[Gary Petty] In English, the word despise is a powerful word. It means to hold something in contempt, to be in repugnance. Now, when we say, when you say that you despise God, well of course not, you don't despise God. But you know we have to be careful because we can do things, we can do actions that actually show contempt for God.

I've been doing some BT Dailies in the Book of Proverbs. Let me read you a couple Proverbs here. This one's in Proverbs 15, "The ear that hears the rebukes of life will abide among the wise. He who disdains instruction despises his own soul, but he who heeds gets understanding. The fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom and before honor is humility." (Proverbs 15:31-33) Solomon writes here that when we despise God's instructions, we despise our own souls. Isn't that interesting? Our own lives. We refuse to understand the consequences of not going God's way and we suffer. You realize what that really means is when you love God and you love His ways, you love your own soul. You love your life because of the consequences that happen.

Here's another Proverb, "He who walks in His uprightness fears the Lord." In other words, he who walks in the right way, God's way. "But he who is perverse in his ways despises Him." (Proverbs 14:2) He who is perverse in his ways despises God. You and I can show absolute contempt for God. We know that He loves us. We know that He's merciful. And what happens is, because of that love and because of that mercy, what we do is we get shoddy about doing things His way. "Oh, He'll understand because He's loving. He'll understand when I don't do what He says or I disobey one of His Commandments because He loves me anyways." At that point, we are showing contempt for God. When we do that, we are disobeying what Jesus said because what Jesus said was the First Commandment is to love God with all your heart and your mind and your soul. When we show contempt for God, we are not loving him.

That's BT Daily. Join us next time.