Chapter 19

Proverbs 19 (Kim)

“A man's own folly ruins his life, yet his heart rages against the LORD.” Proverbs 19:3

When I was a teenager in Florida, there was a party spot at the sand dunes on the edge of town (where we knew we shouldn’t be) called the “whoop-dee-doo”. It was a road, a track really, with hard packed sand and a clearing at the end. Traveled mostly by 4-wheelers with knobby tires, it was really rough. The tires aided by the heavy Florida rains, had created a series of bumps and dips. As you would speed over them, you would bounce high enough to touch the ceiling, be thrown on top of the person next to you, or get a whip-lash- you know fun stuff!

Well, a friend’s dad had given her a car, and we went out to the “whoop-dee-doo” several times a month that summer. As you can imagine, the car began to go out of alignment. Get it to 60 mph and it would shake. As the summer went on, it began shaking at lower speeds. By the end of the summer, it would tire her arms just to keep the wheel straight. It pulled severely to the left. She began to complain, “This car is so cheap!””Why would Dad give me such a clunker!” Not knowing much about cars, she never made the connection between the “Whoop-dee-doo” and her car problems.

The foolishness of a man twists his way, and his heart frets against the Lord. “Twist” in this verse means to “wrench”. When we do things we shouldn’t these things can knock us out of alignment with God’s plan for us. Sometimes we don’t understand why things are wrong, because we do not study and know God’s Word. Sometimes we know they’re wrong and they don’t seem such a big deal, they’re fun and we don’t do them that often.

But we start feeling spiritually shaken, having to struggle to keep our life on track. Because the damage is not immediate, we don’t make the connection between our “whoop-dee-doo” and our spiritual difficulties. Then we begin to think God has given us a clunker, that living according to His will is too hard. Our heart frets against the Lord.