Pray the Word with David Platt as a resource from Radical.net.

First Samuel, chapter 25, verse 33,

blessed be your discretion and blessed be you who have kept me this day from blood guilt

and from working salvation with my own hand. Oh, these words are so important to understand.

They have such important implications for the way we view our lives and the need we all have

for people around us who keep us, protect us in a sense from ourselves. So the whole story here

in first Samuel, chapter 25 is David is obviously been on the run from Saul who is seeking him out

vengeance wants to kill him and David is tempted to give in to the temptation to take things into

his own hands. He says at the very end of this verse, you have kept me from working salvation with

my own hand from doing what I should not have done. And he's speaking specifically to Abigail

who God has provided at just the right time to keep him from sinning to keep him from giving

in to sinful impulses. And I just think about my life. I want to encourage you to think about your

life left to ourselves. We are so prone to sin. We're not for God's mercy in meeting us and saving

us daily from our sin and ourselves. We would be lost. And one of the ways God shows his mercy

is by putting people into our path, people into our lives who help us see things that we may not see

who help us turn from sin in ways that we don't always see. We all have blind spots in different

ways. And we can all get carried away by temptation. And we need people in our lives. And this is

Matthew chapter 18 when Jesus says, I've put you in each other's lives. So when you see one another's

in sin, Galatians chapter six, when someone is caught in sin that you have someone who comes to you

and pulls you back or someone sees you going towards sin, they pull you back in mercy. And this is

one of the pictures of God's love for us that he puts people in our lives that we need to listen to.

All of us, every single one of us, none of us immune to the tendency to take things in our lives

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