Drink water from your own cistern, and running water from your own well (Proverbs 5:15). What God has put together, let no man put asunder (Mark 10:9). Those are two verses in the Bible that sum up what God’s position is on being involved in any intimate way with someone other than your spouse.

And there are very few Bible-living people, before they become involved with someone else, who would deny that this is how we should conduct our lives in marriage. Yet why is it that we keep getting letters here at Marriage Missions from so many that are finding themselves in this type of situation, if that were true? We think it’s because we don’t believe it could happen to us.

We’ve heard the words so many times, “That would never happen to us (or to me)”… “I would never” —spiral down to, “I never thought it would happen to us (or to me), or “I (we) never meant for this to happen.” And yet it did. And all the words to say you’re sorry doesn’t erase the fact that you allowed yourself to “fall” into it.

That’s what happened to Judy Starr who wrote the book, The Enticement of the Forbidden. She even said, “That’s the last thing I expected. I have an incredible husband. One of the most godly men I’ve ever met in my life, and I was the person that would stand up first and say, ‘I would never be involved with someone else’.”

And yet she did — even though she and her husband were in full-time ministry, very much in love, and led a very full-filling, exciting life together, she “fell” into the trap of falling in love with someone else and almost left her marriage for this other man.

Why do we bring up this point? The reason is because it goes to show us that none of us can be so sure of ourselves and what we are and aren’t capable of doing that we let our guard down for a moment or we might become surprised at what we really ARE capable of when the enemy of our faith finds a weakness.

The Bible (in 1 Peter 5) tells us to “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith.” That’s a warning from God telling us that the enemy is looking for a weakness and we’d better be aware of that fact. We’re also told in the Bible (Isaiah 59:15) that “whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.”

So those of us who are Bible-living Believers who are, of course, trying to “shun evil” need to be all the more on the alert because we’re even more of a target for the enemy to try to devour us in participating in that which would break the heart of God.

When Judy Starr (who went with her husband to the Caribbean to work on the gospel project promoting the Jesus film) was asked in a radio interview on Family Life Today www.familylife.org how the whole affair started with her, she talked of how exhausted she was. She said:

“I was working very long hours, working late at night, and I’d get up in the morning, and to maximize my time, I started skipping time with the Lord, because we were on this deadline to get this thing done. So when I arrived at the project in the Caribbean, I arrived with somewhat of a hardened heart spiritually, because I just had not kept my relationship with the Lord current.”

She goes on to say:

“And when I arrived there, it didn’t take long to realize that there was a real draw and enticement between the captain of this boat and myself. It was very obvious that we had quite a connection. (They found they had a lot in common.) So we just began spending a lot of time talking personally. There were things that I should have done that I know now in hindsight are great protectors for our marriage, but I chose not to do that.”

She goes on to tell how she rationalized ways for her and this man to spend time together. When questioned about how she could do that—given the fact that she should have known better, she said:

“To be honest, when you’re doing those kinds of things, you make excuses right and left in your spirit. One of the things I talk about in the book is being honest with ourselves because I chose not to be honest with myself. I was coming up with all the excuses. But internally I knew what I was doing, and I knew I was trying to further this relationship.”

When asked how she would consider giving up her marriage to run off with this man she said:

“It’s amazing that someone who’s in full-time work and has devoted their whole life to seeing the Gospel furthered and so forth, could get to that point. It really comes down to just a hardened heart spiritually. Once a woman or a man begins pursuing that kind of relationship we become spiritually harder and harder.

It’s like you’re in love all over again — like what you experienced when you first met your husband. Those emotions are so incredibly powerful, you will do almost anything to be with that person and reason is gone. You become like an addict in one sense, and the sanity of what you’re doing doesn’t make any sense, but you’re willing to do whatever it takes.”

Judy was then asked how she could justify this while she was still working in ministry she said:

“Initially, I would be just as thrilled as everyone else when people would come to Christ, and at first it was a real struggle for me. It was back and forth. You’d feel like you had one foot in heaven and one foot in hell with the desires going on internally, but the longer I didn’t respond correctly to cutting off the relationship, and do the things that the Lord was telling me to do, the further my foot got away from heaven and the harder my heart became.”

So what eventually brought her back to reality and living for Christ as she should? It was a friend. Judy said, for some reason,

“By God’s grace I called an accountability partner that I had set up many years back in my young Christian life and told her what was going on. She really gave me a dose of reality in big form and talked to me about my vows before the Lord, about my ministry, about my husband, and everything I needed to hear.” When asked if this woman told her anything she didn’t already know she said, “No, but you really need somebody to awaken reality in you, because you are deceiving yourself. You’re closing your heart to what God wants to tell you.”

Judy eventually turned her life completely around. And that doesn’t always happen because sometimes we harden our hearts to reality and how we’re to live spiritually.

Next week we’ll share a few more things about all of this but before we close this message we want to emphasize a few important points that Dennis Rainey (the host of Family Life Today who conducted this interview) made. He said:

“I want to review a couple of things that occurred here:

• First of all, we have a woman who admitted her heart was growing cold for Christ. She was on a spiritual mission, but she was neglecting to guard her heart.

• Secondly, she never thought she would ever find herself in a situation like that, and I believe there are literally thousands, who would say, ‘Not me, I’d never find myself there.’ That’s not the message of Scripture - ‘Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.’

• Third, she kept moving in toward the heat that would burn her.

• Number four, a relationship with a godly woman that she could trust ultimately became a life preserver, not only of her marriage but more importantly, of her faith and the legacy she’s going to leave.”

If there’s anything you see in any of this —any warning signs you haven’t been paying attention to, we pray you’ll do something to turn your situation around. Or if you’re someone who’s seeing any of these warning signs happening in a friend’s life we pray you’ll ask God to show you how to intercede in their life to help them and then do it.

Judy’s friend said that she didn’t know if Judy would make the changes she needed to make but she knew she was responsible for saying what she did to possibly help that to happen. (For additional thoughts on this see Marriage Message #56 - What a Difference a Friend Can Make and #186-Divorce is Not a Private Matter.)

God Bless!
Steve and Cindy Wright

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