Maturity means Paying Attention to Things Large and Small
Some time ago an innovative woman in London named Lorlett Hanson came up with a new way of encouraging under-achieving youngsters, especially those of black and minority ethnic heritage. Ms. Hanson was raised by her grandmother who taught her about life by continuously passing on wise sayings and Jamaican proverbs. Now Ms. Hanson has tracked down and preserved a wide collection of proverbs from Caribbean sources.
“Some of the sayings I remembered myself as I was fed proverbs as a child. I had a whole diet of them,” she said. She has collected and packaged fifty-two of these proverbs, and they have been printed on a set of cards and published under the title, “Things Mama Used to Say.”
This product has been an award-winner in England, and it’s being widely used by educators working with minority youth. The publisher says, “They provide food for thought, lessons for living and keen observations of how to successfully navigate your life journey.”
Well, “Things Mama Used to Say” is a great idea, but not a new one. The Bible came up with the idea nearly 3,000 years ago, and the book of Proverbs gives us, not just 52, but over 900 verses that provide “food for thought, lessons for living, and keen observations about how to successfully navigate your life journey.” We can call the book of Proverbs: “Things Papa Solomon Used to Say,” or even better: “Things our Heavenly Father Wants to Say to Us Now.”
One of the most frequent themes in the book of Proverbs is the importance of being diligent in life, for maturity means paying attention to things both large and small. We want to lead well, to influence others, to be a pacesetter. That requires a threefold commitment.
Improving Ourselves
First, we have to make a commitment to ourselves to improve ourselves. We have to tell ourselves, “God has created me to be special for Him, to live for Him in an abundant life, to be as effective as I can be during my temporary tour of duty on earth. I have to keep growing, to keep learning, to keep developing, to keep improving myself for the sake of Christ and His kingdom.” This is one of the underlying themes of the book of Proverbs. We should be growing in wisdom every day, in our ability to live with purpose and perspicuity. As I read through the book of Proverbs, one of the constant refrains is: You can be wiser. You can do better. You can learn to live on a higher level. Notice how this theme shows up in a single word that occurs several times in Proverbs:
- Proverbs 2:1-2 (NIV): My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding….
- Proverbs 22:17 (NIV): Incline your ear and hear the words of the wise, and apply your heart….
- Proverbs 23:12 (NKJV): Apply your heart to instruction, and your ears to the words of knowledge.
- Proverbs 24:30ff (NIV): I went past the field of the sluggard, past the vineyard of the man who lacks judgment; thorns had come up everywhere, the ground was covered with weeds, and the stone wall was in ruins. I applied my heart to what I observed and learned a lesson from what I saw….
Apply your heart to understanding… Apply your heart… Apply your heart to instruction… I applied my heart….
There comes a point in which we have to be proactive and diligently take charge of our own lives, applying ourselves and doing whatever we need to do to improve ourselves so that we can live to our fullest potential.
- Proverbs 4:5ff (NIV): Get wisdom, get understanding… Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding…. Hold on to instruction, do not let it go; guard it well, for it is your life.
- Proverbs 19:8 (NIV): He who gets wisdom loves his own soul; he who cherishes understanding prospers.
As a preacher and public speaker, I’ve been encouraged by the example of Demosthenes, the most famous of the Greek orators. As a young man, so the story goes, he attempted to speak before the Assembly in Athens, which was made up of the greatest orators in the nation, but he was laughed off the stage and his attempt ended in humiliation. In his gloom and despondency, he traveled to the Greek coast where a friend counseled him and told him that with enough effort he could become a great speaker.
So Demosthenes shaved off the beard on one half of his face so that he wouldn’t be tempted to go out in public. And there by the seashore he started practicing. He used the crashing of the ocean as a sounding board with which to strengthen his voice. He practiced speaking with pebbles in his mouth to improve his enunciation and diction. He would shout out his speeches while running uphill to improve his volume and his lung capacity. He would suspend a sword over his shoulder to correct a problem he had with his posture. He studied the speeches of Thucydides and wrote them word for word, over and over again to teach him the construction of sentences.
The day finally came when he rose to speak again in the Athenian Assembly, and by the time Demosthenes had finished his address the entire audience was on its feet, shouting, “Yes! Yes! We shall follow this man! We shall do as he says!”
Demosthenes was intent on improving himself.
Almost the same thing happened to Benjamin Disraeli, the famous Jewish Prime Minister of England during the days of Queen Victoria. As a young man, he rose to speak for the first time in the British Parliament, but his speech was so poor and so poorly received that he was literally shouted down. As he took his seat in humiliation, he said these words: “I sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me.”
He went to work on developing his positions on issues, his thoughts, his ability to communicate, his speech patterns, his delivery; and the day did come when the Parliament heard him and when the entire world listened to him.
Now matter what we are doing now, we can learn to do it better.
Whatever God has called you to do, you can learn to do it better than you’re doing it now. Whatever your profession, whatever your hobby, whatever your ministry, whatever your skill, whatever your gift, you can develop and improve and grow.
This is true of children who want to become all God wants them to be. This is true of teenagers who want to become men and women who God can greatly use. This is true of those in midlife who are wondering if they’re on the downward slide. This is true of older folks who think now they’ve reached an age where there’s little reason to keep plugging away at improvement.
There once lived a famous Japanese artist named Hokusai, one of Japan’s greatest painters who is best remembered for his historical scenes and landscapes including his Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. Here’s what he once said on this subject: “Ever since the age of six I have had a mania for drawing the forms of objects. Towards the age of fifty I published a very large number of drawings, but I am dissatisfied with everything which I produced before the age of seventy. It was at the age of seventy-three I nearly mastered the real nature and form of birds, fish, plants, etcetera. Consequently, at the age of eighty, I shall have got to the bottom of things; at one hundred I shall have attained a decidedly higher level which I cannot define, and at that age of one hundred and ten every dot and every line from my brush will be alive. I call on those who may live as long as I to see if I keep my word.”
Well, as it turned out Hokusai died at the age of ninety, but he was still producing art when he died and his work became the inspiration for the great French Impressionists including Claude Monet who collected and studied his art.
The great novelist, Pearl Buck, was asked on her eightieth birthday if she wished to be young again. She replied, “Wish to be young again? No, for I have learned too much to wish to lose it. I am a far more valuable person today than I was 50 years ago, or 40 years ago, or 30, 20 or even 10. I have learned so much since I was 70.”
Norman Vincent Peale was an American clergyman who wrote a famous book in the middle of the twentieth century entitled, The Power of Positive Thinking. Some of his theology is a little weak, but I’ve found his book very helpful, and so have a lot of other people. One day, Dr. Peale received a letter from a man thanking him for his book. The man was 93 years old. He said, “I have had an inferiority complex for 93 years, and it made me miserable for 93 years. But a friend gave me your book, The Power of Positive Thinking. I read this book; I believed it; I practiced all your suggestions. And I’m writing to report that after 93 years I have lost my inferiority complex.”
As long as we’re alive, we should keep growing. Maybe you need to muster your energy and get back into school. Finish your degree. Get into that Bible study. Start exercising and develop a work-out plan. Ask that Christian guy or girl out on a date. Join the choir. Listen to those Christian motivational tapes or podcasts or audible books. Memorize that chapter of Scripture. Change your dietary habits. Just take charge and prayerfully begin applying yourself to be all you can be for the Lord!
The apostle Paul wrote that outwardly we are perishing, but inwardly we are being renewed day by day. Proverbs 4:18 says: “The ways of right-living people glow with light; the longer they live, the brighter they shine” (the Message).
Accepting Correction
A second application of diligence is seen in the way in which we accept correction. I’m not talking about responding to criticism, but receiving correction from those friends and family members—and from God Himself—for we need their insights if we’re to improve. This theme winds its way through Proverbs like an unbroken ribbon.
- Proverbs 3:11-12 (NIV): My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent His rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those He loves, as a father the son he delights in.
- Proverbs 9:9 (NIV): Instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still; teach a righteous man and he will add to his learning.
- Proverbs 10:17 (NIV): He who heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores correction leads others astray.
- Proverbs 12:1 (NIV): Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid.
- Proverbs 13:1 (NIV): A wise son heeds his father’s instruction, but a mocker does not listen to rebuke.
The other day I picked up a book for a dollar at a used book sale. It was the memoirs of Priscilla Presley in which she told the bizarre story of her marriage to Elvis. In one chapter, Priscilla reveals how disturbed she was when she learned that Elvis was taking so many pills every night. His fear of insomnia and his family history of anxiety, coupled with his performance schedule, made it difficult for him to sleep, a condition that just tormented him and led him to take handful after handful of prescription sleeping pills, sedatives, and tranquilizers at bedtime. Elvis didn’t take kindly to anyone giving him advice, and so Priscilla was afraid to say very much. But one night she ventured to express her concern.
He bristled. Picking up a medical dictionary he always kept near at hand on his night table, he said, “In here is the explanation for every type of pill on the market, their ingredients, side effects, cures, everything about them. There isn’t anything I can’t find out.”
“It was true,” Priscilla wrote in her memoirs. “He was always reading up on pills, always checking to see what was on the market, and which ones had received FDA approval. He referred to them by their medical names and knew all their ingredients. Like everyone else around him, I was impressed with his knowledge and certain he was an expert. One would think he had a degree in pharmacology.”
But of course, his vast knowledge of the subject did not represent the equivalence of wisdom, and his long-term abuse of powerful pharmaceuticals contributed to his tragic death at the age of forty-two. He wouldn’t listen to the concerns of his friends. Out of selfishness or pride or stubbornness, he just wouldn’t listen, and he died at the very time when he should have been coming into his most productive and mature years.
I’ve seen a lot of people like that. You try to help them, you try to tell them something, you try to admonish them, and all you get is angry resentment. In counseling married couples through the years, I’ve found that sometimes husbands just don’t want to sit down for counseling and they resent it. They think they can solve everything on their own and they’re irritable at the thought of marriage counseling. Sometimes the husband is eager, but the wife is the resistant one. People battling substance abuse are often in denial and don’t want anyone telling them things they don’t want to hear. They resent correction or counsel. But the book of Proverbs speaks very frankly and attributes that kind of response to fools. The wise person is eager for help and humble enough to accept advice and correction and counsel. Solomon wrote:
- Proverbs 13:18 (NIV): He who ignores discipline comes to poverty and shame, but whoever heeds correction is honored.
- Proverbs 15:5 (NIV): A fool spurns his father’s discipline, but whoever heeds correction shows prudence.
- Proverbs 15:31-32 (NIV): He who listens to a life-giving rebuke will be at home among the wise. He who ignores discipline despises himself, but whoever heeds correction gains understanding.
- Proverbs 17:10 (NIV): A rebuke impresses a man of discernment more than a hundred lashes a fool.
- Proverbs 19:20 (NIV): Listen to advice and accept instruction, and in the end you will be wise.
- Proverbs 19:25 (NIV): Rebuke a discerning man, and he will gain knowledge.
- Proverbs 25:12 (NIV): Like an earring of gold or an ornament of fine gold is a wise man’s rebuke to a listening ear.
- Proverbs 27:6 (NKJV): Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.
- Proverbs 28:23 (NKJV): He who rebukes a man will find more favor afterward than eh who flatters with the tongue.
- Proverbs 29:1 (NKJV): He who is often rebuked, and hardens his neck, will suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.
Working Hard
Finally, being diligent in life means that we commit ourselves to working hard. The verses that speak to this in the book of Proverbs are almost too numerous to quote.
- Proverbs 6:6-8 (NIV): Go to the ant… consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provision in summer and gathers its food at harvest.
- Proverbs 10:4-5: Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth. He who gathers crops in summer is a wise son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son.
- Proverbs 12:11 (NIV): He who works his land will have abundant food, but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment.
- Proverbs 12:24 (NIV): Diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in slave labor.
- Proverbs 12:27 (The Message): A lazy life is an empty life, but “early to rise” gets the job done.
- Proverbs 14:23 (NIV): All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.
- Proverbs 26:13ff (NKJV): The lazy man says, “There is a lion in the road! A fierce lion is in the streets!” As a door turns on its hinges, so does the lazy man on his bed. The lazy man buries his hand in the bowl; it wearies him to bring it back to his mouth. The lazy man is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly.
- Proverbs 27:23ff (NKJV): Be diligent to know the state of your flocks, and attend to your herds. For riches are not forever, nor does a crown endure to all generations. When the hay is removed, and the tender grass shows itself, and the herbs of the mountains are gathered in, the lambs will provide your clothing, and the goats the price of a field; you shall have enough goats’ milk for your food, and the food of your household, and the nourishment of your maidservants.
- Proverbs 28:19 (NKJV): He who tills his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows frivolity will have poverty enough!
When I was working on the book Then Sings My Soul, I came across the story of Sabine Gould, the author of “Onward Christian Soldiers” and the hymn “Now the Day is Over.” He was an incredibly prolific who pastored his village church, taught college, dabbled in archaeology, published travel guides, and for many years published a new novel annually. He became an authority on British folk music, and no one really knows how many other books and publications he penned. It was an astonishing number—at one time, he was responsible for more books in the British Museum Library than any other author.
Sabine Baring-Gould declared that he often did his best work when he felt least inclined to apply himself to the task. Rather than waiting for inspiration, he plunged into his work and plodded on until it was finished. “The secret is simply that I stick to a task when I begin it,” he said. “It would never do to wait from day to day for some moments that might seem favorable for work.”
It reminded me of another Englishman. Some time ago, I picked up an interesting book entitled I Was Winston Churchill’s Private Secretary by Phyllis Moir who described how diligent her boss was at going about his work. Before he became Prime Minister during World War II, Churchill was fraught with worry about the Nazi threat, but he also had a series of demanding book deadlines. One the day that Prague was seized by the Nazis he was hurrying to complete a 300,000 word history of the English people. He said to his son Randolph after supper on that tense and frightening day, “It’s hard to take one’s attention off the events of today and concentrate on the reign of James II—but I’m going to do it.”
And he did. Phyllis Moir said, “When a job of writing has to be done Mr. Churchill sits down to it whether he is in the mood or not and the effort generates his creative power.”
It reminds me of what basketball star Jerry West once said: “You can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good.”
I know there are times in life when we need to relax our minds and our bodies. We aren’t machines that pound away twenty-four hours a day. Jesus Himself told the disciples to take a break, come apart, and rest awhile. But by and large, God didn’t make us to waste our time, to sit around for hours and hours day after day watching television, devouring movies, or playing video games ad infinitum and ad nauseam.
Jesus said, “My Father works and I work.”
In one of the most remarkable paragraphs I’ve ever read about this, Roland H. Bainton said in his biography of Reformer Martin Luther that God has called us to labor because He labors. God Himself works at common occupations.
- He is a tailor who makes coats for the animals, fur for the rabbit, and wool for the sheep.
- He’s a shoemaker who provides paws and hoofs for the animals.
- He is a gardener who fills the earth with flowers and trees and shrubs.
- He is a schoolteacher who instructs us daily in the art of living.
- He’s the best cook, said Luther, because the heat of the sun supplies all the heat there is for cooking.
- God is a butler who sets forth a feast for the sparrows and spreads a table in the wilderness.
- The Lord Jesus Christ worked as a carpenter and stone mason in the hillside towns of Galilee.
- And, said Luther, look at the Lord’s friends and families. One of the most remarkable examples of humility in history is the Virgin Mary, who, after receiving the astounding news that she was to become the mother of the Redeemer Himself, went back and milked the cows, scoured the kittles, and swept the house like any homemaker.
We only have a few years to accomplish all that God wants us to do, and so the Bible tells us we should number our days so that we may present to God a heart of wisdom. We should redeem the time, for the days are evil. We should occupy till He comes, because time is drawing short. We must be about the Father’s business, so that one day He will look at us in glory and say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
The very process of sanctification is that process whereby God perfects which concerns us. He wants us to grow, to improve.
Not many of us are satisfied with the way we are right now. Sometimes I become very discouraged with myself, and I feel worthless and useless and like a colossal failure. Most of us have bouts with feelings like those. But God isn’t finished with us yet.
Through Jesus Christ He wants us to mature, to grow, to become all He intends for us to be and to do all He intends for us to do. But we have to cooperate, to be diligent, to pay attention to matters large and small. And that means improving ourselves, accepting correction, and working hard. As we do so, the God who has begun a good work in us will carry it to completion until the coming day.
Let’s heed the book of Proverbs and become pacesetters—improving ourselves in some way every day; accept correction and advice; and working hard. As one old song says: We’ll work till Jesus comes, then we’ll be carried home.