This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions. We are going through the
book of Proverbs, a chapter a day. Today we're looking at Proverbs chapter seven
and I have focused on Proverbs chapter seven verses two and three for today.

Let me read those verses to you. Keep my commands and you will live. Guard my
teachings as the apple of your eye.

Bind them on your fingers and write them on the tablet of your heart. Now these
are verses about keeping God's commands and keeping them close to your heart,
close to your life. But there's a phrase right in the middle of these verses
that brings a question.

What in the world is the apple of your eye? I used to think that it was just a
phrase that indicated that this is something that I look on with a twinkle in my
eye, with love and affection. But one day I discovered I was wrong.

The apple of your eye is a Hebrew term for the pupil of your eye. And the
interesting thing about this is we guard the pupil of our eye no matter what.
Now think about this.

If someone were to stab towards your eye with a pencil, don't try this at home,
but if someone were to stab towards your eye with a pencil, you would
reflexively put your hand in front of your eye to receive that blow. It might be
painful to have your hand hit with the pencil but you would protect your eye at
all costs. The apple of your eye.

And when I realized that this is what this meant, that phrase took on an even
deeper meaning. Guard the truth no matter what. Guard the truth even when it
hurts.

You might be facing a day today. You might be facing a decision today or a
relationship today where it's going to hurt to live out the truth. And these are
verses that remind you you're making the right decision.

Because the end result will always be life. Keep my commands and you will live.
I like the practical advice in verse three about how to keep my teaching as the
apple of your eye.

Bind them on your fingers, write them on the tablet of your heart. If I really
want to value the truth, if I really want to live the truth, first I have to know
the truth. A lot of people that want to live out God's truth in their daily lives,
truth of the matter is they haven't made an investment so that they know what
truth they're trying to live out.

So there's a lot of emotion to it. Oh, I'd really like to live God's truth. But
there's never been any decision to it.

There's never been any commitment that enables me to know this truth. So you
keep it close to you. Bind them on your fingers.

I'm not saying you should write the words of the Bible on your fingers, but you
might try a more modern day example of this, a three by five card. Just write
some Bible verses that are important to you, that are meaningful to you on three
by five cards and keep them in your car or your house or at your desk. A place
where when you're tempted to be discouraged, when you're tempted in any way,
when you need inspiring from God's word, you just pick up these verses and you
just go through them real quickly.

It's a place where you can look through them throughout the day to help you to
remember the truth that you want to guard in your daily life. As we pray together
today, I'd like to pray for the guarding of God's truth. Lord, together, we pray
that you would enable us to have the integrity, strength of heart and mind that
can come only from our relationship with Jesus Christ to make the decision to
guard your truth in our lives.

First, I pray you'd help us to guard your truth in our private lives, the places
where no one sees, no one knows what decisions we're making, no one knows what
thoughts we might be having. God, I pray that our focus on your word and even
our study together, the book of Proverbs, would help us to begin to guard your
truth in that place in new ways. I pray also that you would help us to guard
your truth in our public lives, places where we are living out your truth in
front of other people.

Lord, we're all tempted to skim a little bit here and to slide a little bit
there. And even though we deeply love your truth, to try to make life a little
bit easier. God, even when it's hard, even when it's going to cause us some
difficulty, give us the faith to guard your truth because that's where the life
is.

We're so tempted, God, to take a shortcut to life. But life is in your truth. We
know that, we believe that.

We put faith in you that that is the truth. And so right now, I pray that even
if it's hard to live out your truth today, you would give us the faith to live
out your truth today. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.