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

1 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.

These words are so important to understand, and 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, who protect us, in a sense, from ourselves. So the whole story here in 1st,

Samuel 25, is David has been on the run from Saul, who's seeking him out with 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 here, who God has provided at just the right time

to keep him from sinning, to keep him from giving into sinful impulses.

And I just think about my life.

I want to encourage you to think about your life. Left to ourselves,

we are prone to sin. Were it 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 us mercy is by putting people into our path, into our lives,

who help us see things we may not see and help us turn from sin in ways we don't always see.

We all have blind spots in different ways, and we can all get carried away by temptation.

We need people in our lives. This is Matthew 18. Jesus says,

I've put you in each other's lives. So when you see one another in sin, Galatian 6, when someone

is caught in sin, you have someone who comes to you and pulls you back or someone who sees you

...