While having lunch with our daughter, Stella recalled how normally seated across her was Johanan now at work and beside him was her dad now 3 years deceased. As she was saying this she was graphically etching in the air with her fingers their silhouettes. We have been married for 29 years (3 Dec 1990, to be precise). And recently, we find ourselves laboring through this tedious 8 week workshop—The Four Gifts of Love1 which entails once a week meetings and 5 days a week assignments. Jemimah asks, “Why are you going through it?” To which I quizzed her, “Which are the two relationships that has the greatest affect in your lifetime?”
“When a young virgin queen emerges from a queen cell, she will generally seek out virgin queen rivals and attempt to kill them. Virgin queens will quickly find and kill (by stinging) any other emerged virgin queen (or be dispatched themselves), . . . and fight to the death until only one remains. If the prime swarm has a virgin queen and the old queen, the old queen will usually be allowed to live. The old queen continues laying. Within a couple of weeks she will die a natural death and the former virgin, now mated, will take her place.
“Unlike the worker bees, the queen’s stinger is not barbed and she is able to sting repeatedly without dying.”2
My son, be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge. For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path of Sheol; she does not ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.3
Some wise and practical tips to avoid compromising your marriage:
- Husbands, bounce your eyes away. Men are easy prey. We are very visual and easily physically aroused; we usually succumb to the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes.4 Avoid being left alone in private with the opposite sex. Should you find yourself in a fix, flee from the scene!5 Be mindful of your wife’s emotional need for affection. Fear the Lord.6
- Wives, understand that your husband’s need for sex is biological. Thus, do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.7
Hopefully, you realize that your primary relationships are God and spouse. All others are secondary. It is foolhardy to attend to the secondary while neglecting the primary. Although justifiably good and necessary the secondary things aren’t priorities. Guard your heart.8 Nurture the primary relationships for life!
Notes:
1. Jennifer Harley Chalmers and Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr., The Four Gifts of Love Participants Guide: Revised and Expanded Edition, Copyright 2005, 2016
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_bee
3. Proverbs 5:1-6
4. 1 John 2:16
5. Genesis 39:12
6. Proverbs 9:10
7. 1 Corinthians 7:5
8. Proverbs 4:23
