Wise Words from the Word: A Weekly Proverbs Devotional to Enrich Your Spiritual Life

Wise Words from the Word

A Weekly Proverbs Devotional to Enrich Your Spiritual Life

Stefan Johnsson

A Frank Voice

Title: Wise Words form the Word: A Weekly Proverbs Devotional to Enrich Your Spiritual Life

Copyright © 2023 by Stefan Johnsson

Published by A Frank Voice in the United States of America.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

A Frank Voice Publishing is the publishing arm of A Frank Voice which seeks to empower Christian authors with the tools and resources to publish their ideas and contribute to the Kingdom of God in a meaningful and inspiring way.

Visit www.afrankvoice.com to learn more.

Cover & Interior Design: Cameron Frank

E-Book ISBN: 978-1-962315-04-3

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-962315-03-6

Unless otherwise stated, all Scripture is taken from the English Standard Version.

"The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®) Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.comThe NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Foreword

Instruction from Your lips is better for me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. - Psalm 119:72 (CSB)

How wonderful it is to know the Word of God, and how His Word is not simply affirmations, encouragements, and stories, but in it we find life itself? For the Word of God is exactly that: it is life (Deut. 32:47).

I want to really point out this contrasting idea. Because God tells Moses that the Word is life, and Jesus tells us that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. How then, is life so crazy?

If you disagree that life is crazy, take a break for a moment and scroll social media or any news website. The world is on fire. Even aside from that, most people are feeling the tensions of life in unprecedented ways on a personal level. More than ever before, people are working longer hours, they have more activities with their children, and they are worried about more than possibly any time before now.

When I think about life, I think about an exhausting, never-ending, tumultuous, and unpredictable pilgrimage that seems to throw any curveballs it can in my direction. And I don’t mean to make everything sound doom and gloom—life is, of course, full of joy. The beauty of the earth, the wonder of children, key lime pie, and college football. But between the joys, there is chaos.

And yet, the Word of God is life.

My mentor and good friend recently taught me about decluttering life. It’s something we’d all like to do at some level, of course. He asked me a few pointed questions, most of which I got wrong. But one of them was this: "what is the one thing you can never cut out of your life when you’re looking to declutter?"

I was ready to wow him with my wise and level-headed answer. I said, family, of course. I can cut down on work, chores, responsibilities, but I should never cut down on how I value my family.

He told me that was a good answer, but he wanted to challenge that answer. As soon as he started talking, I recognized my error. He told me that when we look at all the things taking up our time and energy in life, there is only one thing that we should never, ever, forsake. And that is our relationship with the Lord. Our time well spent in His Word and His presence.

If we hold on to any one thing, but forsake our Heavenly Father, everything else will suffer.

What is the best thing that you can do to be a better parent? Spend time with the greatest Parent. How can you be a better spouse? Spend more time with the Holy Bridegroom. How can you be a better employee? Spend time learning from the one who created work for our blessing. The answer to these questions is that we should never forsake devoting intentional time to the study of God’s Word and to prayerfully abiding in His presence.

That is the value of a book like this from Stefan. A devotional book is a great opportunity to reestablish a rhythm with God that will pay dividends in ways we can never fully imagine or predict.

With this book in particular, we get to spend intentional time in an incredible repository of wisdom: the book of Proverbs. In these pages, you will have the opportunity to meditate on a specific proverb, and then go one step further: Stefan has expertly curated related passages from the rest of Scripture to help provide greater context and clarity for the proverb. He masterfully illustrated how God has uniquely given us all of Scripture as a single story for His glory and our edification.

Why Proverbs? It’s the supernaturally inspired collection of wisdom that God has given us. If you’ve never spent much time in the wisdom literature, I would highly encourage that you do so. This book is a great place to start. I wonder how many Christians miss the joy of reading the Proverbs as a part of their daily practice. Professor Grant Horner has said that If you are wondering why you should read Acts (or Proverbs) all the way through every single month, then — you've just shown that you NEED to read them that often! ¹

Fortunately, if you’ve never spent much time in Proverbs, today can be the day that you start. In Wise Words from the Word, you’ll spend one day each week reading a proverb, a supporting Scripture, and a devotional message that will help you apply the Word to your daily life.

I have been blessed and encouraged by this great devotional, and I know that over the next year, you will be too!

Cameron Frank

Author of The Soul Felt Its Worth

1.  Professor Grant Horner, Professor Horner’s Bible Reading System https://sohmer.net/media/professor_grant_horners_bible_reading_system.pdf

To My Lovely Wife Debora,

And Our Son Tomas.

Introduction

I have been writing devotionals for years as part of a volunteer ministry in my church. It brings me joy to seek God through my writing and to share with those who follow our church’s devotional blog. Writing allows me to commune with the Holy Spirit, to hear Him, and listen to what He wants me to share from scripture. It has helped give me a passion for why I do what I do. I want to use this gift from God to glorify His Church and to increase the reach of His kingdom in our world. And it is this calling on my heart that inspires me each day and what has allowed me to put together this devotional book on Proverbs.

The setup of this devotional book is similar to the church blog that I write on. It separates each devotional into four main parts: Scripture, Reflection/Commentary, Application, and a Prayer. I used this format but added the proverb as the main theme instead of a sermon. Secondly, most devotionals may use personal life experiences to explain a proverb, which I could have done, but that’s not what I wanted to do for this book. Instead I used Biblical stories or sayings that relate to the proverb. As the Bible is tied together and provides us with real life application on a daily basis, it is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, [and] for training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16 CSB). Through linking the proverb to a Biblical story or specific verses in the Bible, we can gain a better understanding of who God is and grow in our knowledge of Him. The Bible is all interconnected, both the Old and New Testaments, and this devotional book gives you a small taste of how amazing the Word of God is.

As you read, you will have the proverb to meditate on followed by a block of scripture that relates to it. The next part is the devotional itself. This will focus on the scriptural passage, but also ties in the proverb to give context for what you are reading. Let this guide your thoughts as you think about what the Holy Spirit is teaching you through what you read. The next section is What Now? This is meant to be an application portion to help you think of ways to apply this proverb to your life as you go about your week. The last part is the prayer. This is a starting point for opening up to God and for you to continue in a more personal prayer for God to reveal Himself to you. You should continue to commune with God regularly in prayer as you meditate on what He is wanting to share with you.

So why a weekly devotional? Daily devotionals are hard to keep up with as the busyness of life takes over. It is also very difficult to write 365 different devotionals out of the book of Proverbs when many are very similar. Take Proverbs 16:2 and 21:2 as an example. In the former God weighs the spirt of man and in the latter, He weighs the heart. As both are very similar, it is better to write on one rather than trying to tie in scripture for both. Doable, yes, but not an exercise that I wanted to entertain for this book and finding relatable scriptural passages would be very difficult. Instead I thought a better way was to create a devotional book that would pull as many different sayings as I could and fit it within the weeks of a year.

The other reason for a weekly devotional was for how overwhelming a daily devotional can be. The idea of reading each day for a whole year requires quite a lot of discipline and some days are more difficult than others. And we may often rush through several devotionals just to catch up from a difficult week. Do we really meditate on what we read at that point? Life is never easy and as we grow older, raise families, or go on vacations, staying up with a task such as a daily devotional is never an easy thing to do. I once followed a plan to read the Bible in a year and I still missed days and had to catch up. So why not make something easier to do where it doesn’t take up too much of your time? Maybe you have a time set aside on the weekend to read a book while the rest of the week you do not? Or if you missed a day, you had another day set aside to catch up? This is why the weekly devotional makes more sense as it can fit into the busy schedules of our daily lives.

So when should you start? Do you have to wait until January 1st to begin reading for the year? Absolutely not! Begin your year for this devotional when you wish to do so and take the time to dig in to the Word of God. These devotionals are great for experienced believers as well as new believers, and those who may not be comfortable with reading certain portions of