The Solomon Seduction is a biography on King Solomon, a Bible study, a book for men to overcome temptation, a leadership book, and a great discussion starter for a men’s group. In other words, there are lots of reasons for guys to read this book! You can read my full book review by clicking here, and below are some of the quotes I highlighted from this book.
“Moderation can be a great thing. But the idea that anything is okay as long as it’s done in moderation has given rise to some of the wackiest notions known to man. … One of the big problems with using moderation as a justification for whatever you want to do is that it’s almost impossible to take just a bite when you’re really hungry.”
“Are you just a guy who goes to church, or are you serious about growing spiritually and acquiring discernment? satan’s chances of seducing you will rise or fall on your answers to these questions.”
“Solomon is the perfect example of the fact that you can have your cranium crammed full of discernment and still end up embarrassing yourself. Keep in mind, he not only knew the book of Proverbs, he wrote the vast majority of it! And then ended up doing many of the very things he himself said were foolish!”
“All of satan’s various attempts at seducing believers must include an attempt to undermine Scripture.”
“What we have here is a case not of ignorance or confusion or misinterpretation, but of satan subtly and artfully manipulating Solomon’s thinking to the point where he felt the commands of God seemed out of touch with his real-world experience.”
“satan doesn’t try to get you to forsake your good priorities. He just encourages you to mix in a few lesser priorities that will compete with those good priorities.”
“Mark it down. When the word I starts replacing the word we in your speech, something ugly is happening in your heart. Your ego is swelling.”
“Big-ego people almost never back up and take another look at their actions. Why should they? They’re convinced that everything they do is right. It never occurs to them that they might be on the wrong track. They’re so infatuated with themselves that they can see nothing but that beautiful image in the mirror.”
“‘What’s the big deal?’ If ever a question spoke to the attitude of our generation towards sin, that one does. We shrug off sin as though it’s just a little harmless fun. You know, boys will be boys. Everybody sows some wild oats, right? Or, if we don’t play the what’s-the-big-deal card, we claim that the sin we are indulging in is actually necessary.”
“Instead of repenting, instead of exterminating, illuminating, or correcting their bad behavior, [sin managers] try to manage it. They believe that if they can keep the behavior from getting out of hand, keep people from being hurt or offended, keep the status quo from being upset, keep the ugliness under wraps and out of sight, they can hang on to their sin and everything will be fine. … This is typical of sin managers. Instead of seeing sin as the problem, they see the awkwardness the sin creates as the problem and believe, therefore, that if they can find an answer for the awkwardness, they will have solved the problem.”
“In the category of cold, hard truths, this is a doozy: God doesn’t share the throne of your heart with anybody or anything. You either give it to Him wholly and completely, or He vacates it. You can tell yourself that God comes first and that the sin you’re harboring is just a little something you need to work on, but if you choose a lifestyle of sin management over repentance, you’ve pledged your allegiance to your sin, not to God.”
“Repentance is not what saves us; grace is. But repentance is a response to grace that makes what we are after having received grace different from what we were before. … Repentance concerns itself with how things are while sin management only worries about how things look. Think of a messy closet. Repentance cleans out the closet. Sin management straightens up the closet. Repentance throws away the junk. Sin management rearranges the junk. Repentance gives you a better closet. Sin management only gives you a better-looking closet.”
“When we see Solomon at the height of his idolatrous lifestyle, marrying and buying and indulging like an out-of-control sailor on a weekend pass, what does he say over and over again? ‘I said to myself…’ (Ecclesiastes 1:16, 2:1, 2:15, 3:17, 7:23). Solomon was talking to himself about a lot of things he should have been discussing with God. Who can argue that the reason why he was seduced and eventually reduced to an object of scorn and pity was because he excluded God from so many areas of his life?”
I don’t think there’s anyone reading this that hasn’t—at one time or another, or perhaps even right now—struggled with feeling distant from God’s love. Maybe you felt like you blew it, or gave in to temptation, or things aren’t going as you had hoped, and you thought, “Where are You, God? Do You still care about me?” This message is for you!
Samekh is the only Hebrew letter which is completely enclosed. And when you look at it, samekh looks like a shield. Indeed the word means more than God’s omnipresence. Samekh means…
Craig T. Owens 