Message Description

Dr. Kurt Bjorklund looks at how Proverbs 7 addresses God's plan for human sexuality and four keys to a sexually satisfying life.

Message Notes & Study Guide - PDF

Message Transcript

Good morning. Just as we now have your attention because of the topic, I'm guessing that this will be an interesting morning. I do want to just say this, and that is if you have kids, grade school kids, it's probably a good morning to take them to Kidzburgh, as the subject matter will be just a little more PG-13-ish than usually. So you may want to do that just here at the beginning.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for a chance to just gather. God, as we have worked our way through Proverbs in the Strip District, Butler County, and Wexford, today we come to a topic that is near to so many of our lives. I pray that you would just speak to all of us. God, if there are things I've prepared that don't reflect your truth, your kind of perspective on these things, I pray you keep me from saying them. God, if there are things that if I shared them that I haven't prepared would be beneficial for those of us who've gathered, I pray you'd prompt me and I would follow that prompting in this time. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

I saw some research recently that talked about the existence of somebody who is asexual. Asexual meaning somebody who is not attracted to men or women. The research I saw suggested that about 1, maybe 2% of the population is truly asexual. In other words, they will rarely, if ever, have an attraction to somebody. Here's what that means. That means 98, 99% of us, sex is a big deal. Because you will be attracted to people, there will be things in your life where you will say, "I want something in this arena."

I was talking to one of my sons and he had just casually asked what this weekend's talk was. I said, "Well, it's basically how to have great sex." He kind of perked up, my teenager, like, "What are you talking about?" My wife who was there said, "I'm not sure you should call it that." To which I said, "Absolutely. That is the subject." I mean, our title is Better Sexual Fidelity and that, but it's about having great sex, because sex is God's idea.

Way too often in the church, our perspective has been, or people's perspective who aren't part of the church has been the church is against sex, the church is anti-sex, and sex, if we want to have good sex, has to be done outside the confines of our faith and our religion, our church life.

But here's what I want to say, and that is sex is God's idea. He created it for your pleasure and for good things. So today we're going to look at the book of Proverbs and see what it says about how you and I can have great sex. All right? Do I have your attention now?

Now, you know as well as I do that sexuality has gotten a little twisted in our culture, but it isn't just our culture. It's been this way forever. This is why Proverbs addresses it so directly. If you read the New Testament, the book of 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, you see sexual dysfunction. It's unfortunate because it takes something that's intended to be beautiful and often makes it so it isn't beautiful in our lives.

Here's how Paul David Tripp began his book, Sex and Money, just talking about some of what we're seeing. He says, "She's 13 and the thing she can't stop thinking and talking about is her impending breast development. For her, being a woman is all about the size of one's breasts. She's 15 and quite a self-appointed expert when it comes to oral sex. She doesn't just see herself as knowledgeable, but as a bit experienced as well. What she likes about oral sex is that it's a way of having sex that really isn't sex."

Paul David Tripp continues. He says, "I told my wife that during the summer months, it's hard to walk down the street in Center City, Philadelphia where we live, and to know where to put your eyes because there are so many women in various stages of undress. She's 17 and in ways that she doesn't recognize, she's already been trained..." Or Tim is 17. Excuse me, "and in ways he doesn't recognize he's already been trained to view women as objects whose value is attached to physical beauty and body shape."

"George is married with three children. He seems to have a good marriage, but he masturbates at least once a day. His wife doesn't know it, but he's done it for years. They came to me after a conference, carrying with them a combination of heart brokenness and anger. They wanted to know what to do about their son who seemed hopelessly addicted to internet pornography. I asked how old he was, thinking I would hear that he was in his teens, early twenties. But to my shock, they told me he was eight."

"At a conference in South Africa, they asked if they could have lunch with me. After the meal, they told me a story about their son who was newly married and was having sex with a college girl that he was over in the industry in which he worked. In the big cities around the world, you are considered hopelessly old-fashioned and bigoted if you don't think that same sex marriage is a wonderful idea and also a civil right. Sandra is 20 and her definition of cool and fashionable clothes is those that are designed to reveal her body. Her clothes tend to be tight, and short, and often low-cut. Sandra is a Christian who, in many ways, takes her faith seriously."

He goes on and he talks about how the word sexting has become a thing because of people sending graphic sexual images to one another and how pornography is what drives and is probably the most economically charged engine on the internet.

C.S. Lewis writing a generation ago, said you know that something is out of whack in a culture when a culture idolizes something so much that it celebrates it without actually experiencing it. What he was talking about is... And he used This illustration. He said if a culture would make beautiful gourmet meals and set them out and then people would just gather to watch the meal be displayed and never actually taste the meal, you would say, "They seem to be a little food obsessed." He says the same thing has happened in his culture.

So what I'd like to do this morning is just simply talk about how we can reclaim the beauty of sexuality. How we can have a great sex life, a satisfying sex life. What it requires for those of us who would say, "I'm not asexual, but this matters to me."

Here's the first thing. This is from Proverbs and other places in the scripture, and that is we need to determine that sexual fidelity is God's good design for human sexuality. God's plan of sexual fidelity is God's good design for human sexuality.

Here's what we see in Proverbs 5 verses 3 through 5. It says, "For the lips of an adulterous woman drip honey, her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is as bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword. Her feet go down to death and her steps lead straight to the grave." That's just simply saying that when somebody gets involved in an adulterous relationship, an extramarital relationship, that it's damaging. That's what he says.

In Hebrews chapter 13 verse 4, we read that the marriage bed is to be held undefiled. That God holds marriage to be something that's beautiful, that's sacred, that's intended to be where beauty happens in a relationship. What happens so many times instead is we treat sex not like a beautiful and sacred trust, but instead like it's simply a commodity to be traded.

Here's where we see just an evidence of this. This is Proverbs chapter 30 verse 18 through 20. This is Hebrew poetry. The poetry mechanism here is to say there's three things. No, there's four. He's saying these are excellent things. He says, "There are three things that are too amazing to me. Four that I do not understand." Then he says this, "The way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship in the high seas," and then his fourth, "the way of a man with a young woman."

What he's doing is he's painting a picture. He's saying it's amazing to watch an eagle soar through the sky. As the eagle pierces through the sky and yet is supported by the sky, so it is when a man and a woman make love. Then he says as a boat is going through the and is supported by the water, so it is when a man makes love to a woman. I have no idea what the snake on the rock symbolizes. But other than maybe moving beautifully over something that seems to be unnavigatable.

Then it says this, verse 20, "This is the way of an adulterous woman. She eats and wipes her mouth and says, 'I've done nothing wrong.'" What you have here is you have a picture of sex being beautiful and then sex being treated as just a simple commodity, as simple as an appetite. The way you eat food, you just need something to eat. You have sex drive, so you have sex and then you just go about your life.

Here's what's happened in our world. As I said, it had happened in the world long before our world. So it's not like our culture is somehow worse about this. But that is, we simultaneously undervalue and overvalue sexuality in our culture. Here's what I mean. We undervalue it because we treat sex a lot of times as if it is just a commodity. It is just a drive. It is just something that I need to get my needs met. When I say a commodity, what I mean is a commodity is something that you say, "As long as I get something at an acceptable price, then I'll continue to do business here. But as soon as there's a better price, a better product, then I'll go somewhere else."

Now, I'm not saying that you pay for sex in order for that to be true, but if you go to a store and it provides you a service at a good price, as soon as there's a better price or at a better store, a better quality, you abandon that store for another store. That's what it means to treat sex as a commodity. Is to say, "I'll do it with you as long as it's good for me. But as soon as it's not good for me, then I'm done." The reason that that's undervaluing is because what it does is it says, "My sex isn't in the context of a committed, covenantal relationship that the Bible describes." But instead it's in the context of saying, "I just want you to meet my needs."

We also overvalue sexuality. What I mean by this is we romanticize it and we make our love partner everything in this world. The defining point of all of our lives.

I was thinking about this this week and I came across an article on a website that I go to often, it's called The Ringer. On this website they have stuff that I like, and on this website they had an article about the 50 greatest breakup songs of all time. I got hooked and so I went in. They had things such as, You Heard it Through the Grape Vine by Marvin Gaye, U2's With or Without You, Bon Iver's Skinny Love were on this list. Taylor Swift's Never Ever Getting Back Together. I don't know how that made the list.

But here's what you see in this list of songs. I'll just give you one for each. One on the undervaluing. This is Amy Winehouse, Tears Dry on Their Own. She says this, "So this is inevitable withdrawal. Even if I stop wanting you and perspective pushes through, I'll meet, I'll be some next man's other woman soon." So she says, "I want to be in a relationship with you, but as soon as this is done, I'm going and I'm just going to be some man's other woman because I'm going to get my needs met somehow."

Then in Adele's song, Someone like You... Which I don't know if I'm the only person who thinks it's a little creepy how she is like, "It's not over for me, but you're done," and she's pursuing this guy. I'm showing up unannounced. Creepy. But just me. But here's what she says, "Sometimes it lasts in love and sometimes it hurts instead." What she's doing is showing the other side of this view, which is basically saying, "I want you to be my everything. You're so much my everything that I've been gone for years and I still can't get you out of my mind, out of my heart, out of my soul. You're my everything." Do you see how we overvalue and undervalue simultaneously in our culture, saying that what I need is I need to have something that meets my needs today.

I was at a high school basketball game recently and as I was sitting watching, there were some girls behind me, probably 16, 17, 18 somewhere in that range. Because of where they were sitting, I could hear their entire conversation. If you're 16, 17, 18, I don't mean any disrespect about kind of where you are, but they were talking about how they were trying to connect with different guys and they were talking about how great and awesome these guys were going to be, and how if they could get with this guy, how their life would be so much better. I have to be honest, I just had a moment as I was sitting there, I was thinking I actually know some of the 16, 17, 18-year-old guys that they were talking about, and they're not all that. Yet their mindset was, "If I could be with him, then my life would have meaning." I'm thinking, "Really?"

Here's my point. That is if we see sex as either being everything or just a simple commodity, we miss the beauty that God wants for it to be. Here's where we ultimately need to get to, and this is... It takes some understanding of scripture. But in Ephesians 5, we see that God talks about marriage being like Christ in the church. That it's a mystery. What he's doing is he's saying that there's something that marriage points to that's more ultimate, that's more significant than just marriage, than just romance, than just sex, than just love. That is he's saying, "I want to be your ultimate lover. The best lover that you ever have on earth is just a foretaste of this ultimate love."

If you think that I'm making too much of that, in the Old Testament, you see God use the imagery of adultery, spiritual adultery when people leave him. In other words, he sees himself as the spurned lover, as the one who says, "I want to be in relationship with you, and yet you go your own way and you leave me heartbroken."

Here's what that points to. That is if you or I make so much of love that it's everything, then we don't understand that it just points to ultimate love. And if we undervalue love, and romance, and sex so that it's nothing, then we don't understand the beauty that God invites us to experience now as a taste.

Here's how Ernest Becker wrote about this years ago in his book, The Denial of Death. He said, "We are the first society who has a widespread belief that there is no ultimate future. The first society that is totally secular, that believes that when you die, this is it. There has never been a society that has a view of so much insignificance of human life. Therefore, there has never been a society that has just put so much emphasis on finding your one true love. We secular people need to know that our lives still matter in the grand scheme of things. We still want to merge ourselves to some higher meaning, trust, and gratitude. But if we no longer believe in God, how do we do this? One of the first ways that has occurred to the modern mind was the romantic solution." He goes on to talk about how we pursue this romantic partner.

Then he says this, "When we elevate the love partner to this position, what we want to do is to rid ourself of our faults, our feelings of nothingness. We want to be justified." Now, he's not a Christian writing this. He's writing as basically a person just making a social commentary, but he uses religious language saying, "We want to declare ourselves right through the relationship with somebody, and we want to know here that our existence is not in vain."

Here's what he's saying. He's saying when you're 16, 17, 18 year old sitting in a bleachers in a game saying, "If I could just get with him, if I could just get with her, then I would be something." That we're looking for something ultimate. When you're 25 and you're hooking up with different people and you're saying, "I'm just trying to make something of my life," what you're doing is you're looking for something ultimate. When you're 38 and you think, "My marriage is going nowhere. He doesn't pursue me any more. She doesn't avail herself the same way she used to to the things that mattered." And you say, "I've got to find somebody to meet this." What you're doing is you're searching for something ultimate instead.

Here's what it requires. When I say we have to determine that God's plan, that sexual fidelity is God's good plan, is the creator of the universe for our sexuality, what we need to do is we need to come to a place where we say, "I'm going to trust this even if it doesn't make sense to me."

I don't know if you've ever used the app Waze when you're going somewhere. Waze is a little app that you can put on your phone. When you're driving, it will tell you where to go. It also supposedly tells you where police are so that you don't get a ticket. I use it for the traffic part primarily. The traffic part will tell you when you're driving to get off and follow an alternate path. Sometimes when you're driving, if you follow it, it doesn't make sense to you. You'll say, "Well, wait a second. The best path forward is right here and I don't see any problem going straight ahead." What you have to do if you want the benefit of Waze is sometimes you have to get off the road that seems obvious to you and follow a path that doesn't seem obvious.

Now, the problem with Waze is it can be wrong. The Bible, God's word, God is the creator, the inventor, the giver of sexuality, isn't wrong. Sometimes in order to determine that his path is best, we have to go away from what we think looks so clear, so obvious to us, and say, "I'm going to go a different path because I trust what this is telling me." What we need to do if we want to have beauty in our sexual lives is put ourselves in a place where we say, "I trust God's plan for this area of my life."

Here's the second thing, and that is I believe we need to rehearse the cost of sexual promiscuity. In other words is the cost of what it is when we go our own path. In Proverbs 6 we see several of these images of what happens when we go our own way. I'll just read a few, starting in verse 26, "For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread, but another man's wife preys on your very life." In other words, when you get with somebody who isn't your lifetime partner, your covenant relationship, says it preys on your very life.

"Can a man scoop fire into his lap without clothes being burned? Can a man walk on hot coals without his feet being scorched? So is he who sleeps with another man's wife; no one who touches her will go unpunished. People do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger when he is starving. Yet if he is caught, he must pay sevenfold, though it costs him all of the wealth of his house. But a man who commits adultery has no sense; whoever does so destroys himself. Blows and disgrace are his lot, and shame will never be wiped away. For jealousy arouses a husband's fury, and he will show no mercy when he takes revenge. He will not accept any compensation; he will refuse a bribe, however great it is."

In chapter five, you see some of the same stuff. Verse 14 it says, "'I was soon in serious trouble in the assembly of God's people.'" He says in verse 13, "I would not obey my teachers or turn to their instruction." What you hear is this regret. You see a social kind of stigma. Verse 11, I think you see a physical stigma. It says, "At the end of your life, you will groan, when your flesh and body are spent."

Verse 9 and 10 we see a financial cost, it says, "... lest you lose your honor to others and your dignity to the one who is cruel, lest strangers feast on your wealth and your toil enrich the house of another." In other words, what Proverbs paints is a picture, is this picture of regret.

But here's the thing. You don't need, I don't need the Bible to tell me this. I mean, the Bible is our source here. But the reason I say this is go to the 50 Greatest Breakup Songs of All Time published this week by The Ringer. Do you know what you see? I mean, I'm serious. Now, I went way down this hole. I mean, I read the lyrics to the songs, listened to a bunch of them. Here's what you see: regret, pain, heartbreak. Do you know where you see it? Because people said, "This is going to be my everything. You're not my everything. I need another everything." And then they go about that, and there's this pain because they've chosen to say, "I don't need to listen to God's plan."

One of the songs that was on this list, I wasn't familiar with the backstory, was a song by Beyonce where Jay-Z evidently had cheated on Beyonce. Beyonce's song was about the pain of being cheated on by Jay-Z. I mean, just think about that for a moment. Modern people saying, "We have our own way forward. We don't need any kind of restraint on what we do," and what do they want? They want monogamous beauty in their relationship, and when one of them breaks out of it, it's pain and it's hurt. What Proverbs says is the same thing that Beyonce says. Okay, God's word, Beyonce. They're saying the same thing here today. It doesn't work to do it our own way.

If you want a little more Bible on this, in Genesis 2 verse 24, where God institutes kind of this idea of marriage. He says, "For this reason a man shall leave his mother and father and cleave," is one version, or, "be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." That word "cleave" or "be united" is the Hebrew word, dabaq. What it means is to be so joined together that you can't be pulled apart. If you are pulled apart, you're pulled apart in such a way that you take a piece of the other one with you. This is if you ever see two pieces of wood glued together, and when one's pulled apart, it takes a piece of the other with it so that the other piece of wood is never whole again. To dabaq means to be glued together.

Here's what this means. Whenever you or I are sexually intimate with somebody, we're dabaqing with them. This is why it's so painful when we have to pull apart. This is why sometimes you can't walk past an ex and not feel deep hurt or regret even if it ended as well as it possibly could. This is why if you give yourself to somebody even in a season and then walk away, there's a piece of you that stays with them. This is why if you hook up with somebody, you feel worse after the hookup, even though you thought it would make you feel better. Because this is what God has designed.

So we need, if we want to have beauty in our sex lives, to say, "God's way is the way that's best. It's for my good. Sexual fidelity is God's good plan for human sexuality." We need to rehearse the consequences of going off script, off plan. And then I would say that we need to be aware of the temptations of the seductress. Now, I say seductress because Proverbs speaks about this woman who's a wayward woman, this adulteress. Now, you may say, "Well, why doesn't it speak about men?" Because men can do the same thing. The reason is is because Proverbs was written largely to young men. So it's a book for young men to learn how to navigate life well. It doesn't take a big step to go from there to say, "Here's how it applies to all of us." But here's what this is like, if you read a Boy Scout manual and there's nothing in it about Girl Scouts' perspective, you don't think twice about it. This was written to young men. So it's talking about a woman being a seductress in a sense.

This is from Proverbs 7, the section that was read earlier. Here's what we read in verse 26 from the message. It says, "It's not just..." The message is a paraphrase of the Bible. It says it's not just weak people who will fall, but strong people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. In other words, it's not enough just to say, "I believe in God's plan and I know the consequence," but we have to be aware of where we're vulnerable.

Here's what we see is true. Verse 13, there's a brashness in the seductress towards somebody. It says, "She took hold of him and kissed him and with a brazen face she said..." In other words, it just came right at him. Verse 14, there's opportunity here, "Today I fulfilled my vows, and I have food from my fellowship offering at home." She talks about her husband being gone. What she does is she says, "We have a chance right now. We can go steal a moment and it will be the best thing we can do."

I read one thing that was written about the proliferation of pornography in our day and age. It said the main reasons that pornography has grown so much is because of in part the internet, but it is because of its availability, its affordability, and its anonymity. In other words, the reason that people go down that path is because they say, "I can do this. It's easy. I can pay for it and no one will know." So a seductress doesn't always have to be a person. It can be something that you say, "This is the thing that I can do to meet my need without having to deal with the messiness of a relationship."

Then we see flattery, verse 15, "So I came out to meet you; I have looked for you and I have found you!" You are the one that I want.

I've been a pastor for a few years, and one of the things that I can say about men who end up having affairs, I would assume it's true for women, but I've heard it more from men when I've been able to have a real conversation with guys after the fact, is it's not often about the sex. It's usually about being wanted. It's about somebody saying, "I see you and I want you." So we have to be aware when somebody is flattering us, wanting us because that becomes a moment of temptation. What is often kind of driven deeper inside of us is this desire to say, "I want to be wanted." But ultimately, that masks a bit of self-worship, a bit of a sense of saying, "I want somebody to make much of me."

Then verse 16 of Proverbs 7 just says this, it says, "I have covered my bed with colored linens from Egypt. I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon. Come, let's drink deeply of love till morning; let's enjoy ourselves with love! My husband is not at home; he has gone on a long journey. He took his purse, filled it with money, and will not be home until the full moon." What that's talking about here is this idea of opportunity and central pleasure. This invitation to say we can do this.

Then verse 25 says, "Do not let your heart turn to her ways or stray into her paths." "Stray" has the connotation of taking a little step at a time. It says, "Don't turn. Don't go there. Be very careful."

When a woodpecker wants to get something, what it does is it will come to a tree or a house and it will start to peck on the house. If it doesn't get bugs, generally is what it's looking for, maybe water inside what it's pecking toward, what it does is it just moves over a little and it starts again or it moves to the next tree and it starts again. What temptation is like is it's like a woodpecker who consistently says, "Well, if this didn't get you, then maybe this will. If this didn't get you, maybe this will." What it means is if you say, "I want to have beautiful sex, great sex, I need to say, 'God's way is the right way.' I rehearse what it means if I go a different way. But I'm also aware of the places that I could be vulnerable, that I could be in a place where I may not be able to stay clear."

Then I just want to add this because Proverbs does, and that is to cultivate your marriage or your future marriage. Proverbs 5 verse 15 through 19 says this, "Drink water from your own cistern," this is highly erotic language here. "Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares? Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers. May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer — may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be intoxicated with her love." The word "intoxicated" here has the connotation of being so overcome with it that you're almost delirious. This is talking about a relationship that's exclusive, a relationship that's full of joy and fun, and a relationship that has a deep emotional connection.

Now, I know that some of us are probably here and you're saying, "Well, wait a second. My marriage is not that. My husband hasn't for years. My wife hasn't for years." Fill in the blank to whatever it is that you feel somehow left out. And somehow that makes us feel that that even if we don't go physically outside of the marriage, that we can go outside mentally. But what we need to understand is that every mental energy that's spent on something other than our spouse, takes away from that intoxication, that enjoyment that Proverbs talks about. So what we need to do instead is say, "How do I foster the best marriage I can or the best future marriage that I can?"

If you're married and you're a person of faith, understand this, that your spouse has only one righteous outlet for their sexuality, and that's you. Meaning, if you don't foster that, not that it's ever your fault if they go outside the marriage, but you're allowing temptation. And if you understand that that's you and you haven't pursued your spouse, then what the scriptures say here is let this satisfy you. Let this be what you want it to be.

Here's what I know, again, from my extensive research of the 50 greatest breakup songs of all time. That is when those songs are written, here's what they don't say, "I wanted somebody and you would do for a while. Then I found somebody else and they did for a while. Then I moved on." No, no. What do the songs say? You're great. I want you. They want lifelong love. That's what the heart yearns for. That's what we were created for. That's what the Bible calls us to. Not only that, says it's possible and beautiful if you and I will commit ourselves to God's ways.

But I would guess that here this morning, listening later in a various kind of media outlet, that there are some of us who will say, "I hear that, but my experience been something radically different." Maybe you saved yourself for marriage, you married somebody and it didn't work so well. Maybe the person betrayed you, left you. Maybe you've been abused. Maybe in your life you were in a place where you were the one who chose to betray and run, and you've made a mess of things. And you say, "Because I've made a mess of things, it can never be."

But here's what I know, and that is you can't out sin the cross, and God loves to bring beauty to the places of our lives that are broken. You see, some of us, our temptation will be to say, "Since I can't have the ideal from the beginning to the end, then I might as well just go ahead and enjoy whatever I can enjoy here and now." Rather than saying, "If I can say from this day forward, I've chosen God's plan, that God will bring new beauty into my life and I can experience this."

This is ultimately... When I said earlier about God being the ultimate lover, what the ultimate lover of our souls has done is send Jesus to the cross to say, "If you will know me as your savior, as your substitute, then you'll know what it is to be loved in spite of imperfection." In a way, that's what we really want in a personal relationship. To be loved in spite of our imperfection. To have somebody say, "You're everything," even if they know and you know that that isn't exactly so.

So saving yourself or waiting and prioritizing that is like saying in essence, "I'm going to save everything I have for you in the future," because that has a draw, a much bigger draw than saying, "You know what? I was with a whole bunch of people in the last five years, but now I'm going to be all committed and all in." So when we get these things together, they point us in a direction where we can experience the beauty that sex was intended to be in our lives. When we experienced that, even in just a small dose, it's a foretaste of what eternity will be if we have a right relationship with God.

Now, maybe you're here and you say, "Look, that hasn't been my thing. Church hasn't been my thing. God hasn't been my thing. I don't know about any of this." Can I just say to you that even this area highlights the better way, and there's something in your gut that knows it right now. Because the same songs that I've alluded to multiple times here today are the songs you know, and they sing of something different. It points to your soul being loved ultimately by a God who will never disappoint in a way that no human lover, no human husband or wife can ever do.

When you get that, then you can experience the beauty of a human relationship without loading too much pressure into it to try to make it be something that it isn't. You won't overvalue, but you won't undervalue it. Instead, you'll say, "This is a representative of something much greater that is even more beautiful." That's integrating your faith and your sexuality.

Father, we thank you for your words speaking to something that for 98, 99% of us is a big deal. Father, we pray today very simply that you would help each of us to experience more of the beauty in this area of our lives, and that you would give us the courage to, in many ways, follow your leading in this rather than just our own ideas or the culture. Father, if this is an area that's been painful in our lives, I pray that you would bring new beauty, forgiveness, grace. And in that, we would experience again, hope. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thanks for being here. Have a great week.