The Proverbs Project

Dear Reader,

While serving on the staff of Brownsville Community Fellowship, the senior pastor, Kenny Lewis, had each of the staff undertake a study of the book of Proverbs. That study became known as “The Proverbs Project”.

Pastor Kenny began the project by pointing out to us the purpose of the proverbs. In Proverbs 1:1-6 we read, “These are the proverbs of Solomon, David’s son, king of Israel. Their purpose is to teach people wisdom and discipline, to help them understand the insights of the wise. Their purpose is to teach people to live disciplined and successful lives, to help them do what is right, just, and fair. These proverbs will give insight to the simple, knowledge and discernment to the young. Let the wise listen to these proverbs and become even wiser. Let those with understanding receive guidance by exploring the meaning in these proverbs and parables, the words of the wise and their riddles.” Proverbs 1:1-6 (NLT)

Each Wednesday afternoon we would meet as a team and go over what we had learned, sharing key observations. Often Pastor Kenny would ask us to dig deeper, to give him more. He emphasized that we must not simply settle for the easy observations, but that we needed to become disciplined and dig deeper, essentials keys to gaining understanding and insight.

That study was a extremely helpful to me. It was during that time that I learned to be gentle instead of harsh, loving instead of demanding, encouraging rather than judgmental, a motivator and encourager instead of critic.

I discovered there are three areas in our lives.

1. Things I know about myself and need to work on. Keeping my word, being on punctual, doing what I say I’ll do would all fit into this category. I see these things and can work on them without much help from others. I called these “Things of the Mind”.

2. Things I don’t know about myself but others see. This may be my critical spirit, my cutting and hurtful words, and my facial expression which show my disapproval more than any words I speak. These are the areas where I need an accountability partner to gently tell me that I’m hurting others. I called these “Things of the Heart”.

3. Things that I don’t know about myself and others don’t know about me either. This may show up as sudden or explosive anger, or unexplained days of depression and foul moods. These were by far the most difficult to discover and address, but they can stop me dead in my tracks. For me, this was coming to grips with the buried pain of never having dealt with the death of my mother when I was 14 years old. I called these “Things of the Soul”.

I have learned that we men become master pretenders. When we have something in our lives that hurts, we try to ignore it. But we still find it occasionally bothering us, so we hide it in a closet in our mind and pretend it’s not there. But even then it still pops up, so we lock that mental closet door and paint over the door. But then the outline of the door shows through the paint, so we move a bookshelf in front of the closet door to hide the outline. By this time we have convinced ourselves we have adequately dealt with the hurt and pain, but we haven’t. Like a dead corpse it rots and stinks up our lives.

I recall asking people to come tell me when I was acting poorly. I told them I wasn’t simply giving them permission to tell me I was being a jerk, but to please come to me and to help me become a better person. I even went back and asked each of my children for their forgiveness for having exploded at them and been such a poor example.

The Proverbs Project changed my life. I will always be grateful to Pastor Kenny for making that assignment to the BCF staff.

Do you want to become wise, gain insight, and gain understanding? Get a couple of others and undertake a Proverbs Project. If you’d like, send me an e-mail and I’ll be glad to send you my study notes from one of the chapters as a study outline.

I pray God helps you reach your full potential, and that you experience the abundant life Jesus came to give you.

Pressing forward,

Jim