ROOMMATES, BAD DATES AND GREAT MATES
Sex “. . .and it was good”
Hello everyone, and welcome once again to The Journey. It’s great to see you on the night of the blizzard and you are out here in 27 inches of snow on the ground, so we might as well talk about sex. Well, that’s what we are going to do. We are kicking off this brand new series called “Roommates, Bad Dates and Great Mates”. Tonight we are going to dive in and look straight on the topic of sex and what the Bible means when it says, “it was good”. And we live in a sex saturated society, as you have probably noticed. And that three-letter word “sex” is probably the most misunderstood word in our society. Yet, we talk about it all the time. I mean TV addresses the subject of sex on a regular basis. There are entire television shows and series that are based around this issue of sex. The movies are based on sex. Magazines feature sex on the front cover, whether they are trying to sell to the guys, or trying to sell to the ladies. The internet is absolutely covered with sex. As a matter of fact, the porn industry recently promoted that their revenue is bigger than the combined revenue of all professional football, baseball and basketball franchises. It’s a big industry. Economically speaking, this is a $20 billion a year industry and it drives much of our economy. And sex is discussed everywhere. Psychologically, we are always talking about the effects of sex. Young and old have had both negative and positive experiences from sex. And the psychology of sex is used to sell everything. Whether its selling light beer or selling pharmaceuticals, it’s everywhere in our society. Sociologically, sex is a driving force. It creates a lot of pressure. It pushes young teens to engage in oral sex. It causes adults to pursue prostitution and escort services. It drives singles toward pre-marital sex. And then in the political world, sex is always a factor and sex has the potential to make and break careers. Sex is discussed in our schools, our doctor’s offices, our public arenas and our private gatherings. It’s talked about everywhere, but right here. Sex is rarely discussed in church. We tend to sweep it over in the corner. Instead, we let society to decide what is right and wrong about sex. You see there is a lot of talk about sex, but there is very little truth about sex. There is an abundance of discussion about sex, but there is an absence of truth when it comes to sex. In the series that we are beginning tonight is about the truth. Discovering the truth about what God says regarding relationships. The truth of what God says about sex and marriage, and dating, and temptation, and purity. And like all things, if we are to find this truth, we have to go to the Scripture. We have to go to the Bible, God’s source of truth. And tonight, that’s what we are going to do as we talk about sex and “it was good”. And fortunately for us, the Bible is very frank about sex. There is not a prudish note in the entire Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. As a matter of fact, there is a whole book in the Bible called the Song of Solomon that celebrates the sensuality of erotic love. And the Bible reflects the attitude that you would expect by the person who created sex. And God, better than anyone else understands what sex means, and what His invention of it does in our lives. He understands how it works and He knows exactly what it is good for, and He tells us how to use it. So, tonight, let’s begin our exploration by looking at Romans 12, and I want to begin this discussion with a theological lesson. Romans 12 gives us a foundation, so if you want to turn there in your Bibles, and we want to look at the first verse in your notes, Romans 12:1-2, it’s a rather long passage, but follow along. “And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead to you to give your bodies to God.” Would you underline that phrase, “give your bodies to God”. “Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind He will accept. When you think of what He has done for you, is this too much to ask? Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.” Would you underline that phrase, “changing the way you think”. “Then you will know what God wants you to do. And you will know how good and pleasing and perfect His will really is.” Well, if you follow along in your notes, you have two phrases underlined. You have the phrase “to give your bodies to God” and then off to the right draw an arrow from that phrase down to the phrase “changing the way you think”. One of the great truths of life is that your body and your mind are connected. As a foundation of this series, I want to give you a little theological lesson that we are going to talk about. I want to talk about how God has created your mind and your body to be connected, because this view is pretty absent from our modern day discussions. As a matter of fact, in the modern day, we have given into a false view, a false dichotomy of the mind and the body. I tried to draw this in your notes, and I’m going to draw it up here on the screen as well. When God created you, God created you as one unit. And God created you so that your mind and your body are one. And in God’s plan, this is the plan for creation. Mind and body are one. But what we’ve done is we have fallen into this trap of this distorted philosophy where we have separated the mind and body. And what we have done is, we have said well, the mind is over here and the body is over here. And we keep the mind and body separate. Now, if you studied philosophy, this is often called the Cartesian Divide because of Descartes several hundred years ago. It actually goes back much, much farther than that. It goes all the way back to Plato, because Plato was the first philosopher to state this idea as to what happens in the mind, has no affect on the body. Or vice versa. What happens in the body has no affect on the mind. But that’s not God’s view. The created order, according to God, is that your mind and your body are one. And it’s only when we understand this and we operate according to this foundational truth that we can experience God’s best for our life. But we tend to do is we tend to fall into this dichotomy. This mind and body dualism. Now, let me try to illustrate this a little further philosophically. When the mind and body are at odds, generally speaking, one tends to win out over the other. For example, occasionally, the mind will win out and it’s mind over body. And from a sexual standpoint, this can lead to what is common called Puritanism. Another way to say Puritanism is legalism. Now the Puritans themselves weren’t bad folks. We have sort of taken that phrase and use it to talk about someone who is a prude, someone who says that the mind is more important, it’s all about reason. And throughout church history, occasionally, good Christians have elevated the mind to such a high level they have actually castrated themselves thinking that that is going to help fulfill God’s desire and God’s will for their lives. And so the mind over the body can actually get us in trouble. Most of us aren’t familiar with that sense, and instead, most of us tend to operate in this side where we elevate the body over the mind. And when we do that, that’s philosophically speaking, leads to a view called Hedonism. And Hedonism is not just an island in the Caribbean. Hedonism is a philosophical view. And it basically says—eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you may die. In other words, live it up in the body. Do whatever gives the body pleasure because there is a divide and what happens in your body doesn’t affect your mind. Now if you really begin to think about it, you will realize the problem with this dualism. Because many of you have done things with your body and you are still replaying the tapes of that incident inside of your mind. So it’s a false dichotomy, that we fall into this trap over and over and the prevailing view of our philosophy is that these two issues are in battle. As a matter of fact, most of the popular thinking in our day falls into this mind/body dualism.
Let me give you a couple of examples from television. Do any of you remember the old, old, old Star Trek? If so, just do this. Yea, some of you do. Do you remember this guy, Mr. Spock? There were three main characters in Star Trek. Now, there were other minor characters, but there were three main characters. One was Mr. Spock. The other was Dr. McCoy. And then, of course, you had Captain Kirk. And that was sort of the trinity inside of Star Trek. What’s interesting about Gene Rodenberry, he built an entire series on this mind/body dualism and the battle back and forth. But Mr. Spock, who interestingly enough, was most us. He was our favorite character, Mr. Spock was totally driven by the mind and it was all about reason. It was all about depressing emotion and doing the logical. Dr. McCoy, who was a doctor, he lived his life according to the body. He lived his life with passion and he always represented the other side of things. Then you had Mr. Kirk in between. And Kirk had to always decide—is he going to go with bones, Dr. McCoy, or was he going to go with Spock. And this created for some rather interesting issues inside of the show Star Trek. Well, you say—that’s old. Fast forward to today. Have you seen the show Desperate Housewives? In Desperate Housewives, what you have is you have one person who represents the mind and they operate according to a prudish view of society. Another person represents the body and it’s all about Hedonism and pleasure and the main character is what, always going back and forth. Who are they going to believe? Which philosophy are they going to go into? And this mind/body dualism is so strong. But the problem with that is, whenever you live your life according to a false truth, you are going to suffer pain. You are going to suffer regret and you are going to miss out on the very life that God wants you to live. In the area of sex, all sexual problems can be traced back to a lack of understanding of the truth of how God created us as sexual beings and how He designed us so that when we live according to that design, that we can get His best for our life. So, this is a series about truth. As we begin tonight, I want to give you three basic truths about sex, not from the philosophical prospect, or from the world’s perspective, but I want us to look at sex from God’s perspective and hopefully that will change your perspective as well and you can walk out of here tonight experiencing God’s best for your sex life. Here’s truth number one.
1. God created sex.
God created sex. That may or may not sound all that radical to you, but the reality is that God created us as sexual beings. Now, some people have a hard time embarrassing sex. Some people tend to think that God created us in such a way that He doesn’t want us to experience any pleasure or any fun. That God somehow set up all of these rules and regulations in the Bible so that He could take the fun out of living life. And many have viewed God this way for centuries. And Christians have been guilty of promoting this false view of God. As a matter of fact, when it comes to sex and the issues related to sex, we, as the Church, have been very guilty of knowing more about what we are against than what we are for. Somehow, we have allowed the world to think and the people out there to think that they created sex and somehow they come up with this idea that sex can be fun. The reality is that sex was God’s idea all along. I want to go back to Genesis 1, the creation story in the Scripture, and Genesis 1 is kind of a foundational chapter for this entire series that we are beginning. In Genesis 1, I want you to see how God created sex and I want you to see His purposes and plan for sex. As a matter of fact, let’s read these verses out loud together. Genesis 1:27-28. Are you ready? Here we go. “So God created people in His own image. God patterned them after Himself. Male and female He created them. God blessed them and told them to multiply and fill the earth.” It’s interesting, God says two things. God blesses them and then God tells them to multiply. And inside of that Scripture you find God’s two fold purpose for sex. Purposes number one is to multiply. What you and I might call procreation. God obviously created sex for procreation purposes and God says multiply and fill the earth. And throughout the Scripture, God commands His people to multiply and fill the earth. Most of you have probably heard that reason for sex. It is for procreation. The second purpose, though, is one we don’t talk about very much. That is that God also created sex for pleasure. God blessed the sex life. Now, think about the context of what is going on here in Genesis 1. God has just created male and female. The only two people in history never to go through infancy or teenage years, Adam and Eve. They are created as adults and He created Adam and He created Eve. And we learn their names in chapter 2. And He says to them, multiply, that is to have sex and procreate, but He also blessed that relationship. He creates them in a marital state and that leads us to an understanding of God’s simple plan for sex. God’s plan for sex is one man, one woman, inside of marriage, maximum sexual fulfillment. You see, God’s view of sex is very simple. Inside of marriage, sex is wonderful. But outside of marriage it can be offensive. It can be offensive to both the One that created sex as well as to the created beings who choose to follow a plan that is different from God’s. Sometimes we fall into this. Sometimes we misunderstand that God not only created sex for procreation inside of marriage, but He also created it for pleasure. As a matter of fact, when I was in college, I had just become a Christian and I had transferred to another college. I was pursuing a religion degree. I met a guy who was about to get married. He was engaged and I saw him several months later and I said—how’s the wedding coming? When’s the date? He said, “Well, it was originally scheduled for about two weeks from now, but the wedding’s off.” I said, “What do you mean, the wedding’s off?” He said that about a week or so ago, the girl in the wedding had announced that they were not going to have sex on their honeymoon. It created a problem for him as you might imagine. He said, “What do you mean we are not going to have sex on our honeymoon?” Well, the lady went on to explain to him that she intended to only have sex two times in their relationship because she only wanted to have two children. So the wedding was off. I don’t know about that. I thought—how out of balance can you get? I mean, not only did this girl not understand sex, but she also had a lot to learn about God’s view of sex. Did you realize that the Bible speaks a great deal about marital sex as great pleasure? As a matter of fact, I Corinthians 7, the Apostle Paul says to married couples—be careful that you don’t spend too much time away from each other. You need to be together and spend time with your partners, touch one another and enjoy one another. In Genesis 26:8, if you want to look it up, it is recorded that Isaac was sporting with his wife, Rebecca. The Hebrew word for sporting there, I assure you, does not mean playing checkers. Okay? There is a text in Deuteronomy that says, when a man is married, he should take a year off from work. Because once he gets married, he should spend that next year “cheering up his wife”. The text does not imply that the first year of marriage is going to be one long honeymoon, but it does indicate the tremendous importance of marriage in general and the sexual relationships between a husband and wife in particular. Interestingly enough, the Hebrew word that is translated “cheerful” really involves a profound sense of intimacy. A modern vernacular would mean that the husband is to discover what pleases his wife in every way. That’s just in the first couple of books in the Bible. There is a whole book in the Bible, that I mentioned earlier, the Song of Solomon, that for many years was considered rated “R” by societal standards. The Song of Solomon extols the joys of sexual pleasure within the bonds of marriage. In fact, it was so explicit that the ancient Jews forbade young men from reading the book until they turned 30 years old. You see, over and over, the Bible offers an underlying assumption about sex, if God created sex and if the Bible tells us that it is created for our pleasure, then God, more than anyone else, knows how you and I can get the maximum benefit from it. You see the God as a cosmic killjoy is wrong. Yes, there are things in the Bible where God says “no”, and God will occasionally say “no” to something for our own good, but for every “no” in the Bible, you should understand there is a parallel “yes”. God says simply—sex outside of marriage, yes that is considered painful, and ultimately sinful. But the yes is that within marriage it can be profoundly beautiful and utterly good. You see, our model for this from the very beginning was found in Genesis 1, with Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were the model for maximum sexual fulfillment. One man, one woman, fully enjoying each other inside of marriage. Regretfully, we don’t know a lot about the marital relationship of Adam and Eve, except it was a long one. Adam lived over 900 years and the Scriptures say that he outlived his wife, Eve. He and Eve were life-long partners and they had many sons and many daughters. And Adam and Eve, interestingly, were the only couple that experienced life in the garden and outside of the garden. If you will remember from your reading in Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3, when Adam and Eve were created, they were created and placed in this perfect place called the Garden of Eden. They lived their early years of marital life inside of that garden. And interesting aside, the only perfect marriage that has ever happened in history. And they lived a perfect marriage for a period of time inside the garden. But eventually because Eve and Adam sinned by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they were kicked out of the garden. Just as a note, around the room, you see some of the artists and they are drawing representations of what life in the garden might have been like. What relationships in the garden might have been like. We certainly don’t know enough about that, but here’s what we do know. We know that once Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden, human free will kicked in to such an extent that the rest of human history has been a devaluation of how God created Adam and Eve in the garden. In other words, as we have gotten further and further away from the garden, we have become more and more sinful in the area of sex. So much so, that it is a sin today run out of control, just like it did in the day of the Apostle Paul. That’s why when Paul was writing, many, many, many years after the garden, in the New Testament, it says this in Romans 1. It says, “Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their heart to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.” They exchanged the truth of God for a lie. And they worship and served created things rather than the Creator. Even way back then, they began to elevate the body over an above everything else. Even to this day, we live with that elevation. In our day, we tend to worship the body, the creature, the bodily creature, rather than the Creator of the body. And what we find is that historically from the Garden of Eden, until today, human beings have constantly lowered the value of God’s created sex. And that leads us to truth number 2.
2. God elevates sex.
We may have lowered it but God does this—God elevates sex. Now let me try to explain. Because God understands how He created us as sexual beings, God constantly raises the value of sex and God holds sex in a much higher regard than we do. Now, what is interesting to note is that when God talks about sex in the Scripture, He rarely talks about sex in a vacuum. Instead, He places sex alongside of love. Sex, inside the marital context. Love and sex are God’s idea as well. God created you to have a love life. God created you as an emotional being. Now, this is a fine point of creation theory. Because if you buy into the Darwinian approach of creation, that will ultimately lead you to the fact that you should have sex and further the species. If you look at how we are created, both sexual beings as well as emotional beings, it just doesn’t make sense from the Darwinian perspective, because only God could have come up with the idea of love and sex. And God designed both. God created us as body and mind and God, in a sense, elevates sex over and above the prevailing philosophy of our day. Now, think about this for a second. Just from a metaphorical standpoint. I want to go back to the Garden of Eden for just a second. We don’t know in the Garden of Eden if it was an apple or not. That’s what we come to think of fruit from this forbidden tree, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But metaphorically speaking, in my mind, when Eve reaches for that forbidden fruit, I have this image that she reaches up to grab the fruit and she pulls it down. That metaphor of her grabbing something high and pulling it down to something lower has been a metaphor for what we have been doing all along with God’s creation. We tend to think, as humans, we tend to take, as humans, whatever God elevates, and we tend to lower it down to a much lower view. We often devalue the very truth of God, that He holds up. If you think about it, in our day when it comes to sex, have you ever heard anyone tell a dirty joke? Of course you have. We’ll say to that person who does that is—get your mind out of the gutter. And so from here to here, all the way down, into the gutter, but if we want to experience God’s best for our sex lives, we have to, once again, elevate this. We have to take a higher view of sex. And over and over, what we do instead of elevating, this view of God, instead of elevating both the mind and the body, we fall into the trap of elevating, one or the other. We tend to elevate either the body over the mind, or we tend to elevate the mind over the body. This is what allows us to justify such false thinking as pornography. When we devalue the mind, we say—well, pornography, that doesn’t affect anything else, it just goes into my mind and it doesn’t affect my marriage, or my relationships. It’s what allows us to rationalize casual, premarital sex, so it must be okay. Same thing for masturbation. When we lower the view of the mind, we can rationalize almost anything. At the same time, if we lower the view of the body, we fall into all kinds of other traps where we begin to embrace prostitution, or we think of oral sex as simply a physical release with no consequences, or we fall into all other kinds of perversions, like sadomasochism, etc. And we lower these things, yet God raises them, and God says, to lift your view to see sex for what it is. So let Me elevate that into your life and make it into the best thing that it can possibly be. And God continues to remind us of that. And the history of Scripture is a reminder that you and I, as humans, are to elevate the things of God. Jesus, of course, faced the same problem in His day. When Jesus was talking about sex to the people in His day, He noticed that they, once again, had lowered sex. They had cheapened it, particularly with how you use your eyes. That leads us to a very interesting passage from Matthew 5. It’s in your notes and I hope in a future message in this series, we will have a chance to unpack this, but I want you to see how Jesus, once again, elevates both the mind and the body in some rather strong language. Look at Matthew 5:27-29. Jesus said this, “You have heard that it was said do not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gauge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” Now, maybe we will have a chance in some of the upcoming messages to address this particular topic, but I want you to see in this passage what Jesus is doing. Jesus says, you cheapen not only adultery, but you cheapen lust and you have fallen into the idea that what happens in your mind doesn’t affect your body. In other words, Jesus said, you have lowered your view of sex, but God sets the standard of sex pretty high. God elevates sex. And because God elevates sex, sexual sin are the most damaging kind. There are all kinds of psychological impacts of sex apart from God’s best plan. And that leads to all kind of pain. Many of you have experienced a large amount of emotional, physical and even spiritual pain because of an abuse of God’s gift of sex. Look, I realize that sometimes this abuse was not of your own choosing. That someone else actually abused you. But if we are honest, many times we chose freely to abuse God’s gift of sex. And this abuse in our society ranges from sex being demeaned in the media to sexual predators getting depraved thrills by victimizing women and children, to all kinds of forms of unholy sexual practices, both within and outside of marriage. You know, as I have been a pastor now at The Journey four years, I have heard about the pain of abusing sex and devaluing it. The pain that many of you have experienced regretfully from child molestation, or the pain of past sexual abuse, or the pain of multiple sexual partners. The pain of pornography, or the pain of homosexual experimentation, or the pain of past regrets. And I deeply regret that you have experienced such pain. And I know that many in our church have. You have heard the stories of friends, certainly, and you know the unfortunate news is that we cannot go back and undo the past. You can find forgiveness from the past. You can find freedom from the past, but you don’t get a “do over” for whatever reason in this life. But you can from this day forward begin to live God’s best for your sex life. You make a decision with your mind and your body and under God’s control, you have the power to determine that your sex life from this day forward is going to be God’s best sex life. That’s one of the reasons I have made I Corinthians 6, your memory verse. It’s kind of long, so we won’t read it out loud, but follow along as I read it. “Don’t be immoral in matters of sex. That is a sin against your own body in a way that no other sin is. You surely know that your body is the temple where the Holy Spirit lives.” Isn’t that a great phrase. “Your body is the temple where the Holy Spirit lives. The Spirit is in you and it is a gift from God. You are no longer your own. God paid a great price for you, so use your body to honor God.” And you can make that decision today. You can say, from this point forward, God, I am going to honor You. I am going to make a decision with my mind, to honor You with my body. You see, sex is a lot more than just skin on skin. Sex is as much a spiritual mystery as physical fact. And when you begin to elevate that and you make the decision to live your life according to that plan, you will find that God will bless your sex life. And that leads me to truth number 3.
3. God blesses sex.
When you determine to live your life according to God’s best plan, you can get God’s blessing in your life. Now, God gives you free will in this area. In preparing for this message and this entire series, we looked at all kinds of issues related to sex and love from God’s perspective. I noticed that a lot of times, in society, when we talk about sex and love, we often use words that are the type of words that you would use to describe fire. Your hormones rage out of control. You have burning passion inside of you. That led me to think, you know, maybe sex is a little bit like fire. I mean, fire, when it’s under control can serve a great purpose. I mean, fire can heat a home, it can light a room, it can cook our food, but if you let fire burn out of control, it destroys everything in its path. And fire is a powerful force. It has the potential to both create as well as to destroy. So it is with your sex life. You have a choice. You can live your sex life apart from God, and you can leave a wake of destruction in the path. Or you can choose to use your sex life as God created it and you can find that God will bless your sex life. This word “blessing” is interesting. In the Old Testament, when it talks about blessing, it means to sanctify. To approve to exalt. In the New Testament, the Greek word means to make good. So in other words, if you want a blessed sex life, do it God’s way. God will make it good. Now, God’s plan for sex is very, very simple. We get it from Genesis 1. I want you to see how Jesus worded it in the New Testament. This is God’s best plan for sex. Matthew 19:4-6, “Jesus replied, from the beginning God made them male and female. This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife and the two are united into one.” God’s plan for sex, one man, one woman, fully committed to each other, inside the bond of marriage. That is maximum sexual fulfillment, and when you life your life according to God’s plan, when sex is practiced according to God’s plan, it’s not dirty, demeaning, or emotionally detrimental. Instead it is pleasurable, it’s enjoyable and it is blessed by God. You see, God, ultimately, doesn’t look down on sex at all. God is as up on life and living your life according to His plan. You see, if you fall into this dichotomy, you are going to live with this constant battle that ultimately is futile. Because the battle is not between your mind and body. Instead, you have to choose to give in or to surrender in another type of battle. That is the battle between you and God, because God is your Creator, and He created you as mind and body. The issue then becomes, are you going to surrender to Him? I realize that surrender is not a very positive word. As guys, we don’t like to surrender anything. We don’t like to give in to anything. But it’s only when we surrender our lives, our sex lives to God, that we are going to find God’s best. That’s true in our sex lives, as well as every other area of our life. And some of you may be here tonight, and you have been in a battle with God. You have been running from God. You have been away from God, maybe tonight was even the first time you have been to church in a long time. But you want God’s best because the pain of living outside of God’s best is almost too much to bear. You have seen the results. Tonight, why don’t you surrender your life to God? What you will find is you aren’t giving up a thing, instead you are gaining it all. Simply say,
God, I’m going to follow you from this day forward. God has His best plan in mind for you. Others of you may have been a Christian for a long while and you have given other areas of your life to God. You have given your finances to God. Maybe you have given your friendships. Maybe you have given your spiritual life to God. You have even given a large portion of your time to God. But you have never turned over your sex life to God. Why don’t you, tonight, say God—I’m going to give you all of my life. And you, too, can find God’s blessing in that area. So our prayer for this series is that you will discover God’s best for your sex life. Next week, we are going to be talking about marriage, and we are going to zero in on that particular topic. Even if you are single, I hope you will be back because we are going to explore this idea of sex as recreation and pleasure as well as procreation. We are going to talk about this idea of the two becoming one and there are a lot of misnomers out there about marriage. So next week, there is going to be the truth on that. In a couple of weeks we are going to talk about dating, and even if you are married, you should still date your mates. So I hope you will be here for that. Then we are going to look at temptation and we are going to talk about purity in this series, as well. All of this is coming down because we have to get the truth out. We have to discover it. We have to help our friends discover it. That’s why my prayer for you, at the beginning of this new series, is found in I Thessalonians. It’s really a prayer, I just kind of want to pray this over you and then we will bow our heads in a moment to pray corporately. But look at what the Bible says. This is what I pray for you. I think this summarizes where many of you are. “Dear brothers and sisters. We urge you in the name of the Lord Jesus to live in a way that pleases God, as we have taught you. You were doing this already, but we encourage you to do so more and more. For you remember what we taught you in the name of the Lord Jesus. God wants you to be holy. You should keep clear of all sexual sins.” I pray that you will discover the truth, the truth of God’s best for your sex life.
Would you bow your heads, close your eyes and let me lead you in a prayer.
God, we thank You that this issue of our sex life is something that you created. And that this issue of our sex lives is something that You created. And God, if we didn’t have You, if You didn’t create this, we would be just wandering around making it up as we go. But God, we can experience sex to the fullest when we begin to follow You and we willingly give ourselves to Your plan for our sex lives. And God, I pray for those who may have experienced some pain because they have been on the receiving end of others who have not followed Your best plan. I pray for those who may have some pain in their hearts or pain in their minds. God, I pray that You would be the God of all comfort for them. And God, I pray for all of us that we would make the decision tonight with our mind and our body, to follow You, to live our lives according to Your plan. As a matter of fact, maybe you just want to say that right now. Maybe just in your heart, you want to say. . .
God, I want to live my life according to Your plan. I am inviting you to be the God of my sex life. And I want to live this out in a way that will honor You.
If you are here tonight and you have never turned over all of your life over to God, maybe tonight you are ready to become a Christian. A follower of God by following the teachings of Jesus Christ. Maybe tonight you just want to say. . .
God, I am deciding tonight to begin this new friendship with You, to follow You. And God, I want to grow and learn more and more about what this means, but I am beginning the journey tonight. I am starting tonight.
God, we offer all these prayers up, the prayer that we prayed from I Thessalonians, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
