Adulterer, Me?

If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish. (Exodus 21:10)

Allow me to delve into a very sensitive topic; sex and marriage.

I want to state that adultery is not simply when one is sexually involved with someone other than their spouse.

Adultery happens long before the actual act of sex outside marriage occurs.

You could actually be the best example of chastity when to God you are hopelessly lost in adultery. You could be the person everybody looks up to for marriage counsel when you are sunk to your neck into whoredom.

What am I saying? You may be wondering.

Jesus said that adultery, like any other sin, starts in the heart.

We must therefore seek to understand the heart’s yielding to be able to look at sin the way God looks at it.

Let me throw another spanner into your works by also stating that divorce does not happen when a couple legally separates.

You could actually be a serial divorcee even before getting legally married.

What people call dating is actually marriage even before the consummation of the same. Yet these days it is treated as normal when dating people have sex. And the same people will not feel any guilt when they decide that they have discovered that they were not meant for each other.

Let me scare you with this.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. (Matthew 1: 18 - 20)

Why is Joseph planning on divorcing Mary yet they were not married according to us?

That pledge is the same as marriage when looked at with God’s eyes. That is why God says that Joseph should not fear to take Mary HIS wife and not as his wife.

God recognises marriage when two people agree to get married and not when they actually get married.

Sex is the seal of what was recognised in heaven.

Breaking of the engagement is therefore akin to divorcing the person.

That is the reason I will always stand to be counted when declaring dating as not of God since it opens wide the door to divorce even before people become legally married.

Let me get back to our topic.

Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. (1Corinthians 7:5)

Unfaithfulness starts when the deficiency of sex in a marriage is not by mutual consent and especially not driven by joint prayer and fasting. That is when the seed of adultery sprouts.

When sex starts being an optional aspect of marriage, adultery starts manifesting in ever increasing ways.

When the excitement and electric shock feeling from that touch becomes a bother or disappears, you can be sure one has gotten a notch higher in the path to full blown adultery.

You see, the desirability of a spouse is the running oil in the engine called marriage.

And by adultery I am not just speaking of the guilty party. The one becoming adulterous in their heart is an active partner in driving their spouse to adultery.

This means that not only are you committing adultery, you are forcing your partner into adultery.

But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery. (Matthew 5:32)

Denying your partner sexual rights causes them to commit adultery, and I do not think they have to physically do it to be so though it drives them in that direction.

But it happens long before that.

That denial or sparsity of sex happens because adultery has already happened in the heart.

When your partner stops being the prime object of your companionship, it is because your heart has already strayed elsewhere.

If your pastor commands more respect than your husband, you can be sure that God has already condemned you of adultery. If your boss’s word carries more weight than your husband, you are in the same place.

If prayer and other spiritual exercises are the reason your husband cannot enjoy your undivided attention, you are actually serving the devil, sorry I have to be so blunt.

Numbers 30 puts that in black and white.

What am I saying?

We many times blame the wrong person for adultery.

You could be crying to all that your partner is straying when you are the trigger that is actively driving them away. Your spiritual adultery drove him up the wall that they committed physical adultery in frustration.

Or do you think that it is a wonder that the women with the most unfaithful husbands occupy very prominent positions in church?

Does it surprise you that all that fasting and prayer for a husband to change takes forever to happen if ever?

The husband becomes a spare wheel in the marriage, however key he may appear to be.

His desirability is exchanged with somebody or something else; children, church, job, spiritual leader, chama, and anything else in between.

That is what drives him away from home. Because he has already been spiritually and emotionally kicked away from that home.

Look also at this

Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; (1Peter 3:1)

That lack of submission, however justified you might think you are, is actually adultery because someone or something else has become your authority, which in spiritual terms means husband.

That is how God looks at it.

And you expect a husband you are cheating on to follow you to those places that will continually remind him how much of an adulterer you are because they are the ones that have kicked him out of his marriage! If folly was a person, you would be it.

Let us get to scripture before you kick me out of your attention.

We of course know that marriage is a picture of our relationship with God.

This means that we can understand marriage better if we looked at the model it is taken from.

Remember Israel in the wilderness?

Apart of the golden calf that occupied probably a week or at most two of the forty-year journey, is there any other idol you have seen that Israel worshipped?

I for one have never seen any other, except probably Baal Peor, and even then it was being outsourced.

It is in Judges that we see the presence of idols.

Yet why do we read this?

And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness. (Numbers 14:33)

Why is God accusing Israel of idolatry and prostitution? And he is mentioning, not one or two incidents of adultery but uncountable and stinking levels of prostitution.

Idolatry is not the bowing down to an image. It is not being completely sold out to God. It is a wavering of our desire and devotion to God that God terms as idolatry.

We must therefore understand that God was judging them for idolatry that did not involve actual images and prostitution that did not include sexual intercourse.

I hope you understand what I mean.

Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. (Revelation 2:4)

That church was doing everything perfectly. They had no complaint as to their doctrine or conduct.

They looked like you and the way you run your marriage.

There is no verifiable breach of performance.

But God sees the heart. And that is where He judges from.

Do not therefore be offended when I say that you could be a serial adulterer though there is nothing that is outwardly connecting you to adultery or even inappropriate conduct.

Do not be offended when I call you a prostitute when you are the leading lady of the church.

But you may be forced to agree with me if you decided to look at your marriage in the eyes of the One to whom we will have to give an account.

And I do not want to give an account that I feared to confront the corruptions that are breaking our marriages so that I am not hated.

Allow me to close with this

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139: 23, 24)

Because

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)

Will you allow God to examine your heart and give you His verdict?

Will you take His prescription?

This is because I believe you do not have time, nor do I, before God exposes our hearts to the world.

Or like He says in the prophets, He will uncover our nakedness before all our lovers.

God bless you.

Prodigal Doctrines 2

Let me go a bit farther on the prodigal to let us appreciate the reality that the repentance of the prodigal was not the only requirement into his accessing any inheritance.

The first reason is that he had no inheritance at all. His connection to any inheritance was therefore dependent on the one holding it – the elder brother.

Second was that his system was already corrupted so that giving him access to inheritance could very easily launch him back to those wild days.

Let me give you this story that I know you may have as many variants as your experiences.

A minister fell into drunkenness and was lost for many years.

I knew that because everybody was always deriding his fall.

‘Can you imagine this was a pastor and missionary who even preached in other countries!’

It therefore bothered me and I made it my assignment to pray for his restoration even as I did all I could to not only understand but also help in that restoration.

I made him an Audio Bible and after some time he sold it and gave stories like any drunk does.

I think I still made him another one. We kept talking a lot but he was secretive and very hard (I hope you understand what I mean)

After over two years, a pastor friend of mine confronted him and he repented.

I was overjoyed.

I made him another Audio Bible, got him a Bible to read and a few other books. I even gave him a cellphone so that we could be in contact more and of course made a solar charger for the phone and Audio Bibles.

He changed!

He became clean, sober, very organised.

He even left his former crowd.

He would regularly visit and we would have great times discussing the scriptures. He even brough some albums of his past life as a man of God.

The only thing he did not do was activate the cell phone, his excuse being that his ID card was lost and its replacement was taking long.

After some time I started hearing about him in drunken issues.

As usual I believe time reveals most things so I waited since he continued behaving like a growing disciple.

One day I needed some work done and I was going to town so I went to the place he used to laze with some young men (his former crowd) so that they could direct me to where I could find him since that was his hood.

They called him from a bar! And that was in the morning.

Once his cover was blown, he tried to explain and even show that it was a blunder but God blew it another time.

It was as I sought to get him become open that he confessed to have sold the cellphone.

He died recently I hear in a drunken fight.

This was a man in his sixties.

I do not think he feigned repentance.

One does not leave the prodigal nature just like that as there are enough things that can trigger a relapse.

Let me give some other stories, this time of young men.

I was sought by a young man very desperately.

He was lost in drugs and wanted anybody who could help him and as he asked around the church was directed by a friend who knew that I was connected to a rehab.

When we met, I asked him when he wanted to join and he said immediately. He did not even return home for his personal effects as he was so desperate.

Well, I took him there and his transformation was immediate. He was clean long before the official time for having cleaned out.

He got into the worship team and even became a leader accompanying the big guys.

Then a friend gave him a cellphone and his former crowd was able to reconnect. In a short while he was where I found him, lost.

After a short time, he sought me out in tears to plead with me to help him rejoin the rehab as he had learnt his lessons.

I did so and what had happened the first time happened. The healing was very fast. Yet after the healing he was unable to resist the pressure of his former crowd.

I do not remember whether I took him back the third time but I eventually told him that I do not think he was ready to handle the transformation he sought.

To this day, any time he sees me he is always pleading with me to take him back to the rehab. But would you?

The next is still about another young man.

His parents brought the young man to me to convince him to go to rehab.

After talking for some time, I realized he was not ready and told the parents so.

He later came ready

When the time came to be released after becoming clean, he refused to go back home and said he did not trust himself enough to go back to his former crowd.

We looked for a college for him and the parents were more than willing to support the same.

He left the rehab after college and to date I continue receiving positive reports about him.

The purpose of all this narration is to prove to us that the prodigal, however drastic their repentance, must need adequate time to grow back into the inheritance.

We many times become enraged when we hear of a pastor eating his sheep without caring to know whether we released him into the sheep pen before completely curing his prodigal nature.

We scream the loudest when we hear of a spiritual leader eating all the offerings or a leader who is always insulting his flock without first asking where we picked him from before launching him into the ministry.

He may have just had a relapse because we did not allow him adequate time to detox his prodigal nature.

Our excitement at his homecoming overtook our reason.

In short, they are the way they are due to our folly and thus we are the ones to blame for their error.

It is sad that when a church member falls into sin they are disciplined for anything from six months to several years according to their sin. Yet the same church does not waste any time inducting someone who had been on the devil’s payroll for decades into leadership.

I have no issues with discipline. What I have a gigantic problem with is rolling the red carpet when a prodigal comes home to the point of overlooking the already overworked elder brother.

That is the sin of our generation.

I was told of girl that became pregnant and the boy was made a pastor because the girl comes from a prominent family. And that is not a church hidden somewhere in the bush.

And we seem surprised when we can’t contain the sexual explosion in our young people. We gave the prodigals the chance to manage the inheritance and left out the elder brother who had been managing it all the time the prodigal was away.

I repeat. There is need to celebrate the prodigal. Only that we must give him enough time to allow the stench of swine to get out of his system.

Otherwise we could end up having our whole house smelling like a swine sty. Not forgetting that it is very possible for him to forget that he moved from feeding among the swine to owning them and so comfortably start competing with them for food, something we have too many examples for comfort like the few examples I have mentioned above.

In conclusion, let me say that I love the prodigals coming back home. But I am even more excited when they are gradually grown back into the family before they are released into the mainstream of ministry involvement.

That is what we call discipleship.

Otherwise a harlot will come to church to leave that past behind and get converted into a ‘sanctified and anointed’ harlot due to lack of that growth.

I think that is one of the interpretations of this verse

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. (Matthew 23:15)

They thought capturing a proselyte was the main job like we do when we think the prodigal coming back home is the main job. And the outcome is the same.

I Hope we understand each other.