Joshua 13:17-22: in context

This passage lists the towns of the inheritance given to Reuben, the cities of the plain that had belonged to Sihon king of the Amorites, whom Israel defeated. And among the record of the fallen, one name stands out, set apart from the towns and kings: the children of Israel also killed Balaam son of Beor, the soothsayer, with the sword, among the rest of their slain. The diviner who had once been hired to curse Israel ends here, cut down among the enemies of the people he had schemed against.

The brief notice of Balaam's end carries a whole story behind it. Balaam was the diviner whom Israel's enemy hired to curse them; forced by God to bless instead, he then found another way to harm them, counseling that Israel be lured into idolatry and immorality, which brought a plague upon them. He knew the true God, heard his voice, even spoke his words; and yet he used his gifts for hire, and when he could not curse God's people outright, he schemed to corrupt them, all for reward. And here is where it led him: slain by the sword among the enemies of God, dying on the wrong side of the very people he had plotted against. The New Testament remembers him as a warning, the way of Balaam, the man who loved the wages of unrighteousness. There is a sober lesson in his end. Balaam's tragedy was to take what was holy, his knowledge of God, his prophetic gift, and to sell it, to use spiritual things for personal gain, and to set them at last against God's own purposes. And it destroyed him. The way of Balaam, using the things of God for our own profit, trading on the sacred for reward, setting our gifts to serve ourselves rather than God, leads where Balaam went, to ruin among the enemies of God. It is possible to know God, to have real gifts, even to speak true words, and yet to be lost, if we bend the holy to our own gain. Balaam's end warns against every version of that bargain: the selling of what is sacred, the use of God's gifts for self, the choosing of reward over faithfulness. It ends among the slain.

Am I tempted, like Balaam, to use what is holy, my knowledge of God, my gifts, my influence, for my own gain, bending the sacred to serve myself, and does his end, slain among God's enemies, warn me where the way of Balaam leads, so that I keep my gifts in the service of God rather than selling them for reward?