According to Proverbs 7:1-5, your battle with sexual immorality begins by writing God’s words of wisdom on your heart. You can’t wait until your hormones kick in before deciding how to honor God with your body.
This week I’d like to take that main point and run it through the Application Matrix to generate a variety of potential applications.
Inward Application
The battle approaches. Time to lock and load.
Head
Do you believe this battle is worth fighting? Do you believe it’s possible to fight and win, or have you given up, thinking that immorality will simply characterize the rest of your days? What passages of Scripture most motivate you in this realm? Do you believe God’s Spirit working through the word is powerful enough to defeat the sin in your heart? Or do you expect to keep doing the same thing and get a different result?
Heart
Generation Bass, Creative Commons
What rules your heart? What have you written there? Can you quote the Hunger Games movies more readily than Scripture? Do you want things to be any different? I don’t just mean the guilt. I mean the holiness of life and denial of self that will produce true and lasting joy in knowing God.
Hands
Take time this week to memorize Proverbs 7:1-5. Write these words on the tablet of your heart. Cut a bit of time on social media to work on the memorization. Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,” and call understanding your intimate friend. Jesus is your best friend and counselor; get to know him better this week.
Outward Application
One of the best ways to get your focus off yourself is to consider others. As you build your influence for Christ and help others to write the word on their hearts, you can’t help but draw closer to the Lord yourself.
Head
Whom has God put in your life, whom you can serve and lead in godly wisdom? What Scripture passages would be good to help them write on their hearts?
Heart
How can you help others to value what the Lord values? How can you avoid merely giving people a list of rules and behaviors, and instead help them identify the desires of their hearts that lead them to commit immorality (pleasure, escape, control)?
Hands
Perhaps you can spend time this week practicing memory verses with those you lead. You can ask what they’re learning from the word. You can ask what will be their plan when they face temptation (how they can choose intimacy with Christ their wisdom over the false intimacy of pornography or immoral relationships).
Conclusion
God wants to change specific people in specific ways and so conform them to the image of Christ. Reading, writing, and speaking about immorality won’t guarantee change. Only repentance and obedience show our faith to be true. Will you work out your salvation this week, even as God works his perfect will in you?
Leave a Reply