Kindle the Fire of Marital Love: Pursue and Protect

He lost his wife, Vivian. And when I would visit him years after she passed, he would still talk about her like she was in the room. He would literally go and have his breakfast with her picture on the coffee table every single morning. It was a couple who practiced pursuing each other for sixty nine years. It was muscle memory to Harvey, so much so that even when death released Harvey from his vows, he couldn't stop. [00:55:28] (32 seconds)  #LoveBeyondDeath

Women, the the gal in this book is always pursuing her man, just like the man's pursuing her. Always seeing so many awesome qualities in him. She's excited to be near him, with him. She keeps finding competence and speaks highly of what she finds. So women, look for your husband's competency, his gifts, and point them out to him. Even when that's really hard to find something competent at times, find something. Your job at times as a wife is to look look at your husband and find something that you admire, something that's really worthy and value of you know, valuable, something worthy of praise for him. Look for it. And then as you see it, you tell him about it. [00:49:23] (47 seconds)  #PraiseHisStrength

Church, there are a lot of ways to pursue each other and be intentional with one another. Sex is not everything, but it is a big something in marriage. So pursue each other and pursue it. In the words of the Nike Nike's marketing team, just do it. And church, this pursuit that you embark on with your current spouse or perhaps this pursuit for your one day spouse, when you keep this in mind, all of this is modeled after Jesus Christ who is in constant pursuit of each of you. [00:56:09] (39 seconds)  #PursueLikeChrist

sex is good. It's not bad. In fact, God is the one who designed sex. God cares about your love life. God's not the enemy of your sex life. And when sex is handled correctly, it can actually be a holy act, something that brings honor to God, brings joy and glory to our heavenly father. [00:35:47] (22 seconds)  #GodDesignedSex

And that bond, when it's not in the the sacredness of marriage where promises are are present, as people sleep together and then break up or separate, there's a tearing apart, and this has many consequences. God says, I want to make sure that this gift that I've given is done inside the safety firing of marriage where these promises can be present so that neither person will leave or forsake. [00:39:25] (28 seconds)  #KeepSexSacred

Oxytocin is incredibly powerful for bonding. This is why your wife can give birth to a kid, and then two weeks later, they're holding this little baby and be like, let's have another one. And it's like, another one? Do you remember what you went through? You're still healing for crying aloud, but oxytocin is working. [00:37:42] (24 seconds)  #OxytocinBonding

If you have been hurt by sex, or maybe you've maybe abused it, or experienced it outside of the firing of marriage, and maybe you've bought into some of the lies about sex, and there's so many lies about sex in our culture, and you've gotten burned. If you've experienced hurt or shame that comes from sex outside of God's design, I wanna tell you that I'm sorry. I'll hurt with you, absolutely. But Jesus is bigger than the shame that you might experience or any sexual sin that you've partaken in. Sexual sin is big. It's hard. Jesus is bigger. [00:40:08] (46 seconds)  #JesusBiggerThanShame

Don't let shame make you withdraw from Christ here this morning. Let it bring you to Christ. Christ is bigger than your sin or your shame, and he doesn't want to have you carry that shame any longer. My heart today as we talk about this is not to shame anyone or to make you feel uncomfortable, but the church has got to talk about this at times so that we can all honor God in our sexual sexuality just like we long to honor him in other parts of our lives. [00:41:31] (30 seconds)  #BringShameToChrist