Proverb A Day: Proverbs 27
PROVERB A DAY
Pastor Kevin leads us through a daily thought on Proverbs 27.
Transcript Below.
Hey, everybody. Glad that you’ve joined us for our daily devotional. We’re using a different format this week. Rather than the written devotionals that we’ve had for a while, this week we’re going to have a number of video devotionals where we’re going to work our way through a proverb a day. It’s a pretty common practice for a number of people who do devotions. There’s 31 chapters in the book of Proverbs, and so it’s pretty easy to line that up with the day of the month and to read that chapter on that day and to do so, asking God to highlight one or two of the Proverbs that would be particularly significant for you for that day.
We’re going to use that kind of a format this week. Here’s what that’s going to look like. We’re going to post a video here each day where I will drop into one of the chapters of Proverbs and I’ll share some of my insights from one or two of those Proverbs that we find in that chapter. We’ll share a few thoughts about that. But after that, I want to encourage you to read the rest of the chapter on your own and to be asking God to highlight a word for you for the day.
As that happens for you, I think it’d be really great if you could post that in the comments on this Facebook post. It’d be a way to share with each other what things God is bringing out for us from the text. That’s what we’re looking at for this week, and I’m looking forward to digging into this together.
So when we turn to Proverbs 27 today, there’s a couple of Proverbs right beside each other that stand out to me because they have really interesting things to say about true friendship. It’s Proverbs 27 verses five and six says this: “Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.”
These verses catch my attention I think because the idea of open rebuke is something that is being put forward as a good thing here. And in my own mind, I don’t think of open rebuke as a good thing. Either receiving it, certainly not receiving it or giving it. But by temperament I’m not someone who is really eager to rebuke other people.
But there’s value in it here. And actually, as I think about my life, there have been some key points where it’s been really important for me to have received a rebuke from someone, that I had a friend who loved me enough to tell me the truth, to tell me a hard truth about myself, to do it in love. But nonetheless to offer a kind of rebuke to me.
So this proverb brings it all back to me. It reminds me that open rebuke, yeah, is better than hidden love, and that the wounds of a friend can be trusted. And that maybe leads to a question for us to be considering today. Do you have any friends that love you enough to wound you?
Not in the emotionally damaging kind of a way, but do you have people in your life that love you enough to tell you the truth about yourself when you need to hear that? And who can do that because you can trust them, because you know that they care about them. Do you have anybody in your life like that?
Or is there someone in your life for whom you need to be that kind of friend, carefully and graciously and prayerfully, but faithfully to wound them in a way that leads to their healing? Those are some good thoughts for us to reflect on as we head into our day.
As I mentioned before, as you spend some time in Proverbs 27, I want to encourage you to leave a post here on or leave a comment on this post about what Proverbs from the 27th chapter stands out to you. What is it that God’s saying to you through this collection of Proverbs today? Share that with us so we can all learn and grow together. Grace and peace everyone.