Chapter 8: The Restoration Of the Virginity of the Heart

Chapter 8: The Restoration Of the Virginity of the Heart

⁸ Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.⁹ But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. ¹⁰ After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. ¹¹ To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen. I Peter 5

     God's purpose in this chapter is to point our hearts to His restoration. Many have committed to outward act of sexual immorality and are no longer virgins in the flesh. Others of us, have been virgins outwardly, but our hearts have gone astray and been unfaithful towards God. God offers His restoration to us when we have fallen. He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness when we confess our sin (1 John 1:9).

      God's restoration is always delivered to His chosen people with the purpose to make them perfect, complete, equipped, prepared, and strong. His restoration is an act of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God and follows a period of suffering, Spiritual dryness, Spiritual stumbling, or discipline. The essence of His restoration is the power of His love revealed in the Gospel. He willingly and joyfully restores us with all of His heart and soul. The reason He restores us is so that His Name will be glorified. Thus, He will restore us in spite of our fleshly resistance granted that we continue to believe in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The Need for Restoration in PRISONERS OF HOPE

¹¹ Do not cast me away from Your presence
And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.
¹² Restore to me the joy of Your salvation
And sustain me with a willing spirit.
¹³ Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,
And sinners will be converted to You.Ps 51

     Restoration becomes necessary when God's people have lost some or all of their joy of salvation in Jesus Christ. Christ came so that our joy would be complete (John 15:11), to give us life to the full (John 10:10), to make us free indeed (John 8:36), and so that we would no longer live in darkness but have the Light of Life (John 8:12). He came to give us eternal life in knowing Him so that we would always live by the Spirit and not gratify the desires of the sinful nature (Gal 5:16). What captured our first love for Him was the love that He had revealed to us in His salvation. We had come to Him with guilt and shame and His grace and mercy had conquered our hearts. We had come to Him with broken hearts and helpless estates and He had mended our wounds, healed us, and delivered us from death and the shadows of gloom. All of us who have been saved have seen His glory in these ways. If we are truly His, we have known the joy of His salvation.

     In the midst of the joy of His salvation, our awe of Him grows. Our view of God becomes increasingly great as we understand the depth of our salvation. God's intent is to give His children an increasing joy and comprehension of His love. His Face is to be clearer and brighter to them. His splendor and majesty are to be felt dearer. Our conviction of His Gospel and Resurrection are to become stronger. Our resurrection with Christ is to become more and more certain. The Seeds of the Word of God are to result in the bearing of more and more fruit as He maintains the good soil of our hearts. The act of God in the life of the believer is to increase their faith, hope, zeal, and AGAPE. He will be seen as glorious and exalted and they will keep His Name holy (Is 29:23).

     But God speaks in His Word of times when His people undergo a loss of the joy of His salvation. The worries, pleasures, and persecutions of the world lay hard on their spirits and cause them to be discouraged. For a short time, His people stumble into sin and stray from the narrow path. Pride may creep into their hearts as the devil delivers his attacks. The wickedness of the world and the guilt and shame from momentary sin clouds their view and they no longer feel as the pure and clean priests who carry the vessels of the Lord. They forget His great love for them and the effect is that their love for those around them turns dry. But they cannot deny Him nor can they continue in their sin and loss of sight of Him. The reason they cannot continue in their joylessness is because the Word of God lives in them and the Spirit is never taken from them. He had never allowed them to be cast from His Presence.

⁹ No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.¹⁰ By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother. I John 3

      Jeremiah inquires of God why his pain was unending and his wound was grievous and incurable. He asked God if He would be to him like a deceptive brook, like a spring that fails. (Jer 15:18)  Though His people lose sight of the glories of heaven that they had seen, they never lose their hope and they never deny Jesus as Lord. They continue to praise Him and trust Him. Even in their distress they commit their spirits to the Lord and proclaim to the devil:

⁸ Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy.
Though I fall I will rise;
Though I dwell in darkness, the Lord is a light for me.

⁹ I will bear the indignation of the Lord
Because I have sinned against Him,
Until He pleads my case and executes justice for me.
He will bring me out to the light,
And I will see His righteousness.

Micah 7

      God's people who are in need of restoration may feel rejected, despised, afflicted, and wounded. They are in the midst of Spiritual or physical famine and they do not feel peace during these times. They acknowledge their wickedness and the Spirit confirms to their hearts that they are in need of His cleansing from sin. Though they may stumble in their idolatry, they know that these idols are worthless and can bring them no salvation. Therefore, their hope is in God's restoration. 

¹³ O Lord, the hope of Israel,
All who forsake You will be put to shame.
Those who turn away on earth will be written down,
Because they have forsaken the fountain of living water, even the Lord.
¹⁴ Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed;
Save me and I will be saved,
For You are my praise. Jer 17

      Those who are capable of restoration are the people of God who acknowledge their sin and turn their eyes with hope to the One in whom they are trusting for their restoration. It is the Spirit of God who continually imparts the gift of repentance to His children. God's children desire His restoration for they realize in the depth of their souls how desperately they need to see Him again. God's children put their hope completely in Him even when they lose the joy of their salvation because they know the character of their God. They know that He will maintain the honor of His glorious throne. They know that He has made an everlasting Covenant with them by the blood of Christ. They know that He keeps His promises. They know that He alone is to be adored and exalted and that the idols of the nations cannot bring peace to fruition in their hearts though they may be temporarily deceived. 

¹⁹ Have You completely rejected Judah?
Or have You loathed Zion?
Why have You stricken us so that we are beyond healing?
We waited for peace, but nothing good came;
And for a time of healing, but behold, terror!
²⁰ We know our wickedness, O Lord,
The iniquity of our fathers, for we have sinned against You.
²¹ Do not despise us, for Your own name’s sake;
Do not disgrace the throne of Your glory;
Remember and do not annul Your covenant with us.
²² Are there any among the idols of the nations who give rain?
Or can the heavens grant showers?
Is it not You, O Lord our God?
Therefore we hope in You,
For You are the one who has done all these things. Jer 14

     These children of God are "PRISONERS OF HOPE" (Zech 9:12); they can do nothing but maintain their hope in their Savior even when they go astray, even when they do not feel His Presence, even when they are persecuted and disciplined...

¹¹ As for you also, because of the blood of My covenant with you,
I have set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.
¹² Return to the stronghold, O prisoners who have the hope;
This very day I am declaring that I will restore double to you. Zech 9:11-12

     Often the children of God have persevered in their acts of righteousness, but are tempted by the roaring lion who prowls around looking for someone to devour. They resist him and stand firm in their faith in spite of great suffering. During this suffering they may not feel His joy and the delights of His glory, but they trust in His promise to restore them and make them strong, firm, and steadfast. Their cry to their God is:

O God of hosts, restore us
And cause Your face to shine upon us, and we will be saved. Ps 80: 7

Restoration for His Glory

      One of the strongest anchors that we have for our hope in His restoration is our belief that God will maintain the glory of His Name. We know that we have borne His Name and that His Name has been our Banner and our strong Tower (Prov 18:10). We know that we are called by His Name, created for His glory, formed and made by Him (Is 43:7) to praise Him and to speak of His acts of goodness and salvation to the nations. We believe that our standing in Christ is dependent on His Covenant with us by the Blood of Christ. We remember our Advocate and Intercessor who lives to plead our case before the Father.

⁹ “For the sake of My name I delay My wrath,
And for My praise I restrain it for you,
In order not to cut you off.
¹⁰ “Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver;
I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.
¹¹ “For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act;
For how can My name be profaned?
And My glory I will not give to another. Is 48

     If only we could comprehend the splendor of His promise to His people to blot out their iniquity and to remember their sins no more, to purify and refine them so that they are presented holy and blameless on the day of judgment, to keep them until the end, to never let anyone snatch them from His Hand, to never sever us from His love...

Thus says the Lord, “If the heavens above can be measured
And the foundations of the earth searched out below,
Then I will also cast off all the offspring of Israel
For all that they have done,” declares the Lord. Jer 31:37

     Our sin has been very great even during the times after believing unto salvation when we have gone astray, but because of His Covenant, we are not rejected. Our backsliding has been great and our loss of reverence has shown our unworthiness, blindness, and arrogance, and yet BECAUSE OF HIS COVENANT WE ARE NOT CONDEMNED. We are not even temporarily forsaken and left. His promise is that He will never leave us or forsake us (Heb 13:5).

     Because He maintains His Covenant and the glory of His Name, there is only one resort for our restoration: He must discipline us. But God's children understand their need to continue in Him so that they will appear unashamed before Him at His coming. Their fear of God allows them to understand that if their Father does not discipline them as legitimate children, they would be given over entirely to the tiniest belief in the lies of wickedness and the sweet promises of the deceiver. They are convicted that the wages of sin, small or large, is death and eternal separation (Rom 6:23). When they acknowledge that their Father is disciplining and refining them, though they feel the pain of the refining furnace, their souls inwardly praise Him for they know that He had never rejected them as His children but had marked them out for His own. They cry out in the midst of the refining furnace "My Father, You have never left me, and I know that You are bringing me to perfection so that I may share in Your holiness and be found in Christ on the day of judgment!" 

¹⁸ “I have surely heard Ephraim grieving,
‘You have chastised me, and I was chastised,
Like an untrained calf;
Bring me back that I may be restored,
For You are the Lord my God.
¹⁹ ‘For after I turned back, I repented;
And after I was instructed, I smote on my thigh;
I was ashamed and also humiliated
Because I bore the reproach of my youth.’
²⁰ “Is Ephraim My dear son?
Is he a delightful child?
Indeed, as often as I have spoken against him,
I certainly still remember him;
Therefore My heart yearns for him;
I will surely have mercy on him,” declares the Lord. Jer 31

The Act of Divine Restoration

³⁷ Behold, I will gather them out of all the lands to which I have driven them in My anger, in My wrath and in great indignation; and I will bring them back to this place and make them dwell in safety. ³⁸ They shall be My people, and I will be their God; Jer 32 

     The act of Divine restoration is exalted and distinct. This act is unlike any other offer of restoration that the world and the forces of darkness have to offer. The strongest inner strength of a man, the wisest counsel of the world, and the most abundant granting of earthly prosperity cannot bring about the act of Divine restoration. Furthermore, we cannot bring about our Spiritual restoration. Even our own attempts to fast and wail, to repair the damage we had done in our hearts and likely in the hearts of those around us, to correct ourselves, to resolve not to backslide, and to seek the counsel of others could do us no good. But the act of Divine restoration is a sweeping movement of the Hand of God brought about by the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer through the Word of God.

⁶ Behold, I will bring to it health and healing, and I will heal them; and I will reveal to them an abundance of peace and truth.⁷ I will restore the fortunes of Judah and the fortunes of Israel and will rebuild them as they were at first. ⁸ I will cleanse them from all their iniquity by which they have sinned against Me, and I will pardon all their iniquities by which they have sinned against Me and by which they have transgressed against Me.⁹ It will be to Me a name of joy, praise and glory before all the nations of the earth which will hear of all the good that I do for them, and they will fear and tremble because of all the good and all the peace that I make for it.’ Jer 33 

     This act is always accompanied by a deep acknowledgement of sin and a magnificent display of the eternal Gospel. This act always results in a deep-rooted circumcision of the heart that removes the passions and desires that had grown out of the prostitution of the heart. This proceeds from the Word of God which had been acting [likely for a period of time] on the heart of the believer to convict them of the wickedness that had dwelt in them. At the time of restoration the inner turmoil and displeasure at the evil root of idolatry had become so great in the believer that the removal of the root, though painful, is delightfully freeing. The delight of the freedom from bondage results in an overwhelming joy and thankfulness to the Father of Light. 

¹⁰ ‘Fear not, O Jacob My servant,’ declares the Lord,
‘And do not be dismayed, O Israel;
For behold, I will save you from afar
And your offspring from the land of their captivity.
And Jacob will return and will be quiet and at ease,
And no one will make him afraid.
¹¹ ‘For I am with you,’ declares the Lord, ‘to save you;
For I will destroy completely all the nations where I have scattered you,
Only I will not destroy you completely.
But I will chasten you justly
And will by no means leave you unpunished.’ Jer 30

     The result of His restoration is that our hearts become undivided and every action is derived from this singleness of heart. He inspires us to fear Him as He puts His Law in our minds, writes It on our hearts and causes us to all know Him from the least of us to the greatest (Jer 31:33-34). No longer is our obedience derived from a constraining of the inward passions or an excruciating denial of self. Rather, the path of obedience become the path of least resistance for our souls. For this reason, we are planted in the Land of His righteousness because our heart's desires are aligned with the One who fills us with Resurrection power and Love.  Furthermore, He rejoices in doing us good and assuredly plants us in the land of His Spiritual Kingdom with all His heart and soul. 

³⁹ and I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me always, for their own good and for the good of their children after them. ⁴⁰ I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; and I will put the fear of Me in their hearts so that they will not turn away from Me. ⁴¹ I will rejoice over them to do them good and will faithfully plant them in this land with all My heart and with all My soul. Jer 32

     Our King, our good Shepherd delights in us. His desire had never been that we live in Spiritual dryness and inward poverty. His desire had never been that we feel or be incapable of living righteously. His desire was not for us to live in prolonged grief and misery. But He rejoices in filling our hunger and thirst for His righteousness so that we may be filled to all the measure of the fullness of God (Eph 3:19). His promise to never stop in revealing His goodness indicates that He will do whatever it takes for as long as we live to cause us to know His goodness. How great is the love of our King!

“At that time,” declares the Lord, “I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be My people.”

² Thus says the Lord,
“The people who survived the sword
Found grace in the wilderness—
Israel, when it went to find its rest.”
³ The Lord appeared to him from afar, saying,
“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore I have drawn you with loving kindness.
⁴ “Again I will build you and you will be rebuilt,
O virgin of Israel!
Again you will take up your tambourines,
And go forth to the dances of the merrymakers.
⁵ “Again you will plant vineyards
On the hills of Samaria;
The planters will plant
And will enjoy them.
⁶ “For there will be a day when watchmen
On the hills of Ephraim call out,
‘Arise, and let us go up to Zion,
To the Lord our God.’”

Jer 31

Restored to Be His Servants

     The result of His Divine Restoration is that we become strong, firm, and steadfast (I Peter 5:10). We are restored in order that we may serve Him. The service of His people that results from His restoration results in a humility that becomes a shelter for them.  And our service becomes a delightful one. Our service will be characterized by our words which are as pure as the restored hearts that He has granted us. He allows us to be His spokespeople. We will hold out the Words of Eternal Life, not reluctantly or timidly, but boldly and with confidence because we have seen the power of the Gospel yet again in His restoration. The chosen people will hear the Word of God.

¹⁹ Therefore, thus says the Lord,
“If you return, then I will restore you—
Before Me you will stand;
And if you extract the precious from the worthless,
You will become My spokesman.
They for their part may turn to you,
But as for you, you must not turn to them.
²⁰ “Then I will make you to this people
A fortified wall of bronze;
And though they fight against you,
They will not prevail over you;
For I am with you to save you
And deliver you,” declares the Lord.
²¹ “So I will deliver you from the hand of the wicked,
And I will redeem you from the grasp of the violent.”Jer 15

     But God commands us not to turn to the people who turn to us who have known God and His Word. Yes, we are to love sacrificially and be thankful for the many ways in which we are blessed by the fellowship and union with believers. But every piece of human favor, love, admiration, or neediness for us, that was not completely derived from the source of the Father's unfailing Agape, was a temptation for us to establish our souls yet again onto a unstable foundation, or a cistern that could hold no water. This is why after James tells us that if we submit to God and resist the devil he will flee, he immediately tells us to draw near to God (James 4:6-8). When we were broken and contrite we knew that there was nothing lovely in ourselves either physically or spiritually. And if the favor of mankind were dependent on something other than the unfailing AGAPE of our Father, it would be sure to disappear with their perceiving of our humanity. And if we had trusted in this favor or allowed our souls to delight in such unstable favor, we would have almost denied our contrition and sought to establish a glory of our own all over again. 

⁶² But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Luke 9

    But when we make His love our anchor, our love for one another is incredibly free because it is founded on His ocean of love and grace, the firm Foundation of His Covenant. There is an infinite amount of room for all of us to abide here. In the very process of abiding in His love, we are loving the people of God. Knowing His love and loving the people of God are inseparable. The love between believers is not soul-draining (as if there was a shortage of love among us) and there are no dependencies of one person on another because they are all dependent on the Father's eternal Covenant of love in Christ. As each of them abides in His love, their love for one another increases. And all of this heavenly love is separated from the earthly glories and dependent on the the New Covenant in His Blood poured out for us. He is the only eternal Leader and Ruler of Love. 

²¹ ‘Their leader shall be one of them,
And their ruler shall come forth from their midst;
And I will bring him near and he shall approach Me;
For who would dare to risk his life to approach Me?’ declares the Lord.
²² ‘You shall be My people,
And I will be your God.’”

²³ Behold, the tempest of the Lord!
Wrath has gone forth,
A sweeping tempest;
It will burst on the head of the wicked.
²⁴ The fierce anger of the Lord will not turn back
Until He has performed and until He has accomplished
The intent of His heart;
In the latter days you will understand this.

Jer 30

Expectations that Cause Despair

     When we continue in our immorality and evil desires, we have expectations for these desires and cravings to be met. The devil will satisfy our evil desires on some days and we may pursue them further. But on other days, our longings and expectations will not be met. And we will be broken. The consequences for our impurity will rise up against us and we will find no pleasure in what used to give us a thrill.

 ¹¹ Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. ¹² Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, ¹³ and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. ¹⁴ For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace. Rom 6

     One thing every woman must know is that no matter how “high” your heart feels in the midst of sinful pleasure, you are going to come down. You are going to come down. And when you come down you will have nothing. You will have become worthless. Your God-given femininity will be reversibly destroyed (reversibly in the sense that God can restore you). You will be worth as much as the man whose affections and desires you craved. If you are truly a child of God, if you continue in sensuality, God will bring calamity upon you in order to restore you to Himself. Your expectations will never be fulfilled, dear sisters. Devote these evil expectations to destruction. Put your hope in Him. He will never fail you.

The Calamity that Overrides Fleshly Pleasure

     There is a certain level of calamity or earthly “trouble” that in a sense relieves us of our sensuality. Many of us Christian women are afflicted with physical pain, financial worries, sickness in those dear to us, earthly jobs, tasks, errands to do… and in a sense we are temporarily relieved of our sensuality because of our preoccupation with these things.  However busyness is not a shield from impurity but rather a weapon against us. In our business, we neglect the strengthening of the soul. And when temptation comes we would have no strength to resist…

My Story

     When I was younger (13-17 yrs) I struggled with some internal sensuality. I subtly craved man’s attention and dressed accordingly. By God’s grace both of my parents have largely protected me from coarse sensuality and deeds which portray the like: dating, having a “crush”, having a boy who was just a “friend”…I was not allowed to do any of these things and I am very grateful because I think that I could have gone quite astray. In spring of 2007 I was in my second year at the UMN, and that was perhaps the worst semester for me in terms of inward sensuality and for some reason, I did not have calamities at that time to quench the wicked fire. At the same time, I was holding onto God, I could not deny Him completely. Just earlier in fall 2006, I had been changed by reading “Reese Howell’s Intercessor” and learned to pray and experience the presence of God. Satan’s attack was to shower man’s attention on me thereafter so that I would forget God.

     That summer we went to India on a mission trip because Anand had vowed to preach the Gospel to 1003 people (long story, you can ask me). This was a blessed trip, and I came to know God much more in our preaching journeys. But I became very ill in India and my stomach turned quite sensitive. I hardly ate anything at all in India. When we returned to the USA, I continued not eating many calories out of some kind of irrational fear of stomach ailments. Every food that made my stomach hurt in the least sense was eliminated from my diet. The only thing remaining for me to eat was vegetables. I knew all about nutrition, but I neglected eating adequate calories. I found out later on in my nutrition studies that I was essentially on the “Keyes Study Diet” given to Jewish people in concentration camps in terms of the duration and caloric deprivation of my starvation period. Most of these Jewish people ended up in asylums or became addicted to eating after being released. The fall semester after returning I dropped 30 lbs (from 93 lb to 63 lb; I had originally been over 100 lb before the India trip). I was so busy with my course work that I hardly realized I was losing so much weight. After much pleading, yelling, crying, and forcing on the part of my parents, I tried to eat more, but I could not gain any weight back. Every day, I would read a verse that my mom had written for me:

²⁴ For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. ²⁵ Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. ²⁶ Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. Ez 36. 

     I knew that if this verse did not come true in my life, I was going to die. A few of the women in our church told me that God’s will for me was not to be a lifeless weak dead-looking girl. I lost all motivation to live. I did not want to go anywhere and would cry when dad and mom tried to take me anywhere (even the grocery store). Most of my hair fell out. I lost all beauty and fertility. It vanished, calamity had fallen on me.

²⁴ Now it will come about that instead of sweet perfume there will be putrefaction;
Instead of a belt, a rope;
Instead of well-set hair, a plucked-out scalp;
Instead of fine clothes, a donning of sackcloth;
And branding instead of beauty.
²⁵ Your men will fall by the sword
And your mighty ones in battle.
²⁶ And her gates will lament and mourn,
And deserted she will sit on the ground. Is 3

     These verses were literally fulfilled in my life. One day, mom had prayed with her Bible study for me that God would “move the mountains”. That day dad and mom were really grieved and I could not bear it any longer. I repented with a fear of backsliding, and God completely delivered me. He helped me gradually learn to eat calories, fat, protein, meat, etc. In the years to follow, the past few years, He has gradually restored everything, first the weight and hair, then the fertility, and more recently the motivation to live and feminine spirit.

²⁵ “Then I will make up to you for the years
That the swarming locust has eaten,
The creeping locust, the stripping locust and the gnawing locust,
My great army which I sent among you.
²⁶ “You will have plenty to eat and be satisfied
And praise the name of the Lord your God,
Who has dealt wondrously with you;
Then My people will never be put to shame.
²⁷ “Thus you will know that I am in the midst of Israel,
And that I am the Lord your God,
And there is no other;
And My people will never be put to shame. Joel 2

     As I had my femininity removed from me (so that I was physically like a little girl) and had it restored again, God taught me so many things about what it means to be a woman. In addition to other things, my sensuality was destroyed in the fire of this calamity. As mom tells me, “God was protecting you from evil men and from the temptations of youth”. Since being restored, some of these temptations have come back, but I am much more aware of them (having had them removed and restored) and rely on God alone for my daily purity…my daily Bread. Christ is my righteousness and purity.

     The point of this story is to convey to you that if you continue on in sensuality, God can and will inflict you with calamity to wash away your impurity.

¹³ “Behold, he goes up like clouds,
And his chariots like the whirlwind;
His horses are swifter than eagles.
Woe to us, for we are ruined!”

¹⁴ Wash your heart from evil, O Jerusalem,
That you may be saved.
How long will your wicked thoughts
Lodge within you? Jer 4

     In a way, another weapon against sensuality is to let yourself bear the anguish of God for the sin of His people.

²⁷ It is good for a man that he should bear
The yoke in his youth.
²⁸ Let him sit alone and be silent
Since He has laid it on him.
²⁹ Let him put his mouth in the dust,
Perhaps there is hope.
³⁰ Let him give his cheek to the smiter,
Let him be filled with reproach. Lam 3

     Go to funerals and comfort those who mourn so that your heart will be drawn to heavenly things rather than sensuality.

²⁷ It is good for a man that he should bear
The yoke in his youth.
²⁸ Let him sit alone and be silent
Since He has laid it on him.
²⁹ Let him put his mouth in the dust,
Perhaps there is hope.
³⁰ Let him give his cheek to the smiter,
Let him be filled with reproach. Ecc 7

     Spend yourself on behalf of the needy and make yourself industrious for the Kingdom of God, or rather let Him work in you to will and to act according to His Spirit. Live by the Spirit.

¹⁶ But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. ¹⁷ For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. Gal 5