Bill Johnson - Why You Need to Take Care of Your Soul
The target is to be so impacted by the heart and mind of Christ that our internal world becomes healthy, and when my internal world becomes healthy, it affects everything about my life—my physical health, mental health, emotional health. It affects my finances and my worldview. Everything is impacted by what I allow to go on in my heart of hearts. Welcome, I’m glad you’re able to join us once again. We call this the Quest for Wisdom. The need has never been greater for a people to rise up in the earth with the wisdom of God because the wisdom of God brings solutions, and we’ve never been more surrounded by challenges or problems than we have in recent years.
So anyway, welcome to the Quest for Wisdom. I forgot to mention this in previous weeks, but I do most of my study and reading in this series from the New King James Version, and I happen to have the Holy Spirit-Filled Life Bible that Jack Hayford put together with many great word studies. This isn’t a promotional for that; it’s just to let you know what I’m reading from because some translations vary quite a bit, and each adds a nuance or a flavor that can really help us in our pursuit of wisdom.
Chapter 14 is where we’re starting, and it is just a pregnant chapter. There’s so much in here for us. I’ll do my best to get through as much of it as I can in the seven or eight minutes we’ll have together. Proverbs chapter 14—I want to begin with verse 4, which is one of my personal favorite verses that I call «Revival verses.» You have to understand—I’m loosely translating «Revival verses» because it may not directly talk about an outpouring of the Spirit of God, yet the principles involved in the scripture here in this book of wisdom pertain directly to great moves of God. So here’s the verse we’re going to start with: Chapter 14, verse 4. «Where no oxen are, the trough is clean, but much increase comes by the strength of the ox.» Where there are no oxen in the barn, it’s clean; it’s orderly; everything’s perfect. But if you want increase, you have to have a shovel. You need to be ready to clean up a mess. Honestly, I don’t know of any verse that more accurately describes being involved in great moves of God. There’s a notion that some people have that if it’s a great move of God, there won’t be any problems with it; that’s just not true. Anytime people are involved, you increase the odds of complexities, difficulties, and conflicts. The enemy is a counterfeit; he’s not a creator. He likes to counterfeit things. So when you’re involved in something that God is doing—a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit—there will always be opportunities for the flesh and for the enemy to come in and deceive. That’s not to make us paranoid; it’s just to help us sort through the priorities. If you want a move of God, just be ready to clean up messes.
Perhaps you’ve heard the comparison: graveyards are nice and orderly, while nurseries, where there are lots of babies, are really messy. One has life; the other doesn’t. Great moves of God automatically bring challenges to life, and so it forces you to learn how to pray. I’ll tell you, we’ve gone through seasons where, night after night after night, God would be doing something so powerful, and we’d look at what was happening and shake our heads, saying, «Is that the Lord?» I don’t know—first of all, is it biblically accurate? This is so unusual. We would shake our heads and measure the fruit over time until we could say, «Yeah, that was God. It was amazing.»
I want to encourage you; it’s a risky but well-deserved journey to embark on to say, «Holy Spirit, come and do as You please. I just want to cooperate with You.» So, where there are no oxen, the barn is clean; but if you want increase, you need to get a shovel and be ready to clean up messes. Welcome to Revival; that’s the life of Revival. Let’s move on through chapter 14—there’s so much here. This brings me to verse 7: «Go from the presence of a foolish man when you do not perceive in him the lips of knowledge.» The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way; the folly of fools is deceit. Here’s the point: go from the presence of a foolish person when you don’t perceive that he is speaking truth—he’s speaking revelatory knowledge. Why? Because who you associate with impacts and affects your discernment. The people you exchange life with actually have an effect on your perception of truth. If you continually expose yourself to things that are not true—whether it’s your best friend at work or a sitcom you watch on TV—it will affect your ability to discern right from wrong, truth from a lie, that which is vital from that which is inferior. The Lord wants us to be deliberate in who we associate with.
This is how I approach it: I will serve and minister to anybody. They can be the worst person on the planet; I’m going to love and care for them. But the ones I allow to speak into my life, to contribute to my inner world—that is a different story. I’ll approach that with much more caution and care. Choose the people you spend time with carefully.
Verse 9: «Fools mock at sin, but among the upright there is favor.» «Fools mock at sin"—this is a big deal. What does this tell us? The enemy erodes godly culture; he’s not going to get us to approve of sin overnight. So what does he do? He brings sin into sitcoms, jokes, and various parts of culture, knowing that if he can get us to laugh at sin, we’ll think it’s humorous, which will weaken our resistance. You can look over the last 40 years of television to see that every area of sin our nation is involved in right now started as an area of humor 20 or 30 years ago. When you laugh at sin, when you make light of sin, it destroys your resistance and affects your discernment.
So, it’s a significant matter for us to be careful about what we laugh at, what we make a part of our own entertainment. All right, I’m going to move on down here real quickly. Let’s go right down to verses 27 and 30: «The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life to turn one away from the snares of death.» «A sound heart is life to the body, but envy is rottenness to the bones.» This quest for wisdom is more than just trying to find answers for the world’s problems; for me, that’s spillover—that’s the benefit, the result. The target isn’t finding solutions for world peace. The target is being so impacted by the heart and mind of Christ that our internal world becomes healthy. When my internal world becomes healthy, it affects everything about my life—my physical health, mental health, emotional health. It affects my finances and my worldview. Everything is impacted by what I allow to go on in my heart of hearts.
Here it is—a sound heart, a stable heart, that inner world is life to the body. I would encourage you; if you’re dealing with health issues at all, go through the Book of Proverbs and look at every time there’s a decree about our words and our internal world of health: sound mind, sound heart—the internal world having an effect on our bodies. I pray that in the next season, you and I together can learn some secrets of divine health because that’s God’s will for us.
I pray that for you. I pray that in this upcoming season, everyone watching this would come into breakthrough in areas of health, especially as it pertains to a sound heart. In 3 John 2, it says that we would prosper and be in good health even as our soul prospers. So my prayer for you, for me, for all of us is for the prosperity of our souls—our internal world to be healthy. Amen. Bless you.
For all of you that would say, «I really need more joy in my life,» here it is: a person has joy because of the answer of their mouth. You’re presented with a challenge, a question, a problem, a difficulty—what’s the answer? Your answer determines your measure of joy. I think it’s a big deal for us to take responsibility for managing our own soul in that area of healthy joy; you and I were designed for great joy.
Hello again, welcome back! I’m really thrilled that you’re able to join us in the Quest for Wisdom. Chapter 15 is where we’re going today, so let’s get started. Verse 4 is where we’ll begin: «A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit.» A wholesome tongue is a tree of life. The tree of life is mentioned in three books of the Bible: in Genesis, in Proverbs, and in Revelation. Genesis is what was; Revelation is what will be; but Proverbs reveals what is—a present-tense reality.
What you need to remember about the tree of life is that it marks whoever touches it with their eternal purpose. When it says, «A wholesome tongue is a tree of life,» it means that through our speech, we have the ability to agree with the reality God has created for us and tap into our eternal purpose. We can speak life, and death is in the power of the tongue. We have the power to speak life and death over our children, grandchildren, friends, cities, and businesses—things that bring great strength and great courage—and more importantly, help to define or help people realize God’s eternal purpose in each of these things. A wholesome tongue is a tree of life; you have the ability to speak the words of God that mark people with the reason they were created. That’s a significant task!
Moving on to verse 13: «A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance, but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken.» I also want to take verse 15: «All the days of the afflicted are evil, but he who has a merry heart has a continual feast.» So, let’s read verses 13 and 15 together: «A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance, but by sorrow of the heart, the spirit is broken. All the days of the afflicted are evil, but he who is of a merry heart has a continual feast.»
Here’s the deal: if the afflicted versus the merry heart or the sorrow that breaks the spirit is compared to a cheerful countenance, if those are just your lot in life, if you were born with a happy nature versus an afflicted nature, then this would be cruel. This would be a cruel confrontation of the realities we’re stuck with. The only reason it is brought up here is that these are choices—it’s actually decisions we make. What we think and what we talk about helps determine the nature of the prosperity of our own soul. We draw from truth and make that our confession, prayer, and decrees. Sometimes we just need to stop and declare things like, «God, I trust in You. I don’t know what’s going on in this situation, but my trust is in You.» Sometimes it has to be spoken; it can’t just be a nice, happy, warm, fuzzy thought. It must be a decree. You and I need to take responsibility for the moment we’ve been placed in and make the divine decrees.
Why? Because we are the ones who decide if we have the cheerful heart that actually becomes manifest. Did you know in scripture, the Bible actually teaches that nations will turn to God because of the joy that is in the heart of the believer? It’s in the Psalms—that nations will turn because they see what God has done for His people and the joy that’s on their countenance that captures their attention. That’s where we are. I believe joy is expected when you just won the lottery, joy is expected when you just got a raise, or you just had a healthy baby. However, joy in the middle of adversity—that’s when you capture the attention of the people around you.
So let’s determine we’re going to be tree of life people who decree what God is saying. Let’s move on quickly. Verse 28: «The heart of the righteous studies how to answer.» I was pondering this last night because it caught me off guard. The word «studies» caught me off guard; it’s the same word used in various places in the Old Testament for meditating—it means to murmur or to mutter. Biblical meditation, if you’ve been to the Wailing Wall, or you’ve seen pictures of the Jews who stand at the wall, who are bouncing back and forth—that’s a physical act of meditation where they recite, repeat, and utter certain statements and phrases. The righteous do that in their heart of hearts about how to answer, how to say things, and how to phrase things.
I want to make sure I communicate well and accurately, and the righteous rehearse what to say. Now let’s go to the last verse. This one is going to seem quite out of context of what we’ve been discussing so far, but it’s in verse 30: «The light of the eyes rejoices the heart, and a good report makes the bones healthy.» Good news can actually affect our health. A good report can make our bones healthy. We have to take this as the word of the Lord. Sometimes we have to go out of our way to find good news.
Let’s wrap this up quickly. We pray for good news to bring life to every part of our being. I pray it’s multiplied to you over and over again. Amen. The hour we live in is an hour where good is called evil and evil is called good. I have to cultivate in my heart the value system He has. I refuse to call evil good just so that I seem contemporary or like I’m in touch with culture. I don’t want to be in touch with culture if it influences me. I literally just want the culture of Heaven.
Hello once again, welcome back to our Quest for Wisdom. We’re in chapter 17 today, and I think I’ll just take two or three verses out of this chapter. Chapter 17 has a lot to say about conversation again. So, I’ll let you read that on your own, but I want to get down to verse 7 to start with: «Excellent speech is not becoming to a fool, much less lying lips to a prince.» This fascinates me; excellent speech means we should give ourselves to excellent speech.
There are certain things I won’t discuss; if the conversation isn’t uplifting, I feel no obligation to engage in it. I will avoid engaging my heart and my words. I’ll walk out of a room. Guard your heart to protect the privilege of excellent speech coming out of your mouth. Verse 8 is a little bizarre: «A present is a precious stone in the eyes of its possessor; wherever he turns, he prospers.»
Let’s say a very wealthy person gave you an incredibly valuable gift and required you to carry it for 30 days without wearing it or showing it to anyone. Suddenly, you have this awareness of the significance added to your life simply by possessing it—changes your awareness of who you are. This person, aware of the gift they carry, becomes prosperous in everything they do. It changes our sense of importance, purpose, and awareness of what God has given us to do when we realize we carry something invaluable.
Reading commentaries, they often say that a present is a bribe, which gives someone confidence in an evil situation. But maybe being aware of the priceless gift you carry actually gives you confidence because you’re sent by someone greater than you to represent Him in a situation. It means you’ll prosper. So, consider becoming aware of the treasure you carry—the Gospel and the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life that increases confidence in challenging situations.
Let’s quickly examine verse 15: «He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the just are alike an abomination to the Lord.» The hour we live in is one where good is called evil, and evil is called good. I’ve never witnessed such a resemblance to the hour we’re in, where the righteous are called corrupt, and wickedness is exalted in culture. It is a warning; it doesn’t mean I need to hate people; it’s about cultivating in my heart the value system He has. I need to recognize that calling evil good is wrong. I refuse to do that for favor at work or with my neighbors. I don’t need to lower the standards of what is real, right, or true.
Ending with one more verse, verse 22: «A merry heart does good like medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.» Taking the negative first: a broken spirit, that internal world can become traumatized through crisis and difficulty. However, we all face loss and disappointment, so that’s a universal experience. Mourning can take me to the Comforter or to rebellion. If I allow the brokenness of life to take me into a place of resistance, then it will dry up my bones.
I remember praying for a girl with Crohn’s disease; she was very critical of herself. After praying for her, she realized her harshness contributed to her illness. After repenting, she was healed. Our bodies sometimes shout out what’s going on in our internal world. A merry heart—a choice—does good like medicine. Perhaps we should have a «merry heart» counter at pharmacies, ensuring we receive good news and replenish our souls.
I pray for you. I hope that you and I together can illustrate divine health as an invitation for the world to come to know this Jesus, our perfect Father. Bless you, and thank you for joining us.