Adultery in the heart is when we place more importance on a thing or a person than we do on Jesus Christ. This happens all the time in churches, when the people place more importance on the culture than they do on Christ.
This happens when "Christians" follow what they like in the Bible and ignore all of God's commands that they don't like.
Jeremiah 3:20 "20 Surely, as a treacherous wife leaves her husband, so have you been treacherous to me, O house of Israel, declares the Lord.’"
Isaiah 57:8 "8 Behind the door and the doorpost you have set up your memorial; for, deserting me, you have uncovered your bed, you have gone up to it , you have made it wide; and you have made a covenant for yourself with them, you have loved their bed, you have looked on nakedness."
Ezekiel 16:30 "30 "How sick is your heart, declares the Lord God, because you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen prostitute,"
Disloyalty manifests itself in many ways, physical is only one, and the most obvious one. There are many ways to be disloyal to our spouse.
One way I have seen it often is when a spouse prefers to please extended family rather than their spouse. A union between two people in a marriage covenant demands that we seek the well-being of our spouse over anyone else. All decisions should be made together; no decision should be made without the concurrence of the other. No one makes a major decision without the agreement of both partners in a marriage.
A good example of this is a story God gave me, a fictional story, but one that demonstrates loyalty and concern for one another.
Please remember that this is fictional but has been seen in various ways in family dynamics. Here is the story;
There once was an old man who lacked faith and somehow had it in his mind that his ashes should be spread in a spot that he desired to be remembered before his death.
Notice the mentality of the person still alive is "how they are remembered" or that "people come to visit their grave", even though they are not in that place.
Because this man lacked faith, he wanted his wife to go to the spot where his ashes would be spread to visit him. The place was not special to the wife, and the dead husband would not be there because he had left this life. Who was the husband thinking of? He was fantasizing that somehow he would be looking down on that spot and his wife would be pondering him whenever she visited that spot.
The wife expressed to him, while he was alive, that she didn't want to spread his ashes in that place because it was illegal to spread ashes in that park. She was a woman of faith and knew his body was not on earth anymore, and she did not practice the usual necromancy the rest of the culture did by talking to a dead person.
So, knowing the wife did not want to promise the husband something she didn't want to do, the husband willed his ashes to someone else whom he had asked to do the job for him after his death.
When the husband had died, the ashes were willed to another woman. Now it became clear that the other woman was far more important to the man than his own wife. Since her desires didn't matter when she would be the one still alive after his passing.
The wife had spent 60 years serving her husband, helping him in every endeavor as his helpmate, and yet she was not the priority upon his death.
When we know we are going home to God when we pass, we have no concern about what happens to our body after it perishes. We are more concerned before our death about the well-being of our spouse than what happens to our bodies.
How many times have you been pressured to do something the culture expects but makes very little sense to you, because you think more deeply?
Just something to think about.
James 4:4, "friendship with the world is enmity with God,"
Jeremiah 3:20 "
20 Surely, as a treacherous wife leaves her husband,so have you been treacherous to me, O house of Israel, declares the Lord.’"
It is adultery against God when we choose the culture over the mind of Christ.
