February 25, 2026 -- Proverbs 4:3-4 -- Choose which hard path you'll take

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When I was a son with my father,
tender, the only one in the sight of my mother,
4  he taught me and said to me,
“Let your heart hold fast my words;
keep my commandments, and live.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2025), Pr 4:3–4.
 
Life is hard. Choose the hard you will engage in. You can choose to do hard things that lead to sin, to destruction, and ultimately to death, or you can choose the hard path that leads to life. Any son who strives to hold fast (that means, to hold onto tightly; think of our modern word fastener, something which secures, binds) his father’s Christian instruction will be endlessly mocked by his secular peers. Choose your hard path.
 
When your mother encourages you to keep the commandments of God, and live, you know your peers will be holding out a blunt, telling you you’re a loser, a wimp, a momma’s boy, if you don’t take a puff. But you know that whoever hates wisdom, loves death (Proverbs 8:36). Even those who appear to be Christian friends can be shaking hands with the devil. No wonder the culture all around celebrates skulls and death. An honest atheist chooses their hard path to death that ushers a man into hell with no possibility of mercy. A dishonest man is walking the road to death, all the while asserting he is free, he is happy, and no one is his master. The truth is, what you serve, you’re a slave to it. Today this warning reaches you, turn from evil and hold fast to the words of God and live. Turn from the little temptations, the small seemingly harmless itches to wrong doing. Serve Jesus and live.
 
O Lord God,
Thou art my protecting arm,
fortress, refuge, shield, buckler.
Fight for me and my foes must flee;
Uphold me and I cannot fall;
Strengthen me and I stand unmoved, unmoveable;
Equip me and I shall receive no wound;
Stand by me and Satan will depart;
Anoint my lips with a song of salvation and I shall shout thy victory;
Give me abhorrence of all evil,
as a vile monster that defies thy law,
casts off thy yoke,
defiles my nature, spreads misery.
Teach me to look to Jesus on his cross
and so to know sin’s loathsomeness in thy sight.
There is no pardon but through thy Son’s death,
no cleansing but in his precious blood,
no atonement but his to expiate evil.
Show me the shame, the agony, the bruises
of incarnate God,
that I may read boundless guilt in the boundless price;
May I discern the deadly viper in its real malignity,
tear it with holy indignation from my breast,
resolutely turn from its every snare,
refuse to hold polluting dalliance with it.
Blessed Lord Jesus, at thy cross
may I be taught the awful miseries from which I am saved,
ponder what the word ‘lost’ implies,
see the fires of eternal destruction;
Then may I cling more closely to thy broken self,
adhere to thee with firmer faith,
be devoted to thee with total being,
detest sin as strongly as thy love to me is strong,
And may holiness be the atmosphere
in which I live.
“Conflict” Valley of Vision: Puritan Prayers and Devotions, page 182
 
https://youtu.be/936BapRFHaQ?si=3CDSsJtF7cl3HnQj He Will Hold Me Fast
 

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