Our Favorite Proverbs: Proverbs 13:15

0:00Welcome to this moment of hope I'm Jen Houston joined by pastor David in Maryland Chadwick. We're in a series called our favorite proverbs and today we're going to take a look at Proverbs 1315. David will you share with us how common sense fits in with prayer? I will Jen let me read the verse and then we'll get into this today. Good sense wins favor but the way of the treacherous is their ruin. So I think in this Proverbs 1315 insight we see the value of common sense which I think is thoroughly lacking in today's society and culture. In fact even go back to the revolutionary wartime period a couple hundred years ago a guy by the name of Thomas Payne wrote something called common sense. It was a regular distribution to the colonists and it was hugely successful. I mean thousands upon thousands of them would read it regularly again the value of common sense but if you look at today's culture you spend five

1:01minutes on social media and you see everybody's got an opinion on just about everything and you don't know what is truly true and you don't see much common sense as well. So that's why I think studying the book of Proverbs together over these weeks has been really fun because it's filled with common sense. Now Jen answer your question is there a connection between common sense and prayer? My daddy used to say all the time you know sometimes I wonder if prayer isn't just good common sense expressed to God. So I think that's true because when we pray we try to figure out the will of God and God's will is pure common sense. So when you pray you try to figure out what looks like the right avenue, pray it to the Lord, trust him with the answer and then you know it will end up in a good place because God is perfectly good in every way. So common sense folks I would invite all of you to have friends who have good common sense listen to them. Maybe a wise counselor you might need to go to has good common sense but also go to the Lord because he is the giver of common sense and usually the simplest

2:04way the commonest way is God's way and you can trust him in that way when it's exposed to you especially through prayer. Marilyn? You know I'm sitting here thinking of all the evidence for the fact that the world fell and to me one of the evidence is that the fall is that common sense is not very common you know we just don't naturally gravitate toward that and I find it fascinating that a child sometimes can reach a common sense answer even before a thoroughly educated adult and so I think we have to be careful sometimes education and I would say right alongside that too much time on social media takes our common sense and throws it out the window and I if I hear one more person tell me I'll listen to podcasts so I know the truth about this situation except our pod yeah this one is really good yeah yes and ours will be wise no but I just think we live in a world where there's the illusion because we know a lot that we actually and everybody has an opinion and everybody will express their opinion and can because everybody has a microphone available to them if they want it Jen. Well another another version says good understanding you know when

3:07you understand something I think that's evidence of someone who listens who moles who considers who seeks wise counsel someone who really understands a matter is a person who's very wise. Yeah and and there's something else that came to mind as we're talking Occam's razor is a way to generally try to find the truth and Occam's razor believes through the ages that the most obvious way is probably the correct way the common sense way is probably the right way and I think that's another way we can generally find God's will because if it's the common sense way if it seems like it's the right way that's probably the right way Jen. You know reminds me of an acronym we giggled about earlier K-I-S-S keep it simple we'll say silly here. It's not always so complicated. Yeah and again the simplest ways usually the correct way and the common sense way is probably the right way and I think that's what my dad meant when you pray and you can see what's the right way you're probably praying the will of God Marilyn. Yeah

4:09I think so David and it's just interesting we almost need to encourage each other to keep it simple because we're living in a world that just gets more and more it's a swirl and I'll remind everybody that 1 Corinthians 1433 is still true God is not the author of confusion what we should we say in response to that God is the author of what's clear and common sense