Happy Belated Thanksgiving, Ladies and Gents.
Sorry for going so long without a blog post. Since I work two jobs and have resumed martial arts training to deal with the stress, my weekends are pretty much shot. So starting tomorrow, Monday will be when I blog about my quest to honor Christ to stay pure before, during, and, if I outlive my spouse (God forbid), after marriage.
Last weekend, one of my friends at my old church got married. As a single guy in his late twenties, I'm not exactly a huge fan of weddings. Nonetheless, I am glad that I went and was honored to be invited by her and her dad.
While I probably would be more keen on weddings if I had a significant other, I'm no longer naive enough to think that, outside of a deep relationship with God, a wife is enough to make me happy. That kind of thinking is what got Adam and Eve into trouble in the first place. Satan told Eve that if she ate of the forbidden fruit, she AND her husband would be as God. In other words, if they ate the fruit, they could boot God out of the picture and rule creation on their own. So that's exactly what she and Adam (who was standing there the whole time, by the way) did. Through eating the forbidden fruit, they rebelled against God and threw Him out of their lives. Satan convinced Adam and Eve to be ungrateful for the paradise that God had given them and to reach for more: a world where they (and not the Lord) called the shots. Their ingratitude, and their subsequent decision to reach for more than they should have, not only destroyed the paradise that God had given them, but condemned them and their descendants to an eternity in the Lake of Fire. It took the death and resurrection of God Himself (in the form of His Son, Jesus Christ) to undo the damage which Adam and Eve did.
If we aren't grateful for what God has given us, we won't appreciate it and we will seek out the forbidden (i.e. commit adultery or, if we are not married yet, have premarital sex and cheat on our spouse before we even meet them!). This will cause us to throw the wonderful blessings God has given us through a plate-glass window and get ourselves thrown into our own personal Lake of Fire. This Lake of Fire may include, but is not limited to:
-Divorce Court
-Baby Momma Drama
-STD Biological MMA
-Exes who make Heath Ledger's Joker character look like Spongebob Squarepants
-You get the idea...
I'm not saying that we should settle for spouses who are cheaters, alcoholics, drug addicts, porn freaks/chat room queens, "monkey-spankers"/"slumber party hostesses", or abusive jerks/witches who lay the emotional/physical smackdown on us and our kids. I'm just saying that we should be grateful for a spouse that is God-honoring, wise, loyal, mature, honest, and kind (and REALLY grateful if they are also smoking hot and have lots of bling, although these should not be our primary reasons for marrying them).
After all, not all of us are guaranteed marriage. Even though God's original plan was for all of us to get married, human sin and death will wreck that plan for some of us. Those of us who have a godly spouse in spite of those two things should be extremely grateful. Satan, the culture, and our own wicked hearts will always try to trick us into wanting something more. This can range from the obvious (i.e. a younger, hotter, more romantically charming/sexually adventurous, or richer woman/man) to the more subtle (i.e. a woman with an absentee father who emotionally connects with a kind, older male college professor or a man who was rejected by an overachieving family when he was a child who is drawn in by the affirmation of his female coworkers). Like Adam and Eve, if we pursue these forbidden fruits, we will destroy the very paradise that God gave us.
The only way to grow and thrive in our own personal marital "Eden" is to be grateful for who God has given us. Only then can we experience "Romantic World Peace" and "The Sexual Force Unleashed" within marriage. Only then can we be like Mary and Joseph, who, through faith, were welcomed back into the presence of God by having the honor of raising Jesus Christ as their own Son. Only then can we truly regain marital paradise.
"May your fountain be blessed,
and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.
19 A loving doe, a graceful deer—
may her breasts satisfy you always,
may you ever be intoxicated with her love.
20 Why, my son, be intoxicated with another man’s wife?
Why embrace the bosom of a wayward woman?" (Proverbs 5:18-20)
