● Media is increasingly sexualizing our culture,
directing sexual messages increasingly to children. Watch any amount of TV
programming, and you will see this is the case. There is a tremendous amount of
pressure placed on girls, young women, and adult women, to have the right body
size, even if it means starving one-self and spending inordinate amounts of
time in the gym, or in the office of the plastic surgeon.
● Girls, women and boys are sexually abused in
increasing numbers. Sexual abuse leads to brokenness, a loss of innocence on
the part of children, and a myriad of relationship and intimacy problems later
in life.
● Another menacing problem is the increasing ease
of access to pornography which enables men and women to enjoy sexual images
without intimacy. One recent study found that 20% of Christian women and 50% of
Christian men struggle with using pornographic materials. This can lead to
addiction which affects the brain's chemistry and leads to escalation as people
look for increasingly more graphic and brutal images and eventually to actual
experiences with unknown persons to satisfy their addiction. Partners are
deeply hurt and marriages are broken when their partner is addicted to
pornography. People who struggle with this type of addiction need consistent
and ongoing therapeutic intervention and accountability, not just for a short
period of time, but often throughout the rest of their lives.
● People struggle with knowing how to manage their
sexual attraction as they are in dating relationships or as they work or are in
school with people of the opposite sex. We all know that temptation happens. I
feel safe to say that all of us, even those of us in a marriage relationship,
have experienced temptation; temptation is not sin, but we cannot ignore those
inner passions that call to us because we are all vulnerable, and we need to
establish boundaries that honor the gift of our sexuality and the sanctity of
marriage.
Marriage
therapists say that if you're not talking about temptation within the context
of your marriage, you probably should be, and if you cannot talk about those
things, then you may want to seek some help to do so.
Let's also not
forget that new beginnings are always possible. If you are in a situation where
you have fallen in some way in your sexual life, forgiveness and a new
beginning are always possible. It is never too late to start over. Jesus brings
to us the possibility of healing and restoration in him as we choose to receive
it.
God longs to
bless us through healthy expressions of our sexuality. He wants us to enjoy
intimacy and physical pleasure and emotional connection in our marriage
relationships. God wants us to have fun as sexual beings provided this is
within the context of heterosexual marriage. He is not out to torture us with
unreasonable desires and restrictions about sex. Rather, the boundaries that
are outlined by God in His Word and are taught by the church, represent an
invitation to wholeness and joy that is far more powerful and fulfilling than
the casual, free for all sex that is so often promoted and endorsed by our
culture. I will close this writing by quoting from the Love Chapter in the
Bible - I Corinthians 13. We usually hear these verses read at weddings, but
let's think of them in the context of the sexual relationship in marriage:
Love is patient, love is
kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not
self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in
evil, but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always
trusts, always perseveres. Love never fails.
May
God guide us as we navigate the challenges of living with sexual integrity in
today’s world!
Tom
Horst, Marriage and Family Therapist
New
Hope Community Life Ministry
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