Walk of Life- Day 12 – June 2021 – Thoughts from the Book of Proverbs – Fear Not!
“FEAR NOT FOR YOU WILL OBTAIN FAVOR OF THE LORD”.
Proverbs 12:2 “A good man obtains favor from the LORD, but a man of evil devices he condemns.”
Obtaining favor from God is a thing that we all desire. Irrespective of our age, we always want to be favored by the people whom we respect or adore. Even a kindergarten student tries his best to grab the attention of his teacher always and wants his teacher to treat him in a special manner. The verse talks about finding favor from the LORD.
Why do we need to desire favor from God? How can we obtain favor from God?
In the book of Genesis 6: 8 we read,” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.” The very first natural calamity that occurred on this planet is the great flood. This flood was because of the wrath of the Lord upon the human race. All except for the family of Noah were swept off from this land due to this great flood. Why was Noah alone saved from the flood? As we read in the above verse from Genesis, we come to know that he alone found favor in the eyes of the Lord. So, it tells us during these turbulent times, it is only God’s favor that can save us from destruction.
And if this makes you think that you will be safe from Corona by finding favor in the eyes of the Lord, then you are mistaken. What about the men and women who lived for Christ and slept in the Lord due to this pandemic? Is it because they did not find favor in Lord’s eyes? No, never think like that. Our perspective on destruction is not the earthly death, it is the eternal death. To escape from that great hell fire, the great destruction, we ought to find favor in the eyes of the Lord.
How can we find the favor in the eyes of the Lord?
The very next verse, Genesis 6:9 says “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.” In simpler words it is explained in Proverbs 12: 2 that a good man obtains favor from the Lord. To obtain such favor that protects us from destruction, we ought to be righteous. We all know it vey well that only through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ we can be made righteous.
What is it that hinders us from obtaining the favor from the Lord?
In the beginning of today’s devotion, we saw about a KG child who does his best to grab the attention of his teacher. Though his work might not be perfect, he still has the enthusiasm to please his teacher with little that he can do. As the child grows, the enthusiasm decreases, a sort of carelessness, negligence, and shyness subsides the enthusiasm. It is the same with us. In the initial days of our journey with the Lord we show a great enthusiasm to work for Him, to please Him with our little deeds. As the years pass by, we become passive and backslide. Why does this happen? There could be many reasons, but we shall see one such reason. It is because we forget who our role model is. In our locality we have a dispensary with well qualified doctors. They do not show much interest to put more efforts on treating the patients, they simply refer them to multi-specialty hospitals. Few years back, a young doctor joined the team of these senior doctors. We were all surprised to see the young doctor take at least ten minutes to observe and treat the patient. However, after few months he became like those senior doctors, less interested to treat the way he treated before. Is it because he lost his subject? No, it is because he took his seniors as his role model. In our spiritual walk, when we make our elders or our fellow believers as our role models, keeping the Lord Jesus Christ aside, they there is a chance for us to backslide. As no one is perfect and everyone one of us try to fail. So, my dear friend, do not make humans as your role model, let the Lord Jesus Christ be your only role model in this spiritual Walk of Life. Praise be to God for showing us Apostle Paul who says in 1 Corinthians 11:1 to imitate him just as he imitates the Lord Jesus Christ. His life has never discouraged anybody in Christ, but has been encouraging each one of us even today. If you too imitate Christ, you can become an example for many.
Let us be washed in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ to be made righteous, and obtain favor from Him. Amen.
