Told to Enjoy Her

Let your spring be blessed. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe and a graceful deer— let her breasts satisfy you at all times. Be captivated always with her love. (Proverbs 5:18-19, WEB)

It surprises some men to find that God, in the middle of a warning about the forbidden woman, turns and tells a husband to delight in his wife. Solomon writes, "Rejoice in the wife of your youth, and be intoxicated always in her love." God is not squeamish about a husband's desire. He made it, and he means for it to have a home. The same passage that warns a man away from the stranger sends him back toward his own wife with permission to enjoy her fully.

The tragedy of pornography is that it trains a man to want a thousand strangers and to grow bored with the one woman he vowed to cherish. It splinters desire into something restless that no image ever satisfies, always reaching for the next thing and never resting in what it has. What Solomon describes is a settled and repeated joy in one person over many years, a desire that deepens rather than scatters.

If your wife has become ordinary to you while pixels feel exciting, the appetite has been bent, and it can be straightened. That bending happened over time, and the straightening will take time too, but it is real work that God is willing to do in you. Ask him to give you fresh eyes for the woman across the table, to make her lovely to you again, to teach you the unhurried pleasure of loving one person well. There is a kind of intoxication Solomon is pointing to that grows richer the longer you drink from the same well, and it is offered to you in your own marriage. That prayer honors both her and the God who gave her to you.