Living Wholeheartedly for Him
Proverbs 7:1-5 “My son, keep my words and treasure my commandments within you. Keep my commandments and live, and my teaching as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart. Say to wisdom, ‘You are my sister,’ and call understanding your intimate friend; that they may keep you from an adulteress.”
Observation: The straightforward language of this passage urges pursuit of wisdom that we might be wise enough to avoid the snares of the adulteress.
Application: I see today that this adulteress is a much broader and more cunning problem than a temptress to sexual sin. The adulteress is anyone or anything that entices me away from purity, away from the wholehearted pursuit of Jesus, away from a love relationship with the Creator God and His Son.
Paul affirmed this in Romans 9:2-4 when he mourned over many of his countrymen by saying, “I have great sorrow and increasing grief in my heart . . . for the sake of my brethren and my kinsmen, according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons, and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law.” He goes on to say that it isn’t the word of God that has failed. Rather, the problem is with men who have tried to pursue the law according to the flesh.
The fact is, I become what I pursue. In today’s reading, the writer of Proverbs said to “keep my words and treasure my commandments…Bind them on your fingers, write them on…your heart …call understanding your intimate friend.” I become what I pursue, taking on the attributes of what I spend time with. But Proverbs 9:18 says, “He does not know that the dead are there.”
Prayer: Lord God, keep me from dwelling in the place of the dead. I love Your precepts, Lord; they are life and breath to my very bones. Cause there to spring up in my heart this day a passion for Your Word—Your dear Son. Keep me from pursuing You according to the flesh.”
