SALT WATER

The road to Old Man’s recently washed out so Trails in ALOT more crowded these days!

CLEAN WATER

LIVING WATER

At my favorite place to have church - Sur Coffee San Clemente with my dad. My dad was ahead of his time. He practiced being a vegetarian, rode his bicycle 7 miles to work as a teamster, practiced meditation, surfed and read a new word in the webster’s dictionary each day . This is him at age 78 - a lifetime of good habits.

WISDOM AS CORRECTION - PROVERBS 13

Today I want to talk to you about Proverbs 13 about the value of correction.

If you want to make progress in your life, you have to be willing to get the right kind of feedback that will push back against what you've currently been practicing. So how life works is you assemble a routine, daily habits, and those are based on the best information, the best knowledge, the best learning that you've done up until that point of your life. But in order to grow, you need feedback. In other words, you need people to push back against what you've been currently practicing so that you can get better results. And so Proverbs talks about this. Today I want to talk to you about the value of correction.

FIRST - Correction can be one of the most useful things in your life to help you grow. So we want to lean into these principles. Proverbs 13, one, a wise son heeds his father's instruction, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke. If you are a parent, you see someone in your family doing something incorrectly, you don't speak up, that means you don't care. If you do care about the people in your family, then of course you're going to say something. And so that's the power of correction. It's actually uncaring to watch people do things that are counterproductive to the results that they want and to engage in habits that underlie, that undermine their intentions. So the wise person is going to listen to their father's instruction. Now, whether you had a father or you didn't have a father, you can lean into this idea of a multitude of counselors victory issue. So if you're listening to this, you're going to want to have a group of people in your life that you look up to as mentors. You need to do away with this idea that one person in the world is going to teach you everything that you need to know, whether it's your father or your pastor, et cetera. You need to develop a tribe of people that you look up to and you learn from. And I really want to encourage you to do that. I have six to eight of them in my life, people that I look up to and people that I learned from. So that's what the wise person does.

SECOND - Verse three, he who guards his mouth preserves his life, but he who opens wide his lips shall have destruction. Very appropriate verse for the time that we live in. You know, nowadays you can get ahead by saying less. Everybody's speaking now. Everyone says everything they think all the time. So my encouragement to you would be to pray and then only share in a public forum, in a public matter, the things that God has put on your heart to share.

THIRD - Verse seven, there is one who makes himself rich yet has nothing and one who makes himself poor yet has great riches. The richest people in the world are the ones that don't need anything. Actually, contentment is true, is being truly rich. Being truly rich, being content will teach you to want what you already have. It will teach you to want the wife you already have, the family you already have, the friends you already have, to engage in the work that you already have. We should have, now there's some trial and error to getting to that sweet spot. It's easier for me to say this being 48 than it was for me to say this at 38, 28, certainly at 18. But contentment, you can learn contentment along the way. Satisfaction is not found in the next thing, in the next attainment. Contentment, joy, peace is found in enjoying what you have to enjoy in your life today. And that's a practice that we can all participate in. So actually, the rich person again is the person who doesn't need anything. That's the truly rich person. That's counter-cultural. This is what Jesus teaches.

FOURTH - Verse 12, hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes it's a tree of life. So we have hopes, we have aspirations. If you have to hold out for them for too long, it can be discouraging. There's a principle in here. I think it teaches you should set seasonal goals for your life. You want to have some seasonal goals. Those are going to be just maybe a few months at a time. Then you're going to have some maybe one to five year goals. Like if you're completing a degree, you're building out a business, you have goals for your family at a certain point in time. And then you're going to have sort of some life goals, some macro stuff that you work on for a very, very long time. You sort of have the end in mind for how you think God might be wanting to use you.

FIFTH - And then lastly in verse 15, good understanding gains favor, but the way of the unfaithful is hard. Again, you want to develop a reputation for listening, for empathy. Good understanding gains favor. When you really try to understand others, instead of trying to be understood yourself, you'll gain friends and God's blessing and favor will be upon you. So many nuggets in Proverbs. It's been a lot of fun going through this.

Thank you so much for joining me today. Until next time, I hope you have a beautiful day.

50 DAYS OF WISDOM - DAY 28 "Wisdom as Correction" Proverbs 13