Pray the word with David Platt is a resource from Radical.net.

Song of Solomon, chapter three, verse five,

I assure you, oh, daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the doves 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, anytime, 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 have 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 and your thought life and 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

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