Tag Archives: temptation

Proverbs Reading – Chapter 7

Leave a reply

The Purpose of Proverbs is to impart wisdom for godly living.

Solomon’s fathering advice to young people and all who seek wisdom will greatly benefit from these wise words.   Discover the source of wisdom, the value of wisdom and the benefits of wisdom.   Proverbs gives practical suggestions for effective living.   They should call a person to action.  The verses tell how you can live in close relationship to Him and offers positive advice that helps you to make good and righteous decisions. –  notes of the Life Application Study Bible

Read along with me…

PROVERBS 7    The title is The Crafty Harlot

Although the bible uses the female pronoun her and she and uses the word seductress to define the harlot.  I’d like to change it up a bit and say the harlot is a male.  Starting by repeating….

My daughter, keep my words, and treasure my commands within you…that they may keep you from the immoral man, from the seductor who flatters with his words.  He takes advantage of her, enticing her and seducing her.

In the actual chapter, the advice is directed toward young men to stay away and take heed, but the advice also goes for young women too.    The study notes state, ‘without aim or direction, an empty life is unstable, vulnerable with too many temptations.  I’ve often said in the parenting class I teach that we should not be ‘freestyling life’ which means going through life with no direction.   The best way to combat temptation is to make sure your life is full of God’s Word and wisdom.  Be able to identify the strategies of temptation and run away from it.  Don’t be full of yourself thinking you can over-power temptation.  You can’t.  God would not be giving us warning about it, if we could beat it with our own human wisdom.  We cannot.  At some point…temptation will win. And you’ll find yourself in situations and circumstance God did not call you too and that you now need help getting out of.  Don’t even put yourself in that position.

Avoid sexual sins.  As we read earlier…sexual sin is destructive.

1. Guard your mind – meaning what you watch or read…fantasies that stimulate the wrong desires.

2. Keep away from environments and friends that tempt you to sin.

3. Don’t think only for the moment – focus on the future.  What you do in this moment could affect your future.

Proverbs Reading – Chapter 4

Leave a reply

The Purpose of Proverbs is to impart wisdom for godly living.

Solomon’s fathering advice to young people and all who seek wisdom will greatly benefit from these wise words.   Discover the source of wisdom, the value of wisdom and the benefits of wisdom.   Proverbs gives practical suggestions for effective living.   They should call a person to action.  The verses tell how you can live in close relationship to Him and offers positive advice that helps you to make good and righteous decisions. –  notes of the Life Application Study Bible

PROVERBS 4     The title of this chapter is Security in Wisdom

God is our Father.  So a lot of what He does and how He responds to us is how a parent would to their child.  We are His children.  God is giving us, His children…wisdom and understanding.

Here wisdom is given a pronoun….her and she.

Do not forsake her, she will preserve you, love her, she will keep you, exalt her, she will bring you honor, embrace her, she will deliver you.

Get wisdom and get understanding.  The Study Bible states that ‘one of the greatest responsibilities of parents is to encourage their children to become wise.  Wisdom can be passed on from parents to children; from generation to generation.  But if your parents never taught you in this way, God’s Word can function as a loving and compassionate mother or father for you.’  Create a legacy of God’s wisdom for your children.

If you want God’s wisdom, you must decide to go after it.

Verse 14 & 15 talk about the ‘path of the wicked and how we should not walk in the way of evil.  Avoid it, do not travel on it, turn away from it and pass on.’  The Study notes give you teaching of how even friends can make you fall.  How it is hard for young people to believe that their friends will lure them to do wrong, could lead them to trouble.  But if they don’t know that it’s wrong or the effects of the wrong behavior, they don’t know what they are doing.  Let us teach our children and young people to use wisdom, proceed with caution and don’t let friends cause you to fall into sin.  Teach your young people to have a healthy skepticism about human behavior.  And guess what…us adults could take heed as well; especially when it comes to friends, girlfriends and boyfriends.

Verse 23 to 26 states, Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.  Put away from you deceitful mouth, and put perverse lips far from you.  Let your eyes look straight ahead, and your eyelids look right before you.  Ponder the path of your feet, and let all your ways be established.

Our heart dictates to a great extent how we live says the study notes.  Our feelings and desires have proven to take the lead and cause us to make decisions that don’t always keep us on the right path.  This is when boundaries and wise counsel become helpers for you.  Boundaries you put in place to keep you safe, to keep destructive people and behaviors out.  Put boundaries on your desires.  Learn to have self-control and be able to control the feelings and desires that may come to shift you from your place of focus and your place of discipline.

Wisdom says, just because you feel it; does not mean you have to go with it. Don’t get sidetracked on detours that lead to temptation.  You can’t always say no to a temptation.  The more you indulge in it, the stronger it gets.

Think smart and use the means we’ve been learning about in the previous chapters.

Proverbs Reading – Chapter 2

Leave a reply

 

The Purpose of Proverbs is to impart wisdom for godly living.

Solomon’s fathering advice to young people and all who seek wisdom will greatly benefit from these wise words.   Discover the source of wisdom, the value of wisdom and the benefits of wisdom.   Proverbs gives practical suggestions for effective living.   They should call a person to action.  The verses tell how you can live in close relationship to Him and offers positive advice that helps you to make good and righteous decisions. –  notes of the Study Bible

PROVERBS 2

The title of this chapter is The Value of Wisdom.  True wisdom is centered in respect and reverence for God.  If you don’t respect God, you can not truly walk in His godly wisdom.  And His wisdom is a gift to us.  It’s not something you just automatically have.  To know the mind of God and to understand His words and His heart, you must be in relationship with Him.  You must know Him.  The Study Bible notes state, ‘true wisdom is Gods and that we cannot create it by our own efforts.’  If you choose to be rebellious and foolish, you will not find Gods wisdom, it will be hidden from you.  But if you earnestly seek it…make an effort to find it.  God will reveal it to you.  The Study Bible notes also state, ‘the pathway to wisdom is strenuous.’  This is true to me, because I believe in order to find wisdom; you have to change your ways and say no to your human desires.  That can be strenuous because we are so used to doing things our own way, it’s not always so easy to stop, not always so easy to turn from that, not always so easy to change your mind.  But I love that the genuine truth is being told, we aren’t being fooled into thinking it just happens.  We are being prepared to know that there will be an effort that we have to make in order to find Gods wisdom.

We gain wisdom through a constant process of growing.  First, we must trust and honor God.  Second, we must realize that the Bible reveals God’s wisdom to us.  Third, we must make a lifelong series of right choices.  Fourth, when we make sinful or mistaken choices, we must learn from our errors and recover. – Life Application Study Bible

Let me ask you a question, have you ever asked God for discernment?  Discernment is having the ability to judge, have discretion, know the difference between right and wrong.  Asking God to give you the ability to discern is showing Him that you want to know and use His wisdom in your life decisions.  Thinking back, you probably have made some choices that would have turned out much better had you took the time to discern the outcome first.  Use God’s truth to make wise choices day by day.  Discretion will preserve you and understanding will keep you.

Because you will come across situations and people who will want to pull you away from your walk with God and from making good and right choices.  Having discretion and discernment will help you to see that it’s not for you and keep you focused.  Are you someone who has a pattern of getting caught up in situations again and again, wondering why does this keep happening to me?  Were you using your discernment to think the matter through before you indulged?  This can happen especially when it comes to sexual and prideful matters.  The Study Bible states, two of the most difficult sins to resist are pride and sexual immorality.  Both are seductive.  ‘Pride says, I DESERVE IT and sexual desire says, I NEED IT.’  Pride appeals to the empty head, sexual enticement to the empty heart.  When you have godly wisdom, you can make good decisions in those times.

Don’t be fooled into thinking you can fight the temptations.  You will need Gods strength to resist.  We always think we have control of the situation and then it becomes bigger than us.  That is because you’ve used your human wisdom, become foolish and prideful and forgot that you need God.

I love what we are learning…stayed tuned for Chapter 3!