The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his101/insp143.arj/INSP143.TXT

Text File | 1989-10-09 | 14KB | 223 lines

               Singles  & Sex by Dean Sherman

    Many people think God is unfair. That He made us sexual beings and then
tells us DON'T! Almost every young person I know faces this problem. "Well,
when you really like somebody, and you really get close to them, it's really
hard to control yourself." Why does God limit our behavior towards one another
in sexual areas? Let's take a look at the character of God and find out
the reasons behind His logical loving limits.
    God is, by nature, not a restrictor but a fulfiller. When He limits
our sexual activity to certain situations, He's not trying to steal out fun
but has logical and loving reasons. God thought up sex. It was 100% His idea.
He created our bodies and our responses. The devil wants us to believe He's the
sex expert - that if we get too close to God, or too holy, we'll miss
something. It's a lie that we'll miss something if we DON'T.
    Most people feel that God is trying to push them into a corner and cramp
their style. If you have too much fun or too much pleasure, you're not going
to be saved and He won't like you anymore. They think God wants you lying
on beds of nails to prove you're really serving Him. That's not the way
God is and that's not Christianity.
    God saw you in your mother's womb and said, "Oh, have I got something
for you!" And He got so excited (and He's still excited) about every human
being on the planet. Some are greatly disappointing Him and hurting Him,
but every one of us made Him exceedingly excited when He saw us in our mother's
womb. And He had this thing in mind, and it was that He wanted the highest
possible spine-tingling ... ooooh ... depth of fulfilling  experience for you.
That is His plan for you in relationship to the opposite sex. But few of us
really believe it. We think, "If I'm really gonna have what I want, I'll
have to get it myself. I know what's going to fulfill me better that God
does." And most of us blow it because we don't know God. We don't
understand that He created pleasure.

The God Of Taste Buds

    Did you know that God didn't need to give you taste buds? You don't
need them. This ought to tell you something about God and what He's into.
Food is simply to maintain and repair your body, and you don't need to go
mmmm... over chocolate sundaes. There's only one reason for taste buds,
friends, and that's pleasure. If God is the God of pleasure and wants me to
enjoy what I eat, then I ought to be able to enjoy and amount at any time in
any way. Wrong! That's not logical. I know my stomach holds two quarts,
so to eat a bale of hay a day is not really smart. It's best that I limit my
enjoyment. Likewise, we can't reason that because God has given us sexual
ability or the gift of attraction, that any amount is good at any time.

Man-Created In The Image Of Chemicals

    Many of the things we learn about sex come from songs, movies, and T.V.
We're taught by people who think we are a barnyard animal or just a bag of
chemicals. If it's true that we're just a bunch of pieces of matter, then we
don't matter ... and we can do anything to anybody at any time. By contrast,
God's thing is love. He knows we are a delicate, finely-tuned
personality made in His image. Therefore, we do matter and can only be fulled
by loving Him and by truly loving others. We cannot let materialists
define love for us.
    The Corinthians had some of the same misconceptions that many of us do.
They thought they had a body that operated separately from their spirit.
They said, "Well, Jesus is in my spirit so my spirit will go to heaven,
but my body will rot in the ground so it doesn't matter what I do with
my body."
    Paul wrote them and said, "Hey, wait a minute Your body is a container
for your spirit. It's a temple. Your bodies are members of Christ." What you
do with your body always touches your spirit. Sex, therefore, is never just a
physical thing as some would have us believe. "Did you love her?" "No, it was
just a physical thing." Sex never has been and never will be just a physical
thing, like playing tennis or dancing. Sex is an intermingling, or a blending
of two entire personalities-body, soul, and spirit.

Tearing The Heart

    1 Corinthians 6:18 says, Flee fornication (sex outside of
marriage). Every other sin that mankind commits is outside the body, but the
one who commits fornication sins against his own body (or being). What in the
world does this mean? Preachers get up and say, "You kids out there
committing fornication are going to ruin your bodies!" Don't try to tell
a medical student you can damage your body through sexual involvement. It's a
function that God created your body for, for goodness sake. So, what is Paul
trying to say? He is trying to show that we are an integrated being, that you
can't do something with your body that doesn't touch your spirit.
    We damage our being in every sexual act committed outside of God's limits
because we become one with someone else. Blended and intermingled. And then in
a few minutes we tear that oneness apart into two beings again. It doesn't
rip our body, but it rips our mind, will, emotions, and spirit.
    The mind is now damaged because it has memories and knowledge it was not
equipped to cope with apart from a lifetime commitment. The will is damaged
because it has been bent like a wire against our conscience saying, "no," and
is made weaker. The emotions have been traumatized by the pulling back that
comes after being intermingled. And we get a deep wound in our spirit, because
death is ministered to us instead of life.
    God screams to us "No" and we say, "God, you just don't understand how much
we love each other. It seems so right, "God does understand. He invented
the whole process. He is for us, but in His love He tries to prevent
us from damaging our lives.
    How does this sound, "Oh, I love you so much. I need to damage you."
That doesn't sound like love to me. The reason we say, "It's so hard to
contain myself when I love him soooo much," is because we haven't
understood what God has known all along. We damage each other. Without
exception, your inner being is damaged in every case regardless of how mature
you are, how committed you are, or how long you've been going with each
other. There is always damage and God doesn't want us to be hurt.

Marriage - Not Just A Ceremony

    Another reason sex outside of marriage is wrong is beacuse there's a lack
of commitment. One girl said, "I see nothing wrong with it if you know you
love each other and you're really committed. What difference does a piece
of paper make." My answer: If you are not married, you are not commited,
because marriage is the commitment.
    Marriage is the legal, publicly witnessed and binding commitment between
a man and a woman. Nothing else is. In marriage, God fuses two into one.
The Bible doesn't say, "What therefore sex has joined together' but "What
therefore God has joined together.." (Matt 19:6) So it's not just a physical
joining, it's a spiritual joining of two people.
    In sex outside of marriage there is an intermingling which is ripped
into two again. It's the difference between tying branches on the Christmas
tree for looks, and the ones that grew there. It's not smart or loving for you
to intermingle your whole being together with someone who is not committed
to you for life. Anything less than marriage is not commitment.
    God also says no because you're not protected. Protected from what?
Protected from the devil. Oh...we forgot about the devil. Wouldn't it be great
if we could get carried away in our little sexual things and there was no
devil, or he would just turn his back? That would be nice, but it's just not
true. Have you ever asked yourself why Satan is so interested in sexual
things? Why he pushes this sin so hard, worldwide? It's because sex is not just
physical, it involves the spirit realm.
    In Old Testament times, people worshiped the devil through sexual
involvement. It's the same today in witchcraft and the occult. Satan becomes
a participant. He receives an honor, or a worship, from rebellion against
God's truth and protection. When you back away from the Lord, you naturally
back into the hands of the devil.
    God has know this the whole time. In marriage, I believe God has not only
supernaturally joined you, but He also put a ring of protection around you.
This keeps the powers of darkness from messing around in what God wanted
to be private, relaxed, guilt-free, and fulfilling. Outside of marriage
(even the day before), Satan still has access to bring guilt, tension, bondage,
etc. God's ways are so much more loving and logical

How Many Can Share Intimacy?

    Sex with someone other than your marriage partner destroys a certain
amount of intimacy. Intimacy is defined as: that which is alone or shared
by a maximum of one other person. The enjoyment of taking a lovely, hot
shower would be lost if we had to do it in front of a crowd of people. Being
alone with our beloved somehow loses its preciousness when our little brother
comes around the corner. This is another thing that separates us from animals
and sex according to instinct. We love and need intimacy. God made us
that way.
    If we share ourselves with more than one, in nakedness and sexual pleasure
petting included - we have deluted the intimacy our whole being craves.
 God wants the highest pinnacle of fulfillment for us. We settle for less.
Less than a totally unique and creative experience with only one.
    Sex outside of marriage will also have an adverse effect on your marriage
even if you marry the same person. I have never heard of one couple having
difficulties in marriage because they lacked experience. Some have problems
from lack of knowledge, and if you are going to marry, you need to know
some things. But you don't don't need experience. However, thousands of
couples are having difficulties in marriage because of previous
experience. It's a lie of the enemy that you should arrive at your wedding
night experienced. It puts a weight on you that you can well do without,
and marriages fail every day because of that weight. Some of the
effects on people are :

Guilt:     "I feel dirty and used. I just can't feel right about it.
           We got off on the wrong foot." It's not enjoyed because
           it's associated with wrongness.
Fear:      "I just know something is going to happen to this baby
           because of what I used to do." Or "Will my teenager do what
           I did?"
Lack of Trust: He told you when you were dating. "I don't know about
           the other guys, but I'm just too much of a man to contain
           myself." Since he broke the rules with you, now that you're
           married you wonder if he can control himself on his
           business trips. The fornicator before marriage can more
           easily become the adulterer during marriage because he has
           learned to cross the line of his conscience.
Flashbacks: Memories of being with others that can't be forgotten.
Comparisons: "I wonder if I'm like the others?"
Lack of Relaxation: You can't condition your responses for eight years
           in tense times of wondering if someone will "catch you" and
           then just all of a sudden relax with your husband or wife.
The "Bad is Exciting" Syndrome: We develop an excitement in doing
           wrong. "Oh, don't." "We shouldn't." We've perverted our
           responses. and we now look for something else that's wrong
           to excite us. "Now that we're married everything is okay
           and it's become boring."

    Because sex is a sharing of entire beings, the more partners and
experiences we have outside the marriage container, the more pieces of
ourselves we give away, and the less fulfillment we end up with. The wounding
brings a shallowness in our emotions, and we have trouble finding depth of
fulfillment. This can bring disinterest, lack of satisfaction, and
frustration. We don't draw as much from the "well" as we expected, or as
God intended.

A River Of Beauty And Joy

    God's intention was depth, satisfaction, and fulfillment, He limits
our behavior before marriage, not to take away, but to channel this
beautiful flow like banks channel a river. It is stupid to knock down the banks
of a river to give it "freedom" or "liberation." If the river said, "I'm
going to flow where I want to flow when I feel like flowing," we would end up
with a flood instead of something beautiful. Say "no" to destruction and
"yes" to God and His logical and loving limits. Once we understand why God said
what He said, it won't be hard to control.

What If It's Too Late

    If you've already violated any of these areas, your life is not over or
ruined. God is a redeemer. He will forgive, cleanse, heal, and
restore. You can have a great marriage and future, so don't despair. I've
heard women who were once prostitutes say that on their wedding night it felt
like the first time. God can do a mighty work in your life! Come to Him and
admit that He really knew what He was talking about, and you were wrong to
second-guess Him. Repent and then by faith let Him reverse the damage and set
your feet on a road with guardrails. He'll give you a bright future. Nobody
has gone too far. He'll make all things new. Let Him direct the river of your
sexuality as a river within its banks, and it will become a thing of beauty
and fulfillment in your life.

From Last Days Ministries
P.O. Box 40
Lindale, TX 75771-0040