Past Year/Present Year 2024

HOW WAS 2023? Usually we consider:

• Did I make more money?

• Did I improve my position or enhance my career?

• Did I increase my influence over others?

• Did I “cause envy or jealousy in others?”

1. Did you recognize the importance of self-evaluation?

If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. Each one should test their own actions, not others’, so they can then find fulfillment in their own walk, without comparing themselves to anyone else.

-Galatians 6:3 – 4

2. In 2023, did you understand the value of your time?

Teach us to number our days correctly, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

-Psalm 90

3. Did your victories exceed your defeats?

I have fought the good fight.

-Paul in 1 Timothy 4:7

4. Did you finish well?

I have finished the race, I’ve kept the faith.

–Again, Paul in 2 Timothy

The end of something is better than the beginning.

-Ecclesiastes 7

5. Did you anticipate the return of Christ?

“Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. … He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

-Jesus in Revelation 22

So, moving forward, consider using this for your guide in 2024:

1. Work to improve relationships. (2 Timothy 1:1-4)

2. Desire an increase in freedom. (1 Corinthians 7)

3. Consider your passion and zeal – is it for Jesus and the Gospel? (Romans 9:1-4)

4. Expand your perspective. (Philippians 1:9-11)

5. A commitment to a strengthening of Spirit.

What does a series on WISDOM have to with the outline we just perused?

• Did you recognize the importance of self-evaluation?

• Expand your Perspective.

“Morality and guilt have not gone away. They are simply under new management.”

-Samuel James

Proverbs is “Goads and Nails” … Meaning?

Goads: what a shepherd uses to move his or her sheep along “the right path” – keep the sheep from straying into foolishness.

• Proverbs gently, but with beautiful and strong rhetoric, pushes us toward wisdom and away from foolishness.

Nails: we need a solid, sturdy foundation on which to build our life.

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

-Matthew 7:24 – 27

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

-1 Corinthians 1:26 – 31

BOOKS:

The Forgotten 500 by Gregory Freeman

Bibi by Benjamin Netanyahu

The Genesis of Gender by Abigail Favale

The Toxic War On Masculinity by Nancy Pearcey

The Cancelling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott

Digital Liturgies by Samuel James

Facing the Beast by Naomi Wolf

Timothy Keller: His Spiritual & Intellectual Formation by Collin Hansen

NERDS:

The End of the World Is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan

How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil

YOU DON’T HAVE TO READ IT:

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

• What you know is not nearly as important as how you behave!

• Time uninterrupted.