Daily Jewel

by Pastor J.T. Carnell, McAlester, OK “An Extravagant Relationship” “May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. “– Proverbs 5:18 Obviously not everyone reading this message will have a “wife.” I think you know who you are! Not everyone reading this message is married. So, does it have meaning to all of us? You bet it does! First, there is something to be said about how to live life with passion! We have been down this street before on a number of occasions but I think it really applies well here. If you have a passionate relationship with Christ—the thought of going elsewhere (i.e., being tempted by the adulteress) will not have any power or persuasion over you. You realize that the love of God through Jesus will sustain you and keep you satisfied against any and every temptation. Using the marriage analogy—the same thought applies! Going back to our discussion of verse 17 a spring is a perpetual source of pure water that flows constantly. You may attempt to plug it up, but it will find another outlet in which to flow. It is pure and wholesome as marriage was designed to be. In Old Testament times a fountain would be considered a luxury item (certainly something Solomon could afford) and was fed by a spring, so the water coming out of the fountain would be clean…pure and worth the price! The idea of drinking at one’s fountain would clearly be defined as having an extravagant, pure, wholesome and passionate relationship! The kind of relationship that God intended it be! According to Reuters news agency, Daniel Lehner and his wife, Remy, were married December 12, 1993. Evidently they believed in doing up anniversaries in a big, big way. Before they even celebrated their first anniversary, they made plans for how they would celebrate their second. They made plans to go to one of their favorite plays—The Phantom of the Opera, by Andrew Lloyd Webber—which they had already seen many times. But just going to the play was not enough to express their love. They wanted to make a grand gesture. So, more than a year in advance, they bought tickets for every seat in the house of New York’s Majestic Theater for December 12, 1995. That’s 1,609 seats and at that time, at a cost of nearly $17,000. Daniel and Remy evidently love each other—and this play—deeply! As they have demonstrated, one of the marks of a passionate love is extravagance. When Jesus walked the earth, there were people who expressed their love to him with extravagance; a good example was the woman who anointed His feet with “alabaster.” You do not have to have a lot of money to have an extravagant love affair with Jesus, or with your husband or wife or both if it still applies!