Today as we are still in what is being hailed as love week, I decided to tackle an issue of relationship intimacy. Quite as it’s kept, there are a lot of unhappy people that feel stuck in a loveless marriage. Now though I have been divorced allow me to start off by saying I am not a proponent of divorce. The vows are till death do you part and unless God calls for the separation (as He did in mine and some other’s I know of) than your job is to make it work. The bible teaches us that love covers a multitude of sin. If there is true love than there really isn’t anything that you can’t work through provided both parties are sincerely trying to work through it.
With that said let us go on to the topic of relationship intimacy. There is a cliché that says the family that prays together stays together which is true to a point. A husband and wife’s joint communication is key to the continual growth and development of the marriage. There is another cliché that the world has that says not to be so heavenly minded that you are no earthly good. Now even though this cliché isn’t biblically founded and we are commanded to set our sights on things above consider this: Jesus was moved with compassion because the multitude that had followed Him had been with Him 3 days and hadn’t eaten. He knew He couldn’t send them away because they would most likely faint in the way. So what did Jesus do, He fed them natural food (John 15th chapter starting at verse 32). He could have been like I fed you all spiritual food, you’ve heard the words my father has given me to give you go about your way and be filled. He understood that not only does the spirit need to be fed so does the natural, in other words He wasn’t so focused on the spiritual that the earthly suffered hence don’t be so spiritually minded you are no earthly good. There are other examples like this I could point out but that isn’t the point of this blog. Praying with one’s spouse that you may jointly be intimate with God is great but there is one key ingredient missing that “church folk” don’t like to talk that much about hence a huge reason that the Christian churches divorce rate is well over 50% at the time of this writing. That key ingredient is SEX.
Yes, Sex! But not just sex, intimacy period. I recognize that intimacy is made up of more than just sex but sex is the only act that 2 become 1. It is the time when if done right (meaning in true love and under the covenant of God’s marriage) than it will help to catapult your marriage and keep it above the fray of all the negativity that people (including bitter church folk or most of the church) will attempt to spew at you. How do I know this, because my wife and I practice it (and we try to practice it a lot). We do our best to make sure everyday of the week 2 things happen. We pray together and we are sexually intimate. Now even when we can’t be sexually intimate, we are still physically intimate. We make sure to touch each other, rub each other, and look into each other’s eyes with wanting love and desire. This happens in the morning. See, we desire to be intimate and close with God daily and refuse to neglect the gift that God has given us in each other daily. We aren’t perfect at it but again we practice it. Yes, verbal communication is important but sometimes let’s just be real you can talk too much. Sometimes your words can be misconstrued and taken in a totally different way than you meant it by your spouse. But your touch is very hard to mistake, a loving kiss is very hard to misconstrue. The 2 biggest reasons most every marriage breaks up (in Christ and not) is money and sex. Almost no matter what the situation is it comes back to one of those 2 reasons. Even neglect falls under sex, communication falls under sex. When you are talking with your spouse about whatever even if it’s just how your day went or how you slept, you are communicating to their heart. That communication to the heart causes a desire for you from them. That desire manifests itself sexually. A person can’t generally be with someone they are not attracted to, your communication helps that attraction happen and the proof is in the sex. Now there are a great many people who are reading this but I promise you their marriages (provided they are married) aren’t very fulfilling. Older couples who have been married 50+ years will tell you that even they (as much as you don’t want to think about it) still have that sexual desire for their spouse though they may not be able to fully engage in it.
Sex is very important in your intimacy with your spouse. It is your physical expression of your love for them. Understand how important sex is to a marriage. It is so important that to do it outside of marriage is sin. Talking to someone outside of marriage isn’t a sin. Why because sex was designed to show us as humans the love that God has for us in a physical manner. Whether a person admits it or not while the sex is going on (again under the confines of the covenant of marriage and true love) they never feel more close to their spouse. Another misnomer is sex has to be boring old missionary positions and what not (told you this is Real Talk), the truth is that just as you can pray to God in a manner that fits your personality and relationship intimacy with Him so can you with your spouse (as long as you aren’t trying to bring other people or animals {pause for a quick ewwwwwwww} into your sex) in sex. Hebrews 13:4 tells us that marriage is honorable in all and the bed room undefiled. The word undefiled means it hasn’t lost its purity. Meaning that you can be free to explore and do things with your spouse that each other likes and don’t have to be ashamed because you did it.
Prayer causes your connection to God, sex causes your connection to your spouse. So sex is kinda like prayer to your spouse. I know some of yall didn’t like that one but it doesn’t make it any less a good analogy! The bible teaches that men ought to always pray (and that prayer is to God), so if we ought to continually pray to keep our connection with God open and allow our relationship with Him to grow deeper, than why are we cutting ourselves short in relationship with our spouses. We allow nothing as Christians to get in the way of our time with God. We will go to church services through the week that last till 11 that night and be there dead tired. We will put upcoming church services on our calendar so not to forget them. We will reserve a room as our prayer closet to make sure we get our prayer and bible reading time with God in. We do all of that but yet neglect the gift that God has given us. When is the last time you made some time to be intimate with your spouse? When is the last time that you decided to put on your calendar sometime for just you and them? When is the last time that no matter how tired you were, you were intimate with them just as you push yourself to do with God. I’m not saying your spouse is your God or even should be on the same level as Him, what I am saying is that the same effort put in to getting close with God should be the type of daily effort that you put into with your spouse. Don’t desire to be close with God and neglect the gift He has given you that is a slap in the face of God. You make sure you pray everyday especially in the morning and before you sleep why not try that with your spouse too. I try to send my wife off to work everyday with a smile on her face that comes from some type of close physical intimacy, no not always sex but again we touch each other and embrace one another and look deeply at each other. We have almost been late to work a few times as a result. Now some of yall won’t like I was this raw, blunt, open, and transparent and won’t believe I was led to deal with this topic in this manner, but I say to you I know what God says to me and I know what He shows me. This topic was inspired to uncover some mess that is going which is helping to destroy church families. The first step to saving church families is saving the marriages in the individual families. Restoring the love and intimacy in them causing them to grow closer to one another as they grow closer to God. So if you don’t like it, not too much I can say to you accept this is Real Talk and I don’t pull punches or sugar coat topics. I just speak as I am given to speak. With that said if you have any questions or comments please feel free to email me at jesse.jones@highpraiseministries.com. Remember, Grow in God’s Grace and Abide in His Love!
