Proverbs 4: 20-23 : ‘My son, give attention to My words; incline your ears to My sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes; keep them in the midst of your heart; for they are life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all diligence , for out of it are the issues of life.’
Many of us are familiar with this set of verses. There is an important word to notice in verse 23 – issues.
This Hebrew word tôṣā’ôṯ which is translates as issues here is NOT speaking of the ‘problems’ in your life. The meanings I found are : ‘exit, boundary, deliverance, source, going forth, issues, going out, an escape’.
Now we can see that the word is describing ‘to issue’, as in your heart is issuing forth, or letting something out. Something is escaping the heart. And it tells us what it is!
Life! This is the only thing that God prophesies to be coming out of your heart.
What the writer is describing here by the Spirit, is :
The Life of Jesus (that is in every person) is released from your heart when the words He speaks to you are ‘kept’ in the center of our heart.
When ‘kept’, His words, being Spirit and Life, grow from seeds to trees. The trees bring forth leaves and then fruit.
This is also talked about in Revelation 22:2, where the tree of Life is described – complete with leaves and fruit.
It’s important to see the tree symbology here because what God is talking about in Proverbs 4, is this tree. Remember that Jesus said the Kingdom to be preached and understood, is within. The bible also refers to trees as representing people.
Keeping these in mind, here is the revealing :
This is the process of growing into Christ, into the full image of the glory of God. But it is also the process of the mind of Christ, the work of the cross in us – and the purging of each lie individually. As Jesus purges your conscience of lies over and over and over, not only each time are you experiencing His salvation at the ‘end’ or ‘finishing’ of your faith, eventually you are growing into the full manifestation of a son of God. At that time you now have come to a full revelation of the Tree of Life – Jesus Christ – and therefore look and are just like Him in every way.
Proverbs 4 is describing the process of what Jesus is doing in you each time:
He speaks a word to you – the truth about something, about you, or about Him. You trust that what He tells you is the thing you need to know, and the Truth that will set you free.
Remember Psalm 107:20 – He sent His word and healed them; and delivered them from their destructions. The destructions are lies.
Jesus also said that the Father knows what you need before you ask. Now that we trust that whatever He said is what we need, we keep it. We remember it, and each time the lie rises up to tell us what it thinks about our situation, we give attention to what we are keeping in the midst of our heart – and let it hold our attention. This is the adversary – whatever message is against what God said, is your enemy.
This is the time of tribulation – where inside us ‘Jacob’ is wrestling God. We are watching the lie wrestle with the truth God told us. But when we keep God’s truth to ‘the end’ we see the manifestation of it!
Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith. The ‘end’ or ‘finish’ is when we finally see life manifest in our life – in our healed emotions and conscience, and in our bodies. Even in other people’s bodies if it is others that were the focus.
Jesus gives us the truth that will set us free – we keep it and it is cultivated like a seed planted. It starts to grow. We continue to cultivate it and it grows and grows, first leaves for healing our understanding, and then when you are full of leaves (full persuasion – the Spirit has fully persuaded you of the truth by the faith of Jesus), FRUIT shows itself! Fruit is the Life issued out, shown forth, seen, experienced, in our bodies and emotions! Health to all our flesh.
This tree, this new truth we now own, becomes a tree of Life that has fruit in EVERY season, with seed in itself. Not only can you go back to this tree and take from it whenever you want, it can also be given to others. And it multiplies itself in you, because of the seeds of its fruits. Life doesn’t stop, it continually produces, multiplying out of that one truth many other truths! This is truly the way of God!
Keeping the truth God gives you will cause it to grow and produce life and be a continual tree of life in the midst of your ‘garden’ – your heart! Let Him do the work in you – all you have to do is receive the seed & let it remain…and you will have fruit that remains to everlasting life!