Pray the Word with David Platt is a resource from radical.net.

Proverbs chapter 7, verses 21 through 23.

With much seductive speech, she persuades him.

With her smooth talk, she compels him.

All at once, he follows her.

As an ox goes to the slaughter, for as a stag is caught fast

till an arrow pierces its liver. As a bird rushes into a snare, he does not know that it will cost

him his life.

What a powerful picture.

What potent imagery of the specific sin here is adultery of a man who follows the smooth talk of an adulteress and goes to her like an ox going to the slaughter,

like a bird rushing into a snare, a stag caught fast till an arrow pierces its liver.

He does not know that it will cost him his life.

And obviously this doesn't just refer to a man following after a woman. It could be a woman following after a man. It could be, in a sense, a picture of any

and all temptation to sin because sin promises so much good. And yet it always, always, when we go toward sin when we flirt with sin when we

rationalize with sin then we are like oxen going to the slaughter we're like stags caught fast till an arrow pierces our liver. We're

like birds rushing into a snare, not realizing that what we are doing in any sin costs us deeply.

So I want to pray these verses over all of us that God would help us to see the seriousness of sin in our lives

and any kind of temptation you are facing today that you would not rationalize it, that you would run from it.

You would not flirt with it instead that you would flee from it and that I would do the same and then specifically for anyone

who is flirting with adultery or sexual sin in this way all the more that you would see don't go to

the slaughter run from the slaughter don't rush into a snare snare. Oh, God, we pray you to deliver us from

ourselves, from our propensity to sin from our foolish desires that would lead us to think that

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