Pray the Word with David Platt is a resource from radical.net.

Song of Solomon chapter 3, verse 5, I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles

or the doze of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.

Did you hear that last phrase?

It is so good and so needed in our culture,

especially today, at least where I live in the world, I assure you to not stir up or awaken

love until it pleases. So as we read Song of Solomon, we see a celebration of love in marriage and physical pleasure

in marriage, but we also see cautions against seeking that physical pleasure outside of

marriage between a husband and a wife. And we live in a world. This is such a different message than what we hear

in the world. This world says, any time, any place, any person, whatever you desire, fulfill that

desire. And God is saying, no, no, in my timing, in the place I have ordained with the person I've

given to you in the covenant marriage relationship.

This is where God has designed physical sexual pleasure to be enjoyed in the context of marriage.

And this is where we realize, yes, Song of Solomon is a powerful depiction of the beauty of the marriage relationship, but it's also

a warning, certainly to single men and women, not to seek that physical pleasure outside of

a covenant marriage relationship with a husband or a wife, and to caution every single person who is married to pursue that

pleasure only in the context of your marriage, in your thought life, in your desires, and in your

actions. And so we pray, God help us not to stir up or awaken love out of the good boundaries you have given us in

marriage. We know your repeated commands all across the New Testament to flee sexual immorality,

to flee sexual thought, desire, deed, action outside of marriage between a husband and a wife.

So God, help us to do that because everything around us in this world contradicts what you

are saying in your words. So we pray that you would help us to heed your cautions and to obey

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