He was not going to church as often as he used to. He had good fellowship with some Christian friends but he kind of caught up with busy life and felt estranged from them and the things of God.
Then little by little, his prayer-time turned from one hour to five minutes. He knows that he is a good looking guy who attracts any woman in his vicinity. At times he blamed his look for finding himself in bed with a number of women he didn’t even know their full names.
He swore to God and himself never to have sex with a woman before marriage but he didn’t seem to be able to stick it out.
After he counted three months of life without sex, one woman began seriously pursuing him. He tried to avoid her but nothing worked. He thought for himself, “She is young and beautiful. Why does she make herself this cheap?”
She once invited him lunch and he felt bad to say no. So he accepted her invitation. They went out to a descent restaurant. Throughout lunch, he kept on reminding himself saying that he was not there for sex but because he didn’t want her to feel rejected.
The next day, she called him early in the morning to see if she could count on him for her weekend lunch or dinner. He laughed and said, “Hmm, sure. You know what, I will call you right back” and he hang up the phone.
He was not sure what to do with this woman who availed herself to him 100%. And she was from a different race than him. That didn’t bother him much until she told him of her interest to have a child of mixed race. He didn’t think of her for a girlfriend let alone for a wife. So he wanted to call his uncle who seemed to know about women a lot.
So, he called his uncle. They talked as any two men talk. He said this to him as “a matter of fact” kind of talk: “I met this woman and she is beautiful and everything but I don’t know if I’m interested on her.” His uncle said, also in a “matter of fact” way, “After few years, you will be 40. You may as well settle it with someone now than feeling sorry for yourself later.”
He knew that he had to come up with a decision what to do with her. He struggled with himself to call and invite her for dinner. He remembered all those women he convinced to sleep with. And the last one was the one he struggled to forget. She was a genuine Christian who wanted to do everything in the right way. And she refused to have sex with him before marriage. He promised her that he would marry her, just so she would say yes for sex. He was her first man ever.
But after the fact, he told her that he wanted to finish school first and think about marriage later. She left him crying and she never answered his phone calls. After he tried to call her for three weeks, he gave up once he knew she changed her phone number. It has been almost three months since he heard from her.
Now he was with this woman he was interested neither to marry nor have sex with.
After he thought about it long and hard, he called and invited her for dinner. She was very excited. She said, “You know what, let’s move your dinner invitation for another weekend. I just finished putting together a nice dinner. Let’s have dinner in my apartment and you will take me out for dinner next weekend. How does that sound?”
He said, “Sounds good.”
He got there around 7pm. By the time he drove back to his apartment, it was 11pm.
Everything happened so quick that he couldn’t even put them all together to make a story out of it.
He felt dirty. He felt like all his clothes smelled like rotten eggs. He wanted to throw up. He hated himself. He couldn’t believe to what kind of filthy and dirty stuff he gave himself to. He felt as if someone had just stolen something from him that he couldn’t get back. Guilt and regret consumed him from the inside out.
He turned his favorite Gospel song to comfort himself but it didn’t help that much. He wanted to pray but didn’t want to pray because he didn’t know how to tell God the very thing God Himself had witnessed.
He felt like stopping by at a liquor store to get something to knock him down through the night. But he had done that before and didn’t like the hangover. So, he passed through the liquor store without stopping. He said to himself, “Why do they have a drive-thru liquor shop?” and said, “Why should I care? Why am I asking this anyways?”
The woman who just slept with him called him. He saw her number and had a bitter taste in his mouth. He hated her with all his strength and pressed ignore. Within a minute, she called him back. He glanced at his phone, stared at his phone with disbelief and silenced the ring tone and said, “What does she want from me now?”
He rushed to his apartment and went directly to his bedroom. He didn’t want to stay awake brushing his teeth and wearing his pajama. So he just took off his outer garments and went right into his bed with his under clothes.
He couldn’t stop his mind from thinking about what had just transpired in his life few hours ago. Before he knew it, anger filled his heart. He was angry towards God saying, “Why do you let me go through this again?”
But he knows how God didn’t acquit Adam after he blamed Eve for his own wrong choices. So, he turned to himself. He was very upset and angry at himself for repeating this same mistake all over again as if he never experienced all these things before.
He felt as if he was sleeping on pieces of rocks. His soul, spirit and mind seemed to shout at him like, “Why?” He didn’t know that he was actually drifting in to a deep sleep while he was tossing and turning, forcing his brain to forget it all.
He was sleeping but at the same time, he was thinking and seeing as if he was awake. He was sleeping on his usual bed with a mattress which was covered by an Egyptian 700 count cotton bed sheet.
Turning to the other side, he asked himself why he was not feeling cozy as he used to. It was the same bed but something didn’t seem to be quite right.
Then he heard “tish-tish, tish-tish, tish-tish, – – -” kind of sound coming in pairs. It sounded as if dry leaves falling and getting consumed by wildfire.
“Fireworks?” he asked himself.
He thought to himself, “Is it already July 4th Independence Day?“ He said, “Wow, time flies. It feels like yesterday I saw snow. Well!”
He took a deep breath and positioned himself to his favorite sleeping position, on his belly. Then somehow that “tish-tish” sound seemed to be very close to his ears and he started smelling fried meat.
“Barbeque?” he exclaimed but didn’t want to worry about it too much. He felt very uncomfortable. And he remembered the Bible verse that says, “God grants sleep to those he loves” (Psalm 127:2).
Then he started feeling pain all over his body.
By the time he tried to look down his body, half of his body, the side he was sleeping on, was attached to the fire which was coming out of his mattress. Then he realized that the mattress he thought he was sleeping on was actually a fiery furnace. As he struggled to detach himself from the fire, he heard someone saying:
“Can a man scoop fire into his lap
without his clothes being burned?
Can a man walk on hot coals
without his feet being scorched?
So is he who sleeps with another man’s wife;
no one who touches her will go unpunished.” (Proverbs 6:27-29)
And the voice added, “The Word of God is True and Just!”
Staring at his flesh, his tears, in row of two, rolled down his cheeks. He remembered reading this passage when he was ten years old, at Sunday school. He remembered trying to memorize them so he would outsmart his friends.
Then he, for the first time in his lifetime, looking up to the sky, opened his mouth and wailed saying, “Jesus!”
Then he opened his eyes and saw his body covered with sweat. His tears were still rolling on his cheeks. He knew he was dreaming.
He said, “Oh” and checked his bed and mattress. He looked at the clock and it was 2am. He dragged himself out of his bed. He fell on the floor and wailed “Jesus” and continued crying like a little boy. He couldn’t bring out any word except the name of Jesus. He sobbed and sobbed. He called out to Jesus five hundred times but it was not enough for him. He had nothing in his mind to say to God, except the name of Jesus.
He didn’t know for how long he had been calling the name of Jesus but he found himself lying on the floor around ten in the morning. He didn’t want to go to work. He called out sick and decided to stay home.
The woman who had him the previous night already called him twelve times; texted him seven times and left him four voice messages which he deleted them all without reading. And he called the pastor of the church he used to go to. While anguish and pain trying to suck the life out of him, he said, “Pastor, please help me”.
That was the beginning of his victory. That day was the first day of his journey to the promised land of sexual purity. He turned from his sin once more and he never went back to it again. He saw “the dungeon” he was living in. He saw “the fiery furnace” he was sleeping on. In the middle of that dark night, he made a covenant with God never to go back to his sinful lifestyle.
His sin brought death to his life. The consequences of his sin were beyond he could bear but God gave him enough grace to carry them all. He is still dealing with some of the consequences of his wrong choices such as mild to severe depression, and other stuff.
Whenever he finds himself in the valley of depression, he knows how to call the name of Jesus who is the very present Help in times of trouble.
This brother is now a father of two boys and a husband of one beautiful woman.
What would be the story of his sons! I can’t wait! ///