What happens when love is strong—but fears about the future begin to surface? In this episode, Sam and Debbie uncover another “little fox” that can quietly threaten a relationship and how couples can protect their love before problems take root.

Checkout these other Family Fortress Ministries Podcasts:

TIME FOR THREE daily couples devotional: https://time-for-three.captivate.fm/listen

RELATIONSHIP REALITIES: https://relationship-realities.captivate.fm/listen

Donate: https://familyfortress.org/donate

Free Online Premarital Training: https://preparingforpartnership.org/

Welcome to the Fortifying youg Family podcast.

It can be daunting to navigate through an anti marriage and family culture.

Our teacher will expound biblical principles to help fortify our families and keep these sacred institutions strong.

And now, here's this week's teaching from Sam Wood.

We want to welcome you back to the journey through the Song of Songs.

And we've so enjoyed these sessions that we've been sharing with you.

In the last session, we examined a courtship encounter where Solomon visited his bride to be in their country home.

You remember he was skipping through the.

Over the mountains, down through the meadows, and he came and he was looking around the lattice for his bride.

He was very excited.

He expressed passionate.

He really expressed a passionate longing for sexual intimacy and begged her to come outside and take a romantic stroll with him.

But she knew that she better not do that.

Well, I know she.

At the same time, she expressed.

She longed for sexual intimacy with him too.

She was clear about that.

But before marriage and sex, she just felt like they needed to sort through issues that might damage the relationship.

Yeah.

And so what she did, she described their blossoming love as tender grapes in a vineyard that needed protection from the little foxes that could destroy the vines, especially this fox of premarital sex.

So with the mindset of capturing the little foxes fresh in our mind, the Shuamite experiences in this next scene, we're looking at this time in this session a recurring dream.

We see this recurring dream throughout the song that intermingles her desire for sexual intimacy with Solomon with another potential little fox that could really plague their future happiness.

And we see this as we look in chapter three and we look at verse one.

So let me read the first verse.

It says, by night on my bed, I sought him, whom my soul loveth.

I sought him, but I couldn't find him.

Or, but I did not find him.

Can you really get the picture here?

She's laying in bed, she's drifting off to sleep, and the concerns of her heart began to take over in her mind and in the thoughts of a dream.

And she loves him.

She wants to be with him.

I was talking to you earlier and I said all the way through this whole section, she's continually saying, whom my soul loveth, whom my soul loveth.

She desires to be with him.

And the wording there by night means this is something that's happening repeatedly, like every nighter often.

Joseph Dillo says recurring dream possibly uncovers a nagging concern that due to the demands of the job of King Solomon, that he's going to have all these kind of responsibilities as king of Israel, Solomon, he's not going to be home a lot.

He's going to be absent, away from her.

So she's concerned about that, you know,

and I get those concerns.

I understand as King of Israel, he'll be on call 247 and he's probably going to work long hours, he's going to be required to travel away from home probably on a regular basis.

So here she is and she's wondering, will she be able to handle this loneliness?

You know, the loneliness once they get married or is married life for her just going to be this repeat of longing for him and wanting him so intensely, so, so much.

But then you have it intensified by the reality of this depressing separation, something she can't do a thing about.

Yeah, because she knows he's going to be gone a lot.

He's not going to be home exactly, you know, a lot with her.

So her dream continues.

And we see that in verse two and three.

She says in verse two, I will rise now and go about the city and the streets, and in the broad ways I'll seek him.

Here it is again.

Who my soul loveth.

I sought him, but I couldn't find him.

I found him not the watchmen that go about the city found me to whom I said, saw ye him whom my soul loveth.

You know.

You know, I like that in her dream she doesn't just complain or wallow in self pity, but she develops a plan for her dilemma and she goes out looking for him, you know, catching little foxes that hinder love in a marriage.

It requires diligence and overcoming marital issues requires intention and effort, you know, and

the key I think is, as one of the commentators by the name of Peter Pentas points out, is over time in marriage, disappointments can cool our view of the person that we're in love with.

And he says that dis disappointments are not dealt with early on, then it leads to separation.

And so it's as important, you know,

And I think lots of couples, they're in the same house every day, but because of misunderstandings and hurt, they feel separated.

And this can be dangerous because partners tend to look for other people or things to fill that void.

And then they get used to living separate lives from one another.

And I feel like that's probably the way the fox digs around the roots of the vine to destroy it.

And as you said, there's something key that she's really doing here.

We've already said that she pursues him.

But she's also admitting notice again, she's also admitting that she loves him and she desires him whom my soul loveth.

A lot of times during marriage counseling, once a couple describes their struggle to us before applying scripture or planning a strategy.

I'll look at the husband and I'll ask him, do you still love your wife the way you did when you first got married, or do you want your loving relationship you once had?

Did you want it back?

And then I'll look at the wife and I'll ask her the same question.

I'm reminding both of them that, hey, we are two sinners.

We're a sinner who's married to another sinner.

It's inevitable that we're going to face issues that will tend to distance us from each other and tend to separate us.

So in those times, we need to admit we really do love each other and that we want to work it out.

And to do that, we've got to be intentional to invest the effort to find each other again.

And that's what she's really doing in this dream.

She's investing the effort to go look for him and find him whom her soul loveth.

So as she continues to search for Solomon, she says in verse four, it was but a little time that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth.

I held him and would not let him go until he had brought him into my mother's house and into the chamber of her that conceived me.

Now, you know, this sounds like a plan, doesn't it?

Like she's going to head the fox of loneliness away before the little pests can do damage to their relationship.

And when Shulamite feels overwhelming loneliness, she's determining right now that she's going to make an effort to enter into Solomon's world, to be part of it, to find out what is it that's going on in his life and to really make an effort to understand it.

So she's being proactive.

She's planning a solution for potential conflict of him being away from her.

But she's doing this ahead of time so that once he's been gone, she'll welcome him back in her arms and take him to her mother's house, she says, in the country for some privacy or some time alone.

So instead of being consumed, her being consumed with the what ifs, what if I never see him again?

You know, what if he's with another woman out there somewhere, you know?

Or what if he doesn't want to come home to Me like the Shulamite, we should develop a proactive plan for responding to different types of potential conflicts that can happen in marriage.

Because there will be conflicts in marriage and if we're aware of them and prepare for them ahead of time, we can avoid having, we might say, meltdowns when they come and when they happen.

But you know, there, there's this one special step in Shulamite's plan that especially helps me avoid meltdowns.

And Sam knows what it is.

But she says, I held him and I would not let him go.

You see, when our sons were all young, some close friends of ours divorced and the boys were asking all kinds of questions about, wow, how did it happen?

What's going on?

And I turned to our three year old and I asked him, I said, now what would you do if your wife was mean to you or mad with you?

And it shocked me.

He was so quick to respond, he said, I would hold her.

I thought, how profound.

You're a three year old.

But, you know, nothing soothes my troubled soul as much as a long tight hug.

It just gives me security.

And I asked him, my son, I said, why would you do that?

And he says, daddy always says to have and to hold.

And you see, he had heard Sam repeat wedding vows for couples a number of times.

So this, to have and to hold from this day forward, that was stuck in his mind.

He took it literally.

And you know what, that can be his great plan for his marriage now, to have and to hold.

Yeah.

So if he gets in a little conflict or his wife looks like she's upset or something, just go hold her and you like that, don't you?

Helps me, you know.

In verse five, Shulamite, once again, very interesting, concludes with sound advice for single girls and advice that, you know, advice she's can, you know, she's herself is following.

As we saw this earlier, she's already given this advice once, but here she's going to give it again.

In verse five, she says this.

I charge you, O daughters, oh you daughters of Jerusalem, by the rose, by the hinds of the fields, that you stir not up nor wake my love till he please.

This time the warning not to stir up love implies that singles, they shouldn't become involved sexually until they've settled, that they can handle all the little foxes and then get married.

The little fox she's wrestling with in this dream is the fox of loneliness, separation, potentially from her husband because of his occupation.

And that's what she's really wrestling with here, right?

And you Know stirring up sexual desire by entering that progression of stimulation before marriage.

That's a box.

And what it does, it steals objectivity.

And couples become so infatuated with the pleasure that they overlook key considerations before marriage, like adjustments for careers, flaws in character.

Is my partner walking with Christ.

They overlook dreams and goals of the other person.

So becoming infatuated like that can sometimes be dangerous.

They lose all their objectivity in the relationship.

And we often say that sex should be the result of good friends that end up married to each other, friends that have meaningful conversations, like we're seeing here in the song, about every aspect of life and these very important aspects of life.

Occupation, being here, one of them.

And friends that know each other's heart.

You know, true friends.

I like this.

Are the best lovers.

True friends really are.

They're the best lovers.

But lovers don't always make good friends.

So don't stir up love until it's time.

That is, until you get married and you've dealt with these little foxes we're

talking about, you know, Philip Reichen makes a statement that I think is pretty profound.

He says, practicing celibacy is not simply refraining from sex.

It's an active and positive way of offering ourselves to God.

So singles need to prepare for marriage by first pursuing God.

How else can you determine if.

If this is the person for me to marry?

And understanding crucial God's plan for marriage, plus having these deep conversations about how this looks.

It's invaluable for couples considering a lifetime together.

And that's why we offer our online premier, our online premarital training program, free of charge, Preparing for partnership.

You go to preparingforpartnership.org and you can register free.

And it gives you seven sessions to go through premarital training that are very comprehensive and you can connect to a church.

So we highly encourage you to check that out.

If you know somebody getting married, you might want to encourage them to check that out.

But another thing that we really recommend is that married couples attend a marriage conference every year.

I know we talked to a couple this morning, and I said, one thing you need to do is you need to attend a marriage conference every year to catch the foxes, we might say, that kind of weasel their way in after the wedding once you get married.

Because we still have to deal with all these things.

We all have little pests that want to disrupt unity, and our marriages are worth the effort to get rid of them.

Yeah.

So this is a beautiful scene, this dream.

It brings out another little fox, a fox of occupation.

And some wonderful principles and nuggets for us.

But in closing, let me remind you that the only true way to conquer loneliness is to pursue the perfect bridegroom that is Jesus Christ.

And pursue him.

And listen, you need to pursue like she was in this dream.

You need to pursue him until you find him and then refuse to let him go.

Invite him into the deepest recesses of your heart and find true, lasting fulfillment in a relationship with Jesus Christ.

He is the perfect bridegroom.

I love the verses In Jeremiah chapter 29 and verse 13 it says, and you shall seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart.

What a beautiful verse that is.

Thank you for joining the Fortifying youg Family podcast and if you feel encouraged by today's teaching, give us a follow so we can invite you back and share us on your socials so more marriages and families can be strengthened and fortified through the truths of God's Word.

Remember, fortified Fortifying your family starts with a strong belief in God's Word.