es 10:17

“A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes merry; but money answers everything.”---Ecclesiastes 10:19

“Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Woe to men mighty at drinking wine, woe to men valiant for mixing intoxicating drink, who justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away justice from the righteous man!”---Isaiah 5:21-23

“Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbor, pressing him to your bottle, even to make him drunk, that you may look on his nakedness! You are filled with shame instead of glory. You also—drink! And be exposed as uncircumcised! The cup of the Lord’s right hand will be turned against you, and utter shame will be on your glory.”---Habbakkuk 2:14-16

“But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer is heard; and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son [John the Baptist], and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth. For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.”---Luke 1:13-16

“Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy.”---Romans 13:13

“It is good neither to eat meat nor drink wine nor do anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak.”---Romans 14:21

“But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person.”---I Corinthians 5:11

“…nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.”---I Corinthians 6:10

“Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord…”---Ephesians 5:17-19

“…that the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience; the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things…”---Titus 2:2-3

“No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for your stomach’s sake and your frequent infirmities.”---I Timothy 5:23

So what conclusion did I come to? Well, no I don’t think drinking is a sin. However, I do think that I Corinthians 6:12 sums the consumption up of it perfectly: “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful.”

Let’s be real here for just a second: How many people are killing themselves over whether it’s OK to drink a glass of something with their dinner that’s “a beverage made of the fermented juice of any of various kinds of grapes, usually containing from 10 to 15 percent alcohol by volume”? Now you know most of us are trying to justify why it’s cool to get on that hard liquor; that Crown and Coke, Vodka and Cranberry Juice, Gin ‘N Juice, Screwdrivers, Cosmopolitans, Sex on the Beaches, and, my personal favorite “sneaker upper”, Amaretto Sours. And, most of us don’t crave it for the taste but for what the taste creates: the buzz that takes you a little outside of yourself. To that, all I have to say is that if you claim to be a follower of Christ, you are to operate in the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) at all times and one of those fruits is self-control. And, to have the desire for the effects that alcoholic consumption creates, I just want to remind you that the Word says:

“…you are not in the dark, so how could you be taken off guard by any of this? You're sons of Light, daughters of Day. We live under wide open skies and know where we stand. So let's not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let's keep our eyes open and be smart. People sleep at night and get drunk at night. But not us! Since we're creatures of Day, let's act like it. Walk out into the daylight sober, dressed up in faith, love, and the hope of salvation.----I Thessalonians 5:4

So why did I take us into a mini-seminar about drinking? Because as I walk down the memory lane of a lot of my sexual relationships, about half of the men I know were drunk with me at least 50% of the time. I am strong enough in my self-esteem at this point to not be offended by that because I see beyond the “Wow Shellie, did they have to get drunk to even get down with you?” into the deeper issue. Remember, until we denounce the Holy Spirit (Mark 3:29-30), our spirit is forever at war trying to win over our flesh because “...it is the spirit which gives life while the flesh profits us nothing” (John 6:63). Therefore, I believe a lot of people have to be sexually active in a drunken or intoxicated (to stupefy or excite by the action of a chemical substance such as alcohol state) because in their right mind, their conscience (the Holy Spirit) would speak far too loudly for them to partake in those forbidden fruits.

How interesting that the Bible calls us to be wise as serpents (Matthew 10:16), but the dictionary’s definition of intoxicated is “to stupefy”. Let me just say, there is enough out here in this world to trip you up when you ain’t loaded. Why add an extra burden upon you by consciously taking in a substance that could make you even more vulnerable to the wiles of the Enemy? Bottom line, sex mixed with alcohol doesn’t make the experience better, it just makes you dumber!

Whew! With that said, I will move on to the tale of Shechem and Dinah. If you are not a survivor of rape, especially date rape (and I am), I’m sure this story will come across and pretty confusing. How did Shechem go from raping Dinah to falling in love with her? How do the two mix?

You know, I remember something stated so poignantly by former President Bill Clinton in reference to his wife, Hilary as he was promoting his autobiography on Oprah a little over two years ago. When she asked him if he thought that he loved Hilary even in spite of cheating on her, his response was, “I loved her. I just didn’t love her well.”

Can we pass the offering plate around one time for Bill? In those two sentences, he summed up one of the biggest problems in all relationships. Sure, we may “love” someone, but only through God can we come to a clear, purposeful and beneficial (for both parties) understanding of what that love is really supposed to be. Remember, as we discussed in Chapter Six, the Enemy has ingeniously created a counterfeit for the love that God wants us to have for one another----and it's called lust.

Being that I have been in a relationship with a man who has had sex with me against my will, all the while believing that, because we had sex before and there was a history between us that he was fully justified, I can understand (not agree with, but understand) how Shechem could have thought that he was in love with Dinah. After all, when you have sex with someone, it bonds you to them; however,he wasn’t in love because love is patient and kind (I Corinthians 13:4). No, he was soul tied.

So soul tied that he went to his father, Hamor and asked him to convince Dinah’s family to let him marry her. And obviously, Shechem came from a line of sexual dysfunction because rather than his father rebuking his son for violating a young woman, he approached Jacob and his sons saying:

"My son Shechem is head over heels in love with your daughter—give her to him as his wife. Intermarry with us. Give your daughters to us and we'll give our daughters to you. Live together with us as one family. Settle down among us and make yourselves at home. Prosper among us."—Genesis 34:8-10

Geeze. It sounds like a really bad Lifetime movie doesn’t it? The jock football player date rapes a girl and his daddy comes to the school justifying his behavior. Let me just tell you something: We spend so much time talking about what happens sexually to a girl when her father is either MIA or he sexually abuses her. Let me just tell you that when a man is MIA for his son or he doesn’t teach him sexuality from a godly perspective, that is just as devastating. No man should ever feel that he has the right to a woman that God didn’t give him the right to through marriage; the first people to teach him this fact should be his parents. And, like a Mafia movie, rather than overlook it, Dinah’s brothers plotted a way to get back at Shechem and his father for harming her.

Next lesson: Anything you do outside of the will of God has a domino effect on others. One of the greatest tools that the Enemy uses is giving us the impression that accountability (responsibility to someone or for some activity) is not necessary.

When I started asking God to “reveal and heal” my own sexual past, one thing that he shared with me was the fact I needed to repent to everyone that I slept with because everyone is not as spiritually resilient (marked by the ability to recover readily, as from misfortune) as I am. In other words, I may be able to sin and get back on track, but sometimes----more times than most of us care to admit----what we do can send someone on a road for which they may have a very difficult time coming back from.

Ladies, have you ever seen a guy who swears he’s such the pimp? He doesn’t want a serious relationship and in all actuality, the more women he can “hit-n-split”, the better? If you ever get to the point of being friends with him, catch him on a good day and ask him why. I’m willing to bet that 7 times out of 10 his “take no prisoners” panty rage has to do with some girl who broke his heart years ago. That very girl may be happily married with three kids and a Winnebago now not thinking anything about that dude, but her actions have caused him to spew his bitterness on dozens of other unsuspecting women; all because she didn’t hold herself and him accountable by refusing him years before.

If you have been sexually, or even just relationally irresponsible in your past, while you can’t take the actions back, you have a duty to assist those people on their road to healing and the best way to do that is to confess your wrongs to them:

“Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with.”---James 5:16

Moving on.

Shechem is an awesome example of what a selfish activity can do. Because he could not contain his carnal desires, his entire town had to pay dearly with their lives. In the case of this tale, it was swords. These days, many people could speculate that it’s STDs and AIDS.

Several years ago, I found myself self-diagnosing what I thought was a yeast infection. After nearly buying stock in Monistat and getting no lasting results, I went to the doctor. Come to find out, I had Chlamydia and didn’t even know it. By this time, I had been sexually active with another man (because it had been lying dormant in my system for quite some time) besides the person who gave it to me. In many ways we weren’t any different than Shechem. Shechem raped a woman and as a result, her brothers took out an entire town of people. “He” and I had illicit, irresponsible sex and as a result other people’s health were put in danger.

As Christians, we are called to be preservers, not destroyers of life:

“For the wages which sin pays is death, but the [bountiful] free gift of God is eternal life through (in union with) Jesus Christ our Lord.”---Romans 6:23

When you are contemplating whether or not to do something, one of the first questions that you should ask yourself is “In doing this, am I helping life or hurting it?”

When you have the opportunity to tell your boss where to stick it, in doing so are you helping his life or hurting it?

When you are tempted to spend your tithe money on some new gear, are you helping your life or hurting it?

When your hormones are raging and you get that midnight phone call, in driving over there (please tell me why we are usually the ones driving to them, anyway?), are you helping his and your life or are you hurting them?

By violating Dinah, Shechem caused his father and all of the men in his town to have their lives destroyed. Yes, one activity sent the snowball of sexual violation into an avalanche of pain and heartache for hundreds of people; not only did the men lose their lives, but their wives and children lost their freedom (Genesis 34:29). Shoot, the guys even got in a little looting in the process. The Bible goes on to tell us that this caused an even greater domino effect:

“Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, "You've made my name stink to high heaven among the people here, these Canaanites and Perizzites. If they decided to gang up on us and attack, as few as we are we wouldn't stand a chance; they'd wipe me and my people right off the map."---Genesis 34:30

All because Shechem couldn’t----no, all because he chose not to---keep his pants up. And while, I certainly cannot advocate what Dinah’s brothers did, I do have one final lesson to share from today’s message. When Jacob confronted his sons, their response was:

"Nobody is going to treat our sister like a whore and get by with it."---Genesis 34:31

A male friend of mine called out of the blue to check on me last week. After sharing some things that really touched me, I went on to tell him just how grateful I was to have such a good group of platonic (transcending physical desire and tending toward the purely spiritual or ideal) male friends in my life right now...guys who look out for me without an ulterior motive, guys who will let me know the real deal when it comes to men and their issues, guys who have no problem putting me in check if (more like “when” cause there are definitely times when) I need it, guys who help set a standard of the kind of man I deserve to have in my life as a lifetime partner.

Several days ago, a new male friend of mine and his manager took me to a high-end restaurant. His manager told me that she prayed about where to take me and they selected this particular place because it was where the successful local industry people met and dined. I told her, “Let’s go deeper. If Tim can take me to 'The Palm', I know I need to be expecting my husband to do it!”

Say a word, say a word!

Ladies, don’t be so consumed with getting a husband that you miss out on the joys that come with having platonic male companionship----the kind that you can only get from your brothers. When guys are at a place where they don’t see you for your figure but your heart, then that is a very comforting place to be because you know that they are looking out for your very best interest.

Dinah wasn’t just “some girl” to Simeon and Levi. She was their sister and any guy who treated her like some street corner hussy was going to pay, plain and simple. I’m here to tell you from personal experience that while I would love to have a husband some day, because it’s becoming less and less of a mental obsession for me, I am coming to see that even in my waiting season, God has not abandoned my need for male companionship or protection. Until my husband comes a long he has given me male friends and that ain’t nothin’ to feel gypped about:

“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”---Proverbs 17:17 (NKJV)

So ladies, your homework for today? Get out a sheet of paper and write down a list of all of your male friends. Then, give them a ring or shoot them over an e-card (www.hallmark.com, www.dayspring.com) to let them know how much you appreciate their presence in your life---you never know just what they are sparing you from.

Then ask God to break the generational curses of sexual perversion in the lives of all of us, but especially in the lives of young men. Unfortunately, there are present-day Shechems who feel justified in their actions because they’ve got “Hamors” for daddies who are more concerned with their son’s flesh being satisfied than their souls being saved. Let me just say that if you are a father, don’t give your son a condom and call that sex education. Give him a sense of self-worth, give him what the Word says he is as a man, give him your testimony (good or bad---remember, we and others are saved by our testimony—I Timothy 4:14-16) and give him reasons to want to wait and the tools for doing so.

Finally ladies, stay holy so that your prayers can go beyond the ceiling! We have a lot of work to do in the earth and so we need all of the righteous (morally upright) people that we can get. Some of us are praying and wondering why nothing is changing and it’s because we have not changed:

“For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their prayers; but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”---I Peter 3:12

Keep it tight, keep it right, my sistahs. As singles, we have great work to do in the earth (I Corinthians 7:32). The “Dinahs” and the “Shechems” are depending on it.

©Shellie R. Warren/2006