Advice that will lead you to keeping your fly...zipped!

☛ Probing Proverbs 7: 1- 2 Follow my advice, my son; always treasure my commands. Obey my commands and live! Guard my instructions as you guard your own eyes. Tie them on your fingers as a reminder. Write them deep within your heart. ☚  

As we continue to follow wisdom's advice concerning sexual sin in Proverbs, wisdom begins to lay the foundation to “how not to fall into sexual sin”. Wisdom gives a tremendous challenge for us to consider. First of all look at the relationship that is being spoken of, not one of the mere teacher to student, but instead advice from a parent to child. We need to look at the wisdom of the Scriptures in that light, not mere words written in stone or cold commands that have no life in them. The Scriptures are shared in such a way that clearly the result is to be a deep and abiding relationship with the One that this wisdom comes from, i.e. the Lord our God. 

Secondly, the word “treasure” used to describe how we should view the admonitions given to us by wisdom is an important one. We never treasure anything that is not important to us. In fact, this very word brings forth images of a journey of intensity and concentrated focus to find that precious thing that we call treasure. None of us have a problem imagining the exploits and excitement of looking for and discovering treasure buried by pirates or left by a King. Wisdom is making the point that like a treasure of gold will change our material life; the treasure that wisdom brings will change the quality of our inner life. Thirdly, wisdom explains to us how to keep what we learn ever before us, notice the words that are used: “guard”, (Keep in control) “tie”, (Baton down the hatches) “deep within your heart” (Meditation). There is a deliberate, focused discipline in these words to convey the reality that unless we engraft these truths into our conscious thought processes, we will miss the end goal. Many can tell you what the Scripture states, but only the ones that can tell you what it means have lives that are changed. 

Lastly, an interesting thought is how wisdom compares how we are to keep its advice guarded in our heart to how we are to guard our eyes. In this age of overt sexual bombardment in almost everything we see, there's nothing more important, especially for us men, than to guard our eyes. We must be vigilant to keep our mind in control of our body, especially our eyes. We cannot afford to live in an unconscious state, just allowing whatever we see to come in and out of us. We must confront those things that we see that will lead us into wrong thinking and mentally rebuke them, for then we will train our eyes to see the world, yet to “consciously choose” what part of that world will affect and control us! The more fervent we are in engrafting God's truth into our heart, the freer we will be in our everyday life.