Wowwattawowser!
The world would have us believe marriage is sexual restriction.
Marriage should represent the place of sexual freedom.
Some that are married have difficulty with that comment due to:
I don’t want to minimise anyone’s pain but I’ve never met a parent yet who didn’t want their child’s experience to be better than their own.
From a speech by Dale O'Leary...
“…we have to promote the truth about sexuality. The Sexual Revolutionaries frequently claim that they are for sexual pleasure and we are against it. And we have allowed them to get away with it. Too often we sound as if we are against the pleasures of sexual intimacy. We have not made it clear that we are the defenders of the real joys of human intimacy and that they don't even know what sex is for. Their concept of sexuality is infantile - self-centred sexual satisfaction… we [adults/Christians] have to smile, to shine with joy, to radiate love whether married or celibate and show that we have what the Sexual Revolution can never deliver”.
From “Letters to a Lady” Phillip Baker:
Proverbs 31:22 [KJV] She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.
Proverbs 31:22 [NLT] She quilts her own bedspreads. She dresses like royalty in gowns of finest cloth.
The teaching of this verse corresponds well to the symbolism, ‘her clothing is linen and purple.’ This probably refers to undergarments or, as we would say, fine lingerie...
...this virtuous woman is certainly not a prude. Her sexuality is strong, healthy and unashamed.
… The virtuous woman then is sexually alive and vibrant. She dresses for her husband in the finest lingerie. She prepares herself and her bed. Sex is not an afterthought or a duty. It is a joy to be revelled in, a pleasure to be prepared for. In short, a gift from God.
… Sex should be, indeed must be, passionate. The virtuous woman exemplifies this value. She is adventurous yet discreet; sensuous yet pure. She is for her man and he for her and together they make music in the night.
(Available at Koorong/Riverview Bookstore)
If we want our children to marry someone that will love them for the whole of their person, for the whole oftheir lives, they are going to need to know that their whole person is worthy of love attention and respect - not just their physical appearance or sexual attractiveness.
The love that will last through illness and wrinkles and weight gain and stress can’t be founded in mere sexuality.
Neither is sexuality a gift to only the young and physically beautiful but a gift which can still find expression in the kind of love that endures illness and wrinkles and weight gain and stress.
I remember a local pastor here in Perth who said “a great lover is not a man who pleases many women throughout his life, but one who pleases one woman for the whole of her life”.
God invented each kind of love - including Eros.
Don’t make the mistake that purity in marriage equals the damping down of Eros! The difficulty we have is that most of what the world presents Eros is a worldly distortion of that which God made and called ‘good’.
That which has great power... has great power for good or for NOT good.
Mary Anne Layden
