Praying for Contentment (Proverbs 5:15)

“Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.”
– Proverbs 5:15

Proverbs 5:15 is pretty powerful imagery when you think about the context of what the writer here in Proverbs is doing. He’s warning spouses against adultery, specifically here, husbands against adultery. And he is saying, “Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.” In other words, enjoy the good gift God has given you in your wife, in your spouse. The chapter goes on to talk about, “Let your fountain be blessed. Rejoice in the wife of your youth.”

Lord keep us from looking to other cisterns to satisfy us. We pray that you will help us to be faithful, even in the face of temptation.

And so when we think about marriage and the tendencies, the temptations there might be for any spouse, a husband or a wife, to begin to look to someone else for that which God has designed to be experienced in your spouse, whenever you or I are tempted in that way, just to shut that down and say, “No, no, no. God has designed my wife or my husband to satisfy me in that way, to meet that particular need. This is the avenue through which God blesses me through my husband or my wife in this way.”

This Verse Prays That We Be Content

Obviously, the picture there in this warning against adultery is referring to even sexual satisfaction, pleasure. And so, we are provoked to pray, then, for each of our marriages. If you are single to pray for those who are married around you, yes. And then also to pray for contentment even in your own heart until God leads you, husband or wife.

So God make us, we pray, a content people. Please guard us, guard me, guard all of us from looking to other cisterns to satisfy. We know this even ultimately in our relationship with You, how You rebuked Your people in Jeremiah for leaving You to worship other idols, to seek satisfaction and pleasure in other gods, for forsaking You, the fountain of living water. And God, how prone we are to do that in our relationship with You, and then even in marriage to go outside the bounds of looking to our husband or wife, our spouse, to find the satisfaction that You’ve designed for us and them.

Proverbs 5:15 Prays For Husbands And Wives

So God, we pray. We pray that you would help us, all who are husbands or wives, to drink from our own cisterns. God, I’m assuming that somebody, some people who are listening to this right now, are being tempted to drink from other cisterns, tempted to go outside the covenant of marriage and look to … Some are already starting to look to another man or another woman to satisfy them, to fulfill their needs in this way or that way that you’ve designed to be fulfilled in marriage. So God, may it not be so. May You use even this time in prayer, this word right now, to pull them back, to pull them back to drinking from their own cisterns.

Proverbs 5:15 Prays For Brothers And Sisters

God, I pray for single brothers and sisters who are listening to this right now. That they would not go drinking from cisterns, from people who are not their husband or wife, God, that you would give just sexual purity. God, I pray for that for all of us, single or married. That we would not in any way indulge in activities, sexual activity outside of marriage, to the husband or wife You’ve given to us. And just pray that over all of our lives. That we might experience Your beautiful design. Your good design for marriage and sexuality according to the boundaries and the cisterns that You provide.

May it be so, I pray, in my own life and marriage. And marriages and lives are represented among all of those who are listening right now. God, please may this be so. Help us to honor You and experience satisfaction from You in the ways You have designed. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.