Tag Archives: Adultery

Chapter-a-Day

Burning Down the House

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Can a man scoop a flame into his lap
    and not have his clothes catch on fire?
Can he walk on hot coals
    and not blister his feet?
Proverbs 6:27-28 (NLT)

I still have a vivid memory of our daughter Madison reaching for a red hot burner when she was only a few years old. Fortunately, I reached her before her little mits fell on the searing coil. It was the classic scenario of teaching a child to keep away from that which will burn her. She learned the lesson, as most of us do. But, this nearly universal childhood lesson becomes an apt word picture for other life dangers.

Solomon uses the word picture as he asks the poignant questions above in addressing the topic of adultery. Along my journey, however, I’ve found that the same questions can be asked of any illicit behavior that results from indulging the sexual appetite. So I’d like to broaden the topic this morning from simple adultery to things like lustful thoughts, pornography (romance novels and erotica can prove just as spiritually deadly as hard core internet porn, by the way), extramarital flirtations, prostitution, and etc.

Please understand that I am not going on some puritanical, Focus on the Family rant. This is actually a very simple spiritual principle and it’s intensely personal. My life bears the scars from these flames and I write that which I know from personal experience. So listen up, my friend and hear me when I say: If you play games with the dangerous flames of sexual appetites you’ll eventually get burned. It might not happen right away. Like a drug, the aphrodisiac of sexual lust offers a potent high for seemingly little risk. At least, it seems that way at the beginning. But once you start chasing that high and the flames intensify you will not escape without getting burned.

At best your own spiritual life will be slowly reduced to the ashes of a desperate loop of guilt, shame and despair while you struggle to hold together and maintain a spit-polished facade for the rest of the world. At worst, you will burn down your house and scorch your loved ones with you.

Avoid the flames. Learn to control your sexual appetite. If you’re in the midst of the fire and your life is burning down around you then run for help today. It’s not too late. God is a God of grace, forgiveness and redemption who offers springs of living water in exchange for the destructive flames. It may not be easy, but it will be good.

 

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Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Proverbs 7

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Bathsheba Observed by King David
Image via Wikipedia

Don’t let your hearts stray away toward her.
      Don’t wander down her wayward path.
Proverbs 7:25 (NLT)

As one who has been journeying through God’s Message for many years, please know that head scratching and the occasional fit of confusion is a natural part of the sojourn. Through the first several chapters of Proverbs I can appreciate King Solomon’s repeated warnings about avoiding the temptations of an immoral and adulterous woman and how he literarily contrasts that (briefly) with embracing wisdom who is also personified as a woman.

What will forever have me scratching my head as I read Proverbs are two questions.

 First, history records that Solomon himself had 700 wives and 300 concubines. That means that the dude could sleep with a different woman every night for roughly three years before he’d have to see the same woman twice. It seems to me if that is your reality and you’re still warning your son about being tempted by a woman who is not your wife (or concubine), you’ve got issues. I’m just saying.

Second, and while I appreciate that Solomon was writing in a male dominated culture from thousands of years ago, it seems to me that for every female temptress there is at least one smarmy adulteror guy preying on unsuspecting women. Solomon, whose dad seduced his married mother (Bathsheba) and had her husband whacked, seems eerily silent on that subject. Of course, with 1000 women to satisfy, he was probably busy.

I appreciate the truth of what today’s chapter is communicating. Nevertheless, I do have a few questions for God when I reach the journey’s end.

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