[Part 2 of 5 in the series, "THE SEARCH, Solomon’s Secrets to a Happy & Successful Life"]
We’re in the series, “THE SEARCH, Solomon’s Secrets to a Happy & Successful Life.”
Our text for this series is Proverbs 2:2-4 (NLT) - "Tune your ears to wisdom, and concentrate on understanding. Cry out for insight, and ask for understanding. Search for them as you would for silver; seek them like hidden treasures."
Circle the three words, “wisdom,” “understanding” and “insight.” In order to live a happy and successful life – the life God desires for us – we need His wisdom, understanding and insight.
Last week we talked about how using God’s wisdom helps us talk right and thus live better. This week we’ll see how gaining God’s wisdom, understanding and insight Jumpstarts Our Breakthroughs in Life.
When you have an obstacle in your way and there’s some sort of stalemate, when you can’t seem to get ahead and you keep spinning your wheels – you need a breakthrough.
Perhaps you need a breakthrough in your finances, or in your relationships, on your job, or over some habit or addiction you’re battling. Maybe you need a breakthrough on determining God’s will for your life, short-term or even long-term. Is there anything we can do to jumpstart the process? The good news is – Yes! There is!
3 Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. 4 Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man. Proverbs 3:3-4 (NIV)
Go ahead and circle the three key words we’re going to be talking about today: love, faithfulness and favor.
A BRIEF DEFINITION AND DESCRIPTION OF KEY TERMS
Love: The Hebrew word denotes loving kindness. The KJV translates the word, “mercy.” We should never stop living a life of love toward God, and love, kindness and mercy toward others. The Bible says that we need to wear this attitude of love like jewelry around our neck and inscribe in on the notebook of our hearts. Breakthroughs are much more abundant when our life is characterized by love.
Faithfulness: The Hebrew word used in our Scripture text that is translated “faithfulness” indicates the character quality of being consistent for the long haul. The idea of faithfulness has to do with adhering to the same principles all the time, not vacillating back and forth depending upon the situation, bur doing things consistently for a long time and not just for the short run. Faithfulness is when you live by the same ideals and values and actions like a marathoner and not just like a sprinter.
The King James Version renders the Hebrew word “faithfulness” as “truth,” because the idea of the word denotes someone who is tried and true, trustworthy, someone you can count on because of their track record; someone who exhibits integrity. You know they’re going to show up. They’re not hit and miss. They don’t show up for work one day and skip the next for no good reason. They don’t neglect family or financial responsibilities. You don’t have to wonder if they’ll be “there” when they’re supposed to be “there,” or when they say they’ll be “there.” You can count on them.
Don’t we all love people like that? These are my favorite kind of people. Faithfulness is more valuable than skill, intellect, or income. Study what Christ said about faithfulness sometime. Jesus didn’t say, “Well done thou good and” skillful servant, or rich servant, or smart servant, but “faithful servant.”
Faithfulness is an attractive quality in people. The Bible says Loyalty makes a person attractive. Proverbs 19:22a (NLT) "People do a lot of things to make themselves more attractive but the Bible, God’s wisdom and insight says that loyalty, or faithfulness, makes a person attractive."
And just like loyalty, or faithfulness, makes us attractive, unfaithfulness makes us irritating.
"Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble [is like] a broken tooth, and a foot out of joint." Proverbs 25:19 (KJV)
Circle that word “unfaithful.” Solomon paints two word pictures of unfaithfulness. When we’re undependable and unloving we’re like a toothache. Then the Bible says an unfaithful person is like a foot out of joint. You can’t walk on it so you don’t get anywhere. When we’re unfaithful we hinder progress – our own progress - and the progress of God’s work and the progress of others who have the misfortune of being associated with us.
That’s the antithesis of what will help us jumpstart our breakthrough. Unfaithfulness will not help you get ahead with God, with your boss, with your co-workers, with your family, with your friends, with your customers, nor in the fellowship of the church.
A comedic movie is coming out later this year entitled, “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.” The Bible tells us right here how we lose friends and alienate people – by behaving unfaithfully.
So the first two key words are LOVE & FAITHFULNESS. Love represents the winning ATTITUDE and faithfulness the winning ACTION
The third key word is the RESULT of an attitude of love and actions of faithfulness: “favor.” “Favor” is the breakthrough! Favor is when God and people begin to bless you because you’ve been loving and loyal.
When we’re lovingly kind and faithful, verse 4 of our text says, Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man. We don’t arrive at favor if we bypass love and faithfulness!
What is favor? The Hebrew word means delight, acceptance, and pleasure. Favor is when God and others delight in you, accept you, and are pleased by you. To have the favor of God on your life is to have the single greatest positive, uplifting, success-bearing, fulfillment-assuring, problem-solving, goal-reaching tool in the universe at your disposal! When we need a breakthrough we need God’s favor!
This is life-changing stuff!
In addition to God, our boss, our employees, our parents, our spouse, our children, our co-workers, our friends, our business associates, our customers, our church family members, all relate to us more positively when they know we are loving and loyal. When God and others see a consistent and constant attitude of love and a consistent work ethic and set of trustworthy values in our lifestyle; when they realize they can count on us to do what we say we’re going to do when we say we’re going to do it; then they naturally want to have more and greater dealings with us. When we consistently show love, even when it’s difficult for us to do so, that’s when breakthroughs occur!
But when we leave a trail of unloving behavior, broken promises and an inconsistent lifestyle, when we live unfaithfully, we obstruct God’s blessings. We prevent our own breakthroughs from taking place!
If we want to jumpstart our breakthrough, our goals must become love and faithfulness. The Bible says this is how we gain favor with God and men. This is a great biblical key to success in life, to happiness and satisfaction, and most important of all – this is the way to please God and jumpstart our breakthrough!
But there’s a big problem. Our human nature doesn’t always want to be loving and faithful. Our fallen human nature makes excuses for not being loving and faithful. We must be careful and not fall into these traps.
THE EXCUSES WE MAKE FOR NOT BEING LOVING & FAITHFUL
1. It takes effort.
"The lazy person claims, ’There’s a lion on the road! Yes, I’m sure there’s a lion out there!’” Proverbs 26:13 (NLT)
To claim we have a legitimate reason for not being loving and faithful is like a person claiming they won’t get out of bed and go to work because there’s a lion in the street. Love and faithfulness require hard work. That’s why they are often neglected. We have to put forth effort in order to show love to God and others and in order to be faithful to them. The “lion in the street” philosophy is just a cover-up for an unwillingness to put forward the effort it takes to love others and be faithful to them. The laziness of our fallen human nature rebels against anything that requires effort.
We cannot afford to let our natural inclination to shy away from working at these things to rob us of God’s favor. We need not be fooled by our tendency to excuse ourselves for not going to the trouble of being loving and faithful because it demands our energy. Hiding behind this excuse hijacks God’s favor and we must have God’s favor for our breakthroughs in life!
Most of us have probably heard the inspirational poem “Footprints in the Sand,” a pretty good old poem about someone who sees two sets of footprints along the seashore, and then only one, and then two sets again. They ask God what this represents and God tells him that the one set was not when God was making them walk alone, but rather when God was carrying them. But I like the takeoff on this poem that’s been written.
One night, I had a wondrous dream; One set of footprints there was seen. The footprints of my precious Lord, But mine were not along the shore. But then some stranger prints appeared, and I asked the Lord, "What have we here?" "Those prints are large and round and neat, But, Lord, they are too big for feet." "My child," He said in somber tones. "For miles I carried you alone. I challenged you to walk in faith, but you refused and made me wait. You disobeyed, you would not grow, The walk-of-faith you would not know. So I got tired and fed up, And there I dropped you on your butt, Because in life, there comes a time, When one must fight, and one must climb, When one must rise and take a stand, Or leave their butt prints in the sand."
Let’s not leave our butt prints in the sand! Let’s not make excuses for our unloving spirit and our unfaithfulness. Even though it’s difficult sometimes, let’s act like we’re supposed to act and do what we’re supposed to do when we’re supposed to do it. Why? Because that where our breakthrough begins!
A second alibi for our lack of love and faithfulness is…
2. Life is hard.
"People with good understanding will be well liked, but the lives of those who are not trustworthy are hard." Proverbs 13:15 (NCV)
We sometimes complain that our lives are hard but the Bible says the lives that are hard are the lives of those who aren’t trustworthy – those who aren’t faithful. The irony here is that some of the hard times in our lives are brought on by our own unfaithfulness.
By every act of unfaithfulness we rob ourselves of the favor of God! We postpone our own breakthrough.
Faithfulness helps us get ahead in life. Unfaithfulness holds us back. Unfaithfulness can bring us hard times.
We’re not always loving and faithful because we excuse ourselves for not putting forth the effort, and because we balk when life is hard… and another alibi we attempt is…
3. We’re stressed out.
18 There are three things that amaze me— no, four things that I don’t understand: 19 how an eagle glides through the sky, how a snake slithers on a rock, how a ship navigates the ocean, how a man loves a woman. Proverbs 30:18-19 (NLT)
Circle “how an eagle glides through the sky.” We’ll only concern ourselves with this amazing insight.
How does an eagle glide through the sky? All it has to do is to spread out its wings. The air current carries it. The eagle only has to move its wings to adjust its direction and altitude. Eagles were designed to fly with minimal energy. The ability to glide through the sky gives the eagles an edge over other species. It makes the eagles fast and energy efficient.
What can we learn from this? As Christ followers we were designed to reach the sky. God wants us to excel. He wants us to succeed. He does not want us to be stressed out.
Eagles don’t get tired or stressed when they’re gliding through the sky. Likewise for us, it is not necessary to be stressed because we have a loving God as the wind beneath our wings. We don’t need to excuse ourselves from being loving and faithful because of our stress.
What are we to do if we don’t want to be controlled by foolish excuses for being unloving and unfaithful?
HOW TO SUCCEED AT LOVE AND FAITHFULNESS
"Depend on the Lord in whatever you do, and your plans will succeed." Proverbs 16:3 (NCV)
5 Trust the Lord with all your heart, and don’t depend on your own understanding. 6 Remember the Lord in all you do, and he will give you success. Proverbs 3:5-6 (NCV)
These Scriptures offer us something different than what we often do.
We often make plans and THEN we ask God to bless them. “Hey God, I plan to be a millionaire by the time I’m thirty. That’s my plan God, so now I ask you to bless my plan.” “Father, I plan to make this career move now I ask you to bless it.” And we often fail when we pull these tricks because we’ve got it backwards.
“God, you didn’t bless my plan.” And God say, “No wonder I didn’t bless it. You didn’t include me and my will and wisdom when you made the plans. You didn’t ask me before you bought that car or that house. You didn’t consult my wisdom when you did this or did that. If you had only depended on Me!”
“Depend on the Lord in whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.” “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and don’t depend on your own understanding. Remember the Lord in all you do, and he will give you success.”
We shouldn’t blame the Lord if our plans don’t succeed when we went off half-cocked and didn’t consult Him in the first place. We shouldn’t be angry with God. We’re the ones who made the plans without consulting God in the first place.
"People’s own foolishness ruins their lives, but in their minds they blame the Lord." Proverbs 19:3 (NCV)
The only way to succeed in being a loving and faithful person, and thereby being blessed with favor, and experiencing your breakthrough - is by depending on God in whatever you do.
Dr. Elmer Towns, in his book “Praying The Lord’s Prayer for Spiritual Breakthrough,” tells the story of a small son was playing with his French fries, dipping the end of one in the ketchup, and then waving it like a baton. His father was enjoying the moment. Mother had gone to a seminar, so for lunch the father took out his son and bought him a hamburger and French fries. The young boy was more interested in playing with the French-fries than eating them, though.
“Eat your French fries...” the father coaxed. The son continued to wave his "french-fry baton," and the band played on. The father looked at his watch, but he did not have anywhere he had to be. It was his habit to hurry about everything. After lunch, they were just going back home. Then almost by instinct, the father reached over and did something most fathers have done. He took one French fry out of his son’s package. “No!” the son said sharply, and slapped the father’s hand. Then, raising his voice, he repeated, “No!”
The stunned father sat surveying the situation, though saying nothing. “Who does he think he is?” he thought. “...I bought these French fries, and I should be able to eat the fries that he won’t eat!”
That was not the case, though. The little boy had already gone back to leading his make-believe band as though he had forgotten the situation. The father, however, had not forgotten what happened. He thought to himself, I could get mad and never buy him another French fry in his life.
The father was not mad at his son, though; he was more surprised than anything. He was not the type to get even. If anything, he was a mild kind of guy. He continued to think. I could bury him in French fries and smother him in ketchup; I love him so much.
The father sat in the plastic chair, watching his son dip another fry in ketchup, and lead the band. The little guy had no idea of the thoughts going through his father’s mind.
We are like little children playing at life. Our heavenly Father reaches over to take one of our French fries – say in the form of wanting a couple of hours of worship on Sunday, or asking that we support His Church with our money. Too often we slap God’s hand, telling Him, “No! Keep your hand out of my life."
God does not want to take all our French fries from us. He wants just a taste. Like a selfish child, however, we say, “No!”
The question of the little boy and his father is a question about our heavenly Father and His children: Who owns your French fries? When we are thankful to God we recognize that it is God who owns our French fries. A thankful heart makes room for God’s plan and makes way for God’s provision!
When we slap God’s hand and tell Him to keep our hand out of our life. We don’t want to give our love or our faithfulness – 1) it takes effort we don’t want to give right now; 2) Life is hard; 3) We’re too stressed to give our love and faithfulness. But what’s the result when we slap God’s hand away?
That’s the hand of favor! That’s the hand of blessing! That’s the hand of breakthrough!
Do you need a breakthrough? Jumpstart it today by your love and faithfulness.
