When the LORD your God enlarges your territory, as he has promised you, and you say, ‘I will eat meat,’ because you CRAVE meat, you may eat meat whenever you desire.
— Deuteronomy 12:20 (emphasis added)
7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, [:)] a land of olive trees and honey, 9 a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. 10 And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.
— Deuteronomy 8
11 But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, 12 a land that the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.
13 “And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14 he[a] will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. 15 And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full. 16 Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them;
–Deuteronomy 11
It’s okay to enjoy life while remembering the Source of all provision and abundance, and giving Him all the glory.
It’s okay to be human.
Nothing wrong with craving a beautiful godly wife with an amazing body, a secure, handsome husband who loves the Lord, or craving milk and honey and everything good life has to offer – only biblically.
God didn’t subject His Son to eternal hell for our sins. I think this is a model for His limiting sexual deprivation only to a season of life.
I spent too long around people who focus on a God who’s holy, holy, holy and full of wrath towards sinners, which He is, but they seem to forget that He’s also a God who turned water to wine at a wedding, wrote Proverbs 5 and the Song of Solomon, commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, doesn’t want us sexually deprived in marriage, and richly provides us with everything good to enjoy.
Practice disipline now, reap the rewards later. Work diligently for a season, not forever. Same goes for self-restraint and abstinence.
God is reasonable, gracious and fair.
See also:
Christ-centered ANR 