A Blessed Fountain

"Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe" (Proverbs 5:15-18).

The rewards for marital fidelity are wonderful. The rewards are as refreshing as pure spring water that is not polluted by adultery. The picture of infidelity we are given here is spilt water. Water that has spilt out on to the street is seen as lost and polluted. This is why discipline and restraint are so vital to the marriage relationship.

Cisterns, wells, springs, and streams all have boundaries. Those boundaries are what keep the water pure and readily accessible. Without restraint, the water is spilled out on to the streets and thus wasted. This is why the Lord calls on us to keep our sexual desires in check. There is absolutely nothing wrong with sexual desires. There is never a call for us to repress our sexual desires; we are simply called to control them.

River banks do a wonderful job of protecting neighborhoods from flood waters. Once those banks are breached, real damage is done. So it is with our sexuality. One of God's amazing gifts to His children is sex. His desire is for us to enjoy it in the safety of discipline and restraint. We are to be intoxicated by the joy of sex. To control our sexual desires inside the covenant of marriage leads to blessing. If not controlled, real damage is done. Within the protective river banks of marriage there is tremendous rejoicing when sexual freedom is exercised and enjoyed.

Never forget, you do not have to repress your sexual desires. You simply have to direct them. If you do, you will know the pleasure of God in the intimacy of your marriage. If you do not, you will only know the heartache of sexual floodwaters that have spilled over their protective banks.