Where is our hope when sickness and grief strike? Where is our hope when we wake in the night, anxiously ruminating? Where is our hope when we face doubt or insecurity? Psalm 131 trains us to put our hope in the LORD, teaching us the posture and perspective of the hope-grounded person of faith.

We need friends. It’s part of how God made us. And yet there are many indicators that as a society, we are valuing friendship less, and becoming less skilled at forging friendships. How can we grow in wisdom in the area of friendship? Proverbs holds out a picture of a good friend, both so we can seek such friends and so we can seek to be such a friend.

Being able to speak is a superpower that nearly all people have. With our words we can bring life or destruction, so how can we use them wisely? Wisdom comes by receiving wise words and is displayed by how we transmit them. The book of Proverbs outlines three key reasons why we must be careful with our words and the gives us three core strategies to doing well.

Our lives are complicated and we long for a world that is orderly and fair, where skill and decency win the day. Proverbs shows us this world and urges us to fear the God who orders the stories of our lives. Proverbs assures us that thoughtful, skilled and moral life is a thing of beauty.

The book of Proverbs is filled with wisdom from God on a whole variety of topics. But how will we find the motivation to learn it and incorporate it into our character and life? In Proverbs 8, Lady Wisdom sets out to persuade us to pursue wisdom, even fall in love with wisdom. She does this by setting forth a series of reasons why we need wisdom, showing us why wisdom really is better than gold.

When the church comes under fire, its leaders are often the first to feel the heat of the flames. This reality might cause some to shrink back from Christian leadership. And yet good leaders are exactly what the church needs at this time. In 1 Peter 5:1-4, Peter lays out a vision for what good Christian leadership looks like. It is counter-cultural. It requires courage and involves sacrifice. Are you willing to pursue this, and be what the church needs?

The fiery ordeal of suffering shouldn’t surprise us as followers of Christ. He is using trials to mature us into his likeness, as a silversmith puts silver through the crucible’s fire to remove the dross and purify the silver. He promises us joy as we join him in suffering for his name; his Spirit to stand with us; and final glory to come. In the meantime, Peter reminds us to commit ourselves to our faithful God, and keep doing good.

How do we persevere in following Jesus when we are mocked or face hostility for our faith? In 1 Peter 4:1-11, Peter outlines a series of very practical steps we can take that strengthen us to walk the path that Jesus has already walked.

How can embattled believers follow Christ and bear a faithful witness to him in the midst of a hostile environment, when they suffer unjustly, and when the good they do is regarded as evil? In 1 Peter 3:13-22, Peter offers two lines of advice and encouragement: the first is to walk the path of suffering, following in Christ’s footsteps, and the second is to put our hope in the victory of Christ, who has borne our sins and now lives and reigns at God’s right hand.

In 1 Samuel 7, when God delivers Israel from the Philistines, the prophet Samuel sets up a stone as a reminder of the rescue, and names it Ebenezer, (meaning “stone of help”). Just as the stone helps Israel remember what God has done, so too this text trains us in remembering God’s past deliverance in ways that shape our present action.