Extreme Intimacy

Extreme Intimacy

Genesis 39:7-9

Twenty-five year old, Trina Miller isn't content riding her bicycle through a park or along the streets of Australia, like many of her generation, she insists on living life to the extreme. She is an extreme athlete, competing in SNOW MOUNTAIN BIKING, and this winter, she pedaled her way down a snowy mountain slope to Biker X gold in the Extreme Winter Games. (http://espn.go.com/extreme/winterx00/av/index.html)

Today, people quickly abandon the ordinary to live life to the extreme. While I'm not willing to ride a bicycle down a snow packed mountain, I too want to get the most out of life. I'm not satisfied with the ordinary paths, I want to live it to the extreme too.

Those who live life to the extreme, think outside the box. They see a bicycle and a snow packed mountain and say, "Hey, wouldn't it be fun to put those two things together?" And before you know it, someone is winning a gold medal for riding their bike down a slippery slope faster than anyone else.

Living life to the extreme means not following the crowd and doing what everyone else is doing. Or in the words of all of our mothers, "If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you?" Trina Miller would probably respond, "Of course not, I'd ride my bike."

There is a difference between being a non-conformist and living life to the extreme. Have you ever noticed how non-conformists all look alike? It can be just another kind of conformity.

Living life to the extreme means you are willing to use your own brain and your own faith to make up your own mind. It is a willingness to take the road less traveled by, not just to be different, but to experience the difference.

In his poem, The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost wrote "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

(http://www.poets.org/lit/poem/rfrost01.htm)

Do you want to experience the difference? Are you willing to take the challenge and live life to the extreme? Are you ready to take "the road less traveled by " and experience extreme intimacy?

For years, there has been a disturbing silence emitting from churches about God's plan for intimacy. And then we wonder why believers are following the agenda set out by governmental and social agencies. Today we'll discover God's plan for extreme intimacy. There is a difference between sex and intimacy.

Free Sex

The Hedonistic "free sex" movement may have pushed sexuality to the extreme, but it didn't lead to extreme intimacy.

During the mid 80s, Josh McDowell debated the co - founder of Playboy on television for three hours. He agreed with Josh that the nation did not go through a sexual revolution. The free sex movement was a search for intimacy.

One woman called him at a university. She said, "Mr. McDowell, in the last five nights I've gone to bed with five different men. I got out of bed tonight and looked back and said to myself, 'Is that all there is to it?'" and she started crying. She said, "Please sir, tell me there's something more!" (copied)

The Hedonist believes that sex is appropriate if there is an opportunity and the desire. Longing for connection and intimacy, they exchange their soul for pleasure and end up feeling lonely, confused and in pain.

That's why Paul wrote, "Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart." (2 Tim. 2:22 KJV)

Safe Sex

With the advent of AIDS and STDs, the culture shifted a bit in the end of the 20th Century. The Modernist added one element to the Hedonists view of sex. They kept, Opportunity + Desire, but added Appropriate Precautions to the formula touting "Safe Sex."

How has the "Safe Sex" movement helped?

Focus on the Family compiled the following conclusions of the effectiveness of 25 years of addressing the search of intimacy with "safe sex" ideology. (From Fresh Illustrations)

Ten percent of all 15 to 19 year-old females become pregnant each year. ("Kids Having Kids," A Robin Hood Foundation Special Report on the Costs of Adolescent Childbearing, June 1996, p 1. )

More than 80 percent of pregnant girls under age 17 who give birth and keep their babies end up on welfare, costing society a staggering $21 billion a year. (Ibid, 20. )

Three million new cases of STDs among teens are reported each year. (Division of STD Prevention. The Challenge of STD Prevention in the United States. Accessed August 5, 1998, available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchstp/dstd/STD_Prevention_in_the_United_States.htm. )

Unfortunately, safe sex isn't all that safe. Even if it could deliver the promised results to protect the sexually active from STDs and pregnancy, how can it protect from the emotional damage it inflicts on the unsuspecting?