Be self-controlled and alert.
Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion
looking for someone to devour.
1 Peter 5:8
I'm doing a devotion right now by Gary Thomas called Devotions for a Sacred Marriage. He states that
previous generations of Christians may have paid too much attention to the devil, but our age tends to pay him too little heed.
Allow me to paraphrase a portion of one of the devotions . . .
The severe truth is that Satan hates your marriage and makes its destruction a nearly daily aim. And while many today might snicker, our modern naïveté concerning spiritual realities is at least as pathetic. We must be careful not to open the door to spiritual beings who seek to destroy the holy family God has called us to create.
Jesus taught constant vigilance when he told his disciples how to pray. The Lord’s Prayer includes these words: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:13). Notice, Jesus didn’t say, “deliver us from evil” but from “the evil one.” Jesus told his followers to regularly petition God so that they wouldn’t fall prey to the evil one’s schemes. A married couple’s relationship is the inner fortress in a cosmic spiritual battle. With so much at stake, can we afford to be lackadaisical? Dare we forget that a powerful, pernicious (lethal, malicious)
being has made it his aim to wreck what God is trying to build? Even worse, are we cooperating with his agenda? By our actions, whether physical (flirting with an office mate, viewing pornography, having little or no time to work on our marriages) or spiritual (neglecting to build spiritual intimacy), are we foolishly and recklessly putting our marriages at risk?
Because Satan exists, we must remain vigilant over our souls and our relationships and refuse to provide any open doors that can invite Satan to work his wiles. Ask God to give you a loving and a pure heart. Keep moving toward your spouse. Ask God to close any doors you have foolishly left open. Guard what God has given you; give Satan no place to enter.
I'm going to allow a blog I follow,
Warrior Wives, to (as she put it) wade into the Grey debate on my behalf with her post of
All Fired Up About Fifty Shades of Grey. But I also thought you might find a husband's perspective interesting as well. Check out
Fifty Shades of Danger also.
And come on now. Before feathers get all ruffled, my intentions are
not to judge or take a perch atop a high-horse here. Because trust me, there have been things I've read, heard and watched, even on prime time TV (!!), that I wish I could rewind and most definitely wipe from this photographic memory of mine. But I can't. What I can do however, is not allow this one in. So instead I'm just sharing these links to fellow bloggers who I feel did a far superior job than I could have of explaining exactly
