Proverbs 26:3 (NLT)
3 Guide a horse with a whip, a donkey with a bridle, and a fool with a rod to his back!

In this versus Solomon compares the wicked to a horse and donkey, which can be unruly so a whip and bridle are required to guide them back on the right path. Even Solomon’s father David said men should not be as horses and donkeys, which have no understanding. Like so, a fool to sin will sometimes feel as through they have had a rod to their back to move them back into a place of doing right.

Henry Frederick Cope, author and major contributor to the rise of the Religious Education movement in the 20th century wrote these words, which are found in “Our Father and our Fellows”: “Men in the days of the great Teacher were as we-are-today, prone to compound for the neglect of duties near at hand by the adoration of spiritual delights far off. They talked about getting right with God while they continued to do wrong with men. The problem of the hypocrite who is so thrilled with the delights of heaven that he scorns earthy duties and decencies is not a new one. How easy it is to substitute syllogisms for service, to think that we do our duty by describing it, so to exhaust oneself in pleasant and seductive dreams of a distant heaven that we have no power left to apply to the problems of a needy present day world. The mockery of religion today is that men and women are going to churches, singing themselves into ecstatic complacency and imaginary harmony with their God while their greed is crushing the hearts of the helpless and they are blinding themselves to the world’s gloom and pain that unhindered they may enjoy spiritual delights. Things cannot be made right in our relations to the Father of Spirit’s until they are made right in our relations with our brothers in the flesh.” Has God been leading you back to a place of service or to a place to do what is right? Pray God will open your eyes to those place you have resisted like the horse and donkey and let God free you to do His work.