Proverbs 21:8

The Message

Mixed motives twist life into tangles; pure motives take you straight down the road.

Cross References

Proverbs 15:26

God can’t stand evil scheming, but he puts words of grace and beauty on display.

Proverbs 21:9

Better to live alone in a tumbledown shack than share a mansion with a nagging spouse.

Proverbs 30:12

Don’t imagine yourself to be quite presentable when you haven’t had a bath in weeks.

Isaiah 26:7

The path of right-living people is level. The Leveler evens the road for the right-living. We’re in no hurry, God. We’re content to linger in the path sign-posted with your decisions. Who you are and what you’ve done are all we’ll ever want. Through the night my soul longs for you. Deep from within me my spirit reaches out to you. When your decisions are on public display, everyone learns how to live right. If the wicked are shown grace, they don’t seem to get it. In the land of right living, they persist in wrong living, blind to the splendor of God.

Matthew 12:33

“If you grow a healthy tree, you’ll pick healthy fruit. If you grow a diseased tree, you’ll pick worm-eaten fruit. The fruit tells you about the tree.

Matthew 5:8

“You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

Titus 3:3

It wasn’t so long ago that we ourselves were stupid and stubborn, easy marks for sin, ordered every which way by our glands, going around with a chip on our shoulder, hated and hating back. But when God, our kind and loving Savior God, stepped in, he saved us from all that. It was all his doing; we had nothing to do with it. He gave us a good bath, and we came out of it new people, washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit. Our Savior Jesus poured out new life so generously. God’s gift has restored our relationship with him and given us back our lives. And there’s more life to come—an eternity of life! You can count on this.

1 John 2:29

Once you’re convinced that he is right and righteous, you’ll recognize that all who practice righteousness are God’s true children.