Bible Verses About

“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

This life verse is really simple.  But I love how powerful it is and how impactful it has been in my life.  When I get into a place of despair, anxious and stressed about life, sometimes the best thing I can do is to just quiet my mind and remember that God is God and is more powerful than my current situation.  Even when things are going well and I’m basking in prosperity, still it’s good to reflect and be quiet and remember that God is the one that’s truly in control.  Whatever my current situation happens to be, it’s good to take time to just be still and to remember who God is and that He’s the one that’s in control.

So often life gets so hectic that I lose my focus and perspective.  If I don’t take time to reorient myself and my perspective, then the stresses of the day will often overwhelm me and my peace and joy will fade.  So if you’re anxious and feeling a lot of stress, take the time to just be still and know that God is God and is in control of your situation.  If things are good and you’re feeling blessed, take the time to thank God just for being who He is and for caring about you enough to want to bless your life.  That’s who God is, and taking the time to be still and to realize who He is one of the most important things we can do in life.

“He has shown you, O man, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”  Micah 6:8

This is an awesome Bible verse about life that sums everything up perfectly.  I love the preface of the verse, showing exactly what God requires of each person on earth.  That doesn’t happen very often with most commands.  Usually a Bible command gives us only a part of the story, but this verse gives the whole story.  If you want to live life well and do what God requires, then strive toward these three things.  Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before God.  I love the juxtaposition of the first two ideas.  Justice and mercy are often mutually exclusive terms.  You can have either one or the other, but usually not both at the same time.  But that’s what makes grace so amazing.  Grace is both justice and mercy combined.  And because of God’s grace, we have no choice but to walk humbly before God.  Because God has given us more that what we could ever deserve, it should produce a lot of humility.  The other thing that I really love about this passage is the fact that it lines up well with the philosophy of the ancient Greeks that I often enjoy studying.  According to the great philosophers Plato and Socrates, justice is the highest thing that humans can aspire towards.  Only a just person lives his life well.  It’s cool when things line up like that.

“Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong.” 1 Corinthians 16:13

These are all very difficult commands in this Bible verse.  Each and every one of them takes concentrated effort and discipline.  Yet Paul lists them off in a list, one after another, with no specific instructions as to how.  That’s what makes this verse so powerful to me.  It makes me realize that each one of the things in this list is a conscious choice.  Be strong, be courageous.  It’s just a choice.  There’s nothing that can help you be courageous or strong, you just have to choose it.

Another thing that really strikes me about this verse is that he starts off the verse with “Be on your guard.”  That’s a poignant phrase to me, because I rarely think about being on guard.  Most of my days, I take life as it comes, being stressed out by whatever trials come my way and bent out of shape when things don’t go my way.  I don’t think about becoming a better man, being strong and courageous.  I just think about the trials and troubles of the day.  And that’s probably why I fall.  Without being on your guard, constantly realizing that you’re in a struggle and that being a strong and courageous man who stands firm is the ultimate goal of that struggle, you’ll fall apart.  So that’s the first step.  Be on your guard, and hopefully the rest will follow suit.

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”  Proverbs 14:12

I’ve often considered this life verse, during hard times of self-reflection when my life isn’t going the way that I had hoped and I realize at last that I’ve been walking a path that wasn’t what I thought it was.  It’s so sad how easily we fall victim to false hopes.  The grass is always greener on the other side, they say.  The thing that strikes me especially about this verse is the strong claim about the outcome of our false paths.  He could have said that the way that seems right, in the end leads to discouragement or something similar.  But no, he said that the way that seems right actually leads to death.  That’s pretty powerful language.  Not only are we often wrong, we’re so wrong in fact, that when we think we’re achieving a better life for ourselves, we’re actually walking in the exact wrong direction, toward death instead of life.

I guess that’s why Jesus said things like “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it,” because greed, selfish ambition, and the like are actually paths to death.  When we strive toward our own gain, we end up losing our life in the process, or at least the part of ourselves that really matters.  For my own part, I’ve been on the path that leads to death many times.  I hate how easily I let the wrong things motivate me and change the direction of my focus.  Hopefully now that I’m older, I’m done with those sorts of paths.  Probably not.

“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”  Proverbs 27:17

Even though this is one of the most often quotes Bible verses about friendship, I still really like it.  Though the word picture is somewhat meaningless to modern citizens who don’t often sharpen their iron tools with iron files, the idea is simple enough to understand.  I find the idea being sharpened really interesting.  To me, being sharpened seems to carry the idea of being vulnerable.  Sharpening requires that something be stripped away, the dull edge with its nicks and pits.  Being willing to be sharpened by other like-minded people might take some vulnerability.  In order to be refined and sharpened, I might need to let go of things that are difficult to let go of, and make myself open to change.

That to me is the real meaning of this passage.  Change and refinement are difficult, and it’s only when we let other people in that it happens.  If we want to be sharpened, we need to give the people around us the right to advise us and help us to make positive changes.  If we aren’t willing to be vulnerable with the people around us or let people in, then we’ll never be sharpened into the kind of people who we were designed and meant to be.  Every man is an island, they say.  It’s sad that that’s the mantra of the modern age.  People were made for community.

“He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm.” Proverbs 13:20

This verse is similar to the declaration that Paul makes later in the new testament that “Bad company corrupts good character.”  It’s strange to think that who I choose to have as my close friends will determine how well I develop as a person.  Most of the time, we don’t choose our friends based on whether or not they’ll help us to develop into better people.  We choose out of availability and the similarity of our interests.  But friendship is a powerful thing, letting someone into your life to help advise and steer the course of your decisions.  If we choose poorly, then we might have a much more difficult time growing in both wisdom and character.

It seems that God has designed us each to be a part of a community.  None of us was built to live as an island, all alone in the ocean.  We’re built for community and we’re heavily influenced by the people we surround ourselves with, whether we know it or not.  It wasn’t until I actually found a wise friend that I finally realized how great a thing it was.  I saw myself actually growing and becoming better and being able to talk about life and what it means to be a man in modern American society.  Now I can clearly see how a companion of fools suffers harm.

“A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” Proverbs 18:24

This verse, like many of the verses in the book of Proverbs, has both a positive and a negative declaration.  It shows both sides of the coin.  It’s such an interesting description of how our relationships ought to look like.  A man of many companions may come to ruin.  Why in the world is that?  It seems as though the opposite would be true, that a man of many friends is blessed.  But what if all of those relationships are only surface deep?  What if none of those companions are close friends, like brothers?

I think that this is a really powerful Bible verse on friendship.  I have always been a man of many companions, and I had never really understood why it was a bad thing.  But that I started to realize that if all of my relationships are only surface deep, if I don’t have any friends that are as close to me as brothers, then I might not be able to stand up to the trials and challenges that life throws my way when life gets tough.  If I don’t have the courage to have real relationships with those around me, letting myself be vulnerable enough to let them in, then I’ll be forced to stand alone when it really matters.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5

This is a really famous Bible verse about life — a very often quoted and very well loved verse.  It took me a long time to fully appreciate the value of having a straight path to walk and how trusting in God even when things don’t make sense, is the key. When your path isn’t straight, when you can only see to the next bend, are world is so small.  All we manage to care about are the daily trials and troubles.  We can’t see the big picture, or strive toward anything meaningful.  All we can see is the short road ahead of us before it bends around the corner and out of view.  And with the uncertainty of what’s ahead comes fear.  That’s when trusting God and not leaning on your own understanding becomes so important.  To release control, especially when it’s difficult and things don’t make sense, that’s when God straightens out our paths so shows us the bigger picture of what’s really important.

Being on a straight path has tremendous value.  Firstly, you can look behind you to see all the places you’ve come from, learning from your mistakes so that you’re not doomed to repeat them.  And second, the road ahead is fully in view, showing us bigger picture of what’s to come and what things are truly important in life.  Being on a straight path reduces a person’s cares for the trivial trials and troubles of day to day living and into the peaceful confidence of knowing the bigger picture.

“If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered.” Proverbs 21:13

This is a really hard Bible verse about helping the poor.  It actually says that God answering my prayers is contigent upon how I treat the poor.  That’s a pretty difficult message to hear, especially in a day and age where there are so many poor people in the world.  You can’t even turn on the news without seeing all of the suffering and hardship in the world.  So much of the time it’s so easy to just turn a blind eye, and not really try and find a way to help.

So how do I know if I’m shutting my ears to the cry of the poor?  It’s not like I can really do anything to help all of the poor people in the world.  And how do I know that if I donate money to charities, the money will actually go to helping the poor.  Charities many charities have been shown to be corrupt and send very little money to the people who need it.  That’s why it’s nice to rely on the Lord for guidance.  One very easy way to help the poor is to tithe.  Giving money to your church is a great way of seeing that the poor around the world are helped. Helping the poor is a huge responsibility, one that no single individual can handle on their own.  But that’s why we’re stronger together.

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter?” Isaiah 58:6-7

This has always been a really inspirational Bible verse about helping the poor to me.  It was written to a group of people who thought that they were righteous because of their religious activities, things like memorizing scripture, fasting, and attending church.  In my own life, I’ve often measured my righteousness by how many “religious” activities I do.  But that’s just backward.  It doesn’t matter how much I go to church or read my Bible.  If it’s not causing me to become a better man, the kind of man who looks after the poor and the oppressed, then it doesn’t matter anyway.

God is more happy when I help the poor and the oppressed than when I do my religious duties like praying and going to church.  Though these things are important too, without compassion for the poor and oppressed, spending time reading the Bible and praying doesn’t really have a point.  If my relationship with God hasn’t changed my heart so that I have compassion on the poor and oppressed, then I’m obviously missing something.  It’s like Jesus said to the Pharisees, how they give a tenth of their money and spices to God, but they have neglected the more important matters, things like justice and faithfulness.