Good Monday morning (2.14.11),

Here is a paraphrase of parts of Proverbs 7:

‘I noticed a fool walking down the street. As darkness fell the woman approached him, planning to trick him. She grabbed him and kissed him and without shame she invited him to her house. She promised a good meal. She mentioned the colored Egyptian sheets on her perfumed bed. “My husband has gone on a long trip,” she said. “Let us enjoy ourselves.”

‘He followed her like an ox led to the butcher, like a deer already shot through the liver with an arrow. Just like a bird caught in a trap, he didn’t know what he did would kill him.’

Pretty strong language! But, contrary to what some of us seem to think, God actually knows all about those things we do when we think no one is watching. He’s perfectly aware of what goes on under cover of darkness, in the secrecy of our home or in the hiding places of our heart.

Although this particular passage is a graphic description of blatant sin, it illustrates the way evil entices us through our own particular weakness. Temptation calls to us saying,

“You’re a stranger in this town, no one will know.”

“The internet is anonymous…you’re safe.”

As if God has gone on a long trip and won’t be home for a while.

“Go ahead and look. You aren’t doing anything.”

“Oh, just say it. If you don’t tell about it someone else will. Ask her to pray and it won’t be gossip.”

“That pastor was preaching just to you. He has no right! Go to another church…that’ll show him.”

Seduction (of our morals, our affections, our conscience) dresses nicely and speaks sweet words. If it approached us looking like what it is, like a puss-filled gaping infected wound, like destruction, then of course we would avoid it.

There are so many roads that lead to the extinguishing of God’s glorious light in us. For some of us what we have agreed with, what we have allowed, has already gotten us to a place where we need life support. Our heart is barely beating because we are so bound up in regret, secrecy, hardness, envy, anger, bitterness, greed, pain.

We have allowed ourselves to be enticed. We have lain upon the scented sheets of disobedience not knowing it would kill us: kill our innocence, kill our joy, our love, our marriage, our friendship, our witness…kill our easy access to the Father.

Oh, but if there is still breath within us there is hope. We have a Savior who has been tempted as we have been tempted, and He proved by His resistance that greater is the One in us than the one who prowls the world!

He is compassionate and He is merciful. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9.

Lift up your eyes from wherever you have fallen…look up! Your salvation comes! Jesus loved you having seen the full picture of everything you would do under cover of darkness. He already knew, and yet it was with that knowledge, long before you loved Him, that He died for you.

He was fully equipped with the foreknowledge of your failures and waywardness when He wrote: choose life! Despite all that knowing He came to make a way where there was none. He came to bring not just life, but abundant life, to restore relationship with the Father. No matter how many times we fall down, our repentance and confession draws Him close. He forgives. He cleanses. He renews and restores.

Turn to Him now. Wait no longer, suffer no more. Let Him bathe you in His refreshing, revitalizing love.

“Now, my sons, listen to me; pay attention to what I say. Don’t let yourself be tricked by such a woman; don’t go where she leads you. She has ruined many good men, and many have died because of her. Her house is on the road to death, the road that leads down to the grave.” Prov. 7:24-27

Laurie Gross