What Makes You Feel Secure?

  A preview of January's email-only article.

Jaime Spaniol

IT IS TEMPTING to focus our energy and efforts on the material world, especially when it comes to security. We build stronger houses, install better locks, and design more intelligent surveillance systems.

These things are no inherently bad, but if we're not careful we can shift our focus from the the eternal to the temporary.

Every month I publish an exclusive article for my email subscribers, and this month we're looking at a verse from Proverbs 14 that will help provide some eternal prospective regarding the concept of security. If you'd like instant, free access, fill out the form below. (If you are already a subscriber, check your inbox!)

Here's a snippet of this month's exclusive:

While it's true Solomon may have borrowed or modified many proverbs from ancient sources, Proverbs 14:11 is nevertheless intriguing considering the context in which it was written. The verse reads, "The house of the wicked will be destroyed, but the tent of the upright will flourish."

The surface reading is pretty obvious: God honors upright living and disaster besets those who are wicked. And the implications are just as obvious: be good, not evil.

But beneath the surface level we can observe a few additional layers of meaning that help us better understand how to apply the verse to our lives.

One can see right off the contrast between the house of the wicked and the tent of the upright. One is sturdy, able to withstand storms, while the other is flimsy and subject to the elements. And yet the house is destroyed, not the tent.

What are we to make of such a phenomenon?

 
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To All the Church Attendees with a False Sense of Security

Just because you attend church doesn’t mean you’re saved.

But how many of us operate that way? It’s the modus operandi: salvation by association. Redemption through osmosis. But it’s a myth. It’s a lie. It’s a false sense of security.

Boston Public Library (CC)

We think that by belonging to a group or a particular church we’ll sneak our names in the book of life. It doesn’t work like that. (And that’s a good thing.)

This Is the Reason You Have Nothing to Show for All of Your Hard Work

You work hard, right?

Of course you do. You work forty, fifty, maybe sixty hours per week. Then you come home and do housework. You wrestle the kids. You do homework. You bathe and feed them. But when you actually have a moment to step back and just breathe it’s easy to get frustrated.

Vinoth Chandar (CC)

You feel like you're swimming against the current, and no matter how hard you try you can’t gain any ground.

Sound familiar?

There’s a good reason for this feeling. Something that, even if understood intellectually, is hard to follow in practice thanks to our fickle, demanding, needy flesh.

4 Ways to Be Positive (Even If You're Surrounded by Whiners)

You want to be a positive person. You really do.

But every time you try to think positively, someone grabs you and pulls you back down to earth. Maybe it's a snarky comment, a pessimistic outlook on your situation, or just plain whining. Whatever it is these people keep dragging you down.

And it's not like you can just cut them out of your life. These people are your family. They are your co-workers. Or worse: they are your (gasp) fellow Christians.

Maybe it's just time to join the whiners and pessimists. It would be easier that way. Besides, they seem to lead happy lives, right?