Proverbs 5:15-21

I'm writing this post right now, because I really need it.  I started memorizing these verses earlier this week in the hope that they'd help me fight temptation.  Now, they're being put to the test.  The question is, do I understand them--and is my hope in them or in the God Whose they are?

However, these verses are brimming with sexual innuendo (yes, the Bible has innuendo, and God meant it that way), so this post is not appropriate for readers of all ages.  It is also not appropriate for all people, since some if it's content is controversial.

Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.

The passage begins with an affirmative command: drink.  To drink is to satisfy one's thirst.  In the context of the passage (which decries adultery and promotes sexual fidelity), to drink flowing water is to indulge and satisfy one's "thirst"--or craving--for sexual fulfillment (water is a common poetical allusion to a woman's sexuality in the Old Testament--as in Song of Solomon 4:12 where the analogy is used to describe the bride's chastity before the marriage is consummated).  By beginning this passage in this way, God validates my desires.  God does not begin by saying that my sexual desires are wrong and I need to change them or ignore them.  Instead, he affirms them as strong natural longings (such as thirst itself) and encourages me to drink!  Our God is not against sex: He is it's biggest proponent!

God, however, has a specific means in mind by which we are to seek the fulfillment of our sexual desires.  He says I am to drink only from your own cistern...from your own well.  God wants me to seek sexual fulfillment in that which is my own, not in that which is someone else's.  Specifically, it is referring to a man seeking sexual fulfillment and pleasure in his own wife.

Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?  Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.

Here, the passage asks a rhetorical question.  Going with the analogy of sexuality as water, it asks if one should let one's water spread all over the place and run through the streets.  Obviously not.  Even in parts of America where water is abundant, it's unacceptable to just let it run off from your sprinklers through the streets, doing no one any good.  In arid Israel it would have been unthinkable.  Water was precious and a natural spring was rare.  To let that water gush all over and be wasted in the streets would have been an atrocity!  So also with our sexuality.  God commands me to enjoy it with the wife He will give me.  How absurd is it then when I, through lust, masturbation, and pornography, allow my sexuality to get spread all over the place.  It does no one any good that way, certainly not me!  I am sharing it with people I don't know--won't ever know as more than an image on a website--; they receive nothing and I get nothing, and am left empty and bitter.  Instead of spreading my sexuality around, I must guard it for a single purpose, and a single person.  Only myself and my wife may share this sexuality.  I must not let any stranger have a part in it--for that part is surely wasted.

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 with her love.

Here God is encouraging the free expression of sexuality between a man and wife.  Specifically, he is encouraging me as a man to find sexual fulfillment and delight in my wife.  She is, to me, a refreshing, beautiful fountain (and again, water is a metaphor for sexuality--so fountain of sexiness?  I feel like that's justified), lovely, graceful, wild (though shy), and beautiful.  *Gasp!*  The Bible just said breasts!  Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight.  I don't know about you, reader.  I don't know if you're male or female or what experiences you've had.  Myself, I'm a male, a virgin.  I like breasts, though I'm nervous to admit it and avoid thinking about it whenever possible (I grew up believing sex was always a dirty and shameful thing--which left me ready to shun it in anything good and accept the temptation to lust when I was weak: not a good place to be, hence, these verses).  Actually, I'll admit I'm more of a legs-guy; they say there are three things that are most sexually attractive to males: breasts, bottoms, and legs.  I tend to gravitate toward legs (but this passage also says the wife of your youth is a lovely deer and a graceful doe--and deer are leggy animals, so...yeah).  The point is this: I'm supposed to delight in the physical beauty of my wife (legs, breasts, and all else).  I am also instructed to be intoxicated always with her love.  That word intoxicated is interesting.  To be intoxicated, of course, means to be drunk--drunk with her love.  But the word can also be translated ravished or led astray.  To be led astray, of course, is the definition of being swept away or seduced.  I am supposed to find my wife seductive, to allow her beauty to consume me and sweep me away.  Wow!  And I used to think God was anti-sex!!!

Now, it's ticklish business applying this to my life right now.  As I've said, I'm a virgin, and that not only in the sense of never having had sexual intercourse, but further in the sense of never having had sexual contact with anyone (not even kissing), and--in a much broader sense--never having been in any sort of romantic relationship (not even a date).  Aside from my past (by the grace of God) sins of pornography and masturbation, I am a virgin in the strictest sense of the word (okay, so I've liked girls before, so I guess it could be stricter still, but you get the idea).  I do not have a wife to be sexual with.  How then do I apply this passage to my life?

Of course, if you've read parts 4 and 5 of my "Unconventional Relationship" series, you know that I believe firmly that God has told me not only that I will be married, but whom I will be married to, a girl whom I know.  Our relationship has improved dramatically since last I wrote, and we are now friends again, though some issues between us as friends remain to be sorted out--and she still has no romantic interest in me (and she still has all my heart).  She is still very beautiful, though her modesty covers it.  I've been trying to ignore it.  Every time I look at her, she takes my breath away (though she is totally unaware of it) and it's hard not to stare.  I know that our relationship does not look promising and looking at it from a human perspective, it's going nowhere.  So, I try not to look at all.  I don't want my heart to be awakened by a beauty I seemingly can never have.  Of course, I don't limit this behavior to just her physical appearance.  Other things about her awaken my heart (actually, it would be a shorter list to say what things about her don't in some way stir my attraction for her--and at the moment the only thing I can think of is her consistent rejections, and with her motivation being to save herself heart, soul, and body for God and her future husband [whom I happen to know rather well] even that's not a sure bet).  I'm tempted to avoid any contact with her or thoughts about her that would stir my apparently fruitless feelings.

But this is nothing but faithlessness on my part.  God has said, more times and in more ways that I can count, that this girl will be my wife, that she will come around, her feelings will change, and our relationship will blossom in the spring.  I need to believe that, for it is what God has said and He is ever faithful.  He has never been wrong, nor will He ever be.  I should not shun my future wife in my heart out of faithlessness that she will be my future wife.

What then should I do?  My faith or lack thereof does not change the way she feels about me.  Should I be guarded in my feelings, or vulnerable?  It is a question that has consumed no small amount of my thoughts.  I know that some of my friends would tell me to be guarded.  They would encourage me to suppress these feelings, to "guard my heart" (per Proverbs 4:23).  Among the people from my church here at college, the popular interpretation of this verse is that one should shun romantic feelings and entanglements (some have taken this to such an extreme that they have violated some of God's more explicit commands in order to avoid even the possibility of "not guarding their heart").  But this is not right!  The context explicitly states that we are go "guard our heart" in the sense of keeping evil out of it and good inside.  Are romantic feelings evil, then?  I find no support for such an assertion anywhere in the Bible.  And what of sexual feelings?  The Bible contains many warnings against sinful sexual desires (one of which comes later in this passage), but also broad passages (and even a whole book, the Song of Solomon, which opens "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth") celebrating sex and sexual desire between a man and wife as good and holy.  So clearly, there is a sort of sexual desire to be guarded against (lust) and a sort to be treasured up within.  And which is this?  If I am to believe God--and I am to believe Him!--then someday this will be my wife and all my desires for her will be ones to be treasured up.  But until that day, I find no certain guideline in scripture.

One of my friends just now has given me perhaps the best advice on how to deal with that.  He reminded me that "whatever is not of faith is sin" (Romans 14:23) and to ask God about it and follow Him.  So, a few weeks ago, in the midst of my distress, that's exactly what I did.  The answer I received was that I should give my heart to her unconditionally, I should surrender to what God is doing in both our lives.  "Every time you see her, open your heart," He said.  "Feel what is there.  Taste it, savor it, revel in it.  It is what I give you.  It is my heart, a piece of my heart.  Let your defenses down before it and become undone."  Though I should not force it, I must relax and let my feelings for her--romantically and sexually--grow naturally.  A part of that is letting myself be captivated by her physical beauty when I see her.

Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adultress?

 There is, though, always lust to be guarded against.  This comes in the form of lust for others.  To allow myself to be intoxicated, seduced, led astray, or swept away even in the slightest with another woman is a sin.  Any woman but my wife is a forbidden woman, and any woman who is another man's wife (and, whether they are married now or will be, or will devote themselves to singleness in godliness, every other woman is another man's wife in some sense) is an adulteress if she courts sexual desire from me.  These words also translate as foreigner or stranger--literally, other.  I am to be intoxicated with no other woman's beauty, and be sexual with no one but my wife, even in my heart.  In the context of the passage, the answer to this verse's question is clear: since perfect sexual fulfillment is to be found in my own wife, there is no justification for seeking it in another.

For a man's ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and He ponders all his paths.

This is the ultimate reason, the reasoning and logic that stands behind the entire passage.  Sexual desire is good, a thirst to be quenched, because God made it so, and He watches over our lives to see that we do it rightly.  This desire is not to be spilled out to strangers or indulged with other women, because God considers all that we do, and judges it.  This desire is to be shared and indulged to the hilt with a man's own wife, and this because God sees you and rejoices in your sexual joy, for He gave it to you and He has considered it and found it righteous before Him.

May He be glorified in this, as in every part of my life!