Section 5—Life’s Energizing Force
(B) The Negative
(Words of Restraint and Caution)
Marriage Not Designed to Cover Sensuality and Base Practices—God never designed that marriage should cover the multitude of sins that are practiced. Sensuality and base practices in a marriage relation are educating the mind and moral taste for demoralizing practices outside the marriage relation.—The Review and Herald, May 24, 1887.
Sexual Excesses Endangering Health and Life—It is not pure, holy love which leads the wife to gratify the animal propensities of her husband at the expense of health and life….
It may be necessary to humbly and affectionately urge, even at the risk of his displeasure, that she cannot debase her body by yielding to sexual excess. She should, in a tender, kind manner, remind him that God has the first and highest claim upon her entire being and that she cannot disregard this claim, for she will be held accountable in the great day of God.—Testimonies for the Church 2:475 (1870).
Sexual excess will effectually destroy a love for devotional exercises, will take from the brain the substance needed to nourish the system, and will most effectively exhaust the vitality.—Testimonies for the Church 2:477 (1870).
Perversion of a Sacred Institution—Because they have entered into the marriage relation, many think that they may permit themselves to be controlled by animal passions. They are led on by Satan, who deceives them and leads them to pervert this sacred institution. He is well pleased with the low level which their minds take; for he has much to gain in this direction.
He knows that if he can excite the baser passions and keep them in the ascendancy, he has nothing to be troubled about in their Christian experience; for the moral and intellectual faculties will be subordinate, while the animal propensities will predominate and keep in the ascendancy; and these baser passions will be strengthened by exercise, while the nobler qualities will become weaker and weaker.—Testimonies for the Church 2:480 (1870).
The Abuse in Marriage of Sexual Privileges—The animal passions, cherished and indulged, become very strong in this age, and untold evils in the marriage life are the sure results. In the place of the mind being developed and having the controlling power, the animal propensities rule over the higher and nobler powers until they are brought into subjection to the animal propensities. What is the result? Women’s delicate organs are worn out and become diseased; childbearing is no more safe; sexual privileges are abused.
Men are corrupting their own bodies, and the wife has become a bed servant to their inordinate, base lusts until there is no fear of God before their eyes. To indulge impulse that degrades both body and soul is the order of the marriage life.—Manuscript 14, 1888.
Prenatal Influences—Satan seeks to debase the minds of those who unite in marriage that he may stamp his own hateful image upon their children….
He can mold their posterity much more readily than he could the parents, for he can so control the minds of the parents that through them he may give his own stamp of character to their children. Thus many children are born with the animal passions largely in the ascendancy, while the moral faculties are but feebly developed. These children need the most careful culture to bring out, strengthen, and develop the moral and intellectual powers, that these may take the lead.—Testimonies for the Church 2:480 (1870).
The Degrading Process—The mind of a man or woman does not come down in a moment from purity and holiness to depravity, corruption, and crime. It takes time to transform the human to the divine or to degrade those formed in the image of God to the brutal or the satanic.
By beholding we become changed. Though formed in the image of his Maker, man can so educate his mind that sin which he once loathed will become pleasant to him. As he ceases to watch and pray, he ceases to guard the citadel, the heart, and engages in sin and crime. The mind is debased, and it is impossible to elevate it from corruption while it is being educated to enslave the moral and intellectual powers and bring them in subjection to grosser passions.
Constant war against the carnal mind must be maintained; and we must be aided by the refining influence of the grace of God, which will attract the mind upward and habituate it to meditate upon pure and holy things.—Testimonies for the Church 2:478, 479 (1870).
https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/77.1157#1157
Dear Heavenly Father, Thank You for the privilege of prayer, knowing that through the name of Your Son we may expect what we ask, because we ask according to Your will to be like Jesus. Please bless us to commit to doing right with the motive of love. Please grant us a pure, wholesome, consistent Christian life, which is obtained by daily studying Your Word, the Holy Bible, to behold and reflect the character of Jesus to each other and the world. Like Jesus, please bless us to not be conformed to this world, but to be truly transformed into the persons You would have us be that we in our marriages and our families might honor You in every way. Please bless us truly to contemplate the life of Jesus and to allow Your Word to develop within us that true religion, which ennobles the mind, refines the taste, sanctifies the judgment, and makes us patient partakers of the vibrant health, purity, and holiness of Heaven. Because we ask all these in the Awesome name of Your Son, Almighty Jesus the Christ, our Savior, we say Thank You and Amen.
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DID YOU KNOW THIS…? And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the LORD.—Hosea 2:19, 20 KJV—[The WORD OF GOD—It’s the only flesh that is safe to eat (meditate on) to live forever!]
Do you feel sorrowful, disconnected—without a place to feel at home or useful? I pray this might show you the way forward. Watch…
https://www.youtube.com/live/2QB6fcwVuws?si=fsEvZU-rkI-BngfD
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FREE HEALTH TALK* open to the public Thursdays at 5pm at Country Life Natural Foods Store and Vegan/Vegetarian Restaurant, 1217 Eberhart Avenue, Columbus, GA.
Thursday, June 25: “I love my feet!”
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I coordinate wonderful health and worship events and conferences online and onsite as a gospel medical missionary at Uchee Pines, a total plant-based health retreat, where doctors and practitioners specialize in lifestyle medicine. For event details, visit https://www.ucheepines.org/events
Therefore, if at any time you fail to receive this post as a text, please visit
https://baiom.org/author/audreystovall/
where devotionals are first posted daily (almost without fail). From there devotionals are publicly shared to my page on FB, LinkedIn, and Signal (in My Story), and to a response-restricted group on WhatsApp (once again when I am able to find the time to successfully rebuild it).
NOTE: These began as daily texts to encourage my academy roommate and dear friend of nearly 50 years, until she suddenly passed March 2023. Now I continue to compile and send them to anyone who will receive them and to her family in honor of their mom. Lately, I have begun featuring consecutive chapter portions of a select Bible-based book.
If you agree to continue receiving them, then this is my personal gift to you; and in this way, I not only honor God but the memory of a very dear friend whom I desperately miss.
My personal prayer is that God will bless me to find ways to multiply this gift, so that we all may be encouraged to be found faithful in the sight of a Holy God, whenever Christ returns or our eyes are shut in the sleep of death.
It is a prayerful process that leads me to share from my personal study.
So please feel free to forward to your loved ones or to anyone, as God leads you. I’m calling them Barb’s Devotionals.