We must first start with the core value that sex is about connection, intimacy, and love. Sex is designed to be a safe place where both people are present and vulnerably giving themselves to each other. If sex is a beautiful part of connection with your spouse and not just about orgasming, even when your body, hormonally, may not want sex, your heart and emotions can still desire it.
Sexual sin can creep in as a result of trying to meet our healthy need for connection in an unhealthy way. How does this happen? I’ve found that many people don’t have the skills that they need to build proper friendships in the first place, which can lead them to feeling rejected, isolated, and unworthy of healthy relationships--and they can turn to porn, masturbation, or sex outside of marriage in an attempt to get those relational needs met. But don’t worry, these skills can be learned!
Christmas is a beautiful season of giving and spending time with the people we care about, but sometimes it comes with the realization that life did not turn out the way we expected it to. We look around at family or friends or people we’ve known forever, and it’s hard not to compare our life to theirs. It’s hard not to remember where we thought we would end up or how we thought things would be at this point in our life.
What once had been a marriage of mutual passion had dwindled to a cohabiting couple, sharing daily chores, bills, church services, but sadly void of any warmth behind closed doors. This, sadly, is not an isolated case. It's shocking how many woman (or men) have decided sex is only for the newly married, is unimportant, or simply have no desire to be intimate with you their spouse. What's also harrowing to intimacy is how easy it is to put sex on the back burner when the kids start arriving!
Gay people have a perfectly normal human genotype; they are not genetically distinct from all other human beings in any meaningful sense. Consequently, the development of sexual orientation and choice of partners cannot consist primarily in the elaboration of some controlling genetic disposition but, to a much greater degree, consist instead in the development and expression of personal autonomy regarding one’s own sexual possibilities.
Caitlin Zick dives into her personal story of sexual wholeness and freedom with Eric and Kristy Upton, hosts of The Mommy and Daddy Time Podcast. Caitlin shares about her transformation from being a teenage party girl into a believer, wife, and mother of 4, and opens up about the power of God’s redemption in her life and marriage. In today’s podcast you’ll learn about what the Bible says about sex, God’s heart for marriage, how to intentionally build your sex life after having kids, and finding hope amidst process.
“You are not a victim to what you see. You are powerful and capable of teaching your sex drive how to see. In today’s culture, it could be easy to be desensitized by perverse images and people being turned into objects of pleasure rather than people of value to be honored. You have the power to teach yourself how to see people as children of God. Here’s a few steps for a good start…”
Lust bolts, love stays. Lust forgets. Lust blanks out. Lust has no forethought. Lust lyricizes the glamour of one-night stands, love writes lyrics that says it'll catch a grenade for you. Lust utters empty nothings, love follows through on its promises. Lust defends without humility, love always says sorry. Love makes space to wonder, lust asks what time is it? Lust has double standards – ones that only work for the self. Love listens to the highest standard and fights for it. Lust sends a text to finish a romantic dalliance, love talks face-to-face.
As a survivor of sexual exploitation in prostitution and porn, I can definitively say that it is not a job like any other. The sex industry—prostitution, porn, and stripping—is an industry run primarily by men. Men are the exploiters and sex buyers. Women/girls are the exploited and the purchased commodities. It was a man, my father, who thrust me into exploitation in prostitution and porn when I was 11. Here is my story…
When pain from the past goes unresolved and unhealed, it leads to self-protective measures and often bitterness. We make accusations and judgments against the other gender and consciously or subconsciously create walls and space between us. While we both have fallen into this trap, this is how your actions are affecting the men that you’re hoping will pursue you.
Over centuries the stigma and shame associated with sex has caused a lot of destruction inside and outside churches. From abortion to divorce to gender transition, shame around sexuality has impacted America. Our self-made effort to bring resolution, the Sexual Revolution, has hardly been the salve we had hoped. Its fruit is the whole-scale breakdown of family and sexual accountability that we see today in our Tinder and porn driven culture. Yet the silver lining of the Sexual Revolution may very well be our willingness to see and say all things sexual utterly shamelessly. In the end, our ability to be transparent and vulnerable about our sexuality and its formation could very well be an answer to prayer.
Navigating Your Sex Drive and Self-Control - ft/ Abram Goff & Sloane Wilson by Moral Revolution.