Love Flashes Like Fire

Place me like a seal over your heart,

like a seal on your arm.

For love is as strong as death,

its jealousy as enduring as the grave.

Love flashes like fire,

the brightest kind of flame.

Many waters cannot quench love,

nor can rivers drown it.

If a man tried to buy love

with all his wealth,

his offer would be utterly scorned. Song Of Songs 8:6-7

POPULAR MUSIC can make love seem so sentimental, so simple, so safe. Sitcoms make casual sex seem so inconsequential and unfettered. But the lover in Song of Songs knows that love is far more intense than mere sentimentalism, far more complex than mere words, far more dangerous than hurt feelings. Misuse or misdirect sexual desire and it has the power to inflict severe damage. The only way to safely maintain something with so much power is to experience it in a secure relationship sealed through lifelong commitment.

Everyone to whom we join ourselves, everyone with whom we sleep, takes a piece of us that we can never fully get back. The experience leaves an imprint deep in our souls. To play around with sexual intimacy outside of marriage is to play with fire. Perhaps your child has already been burned. If so, there is good news in the gospel: There is a balm that brings healing to sexual scars. By his wounds we are healed.

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were offended when they found Jesus eating with immoral and sexually broken people. But Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31-32, ESV). Jesus did not come to join himself to people with perfect sexual histories, as if there were such a person. Jesus came for sick people —people who had been burned by sexual sin. He still does not turn his back on sin-scarred people, even if those wounds were self-inflicted.

Lord, you know in a way I never can how ________ may have been burned by the misuse of sex. Help ________ to fall into the arms of the lover of her soul. Only you can bring healing to hidden places of the soul.