Good morning people who pay attention to what God is saying to us.
Proverbs 4:20-21 NIV My son, pay attention to what I say; turn your ear to my words. Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart;
Paying attention to wisdom is not a casual, “Yeah, I heard what you said” attitude that is followed by ignoring it or forgetting it.
In this proverb, the writer instructs us to firstly pay attention to what is being said, but it does not stop there. We are told to:
- Turn our ear to the words; listen to them and hear what is being said.
- Keep them in your sight; let the words form a mental picture that is an accurate representation of the original intention, and then keep that picture playing over in your mind.
- Keep them in your heart; in addition to hearing accurately and seeing accurately, we are to ‘store these up in our heart’ in the same way that David talks about in Psalm 119:11.
What we hear and what we see are to form what we believe.
There is nothing casual about our pursuit of wisdom.