 1. Intimacy doesn't start or end in the bedroom
Sex is holy (set apart for a specific purpose). In marriage, it is a beautiful gift, and we honor God, the Giver, when we accept the gift with joy and enthusiasm. A husband and wife honors Him when they cultivate physical, spiritual and emotional intimacy. And that's the key - all three of these areas must be cultivated.  Whether you recently got married or you've been married for several years, intimacy is important.
The men reading this probably thought immediately of sex. Yes, that's important, but keep in mind, it's a byproduct of spiritual and emotional intimacy, just as I wrote about HERE. I'm talking about intimacy in communication. Sharing, dreaming, exploring, challenging, learning, listening, explaining, and so much more. The problem is, it doesn't just happen. You have to work at it. Here's a simple tip: Don't start with verbal communication. Start with written communication. For the last few years, Daniela and I have been using a journal that we write in and then give back to each other. I even drew pictures in it to make it more creative and entertaining. Make it your own. I haven't wrote in it as much as I would have liked but it's getting better. The key is to keep it somewhat consistent and the purpose is to allow the written communication to spark/lead to verbal communication. Sometimes the entries are long and deep, other times they're short and simple. So, if you have a spouse who is not very talkative and finds it hard to keep a discussion, grab a journal. Or, even if both of you have no problems with verbal communication, this is still a great way to keep the fire burning! Start small, maybe a simple love note or a thoughtful 'thank you.' The back and forth creates a sense of excitement and the both of you start to look forward to the next entry. When you're done writing, place the journal in a spot where you know your spouse will see it, like on the table by their side of the bed or on an office chair. Again, make it your own!  If you think dating websites and social media apps are destroying relationships today, you would have steered clear of cars in the 1900s (pun intended). Cars didn’t just speed up a historical shift from teenage codependence to independence, they fed the growth of an entire sub-culture.
Think about it: Buses began to drive students further from their homes. One-room schoolhouses eventually gave way to large buildings (schools) filled with unsettled crowds of adolescents and their hormones.* According to historians and spiritual leaders, this is pretty much what started the moral decay of young men and women of teen age years and what eventually led to, or influenced in some way, the sexual revolution of the 1960's in the USA. Things have come a long way since then. They are way worse. There is a new line being crossed When talking with a younger couple, not yet married, it does not take long to get a sense of whether or not they have passed the line. (I know, some of you are thinking, Did he just go there?)  Sex is holy (set apart for a specific purpose). In marriage, it is a beautiful gift, and we honor God, the Giver, when we accept the gift with joy and enthusiasm. A husband and wife honors Him when they cultivate physical, spiritual and emotional intimacy.
We miss His heart when we think, believe, and/or make statements such as: He gave us marriage just to make us holy, Sex is strictly for having children, Spiritual intimacy is what matters, and the like. To be clear, marriage is not all about having sex. And the couple, or spouse, who clings to this expectation will be quickly disappointed. But sex needs to be a part of your marriage (God says so) and it needs to be understood if it is to be enjoyed. Sex doesn’t create intimacy, it is a result of intimacy. You can’t fix a frail marriage by having more sex. Intimacy is created and maintained mainly by your emotional and spiritual connection. This includes but is certainly not limited to: the way you speak to one another, how often you speak and how deep the discussions are, how you look at each other, how you spend time together, the things you share or don't share with one another (fears, dreams, pain, frustrations, unforgiveness, etc.), the spiritual disciplines that you practice together (prayer, fasting, worship, Bible reading, serving, etc.), and so on. There are many things that can hinder this connection, some of which arise from the normal day-to-day activities and stresses of life such as work or family responsibilities, sickness, or physical exhaustion. Don't be quickly discouraged or scared when you see that you have not been sexually active for a while. At the same time, don't neglect it! That can and will create other problems down the road. Other factors to this emotional & spiritual intimacy may include impure thoughts or behaviors from one or both partners (pornography, fantasies, personal struggles), problems from the past that have never been addressed and resolved, or external factors such as issues at work, conflict with relatives, tragic or unforeseen experiences, or spiritual laziness/neglect. Young married couples especially need to understand that a healthy sexual relationship has little to do with frequency. At the beginning of our marriage, that was my mindset - it's all about frequency. Frequency is important, but it is not the primary gage for the emotional health of your relationship. To give a negative example, consider the wife who agrees to having sex whenever her husband wishes, but she is never fully engaged. She does it just to get it over with. That does no good. The husband, in this case, should be sensitive to this, refrain from being led by his physical desires, and begin to focus his attention on cultivating emotional intimacy. Sex has much more to do with intimacy than frequency. Here are some questions and areas to consider:
Husbands and wives, want to be pleasing to God? Cultivate emotional and spiritual intimacy first and it will allow you to cultivate and experience physical intimacy. Keep the fire burning, Danny ------- Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. (1 Cor.7:1-5) Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. (Prov.5:15-19) |
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June 2024
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