Very Descriptive Verses!

I was going through a study on selfishness with our staff, and we came upon these verses in Proverbs 23:6-8:

6 Do not eat the bread of a miser,
Nor desire his delicacies;
7 For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.
"Eat and drink!” he says to you,
But his heart is not with you.
8 The morsel you have eaten, you will vomit up,
And waste your pleasant words.

Our study was focusing on selfishness and on us being more concerned with or motivated by what we can get from God and others than with what we can give to them. I started thinking about these verses, and it struck me that our temptation to sexual sin starts in our hearts with thinking about wanting to be satisfied physically rather than allowing God to meet our needs.

It also led me to think about the question, "What is real love?" It is putting the other person first and not wanting to harm him/her in any way--physically, emotionally or spiritually. I have often told my clients that when they engage in sexual activity outside of marriage they don't really "love" the other person the way God intends them to, but are usually in "lust" with the other person (focused on self).

I was also thinking that any of us can be drawn into sexual sin not only by our own hearts but also by the sweet words of another person ("'eat and drink', he says to you"). The person doing the tempting is not thinking about how the outcome of the actions will affect the one being tempted, only how he/she can get the object of the quest to comply. Then when the conquest ("the morsel you have eaten") has been devoured (sexual involvement outside of marriage), the result will be "vomit" (remorse, unplanned pregnancy, abortion, heartbreak, STIs, etc.)! The parties involved use encouragement to sin and sweet words to entice, and then, when the deed is done, what is left over is destruction and heartbreak!

Wow! This passage so totally describes the outcome of sexual sin that we see here at the Center and so aptly shows the results of selfishness and lust!