Embracing Sexual Harmony in Christian Marriage

"We're going to discuss the problem that the research indicates is the number one reason that people give for the breakdown and break-up of marriages; and as I'm sure you can guess, the number one problem listed in America for struggles and the dissolving of marriages in the United States is this: sex -- lack of harmony, lack of communication, lack of intimacy, and adjustment in the sexual dimensions of marriage." [00:00:10]

"One of the biggest problems, of course, that we face in adjusting to the sexual dimension of marriage, particularly as Christians, is making the transition from living in a life situation all the way up until marriage where God says, 'No,' and then all of a sudden we're expected to enter into a relationship where that which was once forbidden is now not only allowed, but in biblical categories, is commanded." [00:02:02]

"Now the church has struggled for centuries with that dimension. Just last week, for example, I was reading an essay from the great theologian, St. Augustine, who is one of my all-time favorite writers and theologians, and in this particular essay he was making the case that the only moral justification for marriage -- for sex relationships within marriage -- is with a specific view towards conceiving and bearing children; that is, Augustine saw no room within marriage and the marriage relationship for the enjoyment of sex as a physical bond involving physical pleasure between a husband and a wife." [00:02:48]

"We know what the sin of materialism is in this world, where people seek all of life and all of meaning through physical things -- through money, through food, through wine, women, and song, through the gratification of the body -- and we call that materialism. And we know that that is a distortion of the reality that God has made, and sometimes to counteract that we go to the other extreme and fall into the error of what may be called spiritualism, where the only thing that is of value is the spiritual dimension, the soul." [00:04:00]

"Now anytime I encounter a form of paralysis, I look right away for one of two things. There are two things in our emotional experiences that contribute again and again to all different kinds of paralyses, and they are -- I'll write them on the board -- fear and guilt, and these two, incidentally, are often very closely related. We say that someone is frozen with fear -- frozen with fear. He stops in his tracks. He can't move. He can't scream. He hesitates. Fear paralyzes, so we discover in sexual problems that there is a tremendous amount of fear entering into the Christian bedroom." [00:11:20]

"Well our sexual relationship is not for display. Nobody's keeping score. It is for the intimacy of the two people that are involved, and it is to be built upon a foundation of love; and that doesn't mean just an emotional feeling. That means a foundation where sex is not ripped out of the relationship to love, but sex becomes an expression of love. I hear people say, 'We had sex two times last week,' as if sex were something that were different from love. Sex was just simply a physical activity." [00:14:56]

"Fear of pregnancy is another major fear, and we could go on and list these fears that people have that inhibit them, but here is where we need communication, where the husband and the wife need to talk, where we need to express to each other what is it that you're afraid of? Are you afraid of something, and how can I help? I'm not going to help my wife by forcing her to do things that she is afraid of." [00:20:14]

"Now the second one is the one that almost no one talks about -- guilt. I'd like to express a pattern that I find familiar in marriage counseling. When I hear a man come into my office and say to me, you know, 'I want to divorce my wife. Our relationship has deteriorated, and she doesn't respond to me sexually and all of that,' I will ask this question straight out, straight from the shoulder. I'll say, 'Tell me, here in the privacy of the office, did you have sexual relationships with your wife before you were married?'" [00:20:47]

"So after they tell me this, that yes, they did have sexual involvement with their wife before they got married, I ask them this question: In your opinion, was your wife more responsive sexually or less responsive sexually before you were married? And their eyes light up, and they say, 'She was more responsive before we were married,' and he looks at me like I'm a voodoo witch doctor for knowing that. He says, 'How did you know that?' I say, 'I know it because I've heard it so many times, and that's why I'm asking the question.'" [00:22:06]

"What do you do in a case like that? Well again, we can get all kinds of therapy offered to us from the medical world, from secular counselors, and from ministers, and the usual therapy goes like this in our day and age: You have to understand that what you did before you got married was okay. Everybody does it. The Kinser Report, the Chapman Report indicates that the overwhelming majority of people do that, and since the overwhelming majority of people do that, that indicates that it's normal, and if it's normal, it's healthy." [00:24:22]

"I had a woman come to me who was about to get married. She had been engaged for a year or so; and she came, and she was very much distressed with guilt, and she said, 'What am I going to do?' She said, 'I feel so guilty.' She said, 'I've been having sexual relationships with my fiancé.' She said, 'And I went to see my minister, and my minister said to me, 'Look the way to get over this is to understand that the reason you feel guilty is that you've been a victim of this narrow, rigid, Victorian, Puritan culture with its taboos, and for -- you have to grow, mature, and understand that you're not promiscuous. You have just been a responsible adult.'" [00:24:58]

"So you're guilty, and the only thing I know that can cure you of that is not rationalization. You have real guilt, and if you're going to get healthy, you have to have real forgiveness, and the only way I know to get that is for you to go home by yourself on your knees and tell God what you've done and confess your sin; and God will forgive you of that. You understand that you can be a virgin again in God's sight?" [00:26:14]