John N N Ng’ang’a Meditation of February 24 ,2025 Hebrews 13 How to avoid infidelity
Day 1
2 Samuel 11: 1-2
"At the time when Kings go off to war, David sent Joab out to the kings men and the whole Israelite army. They had destroyed the Ammonites and sieged Raba but David remained in Jerusalem. One evening, David got up from his bed and walked around the roof of the palace. From the roof, he saw a woman bathing and she was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her."
After reading 1 Samuel 11:1-2, we should also read the rest of the story. The king ended up in adultery after sleeping with Bathsheba, and what is worse, he not only became an adulterer, but he also followed it with murder. You know the story.
What caused the fall into sexual sin, which is the next step in managing our sexual drive? Avoid being idle.
What got David where he was, was that he had fought many battles and won many battles. In this season of war, he decided, "I am an old man, and I can enjoy early retirement. I shall go to the top of the floor and look out."
Kings are not supposed to be on the city rooftops during working hours. They were supposed to be out there, but he was idle, walking on the roof. You can imagine a whole king walking on the roof. He saw what he was not supposed to have seen—a beautiful woman bathing—and then you know the rest of the story.
A lot of the people who have ended up in sexual impurity did so because they were idle. They did not have something concrete to do. Now, each time I see a Christian who is idle, I seem to understand that he isn't aware that he is in the busy army of the Lord. Now, you know if you went to war, and you were ten soldiers fighting against three thousand, it is very unlikely that any of the ten soldiers would be on leave. You would all be busy fighting, all ten of you. And they tell us in a recent study that even people you can call evangelicals in Nairobi are no more than 20%, and any day of the week when you talk about praying, you are talking about a much lower percentage of people attending church, let alone prayer meetings. So then, is it possible that you can call yourself a Christian and have time that you do not know what to do with? And yet there are people in your neighborhoods, people at your workplace who do not know Christ, ministries here at your church that require people. One of the reasons why you end up in sin is because you are idle, and you are not following your calling.
Even times of rest must be well planned, so you are not just idle. Times of exercise must also be well planned. David failed to do this, and as I share in my book on Leadership: King David Style, it later cost him heavily.
Day 2
Matthew 5: 27-28.
"if you as a person lust over a woman or a man, you have already committed adultery."
Another cause of sexual failure is the wrong definition of sexual immorality
You cannot say that you were just thinking of sex. According to Jesus, when you lust for a woman, you have committed as much sin as the one who did sleep with her. So, when you are together in hell, where you are likely to be neighbors, it will not matter that you never had sex with her. One shall say, "Why are you here?" "I slept with a woman," and the other one asks, "Why are you here?" "I only lusted over her." It sounds very unfair because you did not sleep with her; you only lusted, you only imagined, you only fantasized, but you will burn under the same degree of heat in hell. It will not make a difference that you only lusted.
So, you need to understand that if you learn how to deal with sin at the formation stage in the mind, you will never end in sexual failure. When you have lusted over a woman, your secretary, or your neighbor, just the thought of thinking of her in that way should make you feel so bad that you go to God because you know that you have actually sinned. When you go to God in repentance, it will be possible to prevent you from going to the next stage of sex.
For many people, the reason why they got to the next stage is because they did not see sight as sin. That is why they can go and see all kinds of dirty films, read all kinds of dirty books, and fantasize. They can do all those things because they are not sleeping with a woman and so are not in sin. Then it is no wonder that they end up in the next step.
Day 3
Leviticus 20:10
"When you catch two people in bed, and they are not married, then you must stone both of them to death."
The next step is to view sexual sin as bad as God sees it.
What does that mean? It means that if you are involved in a sin, never imagine that the sin was caused by the partner in crime. You tell God, "It was the way that she was sitting; surely even You, what would You have done?" You seem to think that you had mitigating factors, like they say in law. When you end up in sin, never imagine that it is the other person to blame. It does not matter that she came with her dress a few inches up and a few inches down. It does not matter that she said things that were so suggestive. Even at that point, you could have done like Joseph in Potiphar's house—take off at a very high speed. That is what we are saying: you need to hate sin to a level that when you end up in sin, never blame it on the other person; you must admit it. They may indeed have done things that helped, but if you know the Lord, at every point, He kept whispering, "You should not do it," but you say, "Just once, God, not twice."
Thus, the other person is not to blame because you heard from the Holy Spirit, and you disobeyed Him.
Hebrews 13:4 "Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral."
Why should even teenagers be interested in the topic of sexual sin in marriage? At eighteen, marriage sounds like a far-fetched idea, yet in eight years, most of such people are already married (by the age of twenty-six). You see, the second reason why it is important for you to be interested in this topic is the fact that you have greater benefits from the ideas than those who are already married.
If I come to talk to my generation, whatever I say, those guys are so set in the way they manage their family that even on the issue of finances, it will be an uphill task to change. But when I’m talking to an eighteen-year-old, I’m writing on a clean slate. These are people who can listen to God and say, "Yes, God, when You bless me with a wife, I’ll follow Your plan."
Can you then see that the people who need this message even more are the teens? The next thing that can keep adultery away is financial oneness. We saw that a lot of family problems we have as we manage finances have to do with our belief systems. Even when you see a husband and wife fighting about money, it is not because of the money itself; it is because of their attitude towards money. And the problem is not the attitude towards money; it is their belief about money. It does not matter whether you have a lot of it or a little of it. When you have a lot of money, you are in trouble; when you have little money, you still have trouble in your marriage.
Day 4
Gen 2:18
The LORD God said, "It isn't good for the man to live alone. I need to make a suitable partner for him."
The belief behind why you marry will direct how you react to many issues. Why do we marry? We normally have five good reasons why we should marry and five bad reasons why not. The first time God says, "It is not good," is when He identified the sickness of the man. What was his sickness? Loneliness. The man was lonely, and the problem was not that he was alone, but that he was lonely. The two are not the same.
You know you can be alone and not lonely. These are the people I call single and satisfied; they are alone but not lonely. Now it is very important to know that this guy Adam was not just alone, he was alone and lonely. What was the solution?
Loneliness or lack of companionship will lead many to sexual sin whether they are single or married. The solution was marriage if not married and friendship if married. God said, "Let us make him a helpmate." So the reason given as to why we should marry is companionship. Although God visited the Garden of Eden and He gave companionship, it was never appropriate companionship, and the only companionship that could deal with the loneliness of Adam was one like him. That is why he called her woman because she was taken out of man.
So, the reason, according to God, as to why anybody should be interested in marriage is to get an opportunity to give and get companionship. If you have different reasons as to why you marry, there’ll be trouble in your marriage.
There are people who marry for economic reasons. They look at themselves and say, "If I were to apply for a mortgage alone, I could only get a house in a low-class estate, but if both of us get married and we add our money together and apply, I’ll get one in a better estate." This is a benefit of marriage but not God's reason for marriage. You can have a joint purchase with your sister, but this will not be marriage. And we have a lot of people where the trouble they are currently getting in their marriage is because they married to move out of Umoja to Buruburu, but they are still in Umoja because the girl did not bring as much as she was supposed to bring.
I know a marriage that finally collapsed for this reason. When we were trying to counsel them, we thought we could help them. However, the man felt that this woman was not bringing to the table what she was expected to.
If the reason you married her was for her to bring money to the table, as soon as money is not brought to the table, there will be trouble. You see, she is not a wife; she is a money maker. That marriage has no chance of survival. All he told you before the wedding was, "I love you…I love you," but inside he felt you would bring money. "I love your money." Now you need to understand that what he got was not what he bargained for because he never told you he was marrying a bank. You thought he was marrying you as a wife. One can earn enough to live on, and hence you do not marry to deal with your money hunger. You should never then see your spouse as a bank.
Day 5
Ecc 4:12 Someone might be able to beat up one of you, but not both of you. As the saying goes, "A rope made from three strands of cord is hard to break."
We must really create marriages that give companionship a chance. Let us look at Ecclesiastes 4:12, which talks about the idea of coming together.
In other words, God is saying that the reason why we should come together is because when you come together, you are likely to make a better team. But then He introduced something else that is important if you are going to manage your team well: a belief that your marriage is only going to be a good marriage if it is not a party of two but a party of the wife, the husband, and God. Without God, marriage is just a cord of two strands, but Christianity tells us that if we want one that cannot be broken, it must be a cord of three strands. To have a tight marriage that will not allow sex outside, please have God in the mix.
The first belief system that will help your marriage in the way you manage your issues is a belief system that although the husband is the head, he only has delegated authority from God, the third party of the marriage. He only does what the head says because the real head of the family is not a man. Who is the head? God.
Now you need to understand that when Jesus comes into your marriage, He calls the shots. You’ll feel like your wife has annoyed you and you want to quarrel, but the Spirit says, “Wait a minute. I forgave you in the morning. What’s so difficult about forgiving her now?” You have the choice to make: continue talking tough or listen to the head. The Jesus we are talking about is not a silent listener; He is a very loud partner in your home. If you go ahead and continue quarreling, He’ll cut His relationship with you.
Even in terms of money, a lot of the arguments you are having, He’ll remind you just before you start insulting your husband: where do you think the money you have came from? I gave it. It is not your money; it is My money. And just before you embarrass your husband in that financial quarrel, the Holy Spirit whispers, "Woman, it is My money. I only gave it to you as a steward." Are we together?
So, the first solution to family management is to recognize God’s ownership of the marriage. God owns the marriage and is there to call the shots and be in control. Marriage is God’s idea, and He will manage it properly if you allow Him. He is the only one who can understand how the marriage can succeed, like every manufacturer with his products.
But secondly, friendship dies because a man cannot be trusted, and yet marriage cannot survive without trust. Family management requires trust. How do you start working on issues together with a guy who is not trustworthy? There is no hope for marriage until you realize that you can hand over your husband to God and God can manage him when you can’t. He starts spending money wrongly, and you report him upstairs. The guy has no sleep throughout the night, and in the morning, he wakes up and says, "Darling, the idea I had yesterday, forget it." You have done nothing, but you reported him upstairs. God can manage him, not by a woman manipulating the man, but by reporting him upstairs.
Also, brother, if a woman gives you trouble because she keeps asking for this, for that, for the other, until you feel, “I’ll go mad,” please do not go mad; report her to God. So, I’m not asking you to trust the woman; she might not be trustworthy. I’m asking you to trust the God of the woman because you know that God can change your woman. So, you can trust Him because you know this woman can be mean and selfish, but when God is in control, all will go well. It is very important to come to where you are able to put your trust in God and therefore can be open about money. This way, the friendship will be restored, and sex outside marriage will not be a temptation.
Day 6
Mal 2:15
Did not God create you to become like one person with your wife? And why did he do this? It was so you would have children and then lead them to become God's people. Do not ever be unfaithful to your wife.
A lot of the reasons why people are fighting over marriage issues is because first, they do not trust each other, as we have seen, but secondly, both are not transparent. Now I’m not talking about the guy who is to trust; I’m talking about you who is not trustworthy. The Bible says that if your marriage is to be Christian, you must allow yourself to be naked before your spouse. When it comes to marriage issues, it is very important that you share openly even before the wedding.
I know one person who got married just before my time and had a wonderful wedding. I told Rebecca, "Surely I do not know how we’ll marry if our wedding has to be like so and so’s. It was very expensive." About one year later, I met this brother in the Lord walking the street with his head hanging to the side. I asked him what had happened.
He had become so stressed that he got depressed. I do not know whether stress can cause your neck not to move. We started to find out what had gone wrong. We found that it was because this brother did not admit to the wife-to-be that he was taking a loan to manage the wedding. Why? His argument was very simple. "This girl has a salary, I have a salary. Even if I commit all mine to the wedding, when we get married, we can be using her salary." Unfortunately, she also had thought, "My friend has a salary. Even if I committed all my salary, we shall use his salary." She felt, "My parents were so good to me, they educated me. Before I left home, I cannot leave them without a house." So she took a loan, built a house to completion, and by the time they got married, they both had no money.
Now in their home, she did not have money, he did not have money. When she said, “Can you buy rice and use your money?” he kept quiet. They were not talking openly… nobody wanted to admit. When they finally discovered the situation they were in, he ended up in depression.
Transparency and nakedness are required as you walk towards marriage. That marriage began with trouble that affected even the bedroom, but the Lord healed him later. So a lot of marital problems you are having in your marriage have to do with not accepting the Biblical basis of marriage.
If you choose not to be transparent, for example, what will happen is that you will have a shallow marriage because the depth of your marriage depends on your vulnerability. You say, "If we start sharing money, she can destroy me." I agree she can. But if you refuse to take the risk of her destroying you, you lower the quality of your marriage. The depth of your marriage depends on your vulnerability. The two are related. Husband and wife relationships are like that of porcupines. In your village, are there porcupines? Porcupines have a very interesting problem. When it gets cold, porcupines gather. But if porcupines come together, they start pricking one another. And when they prick one another, they again move aside. Again, it becomes cold, and they realize the only solution is to come together.
That is how marriage is. She has pricked you, and you have pricked her. You come together, and you prick one another. You say, “I am going away,” and she says, “Please go.” You soon will be cold. Warmth is only possible by the porcupines looking for styles of getting the spikes together such that they do not harm one another much. This takes time, practice, and love. But if they spend enough time on this, the porcupines will enjoy warmth.
It is very important to understand that it is the same thing with marital issues. The issues are risky, like porcupines, they can destroy. But if you want quality for your marriage, it will be important that you spend time on them until you are close friends.
Matthew 19:5-6: "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and gets married. He becomes like one person with his wife. Then they are no longer two people, but one. And no one should separate a couple that God has joined together."
For you to manage your marriage properly, you must aim at a Christian marriage that is based on holiness. Matthew 19:5-6 is quoting Genesis but taking a step further: what God has put together, let no man separate. Even you do not have the permission to separate what God joins. In a court of law in Kenya, they can separate you legally. You will have a legal discharge, but does God discharge you? That is what you need to understand about this idea of a Christian marriage: that you are in this marriage, and it is not reversible. Since you cannot separate, the only thing you will do is to look after it with care. If you plant a rare tree, and it is not growing properly, you do not cut it down if you know you cannot replace it. What do you do? You look for fertilizer and consult on chemicals needed. You look after it well. Once you know you are in this to stay, you will work on friendship.
When you know divorce is not a possibility, what happens? You read any books that can help you look after your marriage. You will do everything. You will do a PhD on that girl until you can turn the girl around. Because you have no other alternative. Isn’t it? Your marital issues will no longer be impossible issues. You will discuss them since you feel, "I am here to stay."
If you believe you are not there for long, what happens? You will not mix your money because you cannot mix your money with a person who is likely to leave any time. You might feel, "Ndikenjerewo mbui guku" (I will not have my grey hair in this marriage). Kikuyu women who want to divorce used to say, "I am with you now, but my grey hair will not be seen in this home." It is very important to understand that if your belief about marriage is this temporary arrangement, you cannot mix your money. In the process, you do not live in a marriage that has oneness. Christian marriage is a unified thing.
If not truly one at times, they cannot talk over issues. And last night one was facing Mecca and the other one Medina, but when they come to church, they come hand in hand. And there are not a lot of quarrels between them despite not sharing many things. They understand theirs is not expected to have oneness. So, they allow each other a lot of independence. It is pretense, and no wonder they look for sex elsewhere. You do whatever you want with your money. Some of them even divide children. The mother loves the ones named on the wife’s side, and the ones named after the husband’s side are loved by the father. That is not a Christian marriage.
Day 7
Mar 10:7
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and gets married.
8 He becomes like one person with his wife. Then they are no longer two people, but one.9 And no one should separate a couple that God has joined together."
In a Christian marriage, the two have a permanent union. You know, if I hire some piece of land to grow wheat in the Rift Valley, and then that year there is no rain, I will lose all my money. Isn’t it? It is a big thing because that deal is lost with no chance of recovery. But if I own the land, I have title to the land. Some years I do not get a good harvest, but in a ten-year process, I will have made my money. Isn’t it? I can tell you the viewpoints of the two farmers, one that is permanent and one that is not permanent, are different.
In the same way, the day your marriage principle is based on permanence, you can survive any short-term quarrel. This is when your wife has said, "I will stay here until death do us part. Do not bother treating me badly because even if you treat me badly, I will go nowhere." With a wife like that, sex problems will be few and far between. But a wife who is always threatening, "Eeh, you think you are the only man? I am waiting until my son is ten. Now he is nine, one more year…" there is going to be a lot of sex problems. But sex is not the problem; it is your belief about the longevity of marriage. The Christian marriage is permanent, and hence one can take the risk for the porcupines to come together without hurting each other.
We saw earlier that if there is going to be properly Christian family management, it will be important to find out whether your marriage is Christian, traditional, or liberal. If you truly are in a Christian marriage, then you must surrender your choices to Christ. Whether you are a husband or wife, if you run your marriage according to Christ’s choices, what else can you get but peace and blessings for your marriage?
We also have seen that God expects the two will become one flesh. For a good marriage without infidelity, we found about five characteristics of a godly marriage. First, both the husband and the wife have left their earlier homes so that the new marriage is not managed by the father-in-law or the mother-in-law. A lot of issues are because there are husbands who are managed by remote control by their rural home. The man may be eighty, the guy may be fifty, but he never makes decisions except according to the old guy. The characteristic of a Christian marriage is that you begin a completely new entity not managed from elsewhere except from God Himself.
Secondly, we found that if it is a Christian marriage, people invest in cleaving together. They not only leave their previous families, but they also create a new unit by cleaving to one another. What is cleaving? We saw it as friendship. A lot of your issues are because you are managing issues with your enemy rather than a friend. So, you are always fearing he or she could clean you out. So, you are rather careful about the way money is managed. He may be a husband but potentially a thief. It is very important to understand that when a marriage is being run on that condition, there will be sex trouble also. It all has to do with people who are not cleaving. Before you got married, you could buy her chips. Now you cannot even afford a sausage. You do not invest time in friendship.
Thirdly, we said if you truly are a godly marriage, you will be one flesh.
And fourthly, we saw earlier that you will be both naked to each other. You will be transparent, and you will be people who are not ashamed of one another.
We also said the real problem of family management may be to do with your purpose for marriage. If you married for money, then instead of seeing the husband, you saw a bank. And that is why you were attracted to him. You realized with all your poverty history, if only you marry this guy, you have crossed the valley of poverty. He came, and unfortunately, the bank happened to collapse on you. It collapsed. Is it any wonder the kind of problems you are having in your marriage? This is because the guy cannot meet your purpose for marriage. You married a bank; he turned out to be a pauper.
If you married for the correct biblical reason, companionship, then money will be a tool, not a treasure. So the critical thing about marriage is, have you found a companion in your spouse?
Ecclesiastes 4:11-12: "If you sleep alone, you won't have anyone to keep you warm on a cold night. Someone might be able to beat up one of you, but not both of you. As the saying goes, 'A rope made from three strands of cord is hard to break.'"
In Ecclesiastes 4:12, we learned that a godly marriage will be a marriage not between two people but between three. It will be husband, wife, and God. You cannot have your marriage called a godly marriage if God is not in control of it. Who controls your bank account? Is it the husband, or is it the wife? Neither should be in control. Who should be controlling? God. A marriage where the control is not in the husband’s hands or the wife’s hands, but in God’s, is strong.
Those financial issues happen when you do not become transparent. We hear of women who have an account for a rainy day. During wedding showers, before the wedding, every woman tells you, "Do not be a fool. Although you are married, remember to have a hidden account for the rainy day." So, the husband thinks you are poor, but the truth of the matter is there is still another account for the rainy day, unknown to him.
You need to understand you are calling it a financial problem, but it is the belief system that has a problem. When a Christian man says there is no money, he means NO money. He never lies. Even white lies are still lies. The Bible does not have color for lies. It is very important to understand transparency means there is nothing you know that the husband does not know.
A lot of financial issues are because of that secret money for the rainy day. Why can you not have known money for emergencies?
Lastly, we have said a Christian marriage is based on trust and vulnerability.
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