Wellll, ummmm, yeahhhh (Proverbs 5)

Last year my nine-year-old son and I decided to read through the New Testament together, a chapter a day. Then we added Psalms and Proverbs. So far it is going really well. But today’s reading (Proverbs 5) is one that I’ve been dreading doing with him. “Daddy, what does it mean when it says, ‘May her breasts satisfy you always’?” “Welllll son, ummmm, yeahhhh, ummmmm.”

Anyway … I have had the very unfortunate privilege of seeing this chapter play out in several guy’s lives and I can tell you that it is spot on. What starts out seeming like a fun tryst ends with the guy sobbing and his life in “utter ruin” (5:14).

And the thing is that no one ever plans on going down that path. They’ll tell you it “just happened” but it didn’t just happen. They didn’t plan for it to happen, but it happened because they didn’t plan for it not to happen. Proverbs 5 teaches us how to plan for it not to happen:

(1) Have huge boundaries. 5:8 says to “Keep a path far from her.” In my nearly 15 years of marriage I’ve never been alone with a female who is not my wife. I go to ridiculous extremes to keep this and as I do it makes it so I can’t screw up. (2) Drink water from your own cistern. (If you know what I’m sayin’.) 5:15-19 tells us that what should keep us from other women is how amazing our relationship and sex is with our own wife. Guys who have affairs spend tons of energy planning when they’ll meet and covering it up, what if they spent even half that amount of time and energy on their marriages? And wives who say, “We have sex once a week, and that’s enough” – Wellll, ummmmm, yeahhhh, ummmm, no it’s not.