#73 - Stay On GUARD!

Good morning! Wow! I feel a little bit overwhelmed. Did you feel like that when you read today's chapters? Wow. It is so full. It just filled my heart with a heaviness... but filled it with goodness also. A goodness for direction. A goodness for safe-guards. This morning, let's dive in and look a bit into the life of King David. 


Today's Daily Reading: Proverbs 21, Psalms 21, 51, 81, 111, 141, Proverbs 31:10-31

Proverbs 21:29 - A wicked man puts on the bold, unfeeling face [of guilt], but as for the upright, he considers, directs, and establishes his way [with the confidence of integrity].

Psalm 51:1a,2-3, 7b, 16-17 - HAVE MERCY upon me, O God ... Wash me thoroughly [and repeatedly] from my iniquity and guilt and cleanse me and make me wholly pure from my sin! For I am conscious of my transgressions and I acknowledge them; my sin is ever before me....wash me, and I shall [in reality] be whiter than snow. For You delight not in sacrifice, or else would I give it; You find no pleasure in burnt offering. My sacrifice [the sacrifice acceptable] to God is a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart [broken down with sorrow for sin and humbly and thoroughly penitent], such, O God, You will not despise.

Psalm 81:11a, 12a, 14a, 15-16 - But My people would not hearken to My voice... So I gave them up to their own hearts' lust and let them go after their own stubborn will... Speedily then I would subdue their enemies...[Had Israel listened to Me in Egypt, then] those who hated the Lord would have come cringing before Him, and their defeat would have lasted forever. [God] would feed [Israel now] also with the finest of the wheat; and with honey out of the rock would I satisfy you.

Psalm 141:2, 4, 5 - Let my prayer be set forth as incense before You, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. Set a guard, O Lord, before my mouth; keep watch at the door of my lips. Incline my heart not to submit or consent to any evil thing or to be occupied in deeds of wickedness with men who work iniquity; and let me not eat of their dainties. Let the righteous man smite and correct me--it is a kindness.

Proverbs 31:16a - She considers ...

Man! Let me just say... today is loaded! I don't feel I will have a chance to cover everything that I received from the Word today... but it is full. I pray you will have time to meditate on today's Word and see what the Lord is speaking to you about. Revel, marvel, soak in what it says. 


We are familiar with King David being called, "a man after God's own heart." Psalm 51 shows us the heart of David after being called out by the man of God, prophet Nathan. Nathan has just busted David for his sin with Bathsheba. David looked upon her, naked as she bathed on a roof-top, took her as his own, and since she was married, King David had her husband positioned strategically in battle so that he would be killed. The prophet of God, Nathan, approaches David and in rebuke confronts his sin. In Psalm 51, if you read the whole Psalm again, you may read it completely different when you know the heart that is going into the words. David immediately is filled with remorse. He cries, "HAVE MERCY ON ME, O GOD!" David does not try to justify his sin, but he embraces it, he takes it as his own, which it is. David holds it out before God, repentant and cries out for forgiveness. David recognizes that sacrifice is not what God is looking for here. That offering up a burnt offering, or slaying a ram to place on an alter is not what the Lord wants here. The Lords GREATEST desire is for David's HEART! Is for a heart that cries out, "LORD! FORGIVE ME! LORD I HAVE SINNED! FORGIVE ME LORD!" The Lord's desire was for a heart that would cry out for forgiveness, full of repentance and awareness of the sin that was committed. Like it says in Psalm 51, David offers "...a broken and a contrite heart [broken down with sorrow for sin and humbly and thoroughly penitent]..." Not that we need to remain with a broken and contrite heart, because we can RECEIVE forgiveness because of what Christ did on the cross. But here, David here is penitent. Penitent - feeling or expressing sorrow for sin. David expresses his brokeness here. He is truly repentant. 


When we sin, I believe that is where God wants us to be. He wants the sin to cause our hearts to be broken. That the sin so greatly weighs on our hearts, the sin, so heavy, the feeling of remorse so great, that we FALL ON OUR FACES before the LORD. We CRY out to the LORD, "O LORD! HAVE MERCY ON ME LORD! FORGIVE ME LORD! FORGIVE MY SIN!" That our guilt, our remorse would cause us to RUN FROM SIN the next time it approaches us. RUN FROM SIN the next time we are up against temptation. That the remembrance of the remorse would be so real to us in a time of sin, that it would keep us from sinning again. That our desire to PLEASE THE LORD would be greater than our desire to please ourselves and our flesh. 


Then when we look at what the prophet Nathan really did, we can see where Psalm 141:5 REALLY does play a HUGE part here!! "Let the righteous man smite and correct me--it is a kindness." King David KNEW that Nathan was a RIGHTEOUS MAN! He did not throw Nathan out! He did not REBUKE Nathan. He counted it as KINDNESS! He accepted it as TRUTH. HE accepted the rebuke, and I believe deep down, David was GREATLY THANKFUL to have been rebuked. For his error, his sin to be brought into the light. With his sin being brought into the light, it allows him the opportunity to FULLY RESTORE his relationship with the Lord. It allows him to come back into the FULL blessing of the Lord. And, to this day, we still know David, a man who sinned greatly as "A MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART." 


Look at the RISK in Psalm 141 if WE as Christians, as believers don't take SIN seriously... But My people would not hearken to My voice... So I gave them up to their own hearts' lust and let them go after their own stubborn will. The prompting of the Lord will not be forever. If WE, Christians continue to sin, and run from righteousness, as it says in Romans 6, sin will lead to death. So much for the whole promise of "a long life" if we continue, relentlessly on a path of sin, not hearkening to the voice of the Lord. 


Further in Psalm 141, it says what the Lord WOULD HAVE done if the people would have turned from their sin. The Lord WOULD HAVE SPEEDILY defeated their enemies, and permanently. He WOULD HAVE filled their mouths with the BEST wheat (aka, the best food!), and He WOULD HAVE filled their mouths with honey from a rock. The Lord DID HAVE GREAT things in store, but the people would not HEARKEN unto His Voice. They remained stubborn, they continued to chase their lust. 


In our Proverbs verses, it talks about how the righteous man, or in the case of our Proverbs 31 friend, the righteous woman, CONSIDERS their ways. The RIGHTEOUS do their very best to keep their hearts sensitive to prompting of the Holy Spirit. The hearkening of the Holy Spirit. Even the rebuke of the righteous man or woman of God. The righteous count REBUKE from a RIGHTEOUS man or woman of God, they count that as KINDNESS! WHY is it KINDNESS? Why is REBUKE kindness? Because it is keeping them from DEATH! It is keeping them on the road to life! 


May you walk forth, as it says in Psalms 141 - Lifting up of YOUR hands as the evening sacrifice. May YOU Set a guard, before YOUR mouth; may the Lord help to keep watch at the door of YOUR lips. May YOU incline YOUR heart not to submit or consent to any evil thing. 


A CONSISTENT, DAILY, ROUTINE time with the Lord is so important. The Enemy is out there to STEAL, KILL AND DESTROY... like a ROARING LION seeking whom he can destroy. As a brother or sister reading this, my prayer is that you would STAY ON GUARD. I pray a hedge of protection around you today in Jesus Name, that you would STAY ON GUARD. 


Bless you. Bless you today. 

#28 - The 72 Hour Rule *(kid censored)*

Good morning all! How are you?? I am enjoying a watermelon smoothie this morning, finishing off cup of coffee #2, and the boy has gotten a bottle and is probably tapped it off and snoozin by now. I am so excited you have joined me today in reading this post: "The 72 Hour Rule." Should be quite an interesting post.... I will be interested in hearing your thoughts and feedback. :) Some eye-brows may be raised during this one! :) Did you read the post from Friday? "Proverbs 31: The 'How To'"- What were your thoughts on it?? - If you did.... and if you've been following, you will know that today we are going to touch on Proverbs 5 and a verse from Proverbs 31:10-31. What verses do you think we are going to choose?? Well... let's roll on into things. :) 

Proverbs 31:12 - She comforts, encourages, and does him only good as long as there is life within her. 

Proverbs 5:19 (KJV) - Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.

Whoa! Proverbs 5:19 has always been one of my husbands favorite verses. (LOL) I'm sure he'll be real thrilled that I let you know that! But, there it is, in black and white. The bible talks about boobs! Whoa! May be a shocker to some. The Bible talks about a lot of pretty interesting stuff. For those people into the "romance novels", the sex, love, adultery, lying, cheating, killing, prostitutes.... wow, the Bible has it all! Definitely a great book to read if you are interested in it all! Proverbs 5 has been one chapter that I always think about when I am thinking about who is the OPPOSITE of our Proverbs 31 friend. What would be a polar opposite? The loose woman. Proverbs 5:3-10 gives a good breakdown of this "loose woman." Then, when we continue reading, we come across the call to faithfulness in Proverbs 5:15-20. A call to fidelity. A call to faithfulness. A call to one man being with one woman and not straying from his marriage bed. A call to children from one wife or one husband. A call to love and delighting in the physical passions between a married couple. Staying away from the "outsiders" of the world. Staying away from the seductive smile's of the man or woman at the office with the luring words. From real and costly experience, from the actual sin and lust, the adultery that David committed with Bathsheba, he gives a call, a cry out to his son to be faithful. After committing adultery, having Bathsheba's husband killed, her giving birth to their son conceived through their adulterous relationship, David speaks from the hardship of death. The baby, 7 days old, dying because of their sin. David is speaking in chapter 5 from the experience of sin and the loss sin has brought.


The Proverbs 31 woman.... she comforts, encourages & does her husband only good as long as there is life within her. Sex. That's our topic. Studies have shown that most men need to experience a release about every 72 hours. Therefore, in our house, Tyler & I have a 72 hour rule (applied when needed!) The "72 hour rule" is also accompanied with a "No-No" rule. Part of my call as a wife is to comfort my husband, to do him only good. Sex is part of comforting him. It allows him to have a release in what is pent up inside of him. Fulfilling his sexual needs is part of "doing him only good." A lot of our friends operate on the same "72 hour rule"... but those friends of Tyler's who do not and find out about it immediately have their mouth hanging agape. They are freaking out! "MAN! I wish my wife would agree to that! OH MAN! That would be SOOO awesome!" They frequently open up to Tyler and tell him how IN-frequently they have sex with their wife, and some of the things they have to do to release what their body makes. Right or wrong, men do what they feel they have too if their needs are not being met. 


Getting a bit personal here.... whoa! We implemented the 72 hour rule very early on in our marriage. The infamous question, "Do I need the 72 hour rule for myself?" Like most women, absolutely not! I could go for quite awhile and be fine. Do I feel obligated to climax every time I am "assisting" my husband? No. I am fulfilling a need. I am bringing comfort to him. I am doing him good. I must say that the "No-No" policy does come in pretty handy. What does that mean? We have a "No-No" policy. If one of us really needs "help", if we ask for "help", the other person can not say "No." Believe it or not, that really does even line up with the Word:

1 Corinthians 7:3-5 - For the wife does not have [exclusive] authority and control over her own body, but the husband [has his rights]; likewise also the husband does not have [exclusive] authority and control over his body, but the wife [has her rights]. Do not refuse and deprive and defraud each other [of your due marital rights], except perhaps by mutual consent for a time, so that you may devote yourselves unhindered to prayer. But afterwards resume marital relations, lest Satan tempt you [to sin] through your lack of restraint of sexual desire.

My body is not my own, it is my husbands. Once married, part of my marital obligation and responsibility is to fulfill his sexual needs. AND the road goes both ways, his marital responsibility is to fulfill my sexual needs.


THE LOOSE WOMAN IS OUT THERE! - IF I decide I don't want too or don't feel like it... there are repercussions. My husband and myself both having "physical touch" needs.... even in 1 Corinthians 7, it talks about SATAN coming to tempt you because our inability to restrain from sexual temptation. I KNOW that the LOOSE WOMAN IS OUT THERE! So, as a wife, if you/we chose NOT to meet our husbands sexual needs... NEEDS, their body, their physical make-up creates sperm, it has to come out sometime..... so IF us wives do not meet their needs, there are several options for them .... and let me point out, they are not good options. Options that I would prefer NOT to happen. For the FEW - options to abstain may work for awhile. Otherwise, they could find release through masturbation. They could find it through pornography. And then there is the LOOSE WOMAN. Because as we read in Proverbs 5, she is out there! So the cute little secretary at work, not a picture of our Proverbs 31 woman, begins telling him how nice he looks. She makes sure to bend over the copy machine right when she knows he's looking. She wears lower cut blouses than normal to draw attention to him. Meanwhile, his appetite is large! His hormones are heightened because of his lack of "action from his wife." Often, that is when affairs begin. Is it completely HIS fault. NO. It is often almost equally the wife's fault for refusing or depriving her husband from sex. When the husband who is fulfilled at home, the wife is applying the 72 hour rule.... he walks right past the cute secretary who is bending over the copy machine, he doesn't even notice it. He avoids her. His hormones are not heightened to a state of NEED, that he is able to avoid the LOOSE WOMAN who is trying to lure him in to an affair.


So for my husband, may MY breasts satisfy him always. May I comfort and do him good ALWAYS! 


And what is good about the "No-No" Policy? Well.... if you are anything like me.... I do not know when I am going to be "in the mood." It could be at a pretty inconvenient time... but if it has been 2 weeks, and it's not at an opportune time.... IF Tyler said "No"....once the mood was gone, it could be another week or two weeks.... or the LOOSE MAN could come into the picture. The same thing applies to us women. We need our needs met too. When our needs are met at the time that we need them met, masturbation, pornography, or the "hot man at the office" isn't as much of a temptation for women either. In today's world with pornography so easily accessible, it should not be cast aside as something that someone in your house would not consider. If there are children in the house, teenagers....or even if it is just the husband and wife. There are too many sites available to provide a negative source of relief. What used to be a bit harder to come by, now is readily available.


There are also a lot of great web-sites out there that provide accountability or restrictions. Covenant Eyes is a great website that will email weekly updates and rate the websites that have been visited. They will also notify you on any sites that have been blocked. It is a priceless feature to cut down or eliminate the temptation that is available through the internet. Some staggering stats? (http://www.safefamilies.org/sfStats.php) Check this out and then tell me if a "control" wouldn't be helpful:

• 9 out of 10 children ages 8-16 have viewed pornography on the internet (many cases accidental).
• There were 1.3 million pornographic websites in 2003 (It's 2010 now! Has that number doubled? Tripled? Quadrupled by now?)
• 70% of men from 18-34 have visited a pornography website within the last month.
• 34% of FEMALE readers of Today's Christian Woman admitted to intentially accessing an Internet porn site.
• 47% of families say that pornography is a problem in their home! That is almost 1 out of 2 families!!! (Focus on the Family)
• 51% of pastors say that cyber-porn COULD BE a possible temptation.

SO, WHOA! Yah! I know, they are pretty gross statistics, but they are nonetheless a reality. 

Wives, Husbands.... meet the needs of your spouse. Don't refuse your spouse when they ask for help. As strong of a person as they may be, you may be turning them away, in their time of weakness to be one of these statistics. 

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As a PS - Husbands.... wives.... if you are going to apply the "No-No" Rule or the "72 hour Rule", do you think you are always going to be in the mood? Save yourself some trouble, NO you won't be. But... look at the benefits... by you serving your spouse in this area of marriage, you are helping save them from possible sin, from possible infidelity, from possible pain in your relationship. It is definitely a way you can serve your spouse! Blessing you with many happy years til "death do you part."

#10 - BONUS SATURDAY: Red Handed

Wow...what good stuff this morning! My goal is to be predictable in my posts, so my "plan" is to post Monday-Friday and take the weekends off.... but I just can't help to not post this one.... Some really good stuff this morning. 


So being that it is the 5th, we are taking text from Proverbs 5....as I read the chapter, there are SOOO many ways to go: the loose woman, the faithful woman... and really go into depth there. But honestly, this morning after reading, I couldn't get past the first verse! 


Let's take a look:

Proverbs 5:1 - MY SON, be attentive to my Wisdom [godly Wisdom learned by actual and costly experience], and incline your ear to my understanding [of what is becoming and prudent for you]...

Wow! So, let's discover who is talking here. Like we found in earlier in Proverbs 4:3 it says, When I (Solomon) was a son with my father (David).... he taught me and said to me...
So, we can assume David continues teaching Solomon in Proverbs 5:1 as he begins with MY SON. What I really thought was interesting was this... be attentive to my Wisdom. 
What is the best way to learn? We often hear, "through other people's experience"! I can hear David saying to his son, "Son, listen to my Wisdom, it has come through actual experience! Costly Experience!" Which makes me then want to look back on the story to see what David is talking about. 
What was "costly" about David's experience? DEATH! DEATH is what was greatly costly. It cost the life of David's seven day old son. 
Let's re-cap the story. About 10 months earlier David writes Joab, a military leader, a letter saying, "Put Uriah in the front line of the heaviest fighting and withdraw from him, that he may be struck down and die." (2 Sam. 11:15) Bathsheba mourned her husband, and when she was done mourning him, David brought her in, made her his wife and she bore him a son. (2 Sam 11:27).


So... here's where it gets interesting. Over the next 9-10 months, David enjoys life with his new, beautiful wife. Her belly grows, she looks radiant and pregnant. At dinner, they likely talk about this new baby. They dream about what he or she may be, hoping it will be a boy to carry on the name. They begin to love this child before it is even born. All the while, David knowing his sin, pushes it further and further under the rug. Isn't that true though. If or when you have sinned, haven't you just had the times where you hope no one finds out. The longer it goes with no one knowing, we take on the attitude of: "What sin.... it's been so long ago, does it really even count..." or we begin to convince ourselves that it didn't even really happen because we have gotten away with it for so long. 
Well, that is when the man of God, Nathan appears. Nathan tells King David of a story of a poor and rich man. How the poor man had ONE lamb, he coddled and raised up this little lamb from infancy, he practically fed it out of his very own hand. In the meantime, a traveler is coming through, and the rich man not wanting to take from his own large flock, takes from the poor man, takes all that the poor man has. Takes the one lamb belonging to the poor man. David gets furious, says, "Surely this man should die!"
Nathan announces, "This man is you!"
Imagine the immediate sinking in the heart of David. He is caught..... red-handed. His sin has been found out. Think of how David must have felt, or how you have felt when you are caught in a sin, the shame that rises from your heart. The warm heat on your cheeks. The agony and disgust you feel in yourself. You just want to get on your knees and cry. I believe, this must have been how David felt. Pain, disgust & sorrow. 
So, his now wife is getting ready to have a baby and Nathan announces that the baby will surely die. On top of the disgust and sorrow, this child that has been growing in David's wife's stomach, this child that they have already begun to love, will die. All due to the sin that David has committed. David pleads with the Lord, weeps and cries before the Lord to spare his Son. He won't eat anything or drink anything. David cries out to the Lord... but after 7 days, the son of David & Bathsheba dies.
David was guilty, but did receive mercy on his life as Nathan told him, "The Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die." 


In Proverbs 5:1, David is speaking from actual & costly experience. We can read in Romans that sin leads to death. If we continued on the road of sin, death is the outcome, their are consequences to sin. 


I think, how many times have I sinned and felt utterly ashamed. Where I just wanted to run and hide from God and hide from my sin. Pull the covers up over my head and hide. But praise God.... though we are often found guilty, though the cost of our sin could and should be our life, he often pardons our sin and forgives. 


The following video shows is just a clip of an amazing video LUMP. It portrays the shame of sin.... the ending, not shown in this clip, shows a father... loving & hugging his boy who dripping in sweat, running from fear & shame is forgiven.