The Best Intimate Friend

For Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Proverbs 7:1-5

1 My son, keep my words
and treasure up my commandments with you;
2 keep my commandments and live;
keep my teaching as the apple of your eye;
3 bind them on your fingers;
write them on the tablet of your heart.
4 Say to wisdom, "You are my sister,"
and call insight your intimate friend,
5 to keep you from the forbidden woman,
from the adulteress with her smooth words.

How do we expect to withstand the enticements of the "forbidden woman," if we treat her and her companions as our kin and regard the values of the world as our intimate friend? How do we do so? We turn to the secular entertainment world for our nurture. We depend on TV sitcoms and reality shows to present the priority issues and the values we are to hold. Do you differ? How much time do you spend watching secular entertainment versus attending church and engaged in Christian education? Twenty hours plus of weekly secular entertainment versus one to three hours of worship and Bible study will impact your mind and your will.

How much now is the Christian community immune to hearing profanity, viewing illicit sex and gratuitous violence, and associating in activities that oppose the gospel? To say to wisdom, "You are my sister," means more than giving passing attention to a sermon. It means to more than reading the Bible. One must study the Scriptures and meditate upon them. One must study the teachings of wise and godly teachers. One must developed the skill to think Christianly. It does not come naturally, even to the redeemed believer. We have been too much tainted with sin to take to the gospel truths easily.

Keep, keep, keep the commandments and the promises of God's Word ever before you and within you. Do you find reading the Word difficult and studying theology boring? Would you rather be watching a show that though it expouses worldly values, it makes you laugh and entertains you? Then repent and all the more discipline yourself to embrace what is true and good and God-honoring. Life is not a TV show. The stakes are real and they are high. Satan wants your soul, and if he cannot get it, he at least wants to render you ineffective for God. All the more, then, embrace the wisdom of God's Word.