I love you with all of my bowels
If you had not heard the teaching, yet, instead of saying “I love you with all of my heart,” for centuries people essentially said “I love you with all of my bowels” or intestines or guts or whatever. It makes sense, too, when you consider “falling in love” frequently includes feeling sick to your stomach!
I propose something a little different today.
What if it is not necessarily love, but merely lust or physical attraction?
I am not saying love for another person will not cause physical manifestations within our bodies. I have experienced it. My wife and I occasionally joke around, saying “You make my bowels move” to say “I love you.”
However, I also remember something else as I think back on my life. The times in which my bowels seemed to move for someone the most I was thinking not so much about the long-term benefits of a relationship as the instant gratification of the flesh.
“I want to touch her just once.” “I want to know how [various parts of her body] feel.” “I bet the sex would be great!”
In truth, the times I feel “my bowels moving” for my wife very frequently are when I am ready to take her to the bedroom (wink wink, nudge nudge). Many people with whom I have talked (teens, young adults, older adults; men and women) have also said that those physical emotional responses have largely led to thoughts of physical (read: sexual) interaction with another person.
I guess this is more a warning than anything else, especially to young readers (high school/college): Be careful of those feelings.
How many people have rushed to marriage because “He makes my stomach hurt … in that good way!”
How many people have had sex outside of marriage because “It felt like what was right!”
How many people have not listened to others because “My whole body seemed to tell me it was the right thing to do!”
How many divorces could have been avoided?
How many diseases and unwanted pregnancies could have been avoided?
How much heartache could have been avoided?
The heart [bowels/body/emotions] is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?I thought in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.” But that also proved to be meaningless.
For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.
I added some meaning and italics.
The point is as I said above: we cannot always trust our emotions and when our bodies react.
This is what the LORD says:
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who depends on flesh for his strength
and whose heart turns away from the LORD.Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding.
Why are rules set in place for our relationships? It is not to deny our freedom or punish us. In fact, rules for relationships are their to protect us and remind us that we have a tendency to really mess things up in our lives!
We must remember to keep our emotions and bowels and hearts in check by trusting that God just might know us well enough to know what is best for us. We must remember that we can so easily be deceived by our own emotions if we base our understanding on us and not what God has told us. We must remember the need of hearing the Holy Spirit, and that means we need to learn to be able to listen to Him in all things.
a simple man of God 