people who think they're rich, but they don't have anything permanent. it.
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They certainly don't have anything they can count on past this world.
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But those who may not be rich in this world's goods, which is what you were
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saying, have great and indestructible riches because they're laying their riches
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up in a home not made with hands eternal into the heavens.
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And they are walking in the way of the Lord and they are in a situation where they can be blessed.
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Let's hop down to verse 11 and we'll come back to 9.
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11 says, wealth gotten by vanity shall be be diminished, but he that gathereth
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by labor shall increase, right?
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God values our hard work.
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He values when we are diligent. He values when we're not sluggish.
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He values when we are working hard at whatever it is that he has asked us to do.
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And when we get wealth by vanity or unjustly. Or I think sometimes when he's
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talking about not earned.
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Right. But maybe one in haste or unjustly by doing things for vain or some sort
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of detrimental riches, like cheating scales and cheating other people,
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that's going to just dwindle away.
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That's going to catch up with you. But when you gather little by little,
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you increase in his riches.
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Absolutely. Absolutely. Let's pop back up to verse 9, where the light of the righteous rejoiceth.
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We have a light in us.
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We have the light of Jesus in us. And that light rejoices. It rejoices in who who God is.
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But the wicked also have a lamp.
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It says, but the lamp of the wicked shall be put out, right?
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We don't want to have a light or a lamp that can be put out.
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We need to ensure that our lights and our lamps are always ready to go and are shining brightly.
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Verse 10 lets us know that only by pride cometh contention, but with the well-advised is wisdom.
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You know, we talked earlier in this chapter about how wisdom comes by hearing
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and listening, and wisdom comes by keeping your mouth shut.
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But in verse 10, we see too that wisdom comes by the well-advised.
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I think that goes closely with
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our verse 20 verse, right? He who walketh with wise men shall be wise.
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If we choose wise people to speak into our lives, we will gain wisdom.
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But if our world and what we choose to do in our world is controlled by our
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pride, we're not going to end up with wisdom.
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It says here that we will have contention. We'll live a contentious life.
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That's not the life that Christ wants for us. He wants us to live a happy life
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that's lived and filled with the wisdom that he has for us.
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Verse 12, I think, gives us just a nugget. It says.
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So when we are fulfilled with our desires, it causes us to grow,
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and we are bigger than who we really are.
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And it's important that we are patient and wait upon the Lord,
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as we are told to do in Isaiah.
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And he will lift up us on wings of eagles.
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But we have to trust him completely to wait upon him.
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You know, I think it's important to note that waiting itself is work.
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Yeah. I feel like I've done a lot of waiting in my life recently. And waiting is work.
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But waiting when there is hope and waiting when you have peace is a very different kind of waiting.
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That's that be still and know that I am God. Exactly. In Psalms 46.10.
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It can still be work to wait for an answer to prayer or wait for an answer for
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something that's coming in this world.
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Waiting is work, but we can wait in the presence of Jesus and it's much less
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work because he's the one that's doing the work and holding us.
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The next two verses, 13 and 14, really speak to just how powerful God's word is.
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Whoso despiseth the word shall be destroyed, but he that feareth the commandment shall be rewarded.
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When we have a godly fear of who the Lord is, a reverence for him and a reverence
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for his word will be rewarded.
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In verse 14, it says, The law of the wise is a fountain of life to depart from the snares of death.
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The word of God has the power to give us life.
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The word of God has the power to take us from the snares of death.
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And we can't deny that. Those, if that's not something that you recognize.
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I recommend you spend more time in the Word, because when you spend more time
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in the Word and you understand the power of the Word and you experience the
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power of God's Word in your life,
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then you understand how literally it is a fountain of life and it pulls us from the snares of death.
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For the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword,
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piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints unmarrowed,
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and is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart.
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That's found in Hebrews 4.12.
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When you think about this description of what the Word of God is in relation
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to what he's saying in Proverbs chapter 13,
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we really get a clear picture of the importance of the Word of God and how not knowing it,
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we're told in 2 Timothy 2.15 that we're to study the Word of God so that we're
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able to use it to answer questions appropriately and to know how to live.
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But you can see that not knowing it would bring destruction.
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But those who do reverently fear and respect what the Word of God is saying
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to the point that they adhere to the commandments of God, they are rewarded
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with the abundant life he promises in John 10.10.
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And that's an abundant life that any child of God would want and having experienced
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would never want to lose.
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And you know, Proverbs is always about this balance. What's on one side is good
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and what's on the other side is bad.
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And so if you listen to wise people, again, that circle of people you allow
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to speak into your life, then you're going to have a fountain of life and you're
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going to avoid the snares of death.
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Because when you have a good understanding of the scripture,
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of who Jesus is, of what the Lord is asking of you, then you have favor from the Lord.
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Yeah, that verse 15 that talks about the good understanding ends and says,
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but the way of transgressors is hard.
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Amen. I mean, wisdom and living in wisdom, living a godly life literally makes
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life easier. And this set of verses here, like 15, 16, 17, and 18 are all about that.
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They're all about how wisdom makes life easier.
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It says that a prudent man dealeth with knowledge, right?
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When we are prudent in what we do, when we think about what we're doing,
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when we pray about the decisions that we make. And truth is knowledge.
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Absolutely. Knowledge is truth. And truth is Jesus.
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So when you know Jesus, you know the truth. And when you know the truth,
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you're going to do the right thing.
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Absolutely. Verse 17, a wicked messenger falls into mischief,
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but a faithful ambassador is health.
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Having a good understanding means that you're a faithful, truthful ambassador for Christ.
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When you are a faithful ambassador, it says you'll have health.
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Health is easier, right? Life can be hard, but having a healthy life,
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we know is easier. And then verse 18.
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Wisdom is taking instruction, right?
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It's taking the reproof. It's reflecting on our lives and looking at our lives
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and what we've done. It says.
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Wisdom makes life easier. Amen.
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And those who regard reproof positively, like have a positive regard for reproof,
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for taking instruction from the Lord or from the godly people that you have
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in your life, your life will have honor. It will be honored.
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Verse 19 is a really, really, really sweet verse to me.
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And it says, "...the desire accomplished is sweet to the soul.
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But it is an abomination to fools to depart from evil.
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I think that really harkens back to verse 12, which is the one that says,
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hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but when the desire is come,
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it is a tree of life, right?
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When the desire is accomplished, it's sweet to the soul.
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When we have the eyes to see an answer to prayer, when we have the eyes to see
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what the Lord has done, it is sweetness.
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To our soul. And when we have an understanding of the word that says that he
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who has begun a good work in you will complete it, that means we can have the hope it takes to wait.
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And then when we see this all come to fruition, it's just a sweet, sweet satisfaction.
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But those who are self-confident and are not relying on the Lord and are not
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trusting in him, they put their hearts to evil desires, not to the truth or
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not to the knowledge, and they reap upon themselves destruction.
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Our next verse is the verse we started talking about with, He that walketh with
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wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools.
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Shall be destroyed. I don't think this verse can be mentioned,
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ever mentioned too many times, but if we want to be wise, we need to surround
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ourselves with wise people. That's it.
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We need to know the Lord, we need to know his word, and we need to surround
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ourselves with wise people.
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And you see that in verse 21, because he says, evil pursues sinners,
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but the consistently upright,
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the ones who are doing the right thing all the time, and who are in right standing with God,
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they are rewarded with good yes there
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is a good and there is a bad those who
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walk in the knowledge and the truth of the lord receive good those
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who walk in the knowledge of sin and darkness and who pursue that are also going
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to be pursued by sin that's that's an interesting concept in this verse is that
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we see that in verse 21 he that walketh with wise men shall be why i mean sorry
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sorry, evil pursues sinners.
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So it's not just that you pursue, when you start going down that slippery slope,
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you're going to get overcome with evil because evil will check you out.
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It will find you because you've opened the door for it to grow in your heart and mind.
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I think it's really important. You know, we talk a lot about sin and specific
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sins passing from generation to generation, right?
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We learn things from our parents, and good can pass from generation to generation as well.
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Sin doesn't have to pass from generation to generation because the power of
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God is stronger than any generational experience.
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But your verse that you just talked about in verse 21 says that,
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you know, to the righteous, good shall be repaid.
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That very next verse is a good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's
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children, and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.
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The wealth of the sinner can be lost and given to the just, but a righteous
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good man will leave an inheritance to his children's children.
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And I don't think that the righteous good man, it doesn't say that he's a rich man.
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It says that he's righteous. So that inheritance that is passed down can be
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an inheritance of godly, holy understanding.
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And it can be passed down to your children's children. We have a responsibility
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as adults, whether we're parents or not.
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To share the Lord and to speak the Lord and to get the Lord into the lives of all those around us.
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And if you happen to be a parent, it's your responsibility to ensure that your
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children know the Word of God and that your children are introduced to Him.
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But when that work happens, it can go from generation to generation.
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And He tells us that we are to do this kind of when they're young.
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Start out from the very beginning. If you really love someone,
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especially your children, you're going to discipline them.
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If you don't, in this case, he's using as a rod, if you spare the rod of discipline,
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you really don't love your child because you're not setting them up for the best life possible.
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You're not setting them on the course of knowledge and truth,
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and you're not giving them a foundation in Jesus.
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But if you really love them, you're going to discipline them,
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and you're going to gently push them in the road of holiness and godliness and
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to pursue wisdom and goodness and peace and to know the truth, which is to know Jesus,
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which imparts the knowledge and the relationship that one needs in order to navigate this world.
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The last verse in Proverbs chapter 13 says that the righteous eateth to the
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satisfying of his soul, but the belly of the wicked shall want.
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I think that there is nothing greater that we could leave our children or whoever
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the Lord has put into our care than with a satisfied soul.
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A satisfied soul is one that knows Jesus. A satisfied soul is one that.
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Knows how to have a relationship with Jesus, and has an eternity prepared for them in heaven.
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We want to leave our children and those the Lord has put in our life with a satisfied soul.
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We would never say that we would want our children to be in want or to have a need.
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But I think this verse speaks to every individual.
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We're told in John chapter 4 that if you drink this water, you'll never thirst again.
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There is a undeniable space in every individual's heart intended for God to
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feel that nothing else will.
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And you can try everything you want, but until you have made your relationship
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with Jesus secure, until you've purposed in your heart to follow him,
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you're going to feel just a little off.
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In some cases, a lot off if you pursue evil instead of good.
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But the righteous person, the one who's uncompromisingly righteous,
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who's consciously choosing to do the right thing, they are satisfied.
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But the wicked always want more. The devil will never allow a person to be satisfied,
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no matter how much wickedness and evilness they possess, because he's always
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seeking to destroy you, to drop you just a little lower.
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But Jesus said, greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.
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And he's always looking to build you up, to bless you, to help you and to assist you.
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Proverbs 13 is rich. It absolutely is.
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We hope that you've enjoyed this podcast of Women at the Well Ministries.
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And we hope that you come back and listen again at your next opportunity.
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Above all, we ask that you remember that God loves you and that you are loved.
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Music.
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