How To Avoid Adultery

20 May How To Avoid Adultery

Adultery has become unashamedly popular in recent times. It has risen through the rank and file of our society, young and old, low class, middle class and high class. The church and unchurched, believers and nonbelievers, leaders and followers, all classes of people have been hit and subdued by the destructive spirit of adultery.

Adultery does not do anyone any good, it leaves broken hearts, pain, guilt and many times wounded spirits. It is destroying marriages, raising sick and depressed children and building uncertainty in their hearts.

ADULTERY IS SIN! We must fight it, refuse it, chase it away and kill it from our marriages. Click To Tweet

After I wrote on 6 Ways You Can Avoid Fornication a couple of years ago because of my readers’ demands, I had to sit with God to draw out these strategies against adultery. Note that this list of strategies is not exhaustive.

Let me begin:

1. Accept It Is Wrong.
Until you agree with God that it is wrong for you to have sexual relations with another person’s spouse or someone who is not your husband or wife, you will not even consider avoiding it.

God has commanded us that: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Exodus 20:14

So you must agree that God’s command demands obedience and commit yourself to it.

2. Love Your Spouse.
A heart that loves with the love of God at all times can scarcely fall for adultery. When you truly love your spouse the thought of not doing a thing that would hurt him or her would restrain you.

Either way, Christ’s love controls us 2 Corinthians 5:14

Never let your love grow weary and tired, take necessary steps to ensure that your love for your spouse is always on the increase.
May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. 1 Thessalonians 3:12 (NIV)

When you love your spouse you would refuse all temptations and desires because you care about him or her.
Love cares more for others than for self. I Corinthians 13:5 (The Message)

3. Guard Your Heart.
When you tell your heart the kind of thoughts to think, when wrong thoughts come rushing in you would resist them and refuse them accommodation in your heart.

Watching erotic and sensual movies do not help much in this regard because they play over and over in your mind and you begin to imagine what it would be like being part of the scene if it was real life. This could lead you to lustful and adulterous desires.

What you listen to also matters; the eyes and ears naturally feed the heart and what your heart thinks on, your body will accomplish.

Lead your heart by God’s word, guard your heart. Click To Tweet

Guard your heart more than anything else, because the source of your life flows from it. Proverbs 4:23 (GW)

4. Watch It With The Opposite Sex.
Even if you do not feel anything for an opposite sex, if you spend enough time with them you may lose your right sense of judgment, proximity can raise sexual attraction and it is often subtle and tricky.
Avoid spending time with any opposite by yourself.

A lot of men have fallen for their secretaries for instance: while I agree that when lust is in a man’s heart, whether or not he has a female secretary or assistant does not matter. I strongly agree that keeping a female assistant or secretary creates ample opportunities for the temptation and/or act itself. Do not think you are too strong, guard yourself…
Same thing goes for the woman, do not take the risk of spending untold time with a boy and man, proximity has made many do what they didn’t think possible.

There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid. Proverbs 30:18-20 (KJV)

5. Make Yourself Accountable To your Spouse.
Tell your spouses of advances to you from another person, do not try to handle it alone. This will help him/her (Depending on his/her relationship with God) to pray for you, watch out for you and talk you out of entertaining such moves from the person.

Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: Ecclesiastes 4: 9-10a

6. Think Of The Consequences.
One thing that has helped me not to yield to many temptations is thinking of what pain it would cause me and how it could affect my eternal destination. the thought of how my act would displease God has kept me in check.

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators,nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind. 1 Corinthians 6:9

7. Fortify Yourself In Prayers.
There is immeasurable power in prayer. When you pray wisdom to handle adultery temptations is imparted to you. Prayer helps you to attack adultery and also defend yourself from it.

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation. Matthew 26:41a

8. Flee!
Like in the case of fornication and even other sins, do not stand and try to explain why you cannot do it. Do not try to sympathize with the person in question…
BORROW A LEAF FROM JOSEPH THE SON OF JACOB AND FLEE!

How do your adultery-proof your marriage?
How would you deal with a temptation to commit adultery?

Copyright© Ugochi Oritsejolomisan 2015
Updated

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