FAITH PUBLISHING HOUSE Digitally Published by THE GOSPEL TRUTH www.churchofgodeveninglight.com Foreword Bro. Sam Barton and I have just passed our 60th year of married life. Our life together has not always been sunshine, nor has it been strewn with roses. We have had some hardships along the way, and at times the waves of trouble have rolled high. But we have had God to help us in those troublesome times and He has brought us through. We have worked together to the ending of a happy life. I am convinced that it has paid great dividends in various ways. Young people, I desire the very best in life for you and eternal life in the end. But remember it comes through a denial of yourself and being true to God’s ways which are plainly written in His holy Word. You will find in reading this booklet some accounts of those who have not always chosen the right ways. I send forth this booklet with a prayer and a desire for your happiness. —Mrs. Sam Barton Tulsa, Okla., July, 1968. Contents The Sin of Trifling with Another’s Affections By Mrs. Sam Barton .................................................1 A Prisoner’s Life Story By Ira J. Willingham .................................................5 Trifling By Julia A. Shelhamer ...............................................17 I’m 21- May I Do as I Please? Selected by Mrs. Ira Stover .......................................21 Married to a Drunkard — Selected ........................................24 Ungodly Affections By Mrs. Marie Miles .................................................28 The Sin of Trifling With Another’s Affections Girls and boys, I want to speak plainly on a subject that will interest all of you who are old enough to think you should have a girl friend or a boyfriend. Now in this day we find small boys and girls confessing to elders, “I have a boyfriend,” or “girl friend.” Oh, children and young people, do you know these should be sacred thoughts? This involves your whole life; it will make you happy or make you unhappy. Because some did not guard their affection they have paid for it with years of grief and remorse of conscience. They just let their affections run out to the opposite sex freely. Dear ones, we have to pay. God has given your affections as a precious gift to be given to the one you are to love and be a companion to through life. But what will happen if you trifle with your God-given affections and let everyone you may chum about with have a portion of those God-given affections? The time will come when you feel you want a companion to go with you through life, but sad, sad for you cannot make up your mind whom you do love for you have trifled on your own self. You made your chummy friends think they were the one of your choice and they have begun to think you love no one but yourself, which is true, for you were enjoying trifling and you find that you have no true affections for anyone. THE SIN OF TRIFLING By and by you will be shunned by both girls and boys, for they will call you a flirt. Oh, dear ones, wake up! This sin of trifling is after all ages, married or single. Many homes are broken these days by the SIN of trifling. Little children are becoming orphans all because of the sin of trifling. Let us see what trifling will do. It will cause deception, murder, adultery, fornication, jealousy, hatred, lying, and many things too numerous to mention. It is deception. People who trifle have no principle. They are of such character as not to be trusted in after life. People who will so deceive another as to let them believe they love them and then turn about and deny having any affection for them, lack in certain fundamental principles of womanhood (or manhood) which are necessary for the formation of a happy home. Dear ones, you can’t build your happiness on the ashes of someone else’s love; it is impossible for you to go unchastened. And, oh, that bitterness of knowing that you caused some dear unsuspecting soul to lose faith in the thing God so intended to bring every woman and man happiness. You can never build your home on one you wrecked. These are real gospel truths. Remember, folks who are capable of deceiving before marriage are capable of being just as deceptive and treacherous after marriage. Trifling is based on a carnal heart, a romantic heart, and it carries the guilt of lying in word, thought, and deed. Your actions seem to speak louder than your words. Let us look into the Word of God about trifling with one’s affections. Judges 16th chapter. Samson, the strongest man of the 2 THE SIN OF TRIFLING world, lost a great deal by trifling with a woman’s affections. 1. He lost God out of his heart. 2. He lost his hair, which was long and beautiful. 3. He lost his strength to resist enemies. 4. He lost his eyes. 5. He lost his freedom. He became a slave to the Philistines who made him work at a task that should have been done by a strong ox or horse. 6. He lost his reputation, for his enemies used him for making sport or fun for thousands of spectators. What a come-down for a holy Nazarite whose strength was God-given. 7. Lastly, he lost his life and all as a result of trifling with a woman’s affections. Today we have many, many pictures of broken lives all because of people going out of God’s bounds and serving the sin of trifling. Trifling slips in among people who claim to be saved. They go around with different ones. Oh, they will say, there is nothing serious. We just want to be together and after a while one of them gets to drifting into a mood of trifling and the devil will take advantage and soon they have drifted too far and they become caught in the current of a trifler. Then they find that the grace of God has leaked out of their hearts. The devil has placed a carnality in their hearts which has come in the form of love. Then there must come a breaking up. They will say, “I did not know I was letting my affections go out to the other.” Then loss of confidence comes and it will affect both parties. You know I am telling you the truth. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Married life is beautiful, but we cannot build on the ashes of broken affections. Life together can be very beautiful. Look at that white-haired couple who have lived for God, for each other, and their home. During those days when they were striving for their home and little ones, their love has been a wall of protection for both husband and wife, and children included. See those lovely ones 3 THE SIN OF TRIFLING setting God up as the head of the home with their love for each other, bending right into God’s plan. And as the children come along, they fit into God’s plan, so it just completes a beautiful home with God and love reigning. Then we see the things that come against their love— sickness, death, troubles, poverty, crop failures, storms, floods—but all these only make love grow and they become nearer and closer to each other with God as their leader. —Mrs. Sam Barton 4 Prisoner’s Life Story “The wages of sin is death.” In a lonely prison cell, behind iron bars, shut out from the world and all my loved ones, I will try to write the story of my life, hoping it will help some man or woman, some boy or girl just starting on life’s voyage. It may help them to steer clear of rocky shoals when they are hit by the waves of sin, as they are sure to run through these sin waves while passing through the world. Had I, Ira Willingham, only listened to the pleadings of my dear old father, my precious mother and my kind eldest brother I would be a free, well- respected man, free to walk and to work in God’s sunlight, meeting my fellowmen face to face and could feel happy in the thought that I had met the trials of life and had conquered them in the way that our Father meant for us to overcome trials and temptations. Though my trials were many and more than most men could have borne, I, by putting my trust in God, could have kept my ship on calmer waters and finally landed on peaceful shores. I could have been a protector and a breadwinner for my poor heartbroken mother and my little worse-than-orphan children. Instead, I am in a lonely dark cell with just my thoughts for company. Oh, if I could never think again! I was reared on a good farm near a beautiful river. My father was counted well-to-do. I had four brothers and two sisters. We were 5 THE SIN OF TRIFLING used to all the needful things of life and many things we could have done without. Our parents were kind but strict. They were honest and true, living as they understood the teachings of the holy Word of God. They were careful to teach their boys and girls to obey the Ten Commandments.