Here Are My Thoughts

READ: Proverbs 6

“Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched?” (Proverbs 6:27-28)

I have been excited about writing this post since I started this series on Proverbs, simply because of these two verses that are posted above. Through my readings of Proverbs, I’ve constantly come back to this teaching as some of the most practical in the entire book.

We talked yesterday about how wisdom warns-how wisdom gives us the ability to learn from the experiences of others. And these verses are definitely a warning. But I’m always struck by just how real this imagery is. We can clearly understand what Solomon is saying. It’s obvious to us-if a man carried a fire close to his chest, his clothes would burn. If someone walked on hot coals, their feet would get scorched. It makes sense.

Solomon uses this analogy to share with us the danger of getting too close to temptation. The paths we take towards destructive decisions are the fire we carry close to our chest, the hot coals we walk on. We can’t expect to resist temptation when we walk so closely to it. I know I’ve fallen into this trap numerous times. We talk about abstaining from sin, living in personal holiness-but that doesn’t start when we face the sin head-on…it starts when we walk through life and look down a path to see where it could lead. We avoid the destructive decisions of sin by avoiding the avenues that lead to those decisions in the first place. 

It’s another one of those things that’s easy to say and understand, but hard to do. But it’s not complicated at all:

-If you know that you have a drinking problem, don’t spend a lot of time at a bar.

-If you struggle with sexual temptation, don’t put yourself in a private, intimate setting with a member of the opposite sex.

-If you are liable to lash out in response when you get frustrating emails at work, impose a rule where you wait one hour to respond.

If you don’t want your clothes to get burned, don’t carry the fire close to your chest. If you don’t want your feet to get scorched, don’t walk on hot coals. Again, it’s easy to understand, but hard to do.

But that’s my prayer for us tonight: that we would be people who don’t put ourselves in situations where we are more likely to make decisions with great consequences. That we will set boundaries for ourselves so that we can walk more faithfully in the way of Jesus.

-Brett