Today’s passage is Proverbs 7:10-27. A wife dressed like a prostitute meets the man, kisses him, tells him she has completed her religious vows, and seduces him with talk of her beautiful bed and sex till dawn because her husband is on a business trip. Solomon warns that following her is the way of death.
What is your bed of desire, covered with the wonders of Egypt?
Do you feel that going to church makes it okay to sin? Do thoughts of death and Hell persuade you away from sin?
Today’s passage is an almost exact description of the first night of adultery I spent with the woman who became my first wife.
She was married to her first husband at the time. He was away on a business trip.
We were working at the same company. She invited me to her house for snacks and a drink.
While I was drinking, she went upstairs and returned wearing a negligee.
It wasn’t too long before we were in her bed having sex.
I stayed all night.
When I went downstairs the next morning I remember the look of shock on the face of the au pair girl who took care of the couple’s little girl. I was 23.
From that den of adultery, my wife-to-be and I moved to our own apartment with her daughter. Divorce proceedings began.
My wife-to-be got pregnant and we were married. We had two children.
Twenty-seven years later, in a three-month span, I had another adulterous affair with another seductive lady even though I still went to church twice a week, and my wife died of alcoholism at home alone.
My affair did not lead to marriage as I had hoped but to the woman getting pregnant, the birth of our daughter, the loss of my job as a teacher in the US, my return to Canada, a short-term job, then unemployment, the loss of my worldly goods, and life in a YMCA room for half a year.
I felt like I had died and God was gone. I was 53.
The truth is that Solomon could have warned me all he liked when I was 23 and it would not have mattered because I had not met Jesus.
I was lost and lonely and wanted the comfort of a woman.
I did not consider anything or anyone but my own desires, my own needs.
I didn’t even see my relationship as adultery.
I went down a road that led to intense suffering where all my hopes were dying.
I lived in a graveyard of despair. God found me there and called me.
I began to change but not enough because I committed adultery again and again it led to despair and the death of hope and the death of career, money and possessions.
But once again God found me and, through my present wife, led me to Wooridle.
For nine years I have been facing my sins and repenting.
By God’s grace alone, I have been raised from the dead to life.
Without God’s loving interference in my life, I might already be in hell.
Application: Share this with my mother today.
Lord, let me remember my past life of sin and continue to repent. Guide me to share the way you lifted me from death. Inspire me with your Holy Spirit to walk a path of wisdom and understanding.
