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Well, I had wanted to continue a bit more on the "intimacy" nugget from last time, but you know God, His agenda must come first. This morning as I was watching the morning news, they were talking about addictive drugs, specifically Vicodine and how it is being abused by party goers. But over the last several days, I have been troubled by hearing from one of our Valiant Men of an even more addictive drug that he found himself indulging in. As he began to open up to me, he reminded me just how readily available it is, how it's openly offered, and once taken, can destroy one's life. So what is it: Codeine, Marijuana, Heroin, Valium, Crack? Hmm...
Let's take a look at a few scenarios before we reveal the answer. At our church, we are a very "hugging" church. Maybe your's is very similar. What about at work? Have you ever had the chance to hug someone because of some wonderful news or maybe they simply needed comforting. For most of us, this can happen frequently. As a Valiant Man, what if that someone happens to be a woman? Ever have a woman (or even you) hold the hug for just that little bit longer than deemed appropriate for that moment. OK, so maybe not. So maybe you're having lunch with a female co-worker of yours, in the open, maybe even the lunch room and she reaches over during the conversation and places her hand on yours and leaves it there. That soft, seemingly innocent, caring touch. How'd you feel?
Maybe you're out shopping alone for that perfect gift and you catch the glance of another woman checking you out. What happens? You stand a bit taller, maybe puff out your chest, smile and keep on walking. Hmmm ... then there she is again, just by coincidence, shopping at another store at opposite ends of where you just passed. You catch eyes, she smiles, and then walks over to you and starts up a conversation. Maybe it was you who walked over in her direction. Now let's toss this into the mix. As all of this is going on, your cell phone rings. You look at the number and realize it's your wife.
Imagine now a heroin addict with the syringe clenched between their teeth, the rubber band wrapped tightly around his/her arm, and has now found the vein in which to inject the drug. They remove the syringe from their mouth and place the needle atop of that puffed out vein. Just then, a person of God approaches and shouts, "STOP." What will be the addicts choice?
Anyone figure out what that addictive drug is yet? Well it's none of those mentioned before. For a married man, it happens to be a cocktail mixture of our ego, hormones, our testosterone, another woman's looks, and her pheromones. When mixed together, this becomes the most deadly of all drugs ever manufactured. And what makes this even more challenging, it's manufactured automatically in us. Not by choice, but by design. And as soon as we allow this "cocktail" to be injected into our blood stream, the battle begins.
Dr. Meyer's devoted almost an entire chapter on this; even showing us how we are made in three stages ... remember the biology session? And then again in Chapter 4, he tells us that we cannot simply "pray away" our sexual desires "because God put them into us when he made us." Dr. Meyer's states, "God built our physical sexuality on the model of spiritual intimacy, the ability of one spirit to be intimately joined to another spirit and by that intimacy, knit distinguishable persons together in a shared life." Remember, we should be spiritually intimate with God before being intimate with a woman. However, once a covenant marriage as been made between a man, a woman, and God, a one-flesh team is formed. From that moment on, our sexual desires must be managed through the workings of the Holy Spirit.
A few paragraphs back when the man's cell phone went off and he saw that it was his wife, why do you suppose that at that very moment in time his wife was calling him? Well, it started back in Genesis in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve and has been passed along ever since. On the day of your marriage, God equipped you and your wife to engage in Spiritual Warfare together. And in each one of us, God has given us certain abilities. We'll get into the man's role maybe sometime later but for now let's focus on that cell phone call from the man's wife. Understand this, God gave our wives an inner knowing that senses an enemy's attack. Though some of our wives may not fully understand this principle or what God has given them, they have the ability to detect an enemies activity. It's an inner sense that knows something is not right. In Genesis, the adjective "suitable helper" was given to describe Eve ... and is passed along even today to our wives. In the case of our dear fellow Valiant Man, his wife's inner radar went off knowing something was terribly wrong with her husband. She called not once, but multiple times; however, the call went unanswered and the deadly syringe of sin lay upon our dear brothers arm. And so the battle began, both in the physical and in the spiritual.
Ah, but for Jesus !
Details aside, our dear brother's marriage still stands today. Though his situation has been modified here to protect his privacy, as a Valiant Men, he admitted that he should have never allowed the situation to happen in the first place. He and his wife also know the power of forgiveness and of the grace of God. I suppose that he will go back and re-read the previous Valiant Men Nuggets, maybe even share a few with his wife. Not for me to say, though. That's between them and God.
Know this though, our wives complete us. They have that which we don't. Again, God gave them to us to as our perfect "suitable helper." So, Let them !!!
Until next time, keep
your eyes on Jesus !
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