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Devotional Guide
For the week of September 17, 2006

DON¹T BE DECEIVED

Self-control is the fruit of the fear of God


To read the Bible in one year, today Read: Joshua 13-15


To Know:

³And Abimelech said to Abraham, ŒWhat were you thinking of, that you did
this thing?¹ Abraham said, ŒI did it because I thought, There is no fear of
God at all in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.¹² (Gen.
20:10,11)

A man was lost late at night in the most dangerous part of the city. He had
wandered off the beaten path and knew he was in trouble. He turned a corner
and came face to face with a gang. It was too late to run and fruitless to
feign bravery. That was when he saw that the leader had a book in his hand.
It was the Bible. In an instant the menace evaporated. There was no chance
that these young men could both believe the Bible and beat him.

Had Abraham known that King Abimelech feared the Lord, he would also have
known that he and Sarah were safe in his territory. America is increasingly
unsafe. In this free land it is easy to escape capture. Until the presidency
of Dwight Eisenhower it was difficult to jump in a car and melt out of
sight. Eisenhower built the interstate highway system that lets criminals
flee hundreds of miles in a day. Before the dual lane expressways
homogenized the nation, we were easily identified by our words. My first day
in El Paso I asked for a bottle of tonic, not suspecting that tonic in Texas
was meant to keep hair in place. For our country to be a safe place it will
be necessary to reintroduce self-control. Self-control is the fruit of the
fear of God.

Those who work to remove the Bible from our society work against our
welfare. Bad behavior, not the Bible, was banned in Boston in my youth. Now
it is the other way around. The worst language and unseemly behavior is
licensed, while the Word of God is slowly being outlawed. We are an
increasingly out of control society. Some public schools screen students for
fear that more students will gun down their fellows. These students are
carefully protected from reading words like ³Thou shalt not kill.² Have we
succeeded in educating ourselves out of our commonsense? Those who read the
Bible will be faced with the affirmation that the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom.

09216$-09216


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