Wednesday is for One Year: Hosea 4 & Proverbs 29

Hosea 4:6 “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”

This verse can really be looked at from two perspectives. First, the people of God had forgotten the law of God. This pertains to a head knowledge. Today it would equate to the church’s unfamiliarity with the scriptures and inability to understand doctrine or what the scriptures teach. This is devastating to the church and causes her to be blown to and fro and remain weak if at all. But Secondly, it refers to an intimate knowledge of God, a relationship. One could also describe this as a love for God and His law. Head knowledge is not enough, traditions and rituals are not enough, there must be a real relationship or intimacy between man and God.

The key is one needs both the head knowledge and the intimate knowledge. How can you be intimate with someone you know nothing of? And how can you know so much about the most wonderful and greatest being in the world and not love Him?

Proverbs 29:11 “A fool give full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.”

I just had to comment on this text. Therapy and counsel today tells us to not internalize things, that is unhealthy. You need to vent, but just properly. This verse teaches that venting is something a fool, or ungodly acting person, does. Why is this? Words are powerful and any time we vent we say things that are hurtful and not controlled, this is wrong. However, there is a greater truth that we must also see. When we internalize or hold back then we must deal with things inside ourselves. For the unbeliever this is frustrating so they say it is bad, but for the believer there is a being inside, the Holy Spirit, that is our greatest counselor. Internalizing is not to mean that we suppress things, but that we work things out between us and God. Internalizing basically should turn into prayer. We wait upon the Lord, we trust in the Lord, we call upon the Lord, we cast our cares upon the Lord.