A4P Guest: I heard you saying many times and read on many of your posts that looking at a woman lustfully is like committing adultery. Am I right?
A4P: First, I didn’t say that; Jesus did in Matthew 5:28
“But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
And second, Jesus didn’t say, “looking at a woman lustfully is LIKE committing adultery.” He said, “anyone who looks at a woman lustfully HAS ALREADY committed adultery with her in his heart.” (capitalization is added emphasis)
A4P Guest: Okay, Jesus said it and I heard you quoting Him many times.
Praise God! I had a wonderful time this past weekend with wonderful people of God in Lancaster, PA.
As I always do, before I say anything, I would like to say “Thank you” to those people who made this conference possible and my stay in Lancaster a very interesting one.
There are a number of things in life we unconsciously accept as an absolute truth while they are not true at all. These things are collectively called as myths.
I don’t think anyone of us, in one way or another, are immune from believing/accepting “myths” as truth at one point of our lives.
It came to my attention that my recent 19th wedding anniversary message I made to my husband in London was not actually uploaded on the Appeal for Purity (A4P) YouTube channel and because it wasn’t uploaded on YouTube, many people didn’t get a chance to see it.
With a female voice, “Hi Berhan, I just call to say hi and to wish you a happy Easter” was a voice message I found on my answering machine right after I celebrated my first year wedding anniversary. (This was in 1998 – no smartphone, no Facebook, no social media, no nothing.)
After we had our three kids, my prayer time got shorter and shorter and kind of disappeared in thin air. When the Holy Spirit comes and whispers in my ears saying, “Why don’t you pray now?” I will immediately say, “I’m not able to; can’t You see?” And the Holy Spirit asks, “Why can’t you?” I will say, “The children You gave me take all my time and energy and I have no strength left to pray and read the Word.” In a way, I was saying to Him, “If it was not for my children, I would have been praying and worshiping You; but since they are here, sorry, I can’t do that.”
He has to come up with something like this because he married his 7th grade classmate; a girl he put his eyes on since that day; a day he realized that he missed one one of his ribs.
This young man realized that marriage is a ministry, a call. And he not only affirmed his girl that she is his but also he is hers! How romantic.
A4P Guest: My husband doesn’t pursue me for intimacy. I told him about Viagra but he is not willing to go to see his doctor. I tried to seek counseling from our church ministers but the thing is our church ministers blame me for everything, so I don’t want to go to them. What do I need to do for my husband to pursue me again for intimacy? He is not interested in sex anymore.
A4P: What do you mean your church ministers blame you for everything? Are they saying that you are the reason for your husband’s loss of interest for intimacy?
A4P Guest: Yes! They always say that I control and dominate my husband.
Someone dropped this poster in my inbox and I laughed very hard. Why? It has some truth.
When an argument or a conflict erupts between a husband and a wife, I believe a man has to be very wise from which side he has to present his case.
Most of us women are very good at remembering events that happened ten or twenty five years ago; but not our husbands. We can remember because we tend to “tag” every event with emotion; which is a big help for our brain to retrieve past stories quickly and very easily. Our men, on the other hand, usually don’t tag events with “Oh, my! I love that!” Or “Aww! That is awesome!” Or, “My! That deeply hurt my feeling and I don’t think I will ever forget it” kind of emotion. So, it is easy for them to forget it.
