Do not let your heart turn to her ways or stray into her paths. Many are the victims she has brought down; her slain are a mighty throng. Her house is a highway to the grave, leading down to the chambers of death. (Proverbs 7:25- 27)
For the prostitute reduces you to a loaf of bread, and the adulteress preys upon your very life. (Proverbs 6:26)
Lucifer could make great money in Washington or Hollywood as a “spin doctor.” In fact, some of his agents already do so by playing word games to make a deadly evil sound like a pleasant privilege. The sickest pornography is billed as “adult,” “sophisticated,” or “mature.” Nudity and fornication are harmless “play” as in Playboy or Playgirl, and seduction is elevated to “scoring” in the game of sex.
God has a different view of the person who is involved in sex outside of the covenant bond of marriage. For sure, He doesn’t use words like play or mature in describing them.
Writing to young men, Solomon warns of the promiscuous woman in totally unambiguous terms. He would have said the same things of libertine men if he’d been writing to young women. In his cautions, Solomon warns of “turning hearts” and “straying onto wrong paths.” Legion are the Christians who have viewed themselves as “mature” enough to engage in a little “play” with the opposite sex without consequences, and every broken dream and shattered marriage started with an unguarded heart.
Principle: The heart is a person’s spiritual center. If left unguarded, it will be ruptured by demonic darts, not stimulated by Cupid’s arrows.
Four times in thirty-plus years serving leaders in the sex-charged media, I have had to look a brother in Christ in the eyes and say, “Get that other woman out of your life. The Bible says she will reduce you to a loaf of bread.”
For those who did not heed the warning, the picture was not pretty. I had to watch as Solomon’s heavy words—”victims,” “slain,” “highway to the grave”, and “chambers of death”—settled in on my brothers. I’ve seen bitter spouses, rebellious kids, lost fortunes, destroyed careers, and abandoned faith reduce the best of men to the value of a loaf of bread. I’ve watched beautiful young flowers crushed onto the trash heap of exploited women for defying God’s laws in pursuit of misguided “love.”
Principle: Defying God’s law in the pursuit of love or sexual pleasure is playing Russian roulette with bullets in every chamber of the gun.
After nearly six decades in a rich and wonderful marriage relationship, I look back on those times when my heart began to turn and the path to another woman looked inviting. When I do, I thank God for the Hound of Heaven who chased me down and held me to the wife of my youth. For this reason alone, I am no victim, not spiritually dead, and not worthless and unusable to Him.
Let the hearer listen and learn.
Principle: The priceless value of loving loyalty is never realized until all the cheap thrills of infidelity are in the distant past of God’s forgiveness.
[from “Wisdom for the Trenches” by Dr. Larry W. Poland]