The Choices we make

September 4, 2018

Proverbs 17 Selected Verses

Shall we begin with verse seven; “Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends.”  If you have not been offended or betrayed by someone you love or consider a friend, you are very rare.  For most of us it has happened and now the ball is in our court, what are we going to do?  Well, it may come into your thinker if you are a follower of Christ, to forgive as you have been forgiven, that will be one voice you will hear.  If you listen to that voice all will be good, but a much louder voice that sounds much like your own is also giving advice.  And it goes like this, tell everyone you know not to trust that person, they are a backstabbing no good scum of the earth.  Now it may make you feel better to listen to the second voice, but you will not please God, and you will destroy a relationship.  It is always our choice!

I believe each of us should give thought to verse 13, “If anyone returns evil for good, evil will not depart from his house.”  Only a very foolish person would ignore such teaching.  I’m sure many do so with little regard for what they have brought on their family.

Verse 14, I’ve been foolish and made an error in the teaching of this verse, first let us share the verse; “Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam; so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out.”  In my job as a senior salesperson, I took responsibility for some of the younger salespeople who worked with me.  I was always looking for ways to promote them to upper management.  Now it might surprise you but that is somewhat rare in sales, and I believe it was my calling at that time to promote those who were looking for ways to increase our performance.  One such man was John, and he had been working on a way to make our products friendlier for both the customer and the salesperson.  I believed it was a great tool John had come up with and I shared what John had been doing on his own time with upper management.  John had covered most of his bases in that he had gotten the labs approval but did not run it past the marketer in charge of the line of products.

So the email began to fly, and I got caught up defending John, that was good but I let my big mouth put on paper what I was thinking about, how little Austin Center knew about our customer's needs, and the war began.  I did a lot of damage to my career.  If only I had dropped the matter before a dispute broke out, I would not have gone through an awful time.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice