Daily Devotionals
Daily Devotional: Proverbs 5:15-23
Prov 5:15-23
Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his paths. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin. He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is led astray.
1 Cor 7:2
But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.
God’s plan is simple. One man is to have one woman in marriage, and they are to become one flesh, enjoying a sacred intimacy that can never be known in any other relationship. A relationship that is compared to that glorious union of Christ and his church. That involves a bit of heaven here on earth. This is God’s plan.
When I was a young man, I had a teacher who spoke to us often about morality and marriage. One of the things he told us was that the closest thing to heaven on earth is a good marriage, but the closest thing to hell on earth is a bad one. He was a wise man who had observed the lives of others but who had a wonderful marriage of his own. He understood the beauty of God’s plan for happiness.
Biblical love is a choice we make, it is not chance or something we fall into or fall out of. Real love is seen in the love of God for us. He loves us when we are not loveable. He loves us when we are his enemies. He loves us because he is love, it is a part of his nature. This love always seeks the best for another person.
Read the story of David and Bathsheba if you want to see what infidelity and immorality can do to a family and a home. David laments his sin and says that until he repented, it consumed him from within. Sin destroys us; love liberates us.
O Lord God, giver of life and designer of marriage, help me always love my wife, even as you love me. Give me a pure heart that only wants what is best for her and for others. Help me fill my mind and my heart with things that are right and wholesome, things that are lovely and pure, so I will be more like Jesus. Give your healing to those who are sick, those who are hurting, those taking treatments, and give peace to those who are lonely or sad. Give us leaders who respect you and your teaching for us. I pray in the name of Jesus my Lord.
Robert
