Proverbs 6:24 to preserve you from the evil woman, from the smooth tongue of the adulteress.
As I look back on my life I see how so many things had the potential to take me out, and how God has kept me in.
In the verses of Proverbs, both evil and wisdom are personified as women. I love how wisdom is personified way back in Chapter 1, verse 20 and 21. A woman crying aloud in the marketplace, in the noisiest streets, and at the busiest locations.
I ask myself how much attention would men have paid in those times to a woman shouting in the street. There is an idea here that we can miss “wisdom”, because it does not come dressed up the way we might expect, at a time that is convenient for us, or even in a way that we can culturally accept.
When I was truly lost, heartbroken, life damaged, and carrying my internal pain each day, wisdom appeared to me as a family that had little money but loved their children. Wisdom appeared to me as a family that had committed their ways to God. It would have been so easy to miss it.
They took me in, prayed with me, fed me, cared for me, equipped me, connected me, and established me. Sammy and Chattie, legends of Scotland. They had so little but shared it all day after day, week after week.
I received the Holy Spirit and a new heart. My destiny changed in a moment. I knew what was right and wrong ethically and morally, no one had to tell me – although I took the advice. I recognised and repented of my former life, no glory in the brokenness and hurt.
I was preserved from the smooth words of flattery and deception. My ongoing role is to co-operate with God now. That’s it really, cooperation with God.
KNOWLEDGE
Each one of us has things in our lives that will lead us away from God’s best. Each of these things has a shape and a voice that calls to us. Maybe it’s a place we go for comfort when the stresses of life start to overwhelm us, maybe it’s a habit we picked up for our protection as a child or an inner vow we made after being hurt.
There is a smoothness about the way this issue gets into our life. It is incremental, tiny decisions, small steps, the passing of time, the slight hardening of our heart against the Holy Spirit.
God has deliberately reached out to us with commandments and teaching to save us from ourselves and also from the work of the evil one.
We can be preserved, we can be safe, we can protect our future and our children’s futures. All we need to do to avoid calamity, and disaster, is to listen to God with a heart ready to obey. And because this is impossible on our own understanding, He promises to give us that heart – [Ezekiel 36:26 – I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you, I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.]
Have you received your new heart? What are you doing with it?
UNDERSTANDING
Let’s pick one word from this verse to look closer at and see if that can help us gain a deeper insight into how God would love us to live?
The word for “adulteress in Hebrew is pronounced “nokriy” and this word appears 45 times in the Old Testament. In the ESV this word is translated into the English words, foreigner [esp women]; alien; wild vine; and, adulteress.
We pick up the idea of ethical wickedness and a deliberate leading away from the father’s commandments and mother’s teaching of verse 20.
WISDOM – what unique gifts has God given me, and how can I use them for his glory?
STRENGTHS THOUGHT: Maximiser, knows what it does and does not do well, and gives permission to others to be themselves also. You know the best for you and build so well with that.
Allan’s Unauthorised Version – [to guard you against disagreeable women from other lands [inferred is other gods] with their smooth speech.]
PRAYER: Father, thank you for today. Help me to consider well what I look at, who I listen to, and take advice from. Thank you.
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