Forever Beloved

This weekly blog series is going to be on a subject that makes people squirm and blush, sex.  But it’s something I truly feel as the Body of Christ, we have got to stop hiding and start talking about.

Sex is hot topic today, am I right or am I right?  We live in a sexually saturated culture.  It’s everywhere, except where it matters most.  The loudest voice we hear about sex is the perverted one of the world that is exploited by the media.  The church as a whole seems to be so quiet on this subject.

When I was a teenager, one of my favorite things to do was sneak next door to my Grandmother’s house and either pour over boxes of old black and white photographs or find an old book and get lost in it.  I was so fascinated with the vintage “How To” books and how the advice changed throughout the years.  One book was from the late 1800s and was titled “Sex Life – The Pathway to Mental and Physical Perfection”.  I was obsessed with this book, as it had chapters and chapters on beauty treatments, beauty bath recipes, advice on what to look for in a man, etc.  While it was a book on “sex”, it was extremely vague.  I read one paragraph that made my naive teenage mind spin.  Intercourse should not be more frequent than every 3-4 months.  It was followed with a paragraph on how wives can get out of sex, and what excuses to use.

When I got married, I knew two things about marital sex:  the church said to wait until marriage and the book said you should only have intercourse every 3-4 months.  I knew nothing of Gods design for sex in marriage.

A few years ago, I spent some time reading every Christian sex book I could get my hands on.  I couldn’t believe what I was reading, and had a hard time wrapping my mind around it.  Things I never, ever knew about sex.

We should be talking as loudly, if not louder, than the world about this mysterious gift God gave his most beloved creation.  Sex is mind-blowingly incredible…and it’s because God purposefully made it that way.

I strongly feel the only way to arm our children with the tools to strengthen their marriage from the start is to talk honestly about the hard subjects.  And let’s be honest, there isn’t one much harder to discuss than sex.

This week we are going to focus on God’s design for sex and why He created it in the first place.

God created marriage and sex.  

God created Adam first.  Then God made a decision, that we see revealed in Genesis 2:18.

And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
Genesis 2:18

God knew man needed a partner like him, but unique in her own way – a help meet.  When God creates Eve, He called her an “ezer kenegdo”.  Ezer translated in Hebrew means power and strength.  Kenegdo means alongside, or opposite to, a counterpart.  A beautiful way to translate ezer kenegdo together is lifesaver.  In every other instance of these words being used in the Bible, the person being described is God himself.  It’s used when you need Him to come through for you desperately.  God made for man a woman, a powerful counterpart, so that he wouldn’t be lonely.

The Bible goes on to tell us in Genesis 1:28 “God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” and in Genesis 2:24-25: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.  Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”  

This is the beginning of marriage and sex as a part of marriage.  Y’all, the very first words God spoke to them was be fruitful and multiply.  Go have sex!  God designed them to go hand-in-hand together.

Sex as part of marriage was important to God.

Sex is one of the ways a man and a woman are bound together by God in a covenant relationship for life.  Let’s look at a few verses that reinforce this.

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Matthew 19:4-6

“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”
Ephesians 5:31

If you have ever wondered how important sex was to God’s heart, notice that He dedicated an entire book to a detailed, juicy exploration of the topic.  Find some time to read Song of Solomon 2:3-17 and Song of Solomon 4:1-7.  It’s steamy stuff!  The Song of Solomon is not an allegory.  It’s about a relationship between a husband and a wife.

One of the Christian sex books I read was Intimacy Ignited by Dr. Joseph and Linda Dillow and Dr. Peter and Lorraine Pintus.  This book gives a verse-by-verse exploration of the Song of Solomon and shows that the secret to great sex in marriage begins with a servant heart.  To become servant lovers is something the authors are reminding us over and over throughout the entire book.  Even giving specific traits what servant lovers do compared to what selfish lovers do, and what we can do towards that goal of becoming one.  Highly recommend this book!

I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies.
Song of Solomon 6:3

Oh, how I love that verse.  I love it enough that I have it tattooed on my back.  It just speaks volumes to me of love, belonging and intimacy.

God made sex good.

God created our marriage beds to be a place of red-hot, intimate, passionate connectedness.  He gave us the ability to enjoy sex even when we aren’t trying to make babies.  And hello, He created the orgasm.  He created sex for our pleasure.  And He made sex good!

The world says that us church folk are bound to have boring, predictable, missionary position only sex lives.  Y’all, don’t buy into that!  The University of Chicago did an exhaustive study in sexuality and found that the people who are having the most sex and who are the most satisfied happen to be conservative Christians in monogamous marital relationships.

Sex is an important part of marriage.  We’ll explore this more in the upcoming weeks, I know this is a highly sensitive subject and don’t want to make you squirm and blush too much the first week.

If you are married, here’s a challenge.  Explore sex.  Explore the fullness of it.  And pray for sexual intimacy with your spouse.

Make sure you join me again next week as we cover the topic “Why Wait?”.