Joel M Bradshaw

1My son, keep my words and treasure up my commandments with you;
2keep my commandments and live; keep my teaching as the apple of your eye; 3bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.–Proverbs 7

Proverbs 7 is a very sexual chapter. And you could argue that nobody knew that temptation as much as Solomon did. So his words here have power and flow from both experience and failure. We wonder if he wrote this earlier in life, and if so that meant he didn’t practice what he preached. Maybe this came later in life and played out much like the kingly writer in Ecclesiastes.

I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. 

I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man. (Ecclesiastes 2:1-8)

Each of us will face many temptations to sin during this life. Some are outward sins, but most are inward. The great battles are within our thoughts and feelings, where nobody else but God can know. Discipline starts to grow in that garden before you ever see its fruit. A person who is disciplined on the outside is first disciplined on the inside.

So what do you keep in the deepest parts of yourself? What story are you writing down on the tablet of your heart and maintaining within you? What great motivational truths from the Bible are you binding upon yourself? It is during this season of your life that great decisions will be made about the kind of person you aim to be. Jesus once said from the inner person flows evil (Matthew 15:19).

Since the sin that you do first begins deep within, go to war at the most private and hidden parts of you. You’ll never fall to temptation without first thinking about it and desiring it in your heart. So attack your problem there. This struggle faces each of us. Solomon’s proverb mentions the heart, the eye, and the fingers. Temptation involves what we see, how we desire, and then what we do. Stay intentional, my friends.–JMB