Sex within the marriage of a man and woman
Sex within the marriage of a man and woman who love each other can be like a precious stone shining and sparkling in the perfect setting.
But what if you’re married and feel that you no longer love your partner? Is it possible to change your feelings? Is there any hope of finding sexual fulfillment together?
This question has been asked of me many times. My answer is a simple yes. Yes, you can change your feelings. Yes, there is still hope of finding sexual fulfillment with your mate. This chapter tells you how. But we have to begin by defining what love is.
This becomes a difficult task, when we find that the Oxford English Dictionary takes five pages to define love without much success, even after all that. Ask a hundred people for a definition of love, and the chances are good that you will get at least ninety different answers.
Obviously the world has no clear-cut definition of love. Meanings of the word vary according to individual experiences and viewpoints. Love can be passion, affection, romantic feelings, friendship, fondness, infatuation, or innumerable combinations of those qualities. But almost always, love, as the world uses it, includes an expectation of getting something in return.
The Bible reveals another kind of love, which the world does not understand, and it is this kind of love that provides the perfeet setting for the “one flesh” experience of sex in marriage. The New Testament calls it agape love and so fully pictures it in word and action that, as Christians, we can begin to comprehend it, though we cannot plumb its depths.
Agape love is unconditional and irrevocable. God chose to love us first, before we gave Him our love in return, or even knew who He is. Agape love gives without measuring the cost or seeking personal advantage. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Agape love is not natural; it is supernatural! It is a love poured out on us in a beautiful abundance, seeking nothing but our highest good. It does not depend on our actions. While God deeply desires our response, our reaction to Him has no bearing on whether He will love us. That is already decided. He doeslavc us; He has made the irrevocable choice to love us; and He has proved it by giving His best to us—His Son.
Agape love has something both glorious and practical to say to the married couple, for it is this amazing way of loving, God’s way, that can become our way of loving by God’s power. The principles of agape love, operating in the marriage relationship, can answer every need, solve every problem, and show us the way to regions of joy unending.
The New Testament writings show us that agape love in the marriage must involve total commitment, just as God is totally committed to us. God’s command is for Adam to “cleave” to Eve. “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). This means that even before God expects man to love his mate, He expects him to be totally committed to her. Deep in our minds and hearts as man and wife, there needs to be an irrevocable commitment to the marriage.
With today’s no-fault divorce laws, marriages seem almost disposable. Total commitment seems almost out of date. But perhaps we have allowed the world to set our expectations for us, making divorce the norm instead of the exception. There are still plenty of people who get married, intending their relationship to be permanent, but the divorce rate in many regions of our nation continues to climb. Some of those people failed somewhere. Perhaps part of the problem is a lack of commitment to commitment.
“To cherish for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part” should remind a couple that in marriage, storms may blow up and they have to be ridden out. If we think in terms of a foreseeable time when things will be tough enough to quit, quitting becomes an alternative. Often it is all too short a step from possibility to probability. Jesus’ statement, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mark 10:9), needs to become such a part of our thinking that full commitment to marriage, no matter what, will be our only option. In other words, when we go into marriage, it should be with the conviction that there is no way out. Then both partners will be committed to making the marriage a success.
But far too many couples come to the painful point of admitting, “We don’t love each other anymore.” When they say it, they assume, of course, that the marriage must be over. This attitude indicates that the couple had a misplaced confidence in the world’s vague idea of love and suggests that God’s way of loving never existed in their marriage in the first place.
The fact is, the Bible gives no indication that the feeling the world calls love is to be the foundation for marriage. A marriage built entirely on this feeling will be characterized by fluctuating feelings as the circumstances change. Result: shaky emotions, shaky marriage!
Emotions do not and never will sustain a marriage. There are those cold, gray mornings of life when one awakens emotionally weary; obviously, emotions cannot be depended on for stability in marriage. And we do not have to be helpless slaves to love or any other emotion that we slip into or fall out of. But as commitment binds husband and wife together through shared happiness and trouble, all the wonderful, pleasurable emotions they could wish for will spring forth from agape love in action. Commitment is the bond; the feeling of love is the result. The feeling comes because of the fact of commitment through every changing circumstance. Marriage does not necessarily make people happy. But people can make their marriage a happy one by giving to each other, working together, serving together, and growing together. Or they can allow the marriage to disintegrate by not doing these things.
We have all experienced times when we actively pursued happiness for ourselves. We found that it seemed to run away from us, like a startled deer in the woods, as soon as it was almost within our grasp. Most of us know by now that happiness can never be caught when we chase it. Instead, it comes to us freely, surprisingly, when we are concentrating on something else and least expect it. If we grab for emotional happiness without committing and giving first, our selfishness will reap only misery and coldness. But an honest desire for the happiness of our partner will bring a surprising degree of happiness into our own lives—a fringe benefit based on the principles of God’s Word: “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over” (Luke 6:38).
Love, in essence, is that deliberate act of giving one’s self to another, so that the other person constantly receives enjoyment. Love gives, and love’s richest reward comes when the object of love responds to the gift of one’s self. If a man and wife so give themselves for each other, each will have a sense of completeness and contentment. Not only that! The conditions have then become right for building a love relationship that will bring to the marriage all the richly delightful feelings of being in love. Agape love is always the fertile soil for God-planned pleasure in the physical marriage relationship.
God so designed us that we cannot be truly satisfied with mere physical and physiological relief in sex. The world, which often tries to view love and sex in marriage as two separate entities, has missed the point. In God’s perfect design, it is in a marriage characterized by agape love that all the emotions of loving increase and multiply. We find our greatest satisfaction in becoming one with our beloved, in both possessing and serving the beloved. Yet love is not a fixed thing, although the context of commitment never changes. From day to day, even from hour to hour, within the framework of commitment, our emotions of loving may change. At one time physical desire may be paramount. At other times, desire for affection and close companionship may be the only element present. Sexual desire as a conscious need will arise sometimes only after intimate time has been spent together. But if we have entered into God’s way of loving and cultivated this love in our marriage, we will know a blessed security together in the midst of life with all its perplexing changes and unexpected demands on us. Love—God’s kind of love—is the answer! Source: http://abooc.com/
Posted in Choosing to Love
To Ed Wheat Sr. and Gladys Gibson Wheat, whose commitment, devotion, warmth, generosity, and integrity stood for fifty years as a beautiful picture of genuine agape love.