Dear Friends,
Have you ever heard someone say of another, “He’s his own worst enemy.”
What do they mean? Could that be true of you? Are you shooting yourself
in the foot, not literally, but nonetheless truly? Today’s attached
devotional will help you answer and avoid making your life painfully
difficult. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Proverbs 13:15 (ESV)

  15 Good sense wins favor,
  but the way of the treacherous is their ruin.

HARD THINGS

“Hard things come to hard sinners in their hard ways.

1. A Hardened Way. ‘The way of transgressors if hard’ (Prov. xiii.15). Those who break God’s law will surely find hard things in their lives.

2. A Hardened Heart. ‘He that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief (Prov. Xxviii.14), A hardened heart is a heart which will fall in disaster.

3. A Hardened Neck. ‘They hardened their neck’ (Neh. ix.16, 17, 29). Like a horse that will not answer to the driver, so sinners obey not the Lord.

4. A Hardened Mind. ‘His mind hardened in pride’ (Dan. v.20). Pride stiffens to a downfall.

5. A Hard Bondage. ‘Made their lives bitter with hard bondage’ (Exod. i.14). Bondage of Israel is a type of sin’s bondage.

6. Hard Riches. ‘How hard it is for them that trust in riches’ (Mark x.24). Riches are hardening if their hardness dominates.

7. Hard Pricks. ‘Hard for thee to kick against the pricks’ (Acts xxvi.14). The goads of sin cut the sinner.”

[F. E. Marsh, 1,000 Bible Study Outlines, (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1970), p. 196]