Latest / The Woman at the Well Ministries Podcast / 330 | Conversations - Proverbs 5 - Wisdom’s Path: Navigating Temptation

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330 | Conversations - Proverbs 5 - Wisdom’s Path: Navigating Temptation · The Woman at the Well Ministries Podcast

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  Music.
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  Hello, friends, and welcome back to another podcast of Woman at the Well Ministries,
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  where we believe that all of us have to come to Jesus like the woman at the
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  well in John chapter four.
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  Our highest priority is making God real in your life.
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  Whether you are listening in our app, in your favorite podcasting app,
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  or on our website at watwm.org,
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  we invite you to sit down with us as we look to the scriptures to learn more
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  about God and to strengthen your daily walk with Jesus Christ.
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  Living her life for Christ, she's a happy girl.
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  Music.
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  She's a happy girl.
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  In this episode of the Woman at the Well Ministries podcast,
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  join Kim Miller and Erica Close in a conversation as we walk with Jesus.
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  In today's conversation, we continue a series on the book of Proverbs,
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  and in today's podcast, we discuss the lessons learned in Proverbs chapter 5.
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  Well, hello, everyone. I'm Erica Close, and I am here with Kim Miller.
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  Hello, and thank you for joining us on this podcast as we move our way through the book of Proverbs.
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  Yeah, so we are moving our way through the book of Proverbs,
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  and today we are in Proverbs chapter 5.
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  Kim, would you like to read the first part of it? I sure will.
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  My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding,
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  that thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.
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  Knowledge for the lips of a strange woman drop as
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  a honeycomb and her mouth is smoother than oil but her
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  end is bitter as wormwood sharp as
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  a two-edged sword her feet go down to death her steps take hold on hell lest
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  thou shouldest ponder the path of life her ways are movable that thou canst
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  not know them hear me now and therefore all ye children and depart not from the words of my mouth.
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  Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh to the door of her house.
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  Lest thou give thine honor unto others, and thy years unto the cruel.
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  Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth, and thy laborers be in the house of a stranger.
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  And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
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  and say, How have I hated instruction,
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  and my heart despised reproof, and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers,
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  nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me, I was almost in all evil in
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  the midst of the congregation and assembly.
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  Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.
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  Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of water in the streets.
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  Let them be only thine own, and not strangers with thee.
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  Let thy fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
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  Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe. Let her breast satisfy thee
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  at all times, and be thou ravished always with her love. And why wilt thou,
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  my son, be ravished with a strange woman and embrace the bosom of a stranger?
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  For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings.
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  His own iniquities shall take.
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  The wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.
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  He shall die without instruction, and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.
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  The entire chapter of Proverbs 5 is Solomon explaining that you've got to study
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  wisdom, you've got to seek wisdom, you've got to get wisdom.
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  And he ends the chapter saying that when you don't, when you die without instruction
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  and you die in your own fleshly folly, just doing here and there, whatever you want,
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  that you will end up astray.
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  And there's a lot of stuff in between there.
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  But as we begin to look at Proverbs 5, understanding that wisdom is.
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  Begins with the fear of the Lord and having a reverence for who God is.
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  And when you don't have a reverence for who God is, you will surely fall and
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  you'll surely fall into sin.
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  And I think in this proverb, sin is displayed as temptation, right?
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  It's very clearly talked about as temptation. temptation and the temptation
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  is as, you know, sweet as a honeycomb and it's smooth and it's nice and it's all those things.
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  And I think that that, you know, is a really good picture of sin, right? Sin is enticing.
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  Sin is out to get us. Sin flatters us and makes us feel good.
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  But if you look at verse four, the end is bitter.
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  The end is no good. And in 1 Peter 5, we're told that the devil walketh about
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  as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
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  And this is what Solomon is warning.
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  He's saying, if you don't seek wisdom, if you don't get understanding,
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  if you don't submit yourselves to God and live a life that is following the
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  instructions and and the commandments of his word, and walking as Jesus would have you walk,
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  then basically you're going to live a life of ruin.
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  And that in verse 5 talks about how temptation is evil, that her feet go down
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  to death and her steps take hold on hell.
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  Literally, he makes that connection that sin takes us to hell. It does.
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  Because sin is destruction. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God
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  is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. We learn that in Romans 6, 23.
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  And in Proverbs 5, he's showing us step by step how this takes place.
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  And he tells you, listen to me.
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  Don't depart from the words of Solomon's mouth. Don't depart from the wisdom of God.
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  Don't depart from instruction.
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  We all know those people that you just can't tell anything.
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  You can't teach them anything. And the end of whatever they're doing nearly
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  every single time is absolute disastrous.
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  And you can try to warn them. You can see the end coming.
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  And people who will not listen to instruction, people who have no reverence
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  for God, people who have no understanding of the scriptures,
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  you can warn and warn and warn and warn, but they don't heed it.
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  And when they don't heed it, it is spiritual death.
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  And many times it can be physical death.
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  Verse eight says, you know, to remove thy way far from her, right?
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  Don't come near the door of her house, which I think is really important.
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  That should be what we do when we are tempted, When temptation comes,
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  we need to walk away, to turn away.
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  And I think it's really interesting in that the very next verse talks about
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  you're giving your honor away to others and your years to cruel,
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  like your years go to disappointment.
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  Sin takes away life, both spiritual life, it takes away our physical life it
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  takes away our emotional life we we lose things to sin we used to,
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  go to church our pastor before he passed away used to say sin will take you
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  further than you want to go keep you longer than you want to stay and cost you
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  more than you want to pay and these verses in eight and nine are telling us
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  that we are to shun evil and if we look at proverbs three 5 through 7,
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  he tells us to depart from evil.
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  And he says, acknowledge him and he will direct our paths.
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  I mean, it is a simple recipe for success is to acknowledge God,
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  submit to God, understand who he is, put him as king of kings of your life and
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  Lord of your heart, and listen to what he has to say and follow them with the
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  help of the Holy Spirit. And your days will be long.
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  And in fact, the first promise in the Bible, the first commandment with promise
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  is to honor your mother and father, that your days might be long.
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  And Solomon here is saying, listen to what I'm telling you, because he understood God.
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  And he had a relation with God,
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  and he is giving instruction that is in congruence with the wisdom of God.
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  I think what's so sad when we read this proverb is that that next section,
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  after talking about all of the effects of sin,
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  talks about the time when you do actually have remorse,
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  saying there's going to be a time if we have lived in sin and we have walked
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  down a path that is not the path that God has chosen for us,
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  there's going to be a time when we understand that.
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  He talks about mourning at the last when thy flesh and thy body are consumed
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  and say, how have I hated instruction and my heart despised reproof?
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  Like when we start to to look back and see sin.
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  I think that even if we ignore sin while living it,
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  there will be a time when we absolutely understand it and we see that we have
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  not followed the ways of the Lord. And you know, sin is a slippery slope.
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  And he said to depart from it many ways. And even in this chapter, he said, shun evil.
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  But sin begins with this thought.
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  And then when you linger in the thought, it becomes a desire.
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  And when you start wanting it, then you start fantasizing about it, and then you're sunk.
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  You're going to go do it. But anywhere between the thought, you can't help a
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  thought coming in your mind.
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  You can't necessarily help going down the road and seeing an enticing or tempting
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  billboard, but you can stop thinking about it and you can halt it in its effect in your life.
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  And what we see in verse 14 is that he says.
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  In this situation where there's no instruction and there's stubbornness,
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  we see the stubbornness in 13 where he says, I've not obeyed the voice of his
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  teachers nor inclined the ear to those that instructed him.
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  He's been stubborn to all of this.
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  And then the next thing that happens is he's almost all in evil.
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  Everything around him is evil.
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  And it's a slippery slope. And it starts with that opening, that slight crack
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  in your armor, where you are just lingering like Eve did.
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  Just lingering and letting the devil have more and more hold on you.
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  When as Christians, he has no hold on us.
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  But we give him that hold. Absolutely. And in verse, if we look back really
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  quickly in verse three, you know, sin is compared to a temptress.
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  But when we go over to verse 15, we see that as opposed to someone a temptress,
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  the comparison to that is clearly like a marriage, right?
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  To something that the Lord would have chosen.
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  Because in 15, it's saying, you know, you drink waters out of your own cistern
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  and running waters out of your own well, and then your fountains will go abroad
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  and you'll have rivers of water, you know, be in your streets.
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  You need to be only with your own and not with strangers.
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  Like he's saying, you need to be with what the Lord wants you to be with.
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  You need to do what the Lord wants you to do. You don't need to,
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  you know, go to a door of sin and open a door of sin.
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  You need to stay in the house that the Lord has given you, what his plan is for your life.
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  And this section of scripture brings up an important point that sin will mimic what is right.
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  And sin is always appealing
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  to the flesh and the flesh will often try to justify things
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  and especially try to justify sin and and so he's saying stick with your own
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  you know don't do anything that doesn't belong with the child of God that isn't
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  in alignment with God's commandment and his word.
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  Scripture tells us, as I said, that the devil's trying to kill, steal, and destroy.
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  He's trying to go about seeking whom he may devour.
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  But scripture also tells us in 1 John 4, for the greater is he that is in us
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  than he that is in the world.
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  And he tells us in Romans that sin has no more dominion over us.
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  We are fully equipped in Ephesians 6 with the whole armor of of God to defeat
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  the devil and anything that he has or throws against us.
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  But in that moment of weakness, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just
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  to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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  But to repent means to turn away from.
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  And we cannot be all in evil as we see in verse 14.
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  But instead, we have to be cognizant that our ways are his ways.
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  Because Because verse 21 says, For the ways of man are before the eyes of the
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  Lord, and he pondereth all his goings.
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  Exactly. So the Lord sees all the things, right?
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  He sees all the things that a man does, right? The ways of a man.
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  And this chapter makes it really clear that following after what the Lord wants
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  is what's best for us. You know, in verse 18, it says, let thy fountain be blessed
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  and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
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  That whole section talks about the joy, right, of a marriage relationship as
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  in comparison to what we see in that description, you know, of temptation and sin. Right.
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  The Lord sees, and he sees all the things that we're doing.
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  And it says in verse 22, His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself,
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  and he shall be holden with the cords of his sin.
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  Sin holds us. It's spiritual bondage. Absolutely. And we don't need that. No.
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  And we don't even have to experience that. because,
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  again, sin has no more dominion over those who have given their heart and their
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  lives to Jesus, and there is no reason for a child of God to be all in evil.
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  In fact, we are to depart from evil, and if we find ourselves heading in the wrong direction,
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  we have to immediately turn around, and God is there because he never leaves
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  us or forsakes us, and he's watching your ways, and he has a plan for you and
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  it is not for you to be on all evil.
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  He has a plan to you to prosper you, to give you a hope. And Jesus is the hope.
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  And he has an expected end. He has a plan for what he wants for your life,
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  but you have to heed the instruction and you want his expected end.
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  The very end of the chapter says, he shall die without instruction.
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  In the greatness of his folly, he shall go astray.
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  It's not just that he's going to die without instruction, but without instruction, he will die.
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  And that takes us right back to the verses one and two. My son,
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  attend unto my wisdom and bow thine ear to my understanding that they mayest
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  regard discretion and that thy lips may keep knowledge.
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  We need to keep the knowledge of the Lord.
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  We need to keep the fear of the Lord, to have that expected end that we're promised.
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  And if we reach back into chapter 4, verse 23, he says, Keep thy heart with
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  all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.
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  And he says, Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established.
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  Turn not to the right, nor to the left.
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  Remove thy foot from evil. It is a constant mantra through the book of Proverbs,
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  certainly as far as we've gotten, one through five, telling us to get instruction,
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  get wisdom, get godly instruction,
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  hold on to wisdom, and know the blessings of life.
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  Well, we thank you for joining us in this podcast of Women at the Well Ministries
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  as we have walked through Proverbs chapter five, and we certainly hope that
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  it has inspired you and motivated you to look more deeply into the scriptures,
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  and we are praying that you are growing closer to him as you journey through the scriptures.
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  Remember, you are loved. Jesus loves you.
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  Music.
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  quotes from today's podcast and scripture references.
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  Music.