Sexpections: God, Intimacy and Your Love LifeSample

Day 2

“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” (Genesis 2:24-25)

Naked, and without shame. Can you even imagine truly having no shame? Especially with nothing covering you? 

The Hebrew word for naked is very picturesque; “naked” can just as well mean “have no barrier.” It doesn’t only mean Adam and Eve had no clothes on their bodies. There was also nothing between them at all—nothing physical, nothing emotional, nothing spiritual. No hiding. Knowing and being known. Seeing and being seen. 

And no shame! 

That’s a picture of the kind of intimacy God created you to experience. 

Who of us has experienced that? When God created you with the need, desire, and capacity for intimacy, that’s what He had in mind. 

Only a few verses after our reading today comes Genesis 3: enter the serpent. When sin enters this world, shame enters. The first thing Adam and Eve do is try to hide themselves. And we humans have been hiding ever since. 

Hiding and intimacy are mutually exclusive. You can’t hide and be intimate at the same time. Taking the clothes off your body while you’re still hiding in your soul simply doesn’t work. That road doesn’t lead to intimacy, the thing you truly crave. 

Is it any wonder that something in your soul is completely unsatisfied, sex or no sex? 

Your individual story impacts where and how you hide. So, where have you been hiding? Specifically, what part has shame played in your sexual story? 

Let that “naked and unashamed” ideal picture stir in your soul. 

Heavenly Father, I can’t even comprehend being naked—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—and feeling no shame. The hiding has become so automatic, the shame so constant. But to imagine seeing and being seen, knowing and being known, my heart is stirred, even as it feels impossible. Just don’t stop Your work in me! Amen.