31 Days Toward Greater Wisdom - Proverbs 23 - Cravings

August 23, 2018 • Leave a Comment

Proverbs 23 is filled with contrasting cravings. Solomon starts with caution over desiring what the wealthy and powerful have, because setting your heart on something you don’t have at the expense of what you do, is foolishness. How many television shows promote craving for wealth, comfort, delicacies and toys we do not have. It’s entertainment, but longing for things we cannot afford produces bloated debt, financial and emotional bondage and a yearning for a life out of reach.

According to a Yale University study in 2017, chocolate is the most craved food in America, closely followed by Ice Cream and French fries. If you yielded and regularly based your diet on chocolate, ice cream and fries, what would your health look and feel like? The pleasure of chocolate dancing on your taste buds may be amazing, though momentary and when repeated too often, harmful. Such are the cravings for wealth, land, sex, and adult beverages listed in Proverbs 23. These items are not bad or evil in themselves, but unchecked they become toxic.

On the other side of the craving contrast, Solomon lists the desires that produce a blessed and healthy life; discipline, truth, the fear of the Lord, wisdom, understanding, instruction, knowledge, and righteousness. Each one of these passions bring balance intended to support physical, spiritual, emotional, relational and financial health.

As you move through your day test your cravings, put them in check and only allow your eyes to focus on the things that will help you grow as a healthy human being who cultivates and enjoys the blessings you do have instead of craving those you don’t.

31 Days Toward Greater Wisdom

Keywords: Application, aware, balance, beat, beware, Bible, build, cheer, cheerful, chocolate, choice, choose, code, contrast, counter, craving, cravings, cream, criticize, Days, decision, decisions, decisive, delicacies, desire, diligence, discerning, earned, encourage, equilibrium, faithful, faithfulness, family, fear, focus, food, French, fries, generations, gift, good, grace, Greater, grow, heal, health, healthy, humiliation, humility, ice, infinite, inheritance, intend, intentional, Jesus, judgement, laugh, laughing, learn, legacy, light, Listen, longing, love, mirror, motivation, mouth, of, pause, perfect, planning, plans, pleasant, practice, prayer, Proverbs, rebalance, rebuild, redeem, reflect, reputation, respond, restore, reveal, righteous, righteousness, shame, slander, smile, solitude, soul, source, speak, speech, spirit, stability, stable, stop, take, temperament, thankful, think, thinking, thoughtful, throne, Toward, trust, up, wealth, Wisdom, wise, words, yearning

Comments

No comments posted.