Marriage & Parenting Made EasySample

Marriage & Parenting Made Easy

DAY 4 OF 8

The Heart of Marriage: Chamber 4: One Flesh:

You’ve made it to day four. Excellent! The final chamber in the heart of marriage is red-hot sex! Yes, you read that right.

Read Genesis 2:18-25. In the beginning, God created us, male and female. He designed us for oneness in every way. Yes, that includes emotional and spiritual stuff, but come on! The most obvious part of His design for oneness is physical. The male and female bodies were created to be brought together. “Naked and unashamed”—that’s “one flesh!”

That’s the biblical design. However, when Adam and Eve turned from God’s perfect plan back in the Garden of Eden, their immediate response was to sew fig leaves together and hide from each other—and then, to hide from God Himself! When they deviated from His plan, their sexuality became taboo and shameful, and we have been censoring the topic of sex ever since. Worst of all, because of Satan’s lies, we’ve created a mental, emotional, and spiritual barrier between sex and God—and it’s cheating us. Instead of sex being worship in marriage, we worship sex outside of marriage.

If you have any question about how God intended sex to be, look no further than the Bible. The Song of Solomon is devoted almost entirely to sex. Some theologians have tried to explain it away by saying it can be interpreted that way, but gimme a break. This book of the Bible is a steamy hot love letter. While you can look through just about the whole book to confirm this, take a look at Song of Solomon 1:2-14. Believe me now?

Our holy God wanted a steamy hot love letter in the Holy Scriptures because sex within marriage is holy.

Seriously, who do you think invented sex in the first place? Genesis 2:18-25 shows who!

Many things got messed up when Adam and Eve chose to do things their own way. Getting things right with God and realizing the sacredness of sex is a huge step in rediscovering His original design for intimacy on all levels. That doesn’t mean that all sexual struggles are going to disappear magically. Some will need to be faced with patience and persistence, but it will be worth it. Remember that sex is a mandate in a healthy Christ-centered marriage—look at 1 Corinthians 7:5!

In an ideal situation, both partners trust in Christ to love the other person through them and forgive the other person when they don’t live up to their expectations. If both of you initiate good communication and set the stage, the negotiation/conflict cycle won’t even start. However, if both of you get selfish and start withholding yourself from your mate, it’s a disaster in the making.

All four heart chambers need to be pumping well for a healthy marriage. When one is clogged or exhibits a defect, it affects the others. When all four are functioning, love, forgiveness, healthy communication, and hot, regular sex create a marriage that powerfully displays the love of Christ to the world.

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