Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Should your springs overflow in the streeets, your streams of water into the public squares? Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers. May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. Proverbs 5:15-18

Gays are being blamed for most of the sexual excesses in our country. Yet since gays are only about 10% of the population, and our society is sex-saturated, how can that be true? While looking for a restaurant for my birthday in the City, I noticed not a few of the gay businesses are about sex. I would blame gays for this except that you can pick up a Penthouse (or even worse) magazines wrapped in a brown wrapper at your local convienience store, and the local church is not there picketing this. Not that it is O.K. It just appears to me that ALL of society has a problem with sex. Pornography, sexually explicit material lead us to believe there is something more thrilling that our own, boring sex life. Movies and T.V even lead us to cheer on people who find someone more exciting that their spouse. I know this because I have seen it. Because gays cannot in most cases, have a legally recognized union with their spouse, it is much easier for them to break up and move on. We cannot look to heterosexual marriage to support us; the divorce rate stands at 50% in society, and horribly, 51% in the church. So, if we cannot look to society to model marriage for us, we have to look somewhere else; to God. There are some people in society who individually, are making a good go of the lifetime commitment. I have met these people in the churches I have attended. I have met gay people involved in far-longer unions than some straight people could ever hope to achieve. I believe, if gay people want to marry (and not just have the "right" to mess up marriage as badly as everyone else) we need to also HONOR marriage. Even more so, us as Christians. We need to realize that;
-Even if we have just had a Holy Union, or a private ceremony between God and ourselves, we need to TAKE SERIOUSLY the vows we have made to God.
-We need to understand that all relationships go through their ups and downs. Sometimes we cannot even stand the sight of the person, let alone think about sleeping all night in the same bed with them. This will eventually pass into a deeper, more profound love if you are willing to work through it. Talk to people who have been married many, many years. Ask them questions abou their relationships and how they have managed to stay together. You may often find thatit was simply the commitment that held them together during a rough time until the dawn broke once again.
-We are not blind. You will meet people out there you are terribly attracted to. It will feel good. You will feel rejuvenated. Your spouse will seem as exciting as dry toast. Don't keep going down this trail. Instead, do something special for, or with your spouse. Write them a letter and recount why you love them. Pray, and get yourself out of the situation, even cutting all ties to the person. You also might want to take into account two other things; 1- That once your current relationship was as new and shiny as this one with all the special bells and whistles. Eventually, this new "thing" will end up the same way. 2- How can you build a relationship, based on trust with a person who was willing to break into a relationship? You OR the "other" person?
-Read Proverbs 5 in its entirety.
Let us not only honor our relationship with our faithfulness, but more importantly, honor the vows we have made to God. Let Him bring streams of new and living water into your marriage NOW, instead of looking for water elsewhere.



[This message was edited by Blyth on September 15, 2004 at 11:21 PM.]

Excellent post Blyth. I can vouch for what you've posted. What long term relationship hasn't gone through it's trials and temptations? The only way I know how to avoid the situation when it occurs is to cut ties with the person who you're attracted too (or their attracted to you). If you don't, you're only fooling yourself and misleading them. The best way to deal with temptation is to get as far away from it as possible.

1 Cor 13:13 (NLT)
"and the greatest of these is love."