Giving Away Your Best Strength

If you struggle with sex, if you have a problem with lust, if you want to find freedom from sexual immorality, if you want to be pure again, then Proverbs is for you. This book has unparalleled wisdom on avoiding sexual temptation. Nothing else has been a bigger weakness of mine than sexual temptation, and Proverbs has been a huge help to me. Or, to be specific, Proverbs 5 and 6:20-7.

One of the many parts that I love is Proverbs 5:8-14. Here, King Solomon is giving his sons advice on staying away from the adulterous woman. He says, "Keep to a path far from her, do not go near the door of her house, lest you give your best strength to others and your years to one who is cruel, lest strangers feast on your wealth and your toil enrich another man’s house. At the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are spent. You will say, 'How I hated discipline! How my heart spurned correction! I would not obey my teachers or listen to my instructors. I have come to the brink of utter ruin in the midst of the whole assembly.'"

I want to point out some really powerful words in this passage. The first that resonates with me, and the one that hits home the most is in the first sentence, when Solomon says, "Keep a path far from her... lest you give your best strength to others..." This is important to me simply because I don't want to give my best strength to others. I want my best strength to go to whom it belongs- my wife. God designed sex to be something special between a husband and wife. And I want my wife to know how much I love her from the fact that I was able to wait until marriage to have sex. I treat sex like something special and intimate because it is. It isn't a game or experience you can share with every  multiple people- it's supposed to be something you do with only one person- your spouse. And if you keep sex within marriage, then you'll bypass many awful things that will happen to you if you have sex outside or before marriage. Which leads us to the next thing I take away from this passage.

If you keep sex within marriage, then you won't let "strangers feat on your wealth" and at the end of your life, you won't be saying, "How I hated discipline! How my heart spurned correction! I would not obey my teachers or listen to my instructors. I have come to the brink of utter ruin..." In other words, you won't have the regret, shame, and guilt that you would've had otherwise. I know many friends who have lost their virginity- some who are even teenage parents now. I have heard testimonies from friends who desperately wish they could take back what they did. I have listened as they cry and tell me how they wish they could take it back. They want so badly to erase their impurity and their past. But they can't. They cannot erase what they did and they will have to live with that guilty for the rest of their lives. And my heart breaks for those who had lost their virginity or been unfaithful in marriage. If only they would have kept their pants on, they would have foregone so much guilt and shame and trouble and heartache. If only they had kept the fire in the fireplace.

As Solomon says in Proverbs 5:20-23, "Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress? Why embrace the bosom of another man’s wife? For a man’s ways are in full view of the LORD, and he examines all his paths. The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast. He will die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly."

Don't give away your best strength. Save it for your future husband or wife. Treasure your purity and don't let it go. No matter how much you may desire intercourse, or other sexual acts, don't give in. Don't fall for it. 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 says, "Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body." Don't defile the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is your body. You are not your own; you were bought at a price. If you're a Christian, then your body isn't your own. You belong to Christ. So don't waste your body, your temple. Save your best strength for your spouse. Don't waste it because you don't want to regret it.