Welcome to the Daily Blade. The word of God is described as the sword of the spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

Growth isn't a fluke, it's a discipline, and you don't drift into a life purpose, you build it. So if you're done making excuses, you can get the blueprint at undaunted.life slash thirty-one days. So let's go ahead and get into the reading for day eight of the thirty-one day resilience reset, which is Psalm twenty seven and Proverbs eight. And let's actually start out by reading the first part of Psalm twenty seven, and I'll be reading from the Nasbi. The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defense of my life, whom should I dread? When evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh, my adversaries and my enemies they stumbled and fell. If an army encamps against me, my heart will not fear. If war arises against me, in spite of this I am confident. One thing I have asked from the Lord that I shall seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord for all my days, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to meditate in his temple. For on the day of trouble he will count he will conceal me in his tabernacle. He will hide me in a secret place of his tent, and he will lift me up on a rock, and now my head will be lifted up above my enemies around me, and I will offer sacrifices in his tent with shouts of joy. I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord. Now, going back to verse one, the Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom should I fear? So David, who wrote this psalm, is essentially saying, Who am I supposed to be afraid of exactly? The the God of the universe is in my corner and at my defense. Why would I fear some earthly power or person? And the entire psalm smacks of this confidence that David has in God to protect and provide, and we too can be confident that David is not fearful of anyone outside of God because he has a correct fear of God. Now, we're not in Proverbs 9 today, but most of us know Proverbs 9 10. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. But let's look at Proverbs 8 to get an idea of what the fear of the Lord can lead to. Proverbs 8, starting in verse 12, and I'll be reading from the ESV. I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and I find knowledge and discretion. The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil, pride and arrogance, and the way of evil, and perverted speech I hate. The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. This reminds me of one of my favorite single scriptures from the entire biblical canon, which is Psalm 97, 10. O you who love the Lord, hate evil. He preserves the lives of his saints, he delivers them from the hand of the wicked. So again, David in Psalm 27 has confidence in his standing in life because he knows God is for him. He also thinks rightly about God because he loves God and he has a healthy fear of God. And if you love and fear God, there are other things that will be true about you as well, namely that you will hate evil. Now, every time I've talked about this or taught about this, about the hatred of evil, people seemingly purposefully misunderstand what I'm saying. And it, you know, kind of gives them a little tummy ache that I'm talking about this. But most people, especially if you don't spend any time in the Bible for yourself, just can't wrap their minds around the fact that yes, Christians are called to hate things. For sure. We are called to hate the things that God hates. We should hate sin. We should hate murder. We should hate child abuse. We should hate abortion, we should hate theft. Again, we should hate the things that God hates if we have a right view of God, if we love Him, and if we fear Him. So if you find yourself looking around at the world with all the sin and darkness, and you don't hate when image bearers of God are harmed, then you really need to do a heart check. And you should ask yourself, Am I fearful of the world and those in it? Do I dread what someone could do to me? Do I fear God? Do I hate evil? Now, if you answered either of the first two questions with a yes, then it's pretty clear that your answers to the last two questions are no. And you need to fix that. See you back here tomorrow.

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