Each home had its own cistern and perhaps even had its own well.

Each home had its own supply of stored water and this example is used to instruct the son in where he is to satisfy his thirst.

Find your refreshment at home.

Be blessed from that which belongs to you.

God provides you with your own water, or your own satisfaction, and you are not to drink from another’s well or another’s cistern.

In other words you are to find your contentment in what is at your own home and not to look elsewhere.

You are to nurture that which is at home, so that which is at home will provide you, that which is needed to serve others outside the home.

And by saying,  Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.

He says to his son that his home is to be the place where all begins that is to be given.

Home is the place where all energy begins which flows to the outside of the home and blesses others.

On this earth, home is the core, the focus, the heart of that which produces blessing to all else.

Without a strong foundation of the home that which is done outside the home will not meet success.

The home is to produce the servant of God, the loyal follower of God, those who trust in God.

He is to drink waters out of his own cistern, he is to drink running waters out of his own well for the purpose of letting his fountains of waters run though the streets and be dispersed abroad.

The purpose of the strong home is not to confine the waters to the home but to let the waters of the home bless others.

There are many homes that simply exist for themselves but this proverbs father does not intend that for his son.

His home is to be the place where preparation takes place for service to God.

His son is to be a giving person and not a taking person.

He is not to be content in the satisfaction of his own self but he is to also look at the satisfying of others.

Yes, receive pleasures from your own, drink waters from your own cistern and your own well.

Nurture your own, your children and your wife and you will have satisfaction at home.

Work at pulling the weeds from your own grass, work at making your grass more green and improving your own fountains and invest your efforts in your home.

Get your energy, your encouragement, your strength from your own home.

You are not to look elsewhere for satisfaction or sustenance for God has given you the joys of lawful love in marriage.

Choose the clear clean waters that God has provided and refuse the poisoned waters from the hand of Satan.

A man that only finds pleasure and satisfaction outside the home will soon have no home and no ministry for God.

A man is to find the resources in his own home in order to be a blessing to those in his home and to others outside of his home.

This speaks much to what responsibility the members of the home are to be.

A husband and a wife are to bless each other in the home, in order to function for God outside of the home.

This is the kind of compact that will keep the home fires burning.

He is to Rejoice with the wife of his youth and that does not end with her youth.

It is to be a lifetime of rejoicing and that takes much nurturing.

How this speaks of where the husband is to invest his time and energy!

How this speaks of continually meeting the needs of each other.

Not putting yourself first but putting the other first.

Not a fifty-fifty relationship but a zero for me and a 100 for her relationship.

And this is not limited in its breadth but encompasses all areas of marriage.

This is the most intimate of unions and if marriage is to be kept in the heart it is to be kept the most intimate of unions.

Jesus Christ instructed in MATTHEW 19:4-6,  Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

It is interesting to know that the word "asunder" means to place room between, to separate.

Marriage then permits no separation between.

It means one. One is one and that’s all one means.

No separation. No place between.

How this repeats that which is pictured here in our proverb.

Be thou ravished always with her love.

And to stop being ravished with her love is to put the intimacy of marriage asunder.

It is to place room between.

What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. or place room between

And this includes the man of the marriage and this includes the woman of the marriage.

Each is to insure that the weeds of the grass are pulled daily in order that nothing comes between them, for to have something come between, is to no more be ONE, but to be two, and that is the cessation or interruption of marriage.

Marriage is of the heart and when the heart is not in it marriage ceases.

Many are pretenders to marriage when in fact marriage ceased years ago.

Simply depending upon some legal document to perpetuate marriage.

Many are simply living together in the same house but have not been ONE of the heart for years.

Jesus said this important truth about marriage and that is, that he made them male and female, designed physically and spiritually to be one in union.

That is the basis for marriage. Male and female.

Without male and female there is no such thing as marriage.

There never can be marriage between other than male and female for male and female is the foundation of marriage.

For this cause (what cause? The fact that he made them male and female) shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?

Marriage is defined by Jesus Christ as a union of a male and a female.

And this proverbs father instructs his son to keep that marriage continually real and alive by letting her satisfy him at all times and continually be ravished always with her love.

There is to be no looking to another.

That is quite a challenge to the son, to every husband, isn’t it to always keep the marriage alive and well.

And if this is the mission of the son, if keeping the marriage alive is what the son is to put his efforts in, the father ask this rhetorical question:

MATTHEW 19:4-6, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

The word asunder has always sounded to me like a word of power.

Its sound is like the word thunder.

Thunder blasts its way across the sky and I never associate subtlety of meaning to thunder.

Thunder is produced by lighting that separates air molecules from one another, thereby creating a vacuum.

The great noise that we hear is of those molecules closing the gap and colliding together in great force after this violent separation.

I don’t know if it is just me or perhaps others associate the word "asunder" with something that comes in and forcibly separates that which should be together.

In other words an outside force comes in and separates.

The word in English expresses this action for asunder is composed of "a" and "sunder" which means "in sunder" or the state of being separated, parted or severed.

Shakespeare, in his play the "Comedy of Errors" used this word thusly: Gnawing with my teeth my bonds in sunder, I gained my freedom.

By the violent act of his teeth the ropes were broken.

This is asunder in the English.

But asunder in the Greek is chorizo, kho-rid’-zo which means to place room between.

Yes, placing room between is an act of separation and asunder may be the best English word to choose but I think the Greek word indicates a subtlety of action that the English asunder may not express.

Lighting places room between air molecules but it does so in a spectacular and violent way and it is an outside force that separates.

But placing room between can also be done in a quiet and careful way, almost an unnoticed action, with not any at all violence included in the placing.

This is what happened in the garden of Eden, when the serpent placed room between God and Adam.

His deceitfulness was first expressed to Eve when he questioned God’s word by saying to her, Hath God said?

And I suppose he said it with a smile and with pretended love and concern for Eve.

He was placing room between which eventually led to room between God and Adam and then room between the first couple and the Garden of Eden.

The Devil’s main purpose is to keep that room between God and man, to keep the gap made by his sundering.

So the pattern of subtle sundering was established by the serpent in the garden and that is what I think the Lord was warning about when he said

This is a statement that warns those who are married, those who are to always be in a united state, to beware of that which places room between that united state of matrimony.

Let not man put asunder means to not permit room between.

So this is up to those who are united to not permit this to take place.

Sundering can come from the outside but most likely it will come from the inside.

Therefore the man and the woman are to be on the front lines of this defense and both are to be united in it.

There will be no others to prevent this from taking place for the battle to keep room between can only be fought and won by those who are to be ONE, those who are united.

The man and the woman are to be constantly on guard against that which places room between, for there is much that wishes to make space between those who are declared by God to let not man put asunder." be ONE.

If God makes ONE the devil tries to make two.

Whatever God desires, the devil desires otherwise and will set up his world system to counteract God’s way.

The devil has placed in the world system his underlings in the sundering business.

Relatives are very capable sunderers!

Jesus Christ said: For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?

Here again we see separation as God’s defense.

A man and a woman’s loyalties are to be to each other over and above their loyalties to their parents.

They are certainly to honor their mother and their father but this is ultimately done through their devotion to each other and their allegiance to their marriage vows.

Only by continually being ONE will they honor their parents in the Biblical sense.

They are never to permit their parents to place room between or asunder their marriage.

Jesus used the word cleave to express this in no uncertain terms.

Cleave means to glue to, to adhere, to join.

A man and a woman are to be so joined together that parents cannot do anything to place room between.

This is of course up to the man and the woman for Jesus said to permit no man to put asunder.

So it is a matter of the will of the marriage partners.

Do they desire to be what Jesus Christ said they are? One?

Or does their heart express another purpose of the union?

Will they permit room to come between by opening up weaknesses to others or do they only open up weaknesses to each other depending upon the other to provide strength?

Are you as a husband or wife the one to whom your mate goes for solutions, revealing her or himself as weak and needing help?

The Bible calls the woman the weaker vessel but that simply points out that the other vessel is also weak, perhaps just a little less weak.

But from the Biblical sense the marriage is composed of two weak vessels joining into one vessel exposing their weaknesses to each other and no other. "Let not man put asunder."

Children also in their sinful nature have a natural dedication to come between a mother and a father for they see that as an advantage to themselves.

They will find a weakness in their parents defense and use it for their benefit.

They will look for a division of that ONENESS and insert a pry bar to make the crack as big as it needs to be to make their life easier.

Understanding a child’s nature to sin is a must if the ONENESS of marriage is to be upheld.

Children can never be allowed to make room between, never be allowed to see the cracks.

If a man and a woman are truly ONE then they are to have one mind concerning their children.

To have otherwise is to cater to their children’s sinful nature and the ONENESS of marriage will be weakened or destroyed.

The Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil and the devil uses that to put room between.

The love of money is one of the major causes of divorce in this country.

There must be a contentment in the matter of THINGS, always relying on God as the provider and being thankful for what God provides.

A man or woman always having to have things to provide happiness will place room between and permit sundering to take place in the marriage.

Things are not to be that which provides happiness in a marriage.

If things are relied upon to do so then most likely there is much room already between.

Major repair work needs to be done to mend the cracks before the whole structure comes apart.

A man’s work or a woman’s work can also place room between.

And that includes your work in the Lord’s work.

The Lord expects the foundations of life to be kept strong if his work is to advance.

Excessive time at or thought about work can rob a man or woman of the proper time to spend together strengthening the integrity of the wholeness of marriage.

God has so arranged this world and has placed us in this world where maintenance is required.

For us to live an orderly life sweeping, raking, painting, washing, combing, cutting, wiping, vacuuming, dusting, mowing and dragging ball fields in the spring is required.

God did not so arrange this in a casual manner, for God does nothing casually.

Everything that God does in this world is for our good and that includes the requirement to sweep, rake, paint, wash, comb, cut, wipe, vacuum, dust, mow and drag.

God has so arranged things so that we would be involved in the pursuit of maintenance.

I’ve read this quote before but I’ll read it again:

And I will add to this that God has given us the responsibility to maintain as a way to build character for maintenance is to be done day in, day out in the face of a nature that desires the easy road on which to sin.

Maintenance then is a sin prevention aid provided by God.

So for anything to last in this life maintenance is reguired and that includes the maintenance of marriage.

Constant awareness of this will bring into the marriage a newness that maintenance brings.

Everything needs a new coat of paint, every floor needs sweeping, every face needs washing every once in a while and that need for routine maintenance attention includes marriage

Marriage is like a fortress that must not only be guarded from outside attack but like any fortress the walls of marriage need constant maintenance and repair.

Attention is needed to any structure if that structure is to give long service.

What do you do for your car if you expect it to provide ten years of service?

What then do you expect to do in a marriage that God has ordained for life?

As some folks misuse a new car and get little use from it, and only take from it without giving to it, they also do the same in marriage.

So as a car needs a maintenance plan to last so too a marriage requires a long range maintenance plan to last.

And God by ordaining marriage as a long term relationship, until death do us part, commands a long range maintenance plan.

And He has given us the outline of such a plan in:

Drinking, letting, dispersing, blessing, rejoicing, satisfying, ravishing.

Those are chapter headings in the maintenance plan and must be filled in in order for the ONENESS of marriage to be in fact true.

So you have a license proving that you were married!

But that was simply the time that you said your vows.

But are you married today?

Or are you just living in the same house together?

How do you know?

It is so easy for those who have the documents to condemn those who are living together without the documents when in fact many have not been married in the heart for years.

For they are just going through the motions.

Is the maintenance plan in good order and is it being implemented?

Are you rejoicing with the wife of the your youth?

Are you being ravished with her love?

Is the rock of marriage solid or are cracks developing?

Better get that mortar repair kit out daily and see to it that the cracks are closed.

Let not man put asunder, let not man make room means to be on guard for cracks and to fill the cracks daily.

This is an area where each of us needs to know how to mix good marriage mortar and how to apply it.

So after providing his son with the outline of a long range maintenance plan the father asks this question.