Are We Committing Adultery?

Are you committing adultery?

Strange question?

It’s one I’ve been asking myself lately after reading James 4:4.

‘Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.’

If we are one of God’s children, we are also the bride of Christ. How often do we commit spiritual adultery?

Each time we lust after the things of the world, it’s the same as our spouse lusting after another and we commit adultery in our hearts.

(But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.) Matt 5:28

Each time we desire something more than we desire God we commit adultery.

Each time we love someone more than we love God, it’s like our spouse loving another more than us and we commit adultery.

Each time we look away from our Saviour and put the things of the world before God we commit adultery.

It really hurts me to think how often I must have grieved God with my lack of faithfulness to Him.

Just think how devastated we would be if we were cheated on, yet how often do we do the same thing to our Heavenly Husband?

Is there anything we are putting before God?

Our family? Our career? Our hobbies? A clean house? Our phone? Social media?

John very clearly shows us in his first epistle that we cannot love the world and God.

‘Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.’

There has to be a separation from the world and the things of it, however hard that may be. We need God to help us crucify the desires of our flesh.

Christ is always gently wooing us with His great love, through His Word but are we listening?

How about if you were to think of your Bible as His letter explaining His great love for you.

Telling you how He will always be faithful to you, even if you fail Him.

Telling you how He is always near you, waiting for you, even when you wander.

How He is ALWAYS listening and ready to help you and how He will give you everything you need to stay faithful to Him if you will but trust Him entirely.

How as you walk together, He will hold your hand and if you decide to go off alone and fall, He will lovingly chide, then help you back up.

How He will teach you the best way to go and how ALL his paths are peace, even the darkest paths.

How He will be your Comforter and Guide and how He’ll give you all the wisdom you need.

Will you not say with Solomon …

‘His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend,’

But we also need to remember that Satan is always busy trying to lure us away. He is cunning and has many ways that he will use to try to trip us up and trip we will unless we are walking leaning on our Beloved, holding onto Him, keeping very closer to Him in prayer and through His Word.

‘No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.’ Matt 6:24

Will we stay faithful to our Saviour or will betray him and turn to the world to satisfy us?

Don’t let’s defile the temple of God with the world for as Paul says…

‘Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.’

I’m finding this all so searching but we so need God to show us, through His Word, the darkness in our hearts so that we may look to God to dispel that darkness.

Are we living for the Kingdom of God? The Kingdom of light and life and liberty (and it truly is a way of liberty).

Or are we living for the kingdom of Satan, the kingdom of darkness and death and bondage?

Let’s be praying that we’ll not be

‘choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection.’and that we’ll not be left to be ‘lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;’

Let’s be living with an eternal perspective friends.

With love in Christ,

Sharon x