Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Wisdom of Unity | The Writings | Proverbs 25

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

Is wisdom guiding your relationships? Do you have the humility to admit your wrongs? Are you working for unity? In today's episode, Tanya shares how Proverbs 25 encourages us to love God by loving our neighbors. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Proverbs 25

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. In the small farming community where I grew up, there were definitely conflicts and feuds, but they had to be resolved twice a year in June and in November. See, June was hay season, and it took all hands on deck with your neighbors to get the hay in the barn. You had to cut it, rake it, pray it didn't rain in the middle, bail it, load it, and stack it. If you didn't have enough, you had to buy some from a neighbor.

and if your equipment broke, you had to borrow your neighbors. If you had too much, you needed to sell it to a neighbor. Being on the outs with someone just didn't work out when there was hay work to do. And then November. That was Lord's Acre supper. You could guarantee that the one person in the family or the neighborhood you weren't talking to was going to be seated right next to you in the church basement after you went through the line and got your five starch meal.

Yes, I said five starches. noodles, mashed potatoes, rolls, corn, and pie. Knowing these things were coming was good motivation to take care of conflicts before they turned into something bigger. Talk it out or forget about it. When there are only a few families in a community, you can't afford to lose one. Throughout history, we witness different approaches to handling conflict. Sometimes people go to war to fight for the things that are important to them. Sometimes they're willing to negotiate. Sometimes they surrender and walk away. In everyday life, we encounter conflict and potential conflict all the time.

Now, we don't just have spoken words, but we also have digital ones. With texting and social media, humanity has weapons of mass destruction at our fingertips. We can wage war and annihilate someone's reputation or career in a few seconds. We can try to win, but at what cost? Rebecca McLaughlin said well in her book, titled Confronting Jesus. The Rock comes from within. God's pro-tipic people break God's pro-tipic law. This ruins their relationship with God and with one another. Jesus taught us to love others more than we love ourselves, but we often find it hard to even tolerate others, let alone love them. In our study of Proverbs, we've had a chance to dig into many examples of practical wisdom and how it points to our need for Jesus. When we read

Proverbs 25 and the relational wisdom about handling conflict and confrontation, we can't help but recognize how much we need Jesus. We must recognize how deeply loved we are by Jesus to handle our conflict well. Knowing this, we can apply the things Proverbs 25 teaches us without being fake, bitter, or passive-aggressive. In a nutshell, we're going to read the verses in a minute. Proverbs 25 teaches that we should, one, avoid accusing people before we know all the facts. And let's be honest, how often do we really know all the facts? Two, remember our own wrongdoings before we build a case against someone else. Three, decide to either talk directly to the person or drop it.

And four, if we do speak, do it gently. How would you rate your conflict resolution style based on those four points? I think I would get a solid 25% on a good day. But Proverbs teaches us about the wise life, and those who live well with others have learned how to handle their unavoidable conflict well. Listen in, Proverbs 25, verses 7 through 13, and verse 15. What your eyes have seen, do not hastily bring into court. For what will you do in the end?

When your neighbor puts you to shame. argue your case with your neighbor himself and do not reveal another secret lest he who hears you bring shame upon you and your ill repute has no end a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver like a gold ring or an ornament of gold is a wise reprover to a listening ear like the cold of snow in the time of harvest is a faithful messenger to those who send him he refreshes the soul of his masters. With patience, a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone. Okay, hang on to that last line too.

A soft tongue will break a bone. We're going to get to that. See, the wise author understands something about what happens inside us when we come into conflict with others, that we seldom know all the facts or interpret them correctly, and that our motives are seldom as pure as we'd like to think. So the first wise tip is to be patient. Examine the situation from another angle.

Get someone else's help to do this. Examine your contribution to the problem. Admit it to yourself and to others. One of my small group girls does several interviews for business students and she said the reason they always ask about a time you failed. You know that interview question, right? Tell me about a time you failed. Well, the reason they ask this question is to hear, if the person will be defensive and avoid their contribution to the failure, or own it. They want to select the person who has failed and owns it.

What about you? Were you willing to own your part in the last argument or conflict you had with someone? Ask God to remind you of your wrongdoings before you bring a case against someone else. It will give humility and compassion, and it will transform your circumstances into something you learn from. And the second wise tip from Proverbs is to either speak to the person gently or let it go. Sometimes we think that to be Christ-like, we have to be silent about the things that are wrong around us. But when we look at Jesus, he wasn't silent. He was direct and gentle.

When he encountered the Samaritan woman at the well, he didn't avoid the real problem, that she was filling a void in her life with men. His conversation with her was direct and gentle. He addressed her real problem and her need for a real problem and her need for a rescuer, and he addressed it with kindness. Now, the proverb says a gentle, or some translation say soft word can break a bone. It means that an honest word spoken with love can snap the most hardened parts of our hearts. Now, if you think that you're a gentle bone snapper with your words, odds are you probably aren't. The people who do this have broken hearts, broken by the reality

of their own sin and true grief over someone else's. Now, if you tend to avoid conflict and direct conversation at all cost, you're missing out on some of the most relevant restorative work. It is absolutely uncomfortable to have these kinds of conversations with people. It's sometimes dreadful. But it's much better to have a 30-minute uncomfortable conversation than a lifetime of awkwardness when you walk into a room. Ask God to give you the courage to talk to.

the person directly or drop it. And if you're going to drop it, you really should. Why? Well, as a wise friend told me, it matters for all of your relationships and it matters to God. In Ephesians, Paul explains how the way we act toward one another reflects what we believe about what God has done for us. Paul says in Ephesians four, always be humble and gentle, be patient with each other, make allowance for each other's faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. He says, since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sin nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception.

Instead, let the spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. And finally, he says, get rid of all bitterness, rage, harsh words and slander, as well as all types of behavior, instead be kind to each other, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you. So how do your attempts at reconciliation reflect Christ and his love for you? Like Rebecca McLaughlin said, the rock comes from within our own flesh. When we recognize how needy we are, we can see, though, how beautiful our rescuer at Jesus Christ, is. We understand how much he loves us to reconcile us to himself. And this beautiful

truth empowers us to live with other people that are just as messy as we are, to love them, to have honest conversations with them, and to make things better.