Proverbs for the day, for February the 2nd, Proverbs chapter two and verse two. We'll begin reading in verse one to get a little bit of context. My son, if thou wilt receive my words and hide my commandments with thee, so that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom and apply thine heart to understanding, yea, if thou cryest after knowledge and liftest up thy voice for understanding, If thou seekest her as silver and searchest for her as for hid gold, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, find the knowledge of God, et cetera. Now that was all the way down through verse six. So verse two for today. So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom and apply thine heart to understanding. Now notice that it starts off in verse one with an if, an if. Notice the conditional if of the words of God. The important part of it is that there's an if and a then. If and then. If and then. If you this, then this. Okay? And that's life. Life is full of if, then. If this, then this. Now I realize that some of you probably can remember mathematical formulas where if it's this, then this. And you can remember solving equations and doing different things. Well in life, it's that way. It's cause and effect. If I receive his words, hide my commandments with him." Now verse two, if I incline mine ear and thine ear and wisdom, apply thine heart to understanding. Just two main thoughts, okay? Lean towards the mind of Christ. Lend God an ear. In other words, lean towards the mind of Christ. And the picture is this, if thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and incline is a leaning, it is kind of tilting your head towards it, making sure we listen. The Bible tells us that in these last days, or in some last days, they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned into fables. They'll want to hear fables instead, they'll want to. Now the Bible gives us a promise in John chapter 14, and he gives it to us in John 14, 26. It says, the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you. And the modern application of this promise is that if I will read the Word of God, if I will hear the Word of God, if I will listen to the Word of God, if I will attend to it, if I will incline mine ear unto it, then what will happen is I can lean towards the mind of Christ and the Holy Spirit will help me. When I get like that, when a believer's doing that, it's like the passages where the Bible says, and hearing ye shall hear. We know there's some that hear and they not hear. Okay? You ever notice how sometimes a conversation can be going on and someone will kind of tilt their head towards it and ease maybe even into the conversation because they desire to be in there? Not trying to butt in or anything like that necessarily. They just would like to be part of the conversation. The conversation attracted them. I don't know about you, but you know, sometimes I get the picturing in my mind and I think of many times this, I picture this in my mind, I picture what if we're so attuned to things that the Holy Spirit can just kind of bring a few words of scripture to our thought or a sentence someone else says, they may not realize it but it's associated with the Bible or it prompts you to think of a Bible truth. And so what happens there is we're going along and all of a sudden we realize I'm leaning, I'm inclining my ear. He said, thou incline thine ear so that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom. And so the idea is that we're supposed to be on the alert. We're on the lookout for these things from God, these words from God. Lean towards the mind of Christ. Memorize a few verses. Write a few down. Read scriptures. I mean, it won't hurt you to have on your nowadays. You can have it digitally with you on the go. Excuse me. You can have it on a phone. You can have it on a tablet. You can have a handheld pocket Bible in your in your printed one in your backpack like I do all the time. Lean towards it. Lean towards the mind of Christ and when in doubt, think on the words of God. Incline thine ear unto wisdom. And then, you know, with that, make it every chance you get. So the first thought is lean towards the mind of Christ. The second one is in the second half of the verse, and that is live it out. Live it out. And apply thine heart to understanding. Hey, I'm going to give you an example. Whether it be in a little notebook or on some kind of cards, something you can hang on to or stick somewhere and look at later, write a truth out. Write it out. Maybe have your little life notebook. You can have one of these. Some of them are not much bigger than a three by five thing. I've got one that you can get at those large bookstores and stuff. And it's got decent paper. And I'll come across something in my Bible, and I'll just write it down. And I might not ever use it to preach or teach, but many, many days, I slow down, and I open it and I'll flip through it and I might come across a passage, a reference I've written down. I'll go look at that passage of scripture and how something affected me on that day and it's a real help to me. What is the purpose? I want to apply my heart to understanding. I want my heart to grab it and then live it out. So write out a truth and then review that truth. Look, everything in life takes review. Haven't you ever noticed that if you have a password for something and you haven't accessed that account or that thing for a while, sometimes that password can go walkabout on you and you can't find that thing in your head to save your life? It's because you haven't been using a lot. Do you ever notice that other stuff you use all the time? Have you ever had a route you took to work or something and found yourself taking that route even though you weren't on your way to work? You've just taken it so many times. Well, the Bible can help us if we will review it. That is, we get back in touch with it constantly. We review it. That's why we read the same patch of scripture over and over and over, year by year. That's why it doesn't need to be rewritten. It needs to be reread, the old-timers said. And so review it, and then meditate it. You know, just kind of chew on it. Think on it. It's amazing. I do not have to understand all the things that go into a good meal to enjoy it. In fact, one of the enjoyable things is when someone goes to the effort to take the ingredients, put them in the right amount, why even where you apply heat and how long and when affects the outcome of a good dish. And what a blessing to enjoy it. Well, meditating on the Bible is not trying to dissect it and figure it out. It's just absorbing that truth. Simple, okay? Example. What if you just meditate on the fact that God came to earth, was born of a virgin, and God took on the body of humanity of a man? I don't have to understand that. I can't explain it, and I've never met anybody, never met 100 people together. If you put them together, could explain it. but I still enjoy the blessing of believing it. It's a mystery, of which there are at least seven in your Bible. It's a mystery, and we're to be stewards of them. We preach the mysteries without being able to explain them. That's the marvel of faith, but it's also the marvel of the power of the word. I meditate it. And then think about this, about living it out. Think about the fact that many times what we want to do is we want things to just kind of be intuitive and automatic. And God says, no, look, if you'll just learn to meditate. You know why materialism, when it burns out, finds people trying to do some of the things they do in the Far East? Because outwardly, it's the antithesis of it. It's the opposite thesis of it. It's the opposite type of approach. And so they'll get into meditation and stuff. Well, you understand, all that is a counterfeit. All of it is a counterfeit of the real thing. And so don't ever forget that. That the real thing is I meditate on the book, and I muse on the book, and I chew on the book. Incline thine ear into wisdom. Apply thine heart to understanding. And pretty soon it just becomes a part of how you think. See, we're not trying to go around and beat people up with that truth. We're trying to let it have an effect upon our own life, and thereby we can shine the way God wants us to shine, in a dark and a lost and a dying world.