The following story “No Small Affair”,  was written and posted by Lysa TerKeurst on October 23^rd, 2008.

I have posted it for someone who desperately needs to read it today, before electing to enter a wrong relationship. I have also posted it for another who has started what needs to be stopped.

Today, having said it before, I shall say it again: the covenant love of husband and wife is the greatest relationship two people can share, other than the love between each of us and GOD! HE alone will fill every void in your life – we were created to worship HIM!

No Small Affair

Lysa TerKeurst

Devotion:

A few years ago, I sat with a beautiful young woman and watched the tears stream down her face. Six months before our meeting, her world was filled with so much — a loving husband, a healthy toddler, and fun friends.

Life was full. But some part of her heart still felt restless, unsettled, and a little empty. She started to feel detached from her husband and disappointed in their relationship. Why couldn’t he make her feel loved? Wasn’t he supposed to right her wrongs, fill up her insecurities, and give her a lasting feeling of love?

Then one day she met a man who said things she’d longed to hear her husband say. He made her feel pretty and witty. Soon, she rationalized that she’d never really loved her husband in the first place. A web of lies was spun. She fell into the arms of the other man.

She had not wanted to come to the women’s retreat. She knew it might make her feel guilty and she was past having any guilty feelings. She was just waiting for the right time to leave her husband and start over with the new love of her life. But her friends had started to grow suspicious of her pulling back from so many church activities. So, to appease them, she went.

Over the course of the weekend, the walls she’d so carefully constructed to keep everyone at a distance and her secret safe, started to crumble. By Saturday night, she sat down with me and confessed her affair. She desperately wanted to know how I felt so full of GOD’s love. She was now convinced it wasn’t the love of another man her heart craved; it was the love of GOD.

Chasing love outside the will of GOD invites the exact opposite of love into our lives. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 is a picture of GOD’s perfect love. It is patient. It is kind. It does not envy… it is not self-seeking… it does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth… it always protects… it always perseveres. Love never fails. The things we chase in this world are opposite from GOD’s love. False attempts at love will make us impatient, unkind, envious, self-seeking, resistant to the truth, reckless and temporary.

1 Corinthians 13 is not a description of what is inherently ours when we fall in love with another person. It is a description of GOD’s love. This kind of love can be ours as we become more Christ-like. It is never focused inwardly. It is never about what I’m going to get from another person. It is deciding that this is the kind of love I will give away.

I am challenged by this. Because our souls were designed for GOD’s fulfilling love, if we aren’t staying closely connected to HIM everyday, our hearts will start to feel empty. Restless. Unfulfilled.

Let us never get to the place where we think we are strong enough to not be tempted in this way. If we are all completely honest, we are only a few bad decisions away from the same kind of mess my sweet friend is now trying to untangle herself from.

While I have complete hope in GOD’s ability to restore her, the consequences of her chase for love will be severe on many levels.

The kind of love our souls crave will never be found in the things of this world. Lasting and perfectly satisfying love will only be found when we stop chasing the wrong kind of love and start living out the truths of GOD.

Dear LORD, help me rest in the security of Your love. Make me wise in how I guard my heart. May I never get lured into any kind of worldly, fake love. But if I ever start to get drawn away, GOD surround me with people who are bold enough to speak truth into my life. In JESUS’ Name, Amen.

Thank you, Lysa.

Now, short  as the story is, we get the point. Most wrong actions stem from wrong ‘thinking’: some from un-renewed minds, most from stony hearts.

Most people characterize lust, as they do jealousy, greed, and wrath – - as merely emotions, as if emotions are only fleeting thoughts or mood. But there is often a spirit behind these forces, and we find that when such ‘emotions’ dominate and consume people, they generate disordered hearts that often manifest, over time, if left unchecked – - without renewal, repentance, deliverance, and sanctification – - in heart diseases, spiritual, and then, physical. Think about some of those we know, who suffer the symptoms of heart disease, not all, no – but some. Remember their personal histories and herstories. Look at your own heart.

Are you secretly nursing bitterness, malice, resentment, jealousy or lust towards anyone?

Let us pray: Father GOD, in the precious and mighty Name of our LORD JESUS CHRIST, have Your way in my life. Divinely separate me LORD, from every thought, practice, habit, desire and relationship that does not give YOU Glory, in JESUS Name! Cleanse, renew, and sanctify me, indwelling me with YOUR HOLY SPIRIT that I may be used to YOUR Glory, in JESUS’ matchless and mighty Name. Amen.

SELAH*!

*SELAH – Hebrew for pause and  meditate on this.

When more and more people started following LOVE UP, they were so excited, then pointedly asked me why I specifically wrote for those who know and claim CHRIST JESUS, first.

I explained that while LOVE UP was written to bless all marriages, I had written on this extremely important subject for ‘Christians,’ first and foremost, for these reasons:

1. Christians subscribe to, or at least try to practice and honor certain unique and vital values and principles, without much argument, these being the importance of:

• Praising & Worshipping GOD:

Apart from being necessary sacrifices to Father GOD, Praise and Worship are understood to be vitally strategic weapons of spiritual warfare in life, and in marriage, in particular.

Courtship and marriage are really flip sides of the same golden coin.

During courtship, we are both keenly conscious of appearance – how we look, how we ‘smell’, what we wear, and when / how we wear what we wear.

It is well known to most of us that as far as males are concerned, GOD made them the most visual people on earth. From women-gazing to football-crazing, men’s eyes ‘run to and fro’ over the earth and its inhabitants.

Somehow, by GOD’s extraordinary Grace, however, something differs distinctly between a man’s eyes ‘’looking on a maiden to lust” and the eyes ‘’lingering on the object of his heart’s desire’’. The look of love becomes a calm and measured, admiring gaze as love blossoms.

Now, the challenge after marriage is consistently and faithfully keeping two looks of love:

• You still looking lovingly on your Beloved;
• Your Beloved still looking lovely in your eyes.

Avoid the Familiarity that Breeds Contempt. If you’ll notice, in both of the above, there’s no mention of gender, and that’s because, really and truly, the two lines work for all of Biblical “man:” male and female created HE them!!!

How we look to each other – indeed, how we see each other, has much to do with how we behave towards each other.

When we live with the same person day in and day out, so intimately and vitally, it is critically important to work at keeping an aura, a glow about your dealings with each other, so that your Beloved is almost always recognized and treated as the most important person to you on earth!

Both husband and wife must ‘keep the shine on’, so that neither of you becomes ‘common’ to each other and taken for granted.

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