Tues.’s Devo - Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery

Read Ex. 20:14 Naturally this verse is easy to understand but maybe not so easy spiritually. Committing adultery is about usurping someone else’s place in their most intimate part of their life. Committing spiritual adultery is to substitute something else for the affection and love we should have for the Lord. When you have an affair you have to sneak around and find some way to spend time with this person. You lie, break moral laws, anything… just to have some time with them. I would liken an affair to an addiction. Addictions take our judgement away and replace them with an insatiable desire to pursue them. Whatever drives you and saps your time the most can be an addiction and if it takes you away from your first love, it is adultery. The Hebrew meaning of adultery is “apostatize; one who breaks wedlock”. When Jesus was talking about this in the sermon on the mount he went a step further and said that if you lusted after a woman in your heart it was considered adultery. So to really want something that is not in God’s kingdom is considered adultery. Apostatize means to leave what you have once believed in and believe something else. It would be like believing in witchcraft which is the craft of manipulation. If we truly have faith in God to be all-powerful, and in control, we won’t need to offer him our opinion about how he orchestrates our lives, we will just walk in faith. God had to divorce Israel for committing spiritual adultery with the gods of other lands. Lord, forgive us for putting anything in your place in our heart. Rid us of our addictions and let our addiction be to follow you. Thank you for the blood of Jesus that covers us.