How Passionate Is Your Sex Life?

 I belong to my lover, and his longing is only for me. Song of Solomon 7:10

 

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Kiss me again and again, for your love is sweeter than wine. Song of Solomon 1:2

 

Passion. I am going to go out on a limb and say most Christian marriages are not characterized by their passion. Oh, we have dutiful marriages. We have functional ones. Half the time we have committed ones. But we rarely are identified by our passion for our lovers. What do you think our God, the creator of sex and marriage, thinks of that?

I think he is woefully disappointed.

Shannon Ethridge, in her new book, The Passion Principles; Celebrating Sexual Freedom in Marriage, says, “If Christian couples can’t have phenomenal sex lives given the personal connection we have with the Author of sex, who in the world can?”

The Bible says:

It’s good for a man to have a wife, and for a woman to have a husband. Sexual drives are strong, but marriage is strong enough to contain them and provide for a balanced and fulfilling sexual life in a world of sexual disorder. The marriage bed must be a place of mutuality—the husband seeking to satisfy his wife, the wife seeking to satisfy her husband. Marriage is not a place to “stand up for your rights.” Marriage is a decision to serve the other, whether in bed or out.  1 Cor 7:2-4 MSG

Strong. Fulfilling. Mutual. Satisfying. Do those words describe your sex life? If they don’t, why in the world not?

The times in our marriage that have become less-than-passionate,  some obstacle was in the way. Something was killing the passion.

Honor marriage, and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband. Heb. 13:4

Shame

Premarital sex nearly destroyed our marriage. It is shame feeder. I spent my time trying to erase the shame. My husband spent his time hiding from his.

It’s no coincidence that after the creation of man and woman the Bible says they were “naked and not ashamed” (Gen. 2:25). We do a lot of things in our lives to heap shame on ourselves. From our sin to our self-consciousness, we are afraid to imitate Eden. We are afraid to be naked and not ashamed.

Tonight when my husband was asked to give an engaged couple one piece of advice, he said, “Share you deepest struggle with your spouse.” We did that in our marriage. He exposed his inadequacies. I was honest about my sin. Then we bathed each other with grace and mercy. Through each other, we experienced the forgiveness and redemption Jesus bought for us. We could finally be as God created us, naked and not ashamed.

Boredom 

Sometimes we get stuck in a rut. Sometimes sex doesn’t seem quite as interesting as the book we are reading or the TV show that we are watching. We get  distracted looking at other people’s lives on Facebook. Try this- forget the books and TV shows. Go create your own adventure with your spouse.  Instead of being entertained by other people’s lives, go live your own to the fullest. Step out. Be fun together. Laugh together. Indulge together. Be in love together.

Tired

We have six kids at home 13, 10, 8, 5, 3 and 3 months. We know tired. Some nights the kids get to bed and we collapse. But I have learned a liberating truth, sex doesn’t have to happen at night. It’s actually much more enjoyable when you are awake.

Kids

Yes, we have a lot of kids. Yes one or more of them end up in our bed at some point in the night. But here’s another liberating truth. Doors lock and meeting each others needs is just as important as meeting our children’s needs. Our kids need us. But we need each other too. We need each other, desperately. Passionately.

My lover is mine, and I am his. Song of Solomon 2:16

Also see: What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Sex, What Husbands Wish Their Wives Knew About Sex & Kids and Sex: Can You Have Both?

Serena
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Comments: 1
  1. S. C.
    9 years ago

    I can.t help but think that more ladies bible classes, more female bloggers and more wives seeking help is really not what is called for to solve the problem if there is, in fact, a widespread problem in Christian sex lives. I realize that the best we women can do is blog, counsel, question and pray from our own very personal experiences and viewpoint. So once I acknowledge that I have to concede that there must be women out there who are bored with the idea of sex or who are too ashamed of themselves to be able to give themselves over to a Godly sex life or who deal with any of a number of personal issues that I personally can’t relate to very easily. But then in my heart of hearts I also know that this is a two way street and that women who started out marriage enjoying sex and feeling afire with passion and love for their husband and later encounter troubles in that area often go without help because these apparently common problems are not the whole story. I have come to realize that there is a breakdown in some marriages because women, as a general rule, tend to want to understand their lover and they tend to communicate with each other and with their husbands about sex and marriage, but men, as a general rule, are much more prone to try to live as an island and to “respect” other men by letting them be islands. However, the reality is that no man is an island and that approach is not in accordance with the concept of the older men teaching the younger men to love their wives. While I’ve seen countless books, blogs, articles and bible study materials aimed at teaching women to understand how a man thinks and feels, many apparently very accurate according to male reviewers, when I try to see what is going on with the men teaching men I often see primarly the male point of view., how a man feels, thinks and relates to sex pasted over an image of a woman on the opposite side of the bed with a few exceptions.

    So I’m going to go out on a limb and beg all the women who think that they have a great Christian marriage with a great Christian sex life as a major part of it to work with their husbands and encourage their husbands to develop their ability to teach other men on this vital topic. That is the only biblical model I see for how men are meant to learn to love their wives: men teaching men. Men need to be able to get beyond the milk of this subject, ie. “you have to accept that her body is going to change after she bears you children” and into the meat of it. Why should men who have a passion for God be stuck in an elementary level position where they must be admonished to put up with the stuff they are tempted to want to have different from the natural order that God built into this world. This is a critical area. And I’m here to tell you that if you peruse the books on this topic at the Christian bookstore that are written for men there is plenty of the male point of view but there is very little on how to really love their wives in connection to their marital sex life, that teaches mean to understand any of what the female point of view is or failing a true understanding of women at least a lot of really accurate ideas and tips to try on how to care for a woman in every area of your marriage and make her feel so safe, secure, loved and cared for that she continues to feel that same passion she did back when you were courting her and caused her to have such a fire for you. And this shouldn’t have to be a visit to the ER that men discover they must make after they are finally ready, years later to give up on being their own prideful little island. This should come much earlier in marriage when they haven’t had a chance to spend years thinking that they are doing everything right while in reality they are spending years undoing their courtship and building a spirit of fear and mistrust in their wives. The wife who knows that she was foolish to trust any of the feelings of their courtship, because the truth of how they have lived has proven that “love” could never have been a part of why she has felt so unloved for so long requires way more time and patience to build up again than we could discuss in this format. The bible commands men to love their wives. It demands that they view her and the relationship as something worth caring for and protecting as the “weaker vessel” (I hope you are picturing a delicate but also lovely and very expensive piece of china or depression glass here). It admonishes them to live with their wives in understanding that their prayers may not be hindered. This is nothing to be taken lightly. Men need this teaching.

    There are many things about our current society that may offer temptations and disadvantages to men and women alike, but at least the fairytale “love” that most of us started out with before being willing to wed gives most men the advantage of having a wife already on fire for him physically and emotionally before he ever has a chance to build that up or tear it down inside of the marriage. That would seem to be at least one advantage over living in a society where people come into marriage without that type of decision making process on whether to marry or who to marry. And if the wife in question also already started out with an understanding that marriage is forever and that biblical love is an action that they must work on everyday then that marriage also benefits from less of the disadvantages of our “fairytale love” culture.

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Serena
9 years ago 1 Comment Marriage, Womanhood, 1,290