Bryan Richardson

Effective

Re:Verse passage – Proverbs 13:24 (day

“He who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently.”

Disciplining children can be terrifying — not because you might be ineffective, but because you might be more effective than you could ever have imagined. What children learn about who they are through what is allowed or disallowed will stay with them and shape them as their years unfold. What do I have to do to gain the approval of people I love? Does my voice matter? Who can I go to for soothing when I am tormented by guilt and fear? Who can I trust? Discipline includes punishment but is not limited to it. Parents will build trust when they acknowledge to children that being a child who needs to learn about life is not a punishable offense — that learning what’s right isn’t easy.

Everlasting

Re:Verse passage – Proverbs 9:1-18 (day three)
“Come, eat of my food
And drink of the wine I have mixed.
“Forsake your folly and live,
And proceed in the way of understanding.”

Why doesn’t the entirety of the Old and New Testaments consist solely of Genesis 15:6 – “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness” – and John 3:16? What’s all this extra content about wisdom and understanding and encouraging one another and living in peace with each other? The reason is that it’s not extra; it’s essential. The way of God is not a verse to memorize. It’s not even a system to accept. It’s an eternal kind of life. There is no way of living eternally other than the way of wisdom and generosity and peace and love. If you’re going to live eternally, the Bible’s got to teach you to live eternally.

Knell

Re:Verse passage – Proverbs 3:9-10 (day three)

“Honor the Lord from your wealth
And from the first of all your produce;
So your barns will be filled with plenty
And your vats will overflow with new wine.”

God created the universe with no shortages whatsoever. Air, water, vegetation, and mineral resources abound. Scarcity is engineered by people as they vie for superiority, power, position, and favor. The winners of this competition control the levers of influence and domination. Most all human beings not occupying this pinnacle of supremacy find themselves on lower rungs – the second, third, fourth tiers, etc., all the way down to abject poverty and powerlessness. There is one way to stand in defiance of this order of dearth and lack: give away what you have before it gets into the system. Generosity before the Lord is the death knell of the regime of shortage.

Trust

Re:Verse passage – Proverbs 3:5-7 (day three)

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart.”

Where you feel safe, valued, heard, wanted — or where you believe there’s a chance of finding those things — this is where you will be. When the woman at the well said to her fellow townsfolk, “He told me everything I ever did,” implicit in that statement was the declaration, “and for the first time I felt no shame.” She knew Jesus was the one to trust with all her heart because he saw all of her and loved her. This is the God you can trust.

Remember

Re:Verse passage – Proverbs 3:1-4 (day three)

“My son, do not forget my teaching.”

Memorizing Bible verses will not guarantee that you don’t forget God’s word. How can that be? Because the Bible presents to you not just theoretical concepts for you to discuss but a way of living for you to experience. It is a continually unfolding mystery that invites you to grow and be transformed. The letter kills, says the apostle Paul, but the Spirit gives life. He ought to know. As a Pharisee, the rigid letter of the law was his stock-in-trade. When the Spirit blew into his life, he entered into a way of experiencing the life of God that he would never get over. Merely to memorize is to risk understanding the word of God as frozen in place. But to learn to live it out is to remember it. That will renew your spirit.

Seek

Re:Verse passage – Proverbs 2:1-15 (day three)

“If you seek her as silver
And search for her as for hidden treasures;
Then you will discern the fear of the Lord
And discover the knowledge of God.”

Both the Old Testament and the New Testament teach that you will find what you seek. Will the search take as long as your entire life? It might. Will seeking prove hard? It will. Time and effort are characteristic of any quest. Otherwise, you might not even know what you’ve found or why it’s important. Time will give you room to contemplate and to grow in your ability to recognize what it is you seek. And effort will reveal your longings, leading you to understand the you God has made. When you find the wisdom you’ve looked for, you’ll be ready for it, and you will treasure it. This is God’s word to you.

Riddle

Re:Verse passage – Proverbs 1:1-7 (day three)

“A man of understanding will acquire wise counsel,
To understand a proverb and a figure,
The words of the wise and their riddles.”

Why don’t they just say it plainly? Why all these allusions and riddles? This was also the question of Jesus’s disciples. Time and again, they asked him to explain what he meant. Jesus could have said, “Your neighbor is anyone with whom you are in effective contact regardless of station in life.” Instead, he told the parable of the Samaritan. Proverbs could have said, “Some things are beyond the control of even those with absolute political power.” Instead, it says, “A lizard can be caught with the hand, yet it is found in kings’ palaces.” Plain talk will eventually get lost in the noise of life. Riddles, parables, and puzzles will intrigue hearers and invite curiosity for generations.

Open

Re:Verse passage – Matthew 7:24-29 (day three)

“The crowds were amazed at his teaching; for he was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.”

Whatever teaching justifies people in positions in which they hold power over you; whatever teaching conveys that you possess little worth; whatever teaching encourages you not to advocate for your well-being; whatever teaching claims God’s will as a trump card to quell dissent; whatever teaching tends to favor the powerful; whatever teaching places some people above God’s judgment – such teaching magnifies man, not God. It wasn’t the downtrodden, the spiritual outsiders, the sinners whom Jesus disturbed. Rather, it was the celebrated, the spiritual elite, the most biblically literate who became alarmed. The prostitutes and tax collectors? They knew hope when they saw it. This is what happened when the real authority taught the scriptures. Jesus opens doors the system has slammed shut.

Theater

Re:Verse passage – Matthew 7:15-23 (day three)

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

Who did Jesus refer to time and again throughout his sermon as having taught his listeners? Hypocrites, or actors. Eager for the best seats at the banquets? Actors. Making prayer into performance art? Actors. Skirting the law for their own financial gain and in so doing devouring widows’ houses and depriving the elderly of financial support? Actors. Laying claim to the mantle of Moses and with it the special status of a select few blessed by God? Actors. These actors, also known as teachers of the law, are very good at their primary craft – acting. “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” And Jesus says, “What does that have to do with anything?”

Little

Re:Verse passage – Matthew 7:13-14 (day three)

“The gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

Everything about Jesus runs counter to your expectations. Little is much, servanthood is greatness, the poor are celebrated, and now this. Does everything have to be counterintuitive? It’s only that way because you’ve been told that there’s safety in numbers: lots of dollars, lots of people, lots of admiration, lots of publicity, lots of approval. That way of life links security to external factors, though. That way of life tells you that there’s nothing worth much on the inside, so you’ve got to prop yourself up with whatever you can grab. But Jesus says you don’t need a Las Vegas-style entryway to convince you of your value. You’re already worth much to God, so come on towards him through the little gate.