A WORD TO THE WISE. Proverbs 29: 6. "Joy-full and Debt-free"

Proverbs 29: 6     By transgression an evil man is snared, but the righteous sings and rejoices.

Proverbs 29: 6.    People and circumstances can steal your joy, like thieves and con artists can steal your money.  But robbery and fraud aren’t the chief causes of loss in this season.  Debt is.

Physically, we rack up so many charged charges that we start the new year in a gaping financial hole, having signed away the 1^st financial quarter of the new year.  By greed and vanity we literally give away our financial security---- though we give it in festively wrapped packages.

Spiritually, we sin, digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a spiritual hole/ stronghold.  We perpetuate the cycle of self-destruction described by the phrase “the wages of sin is death.”  We feel the burden of due judgment. (The unrepentant deny it, but we all feel it.)  By your worry over the future, your guilt over the past, and your realization that you’re not as spiritually well-off right now as you would be had you made better choices----- by all these creditors empowered BY SIN, YOU GIVE YOUR JOY AWAY.

But the righteous sings and rejoices.

When you give your life to Jesus, He erases your past and future balance off God’s books in the next world.  When you live righteously in that freedom, you don’t empower the spiritual creditors of this world. 

So when that old guilt tries to harass you, you can respond with praise to God that it has no legitimate claim. 

When you live in the righteousness of Christ, that old habit of worrying may call to bother you, but you can hang up with rejoicing because it’ll have no legitimate claim.  

When you are led by the Holy Spirit and not by the flesh, that old sense that you haven’t done enough may come around, but you can kick it out by giving glory to God that you owe nothing more to the spirit of condemnation. 

Live joy-full  and debt-free this CHRISTmas.

Jesus said, “Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.”  (John 16: 22)

---Anderson T. Graves II

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is the pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church

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Hall Memorial CME Church
541 Seibles Road
Montgomery, AL 36116