A young man meets a girl. The whole world looks different when he sees her. Her voice reminds him of something he has been trying to remember all his life, and ten minutes’ casual chat with her is more precious than all the favors that all the other women in the world could grant. He is, as they say, “in love.” (Meditations in a Toolshed, C.S. Lewis)

Can you recall the enchantment? The intoxication of young love? Its gravity, its force, its demands? Perhaps we squint to remember what we thought we could never forget — the bottomless conversations, the nervous smiles, the rewatching in the mind moments just past. We may smile to ourselves, that was a lifetime ago. “Her voice reminds him of something he has been trying to remember all his life” — doesn’t that capture it?

But that was then. The spell wears off. The kids come. You’ve spent days and weeks and years together. You’ve seen her without the composure and the makeup; she’s seen you without the confidence and the strength. You’ve searched out this island called marriage; there is less to explore now. In love still, just a different kind. More realistic, we tell ourselves. The description above undergoes a revision.

A young man marries that girl. The world returns to normal a few years after. He seems to have remembered that thing that pestered him, and ten minutes’ casual chat with her seems next to impossible with young children. He is, as they say, “settled down.”

Much has been gained; something has been lost. You wish, at times, you could return to that first meeting, that first date, that first time telling her, “I love you.” The romance is still honeyed — when you make time for it. She is still beautiful, when you remember to really look at her.

She sleeps next to you now but seems, on some days, farther than ever. She is yours, but come to think of it, you miss her. You’ve grown: better friends, perhaps, better partners in the family enterprise, but are you better lovers? Has the poetry, requiring so much time and attention, turned into abbreviated text messages and generic emojis?

What a different vision for godly marriages the father of Proverbs hands to his sons:

Let your fountain be blessed,     and rejoice in the wife of your youth,a lovely deer, a graceful doe.Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;     be intoxicated always in her love. (Proverbs 5:18–19)

Husbands, “be intoxicated always in her love.” What a command. Literally, “be led astray” continually in her love. Be swept up. Lose track of time. Forget about your phone. Wander. Inebriate yourself with the dark-red of marital love.

Your wife, as the father crowns her, is a lovely deer and graceful doe. Do we need reminding? As familiarity threatens to blind us, as fights and frets and changing figures would cool us, the king bids his son memorize the lover’s irrepressible song, “Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart” (Song of Solomon 4:9 KJV). She, not the adulterous woman, must be his addiction.

Led Astray to Her

We need this command, don’t we? We are so prone to be led astray by lesser things; we whose passions can somehow weaken with possession; we who dull with acquaintance and brighten at novelty. We need a father to tell us on our wedding day (and then again at our ten-year anniversary), My son, be led astray continually to her — away from the tyranny of good pursuits or worldly ambitions — be intoxicated always in marital love.

“In a blur of married and modern life, are we still awake to our beloved?”

Has your pool of passions stilled? Many of us remember being implored before marriage, “[do] not stir up or awaken love until it pleases” (Song of Solomon 2:7). Natural sprinters we proved to be. Desires galloped prior to marriage — when Satan tempted and we ached while apart — but now that time pleases and heaven smiles down, how our love slouches and our once unsleeping passions can hardly keep awake past nine.

In a blur of married and modern life, are we still awake to our beloved? Do we only see the mother of our children? Will we never pause to really see her who is beside us on this grand adventure?

The wise father knows that our hearts, unwatched, grow blind to beauty. We think life unextraordinary — as we live on a planet spinning constantly, flung into a corner of the cosmos, revolving violently around a massive flaming ball — yet we yawn and call it Tuesday. But what is more wondrous still, we live with an immortal soul — in Christ, a coheir of the universe, a redeemed one, indwelt by the God who made everything. A Christian wife. The Alphabet of good husbanding begins with seeing her through faith’s eyes. That is why I suggest, we need to cultivate the habit of seeing her as the Scriptures teach us to see her.

Look at Her

The husband of the Song of Songs, drunk on anticipation and admiration, observes her as an artist bent over a portrait or as Adam waking to behold Eve,

How beautiful are your feet in sandals,     O noble daughter!Your rounded thighs are like jewels,     the work of a master hand.Your navel is a rounded bowl     that never lacks mixed wine.Your belly is a heap of wheat,     encircled with lilies.Your two breasts are like two fawns,     twins of a gazelle.Your neck is like an ivory tower.Your eyes are pools in Heshbon,     by the gate of Bath-rabbim.Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon,     which looks toward Damascus.Your head crowns you like Carmel,     and your flowing locks are like purple;     a king is held captive in the tresses. (Song of Solomon 7:1–5)

Now here, distinguish between descriptive and prescriptive. Charge not forth, good men, to describe your wife in this exact manner. But do learn from the husband’s focus, his alertness, his ever-attentive eye that surveys his bride in quiet wonder. Husband, what does your wife’s neck look like? Her smile in the morning? Her gentle spirit? Her strong convictions? Speak of them, perhaps sparingly, but notice them constantly. And when you do, thank God, the Artist, for what he is painting.

Keep Looking at Her

Does this sustained, admiring stare depend on the beloved’s appearance? Kept curves, bright teeth, ungrayed hair? Notice that the father teaches that the eye of the beloved does not recoil when it observes new wrinkles on skin, new wear and tear from everyday life. Look again at his charge,

Let your fountain be blessed,     and rejoice in the wife of your youth,a lovely deer, a graceful doe.Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;     be intoxicated always in her love. (Proverbs 5:18–19)

“Rejoice in the wife of your youth.” How old is she now? Youth is somewhere in the rearview; the wedding day a distant memory. Decades have passed, perhaps. “Always” is your delight and duty. There she is. You gaze over your morning coffee at her — what do you see? The wife of your youth, the wife of your reminiscences, the wife of your now and former days.

The world, so crude and boastful, would tell you that she, with chronic knee pain and doctors’ visits, is past her prime, perhaps even disposable. With its diseased and rasping voice, it points to the youthful employee, the pornographic magazine at the checkout counter, the woman running past in painted-on attire — behold, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. She will thrill you with the chase, satisfy you with fresher springs.

No, no, no, foolhardy flesh. I have my lovely deer, my graceful doe. She, no longer a youth, is better: the wife of my youth. We keep a most blessed fountain. Her breasts have not stopped filling me at all times with delight. No, no, no, O dark and devilish temptation, you have no mastery here. My God, by his grace, has given me himself and more; he has gifted me her. And though our stay in this body be brief, though our figures droop and drag and waste away, she is even more beautiful now (more Christlike than ever before), a companion no harem of illicit pleasure could rival. Be gone, all others, be gone! I am swept away — intoxicated — always in her love.

King Caught in the Tresses

Consider how closely Christ looks at his bride. How particular is he to pore over that beauty which he himself bestows upon her (and at what cost)?

Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. (Ephesians 5:25–27)

His life, his crucifixion, his being “marred, beyond human semblance” (Isaiah 52:14), all so that he would watch her walk down the aisle toward him — “in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” before him. His eyes, keener than eagles’, survey her.

Behold, you are beautiful, my love;behold, you are beautiful;     your eyes are doves. . . .You are altogether beautiful, my love;     there is no flaw in you. (Song of Solomon 1:15, 4:7)

And then he, the perfect Groom, will call her from this cursed world,

Arise, my love, my beautiful one,     and come away. (Song of Solomon 2:10)

What Marriage Whispers

Marital intimacy, though not the Aphrodite culture would make her, is a precious gift. The father, while not merely pointing us to the marriage bed alone, is here bidding old lovers to drink deeply of the uncorked vintage of God’s design.

Marital sex, a lordly and bright sunlight, should itself bow. I believe we learn something of intimacy’s proper place from (of numerous other passages) a text that has always struck me as something of an oddity. Concerning the marriage bed, Paul writes,

Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. (1 Corinthians 7:5)

Contra many skeptical notions, intimacy, in normal circumstances, should be enjoyed and regular. Our lack of self-control and Satan’s sure temptations ground this dictate. The soak under the silver waterfall serves more than delight and unity; it serves holiness. Regular “coming together” builds a gleeful rampart against the schemes of the enemy.

But this was not the oddity. The oddity to me concerned what the couple might decide (together) to lay it aside for. “[Don’t] deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer.” It struck me as odd that the apostle considered prayer the alternative and the superior.

What does prayer as a planned interruption to the marriage bed suggest? It tells me that sex is a good and necessary gift for married couples from a good and gracious God, but not an ultimate gift. Sex was made for man, but not man for sex. Greater pleasures perch on higher branches. One might halt the lesser intimacy, might intentionally fast from the feast, for the higher and the greater — prayer. The prayer closet — the place of intimacy with God — holds higher rank.

Swept Away

Marital intimacy — with all its high glories and some crawling challenges (here left undiscussed) — samples wine from a coming orchard. Wine within this covenant challis is ultimately about blood-bought union with a covenant-keeping God. The mountain peaks, the ocean deeps, the untamed thrill, the transfigured moments of pleasure and beauty in a healthy married life exist for him (Colossians 1:16). Our union with him is not of one flesh as with a wife, but greater, of one spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17). Considering Ephesians 5:31–32, John Piper clarifies,

Leaving parents and holding fast to a wife, forming a new one-flesh union, is meant from the beginning to display this new covenant — Christ leaving his Father and taking the church as his bride, at the cost of his life, and holding fast to her in a one-spirit union forever. (This Momentary Marriage, 30)

Marital union sketches union with Christ.

So, husbands, look at her, keep looking at her, awaken slumbering summer, foment tidy sheets, cast down enthroned shams — and forgo this intimacy, at times, to pray. Be intoxicated always in her love, be led astray, and in that affection be swept away to a higher love, the love of Christ. Let her voice and her love remind you of what you’ve been trying to remember all your life.

We all desire stability. Like toddlers learning to walk, however, stability often proves elusive. Unexpected disruptions threaten to knock us off balance. Relational wounds from loved ones introduce insecurity and uncertainty. Changes that we neither sought nor asked for throw us out of routine.

Before we know it, a perfectly good day can crumble beneath our feet, and we feel the disorienting sense of falling out of control. For those who desire stability so much, why do we spend so much of our time experiencing instability? How on earth can we actually maintain — or regain — stability when we find ourselves falling?

The author of Psalm 46 understands the perils of human experience. Breathed out by God, the psalm insists on three realities that plant our feet on firm ground and create an immovable people. Forget any one of these realities, and the foundation of our life soon shudders. We fix our minds on truth to fix our feet on rock.

1. God is all-powerful.

The psalm first fixes our heart upon God’s power. The psalmist obsesses over God’s power, anchoring himself in the overwhelming might of the Almighty. God “makes wars to cease to the end of the earth,” wielding authority over all (verse 9). Twice the psalmist names God as “the Lord of hosts” (verses 7, 11), referring to the endless heavenly warriors who hail God as King. All wars cease at the command of such power. No moment showed this more clearly than when Christ — God in flesh — levied his might to defeat death itself. No opponent triumphs over the will of the unshakable God.

The psalmist reiterates his point in verse 6. In a comparison of powers, he notes that “the nations rage, the kingdoms totter,” but when “[God] utters his voice, the earth melts.” Like the raging nations, the troubles of this life can introduce headaches and heartaches. But a mere utterance from God can unravel the world itself. He speaks things into or out of existence. When our schedule falls apart, God has the power to piece it back together. When we grieve a fresh glimpse of our own sin, God’s power stands sufficient for us. Even if the earth threatens to give way, God can speak it into standing its ground — and it must obey.

When life fractures, we often forget this power. We neglect the One who wields all strength and authority, and who can change or destroy the very fabric of creation. The last time you fell into upheaval, did you meditate more on God’s power or on the upended chunks of your life? What played on loop in the theater of your mind? With the psalmist, we can form the habit of obsessing over the power of our God. We can interrupt our anxious thoughts with greater thoughts of our great God.

2. God is very present.

Cascading from this first reality, immovable people also meditate on the presence of God. God is capable of rescuing me from the cliffs of life, but is he here with me?

Verse 1 emphatically points to God as “very present.” Merely “present” does not capture the nearness of God. He is very present. God does not stand at the top of the cliff you dangle from, offering a hand if you can reach to him. He effortlessly clambers down the sheer rock to come to your side. As verse 5 says, God “is in the midst of” us — right in the middle of our instability and chaos.

“No opponent triumphs over the will of the unshakable God.”

Such nearness asserts itself in the repetition of the fact that the Lord of hosts is “with us” (verses 7, 11). The Hebrew underlying this phrase is where the name Immanuel comes from — meaning “the with-us God.” God took on flesh in order to dwell “with us,” and nothing will keep him from being at our side. God remains near enough to feel every breath he gives and hear every heartbeat he sustains. Even when we falter, God remains very present.

When we feel abandoned by the failures of those we trust, what thoughts fill our minds? Do we meditate on the nearness of God? Can we habituate ourselves to stop focusing on the tumbling circumstances around us and instead lean on the Almighty One who stands “with us” in them all?

3. God is your protector.

If we give thought to these two realities, though, we may see the problem of an all-powerful, ever-present God remaining in direct contact with such sinful people as ourselves. We are painfully aware that we are stained with sin. He radiates holiness. What if his power works not for us but against us? The answer to this question reveals the third meditation of immovable people.

The psalmist reveals that, for God’s people, his power is unspeakably bent toward giving aid. Rather than presenting himself as the harbinger of punishment, God has made all necessary preparations to serve as our “fortress” (verses 7, 11). For those who dwell in the “city of God,” the psalmist promises that “God will help her when morning dawns” (verse 4). God does not destroy or smite his people when morning dawns. Rather, he helps them.

God’s aid comes quickly to those who belong to him. Faster than next-day shipping, God brings rescue. This help may entail sustaining your strength to hold on longer in your grief, or it may look like the repentance of the one who wounded you. He may change your circumstances dramatically, or he may give you the courage to keep enduring them. Either way, the God of all power who abides with you has devoted himself to your aid in all things.

Christ Our Rock

Christ revealed God’s saving heart when he rescued us from our greatest enemy. Through his death on the cross, and subsequent resurrection, Christ disarmed Satan of his only damning weapon — unforgiven sin. In the avalanche of implications of Christ’s work, the requirement of punishment and death attached to our sins perished as well.

When dangling from the cliffs of life, we may not fear the fall as much as we fear what comes at the end of the fall. Christ took away that deepest fear by eliminating sin’s power to kill us and keep us from God. That relational wound will not ultimately overwhelm you. The fearful what if scenarios will not steal your sanity. He will faithfully protect you, just as he always has.

The next time you find yourself losing your footing in life, meditate on these realities. In fact, meditate on them every day of your life. Let these realities mark you, holding your attention and shaping your outlook on life. In Christ, your God holds all power. Your God is with you right now. Your God is helping you and has promised to uphold you. The circumstances of life may harass and threaten, but they cannot undo you. Earthquakes come and go, but Christ’s people remain. The city of God never moves, nor do her inhabitants.

Two weeks before Christmas, my heart stopped.

Seated next to me in a congregational meeting, my wife sees me close my eyes and slump. After a few seconds, the old ticker providentially revives “on its own.” It happens four times during that meeting. Maybe I’m just too inactive, I think. Perhaps if I get up and walk around a bit, I can get the juices flowing, and whatever is going on will clear up.

While I’m pacing in the church lobby, one of the elders says he doesn’t think I look quite right. I call my physician, and he recommends that I get to the emergency room for an evaluation. I’m not to drive myself.

In the emergency room, the surgeon hooks me up to a bunch of wires and asks a whole battery of questions to diagnose what’s going on.

“Are there heart problems in your family?”“Yes, my dad died of a heart attack at 60. So did his dad.”“But do you feel pain?”“None.”“Did you feel dizzy?”“Not really. The room wasn’t spinning. I wasn’t nauseous.”“Did you pass out?”“Not really. I could still hear, sort of.”“What do you mean ‘sort of’?”“I was uninterested in it all, like it was all background noise.”“Did you break into a sweat?”“Nope.”

The surgeon is puzzled. Maybe he is dealing with a hypochondriac.

While he goes off to another room, it happens — another episode. Before I slump into semi-consciousness, I glance at the monitor: my pulse registers a big giant zero; I have flatlined. A few seconds later, as I revive “on my own,” the surgeon comes running in from the other room, thinking he may have to do CPR or call a Code Blue or something. He exclaims, “Your heart completely stopped for about eight seconds!”

I’m not having a heart attack from plugged arteries, causing oxygen-starved muscles to die in pain. It’s just that my internal cardio-electrical circuitry is taking a break. Which it will do five more times that evening in the hospital. Pacemaker, here we come.

Sitting on the gurney, I say to Vicki, my wife, “I might see Jesus before Christmas.” We pray. We cry. She affirms that she knows where all our important documents are. She adds, “If you go, I’ll be right behind you.” In sudden concern, I ask, “Why? Are you having a medical crisis too?” Then she says something untrue, but very endearing: “I can’t live without you.”

When Your Heart Fails

Since the word heart is in our English Bibles over nine hundred times, the heart is, apparently, a big deal. It’s common knowledge that heart has more than one meaning. It’s bad if your physical heart fails, like mine did. It is worse if your spiritual heart fails. What does spiritual heart failure look like, and what can be done when, as several biblical writers experienced, you sense your spiritual heart at zero?

I know this pain (or gloomy numbness, as the case may be). If our heart has failed, it will do no good to deny it. We may as well admit it. And we should expect heart challenges. It’s an unfortunate and painful aspect of life in a fallen world that sometimes our hearts fail — even if you are more stable than most. Even Superman encounters his kryptonite. Heart failure is not novel or strange, so don’t be caught unaware.

Even simply admitting spiritual heart failure is a step in the right direction. As Paul puts it,

He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses [like a failed heart], so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses [like a failed heart], insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9–10)

Spiritual heart failure can take several forms. Let’s consider three.

Heart Failure of Discouragement

Hearts can fail when the obstacles seem too impossible. Big adversity puts big holes in our little courage buckets. For example, the heart of Saul’s entire army failed when taunted by a single giant (1 Samuel 17:11, 32). The spies returning from the promised land were discouraged when they thought they seemed like grasshoppers in the eyes of their enemies (Numbers 13:31–33). David’s heart failed when “evils encompassed [him] beyond number” (Psalm 40:12).

Mountains of foreboding discouragement loom large — war, sleeplessness, unfortunate genetics, failed diets, relational pressures, natural disasters, financial burdens, and even ordinary weather. Our hearts are not impervious to such blitzes.

Heart Failure of False Feelings

Doubts send assurance toward the drain, morphing into miserable dread. Like weeds, the seeds of doubt germinate in the thought life and multiply, overtaking one’s feelings, producing a vague sense of nagging guilt and that God has turned against us. Waffling belief and theological confusion can cause me to feel like God is against me. Key word: feel.

Feelings make a bad chief executive, yet they often speak with the loudest voice. They can be, and typically are, shortsighted and short-lived. They demand that gratification be immediate, and once appeased still make more demands. Instead of listening to the siren song of feelings, wise souls listen instead to a more reliable, still small voice: the voice of the Spirit. The failed heart needs faith, and faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17) — sometimes found in the mouth of a wise Christian friend.

“Ask God for the enabling grace to do what your feelings tell you can’t be done.”

The failed heart is helped by doing what it doesn’t feel like doing. Get up in the morning. Work out (tell your feelings to take a hike — literally). Aim your eyeballs at the pages of the Bible. Ask God for the enabling grace to do what your feelings tell you can’t be done. Then act the miracle. Say with Jesus, “Not my will, but yours be done.” Then be a doer, not a hearer only (James 1:25).

Heart Failure of Exhaustion

When your heart fails, it won’t work for someone to say, “Snap out of it!” Affliction, perplexity, and persecution are tiring, heart-depleting. You are out of gas. The sleepless children have left you downright exhausted. The sun rises, and you sit there, bent over in a motionless lump.

But when your heart is failing, consider Jesus.

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted [that is, lose heart]. (Hebrews 12:3)

Look at Jesus (for a model of stoutheartedness), and look to Jesus (for enabling grace to persevere). God has not abandoned you. For example, he has given you sufficient enabling grace to read this sentence. There’s more grace where that came from.

Accordingly, don’t do anything drastic. Don’t quit your day job. Don’t binge on something regrettable. Slow down. Rest where you can. When Elijah despaired of life and asked that he might die, he was helped by some common ordinary sleep (1 Kings 16:5).

Strength of My Heart

When your heart is failing, perform a simple self-inspection. A spiritually failing heart may be evidence that we are treasuring the wrong object. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).

“My heart may fail, but God’s heart never does.”

What is it I really love? Am I supremely valuing the supremely valuable? What was I expecting? How biblical are my expectations? Am I perceiving reality realistically?

Whatever the cause, my heart may fail, but God’s heart never does. Asaph put it this way:

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:26)

God loves his children whether their hearts are thriving or failing. Remind your failing heart that your sins were completely cancelled at the cross, where Jesus took them.

In the emergency room that night, though my physical heart was intermittently failing and reviving, my spiritual heart was raring to go. One day, I expect my ticker to quit ticking altogether. And when my physical heart finally stops completely, I expect my other heart to exult in Jesus, the one who will carry on to completion what he has begun.