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Proverbs 1:23 · World English Bible

Proverbs 1:23 Meaning Turn at My Reproof

Turn at my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you. I will make known my words to you.

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What does Proverbs 1:23 mean?

Correction is not punishment but an open hand. To turn is only to change the teacher a mind has been listening to, to release the voice of fear and face the voice of love that spoke underneath all along.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 1:23 through 2 lenses

The same verse, read by 2 traditions.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

Correction is not punishment but an open hand. To turn is only to change the teacher a mind has been listening to, to release the voice of fear and face the voice of love that spoke underneath all along. The instant that turn is made, nothing is withheld. What seemed hidden pours out freely, because it was never truly kept away, only unheard by a mind that faced the other way.

The correction and the gift are one motion. A mind receives the whole of truth the moment it stops defending against it.

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EGO & BEING

Ego v. Being

Turn. Everything begins with that inner turning, a shift of attention away from the restless stream of thinking toward the still awareness beneath it. As long as you resist the correction life offers, you stay locked inside the same patterns and cannot receive anything new.

What is poured out is not more information for the mind to collect. It is the deeper knowing that rises in stillness once the noise subsides. When you turn inward and stop defending your position, a wiser presence within you begins to make itself plainly known.

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 1:23 today

  1. When you realize you were wrong about something small today, say so immediately, before you have time to build the case. The relief comes faster than you expect.
  2. If someone gives you hard feedback, resist explaining. Just say, let me think about that, and actually do it on the drive home.
  3. In the middle of a stretch where everything feels stuck, change one thing you have been refusing to change. Not the big one. The small one you already know about.

What are you facing away from that would be waiting for you the second you turned?

The same truth in other traditions

Zen

Nan in kept pouring until the cup ran over. You are already full of your own opinions. Empty the cup first.

Sufism · Rumi

Come back, whatever you have done, come back. The door was never the thing standing in your way.

Judaism · teshuvah

Turning is the whole of it. You do not have to earn your way back across a distance, you only have to face the other direction.

Mid-century illustration of Jesus teaching the crowd on a hillside above the sea

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