Physical Intimacy – Designed

CE is maintained way that God is getting married couple to remember and to celebrate our love for each other is like our bodies have a way of expressing the commitment that we made and is remembering that I've given myself completely to my husband.

He's given himself completely to being retweeted those with words. But sex is the way that we remember it by doing that with our bodies and it's supposed to be a celebration welcome to family life today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most kind and Wilson and Dave Wilson and you can find us@familylifetoday.com or on our family life.

This is family life today so I'm excited because we get to hear the rest of a message by Dr. Julie Slattery who you know is a friend of ours is a clinical psychologist. She has a podcast job with Julie, but she is mostly known as a woman you can ask any question about sexual intimacy – he's we were talking the other day and she does and can you imagine being me like you're known as the sex Guru. It's not the best title to wear all the time but she does really give us guidance and help from a biblical perspective and Julie great she's married. She has three sons and she's always willing to be really honest in the real and practical and always biblical. Yeah me she's coming straight from the word of God and you know this is a message you gave on the love like you made a virtual cruise. We didn't get to get on a boat this year so we did a virtual crew so couples all around the world were watching on their computers, and Julie gave. I think a powerful message very very helpful to couples understand as she calls it the puzzle box like you gotta know what you're shooting for. When you do a puzzle we done many try to do a puzzle when you haven't seen the cover of what it supposed to live it up for the cover up every second loss that it placed right there so it can be looking at it continually, as you put it together yet. If you asked a couple. What's God's puzzle box for sexual intimacy and marriage. There's not a clear answer and she got into it in part the first part of a message that I love it because she talked about three different puzzle box highlights and the first one was the world which really just highlights self-fulfillment and then you have the traditional churches puzzle box and that when highlights rules and duty, and then she finished with the Bible's puzzle box which really highlights God's covenant love and that's the one were really shooting for. But we've all experienced all of them and so today we get to listen to her talk about four practical ways that God's puzzle box.

Help us to word sexual intimacy with the marriage, is that we recognize that sexually ill foundation faithfulness. The greatest commandment in the Old Testament is this one in Jesus repeated in the New Testament says it's the greatest command says love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with only my strength. In other words, you should be completely undivided to the Lord your God, you're in a covenant relationship with him and your to be sold out for him and the first in the 10 Commandments actually reiterates us please God says no other gods before you don't worship anyone else.

In other words, be true to me safely to me is really serious about your spiritual commitment can in fact in Exodus God actually calls himself by the name jealous. He says my name is jealous that I think in the Greek ACL canard.

I think that's how you pronounce it you say I am jealous. He says that's my name like that's my Kennedy I am a jealous God.

We often think of jealousy is something that's bad, but when we look at God himself is calling himself jealous. That means that there's an element of jealousy.

That's righteous and right with incumbent in this means that within marriage. There is a healthy jealousy.…

In terms of your covenant promise being exclusive between one another. You should be jealous for that. Now let me also say that there is healthy jealousy that we can have for our spouse. Any jealousy that is based on fear or is trying to control your spouse. That's not healthy I'm not talking about maybe the husband says his wife can't see her family or the wife says your husband can never work with a female coworker that's based on a fear it's not based on the sense of healthy covenant love healthy jealousy is rooted in the awareness that marriage is binding and it calls us to emotional sexual faithfulness to one another.

So this means it should be okay if your spouse is reconnecting with old flames on social media like you should not be all right with it should be okay. If you are, your spouse are looking at pornography you're bringing someone else into that one/covenant relationship. You should be jealous in protecting you know even our larger culture acknowledges this is all the sexual immorality in our culture and all the things that we say are okay today survey show that over 90% of Americans say that cheating on your spouse is morally wrong. This is a higher percentage of people that actually objected to human cloning, suicide, or polygamy, over 90% are saying it's wrong to cheat on your spouse know why is that I believe it's because this covenant faithfulness is actually written on our hearts, we intuitively know it's wrong. We know that infidelity is something that causes great pain and that it breaks apart families and God created it that way because his love is faithful and so we want to emulate that within our sexual relationship and marriage me just tell you this is an honest fact you very likely going to be sexually or emotionally attracted to someone else when you married nobody really tells you that but it is true that you have feelings you drives and desires and your check is very different from your spouse because you're reacting to the pain in your marriage.

It's normal to be tempted. But because we understand the front of that puzzle box we choose to act on their promise and our covenant. Instead of choosing to act on our feelings that even as I teach us. I know that some of you are going through this right now.

I know that some of you right now actually have a secret keeping from your spouse maybe are struggling with sexual addiction. Maybe you have infidelity that you haven't confessed in my encouragement to you would be so many couples have navigated those hard waters come through it. On the other side actually even stronger than they started, but you have to be honest with one another and you have to do the work of pursuing faithfulness in your marriage and healing where faithfulness is been broken because that's really the cornerstone of the picture that God is called the street to create within this aspect of our marriage. This one is realizing that sex is meant to be in my body and spirit celebration of love for me personally, I don't know if he can relate to this.

But one of the hardest things about clothing has been not been able to gather together as a family of God like Reese to not being able to be in church services where we can sing from a heart take communion likely used all the time. Take these are these are parts of what it is to be in the family of God.

And when I think about the past, love liking it cruises that I've been out to be a part of. That's my favorite part I think is that gathering in this auditorium is an family life does an incredible job of getting just amazing. Worship leaders in lifting up our voices together and pray for God feeling that passion that we have for him and there's a sense that our worship, our corporate worship and taking communion are the mind, body and soul celebration of our love for God and God says we should be doing that often. We should be entering his gates with praise and thanksgiving. We should be celebrating communion often these are things that awaken our love for him that awakener passion for him to help us communicate how we feel about him and we not only do that corporately, but we also do that privately. So I try every day to spend time connecting with God through personal prayer and Scripture meditation through personal worship. Just remembering the love I have for him reminding myself expressing my love now in a similar way. Sexual intimacy is the key way that God is given a married couple to remember and to celebrate our love for each other and it's like our bodies have a way of expressing the commitment that we made between remembering that I've given myself completely to my husband. He's given himself completely to me completely to those with words that sex is the way that we remember it by doing that with our bodies and it's supposed to be a celebration. We see this even when we look at the way God's design sex happened within our bodies experience our brains to be washed with things like dopamine, endorphins and oxytocin.

These are neurotransmitters and hormones that make us feel bonded and make us feel good. The pleasure centers of the brain and and so God created sex to be something that is this meant to be fine and pleasurable and is the truth. There are a lot of challenges to enjoying sex within marriage and some of them. My husband and I have experience in pretty profound ways.

And there's things like little kids who cause you to be exhausted all the time. Say can you think about sex and there's physical problems like pain during intercourse, or maybe trauma from your past makes it so that when you think about sex or you experience it you are anxious instead of enjoying it and what God calls us to work through those things because this is supposed to be a celebration of our love is almost like if you were to go to a party and you saw someone at the site of the party was just off by the cells, and they were really really sad. You want to go up and say hey what's wrong like we should be celebrating the partiers And I Think There's That Similar Attitude When Sex Is Pleasurable and Marriage.

We Wanted to Say Okay It's Not That Our Marriage Is Broken Necessarily It's Not Better Sex Life Is Broken, but This Is the Fullness of What God Is Excited Has Designed Us to Experience and so We Want to Do As a Couple Say or How Do We Address That Problem Will Only Clarify Something Sexual Intimacy Based on Pleasure Remember Space a Covenant Is Based on Faithfulness, but Pleasure Needs to Be Part of Celebrating Faithfulness and That Covenant God Created It That Way. And so That's the Second Piece I Would Encourage You to Think about in Terms of Healthy Sex Life Should Look like. The Third Thing I Want You to Think about Is That Sex Was Designed to Be a Journey into McNelly within Christianity, You Might Hear a Phrase like This Have a Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ.

And When We Say That What We Mean Is That Christianity Is Not Just Agreeing to Rules That God Is Put in the Bible. It's Not Just Saying Hey, This Is My Faith Commitment That's That's Part of It but Actually to Enter into That Faith Commitment Is to Have a Personal Relationship with God Himself through Jesus Christ and like Any Other Religion. God Calls Us into an Intimate Personal Relationship, Both As Individuals and As Far As Being Part of the Body of Christ Found God Just Want You One Day to Sign up for Christianity. He Invites You to Do Life with Them.

Jesus Says That He Wants Us to Abide with Him As He Invites Abides in Us in the Picture He Gives Is One That If You're a Farmer You Might Relate to It If You like to Say Garden.

He Talks about Buying in the Branch Abides in Them Flying so Much That Their Stuff Together and All the Nutrients from the Bookbinder Coming into That Branch.

That's How Close God Wants Us to Be with Him Have This Intimate Journey with Him When We Go through Hard Things He Wants Us to Run to Him and Trust in Him. When We Go through Blessings and Happiness. He Wants Us to Rejoice and Celebrate with Him When Were Not Sure What to Do or Face with a Hard Decision. He Wants Us to Lean upon His Understanding and Not Just Her Own Wisdom Journey of Intimate Knowing and the Same Is True with the Way God Is Great Sexual Intimacy. It's This Long Journey of Learning to Know Each Other in an Intimate Way.

Throughout the Years through Ups and Downs through Good Times and Bad Times and I Think Sometimes the Way We Talk about Sex, Both in the Culture of the Church Highlight the Beauty of This Journey That Is Not Just Knowing Each Other's Bodies, but Is Knowing Each Other's Hearts and Minds Going through and Just All the Different Things That Sex Can Bring to a Married Couple. There Times Where You Get a Laugh Together and Memories That She Might Build That You Laugh, I'm Years Later Times Where We Can Just Say Wow That Was a Really Special Kind of Connection with Are Also Going to Be Seasons That We Walked through That Are Very Difficult and That's Part of the Journey of Intimate Knowing and There Might Be a Difficulty of Infertility Where First Season Sex Feels like One Big Aspect of Disappointment.

Every Month the Grieving That We Can Get Pregnant and Sex Feels like It's More like Lab of How Do We Make a Baby Rather Than How to Express Love Is Not a Fun Season but That Is a Season That God Can Use to Help You Grow in Your Intimate Knowledge with Each Other. You Might Be through Seat Going through Season Where There's a Heavy Battle with Dictation or Sexual Addiction. God Isn't Wanting to Be Isolated in That Journey He Wants You Couple to Be Seeking Help Together and Growling Together Because It's Not Just about What's Happening in the Moment. It's about How He's Forging Your Character and Forging Your Love for One Another.

There All Kinds and Examples like That When Our Bodies Don't Work with Her Aging and We Can't Enjoy Sex May Be the Way We Used To and I Would Just Encourage You and Your Spouse to Ask the Question, Do We Know Each Other More Intimately Today Than We Did a Year Ago and What Role Is Sex Playing in Our Relationship Because God Wants You to Continue to Move Together on This Journey of Intimate Knowing and Sex Can Be a Big Part. The Fourth Thing I Want to Talk about That Is Key to This Picture of the Puzzle That Were Putting Together and Again This Is Maybe Something You Never Thought about in Reference to Your Sex Life. But Our Sex Life at Some Level Should Be Characterized by Mutual Sacrifice, Not What I Mean by That Will Let's Go Back to the Picture of Christ and the Church. The Very Cornerstone of the Christian Faith of God's Covenant with His People Is That God Sacrificed. He Gave His Son for Eyes and That Jesus Christ Gave His Life for Us. He Sacrificed Everything for Us. His Alone Cost Him Dearly and Actually He Calls Us to Respond in a Way Where Our Love for Him Cost Us Dearly. Jesus Says to His Followers Take up Your Cross and Follow Me Daily.

Be Willing to Do the Hard Things Out Of Love for Me so If Cornerstone of the Christian Faith.

And That's a Key Component of What's on the Front of That Puzzle Box Where Paul Says That Your Love for One Another As Husband and Wife Is Supposed to Be like Christ and the Church. Why Are We so Surprised When Marriage Costs Is Something Why Are We so Shocked When Our Sex Life Is Difficult, and Cost Us Something. I Talked to A Lot Of Single Christians on Issues of Sexuality and When the Main Things That We Always Come Back to a Single Christians As We Talk about the Importance of Self-Control and Self-Denial and That This Is Part of Following Christ Is Stewarding Your Sexuality in a Way That Is Characterized by Self-Control and for Some Reason II Think We Sometimes Believe That When We Get Married We No Longer Have To Have Self-Control or Self-Denial in Our Sex Life Because Were Now Married and She'll Have Everything We Want, but That Really Doesn't Make Logical Sense God Is Still Forming Her Character He Still Teaching Us to Take up Our Cross to Deny Ourselves to Follow Him and Deny Ourselves.

At Times, Out Of Love for One Another and so There Are Times in Your Marriage Where You Here, You Need May Not Be Matt, the Way You Wish They Would Be There Might Be Seasons Where It's Really Hard.

You Gotta Walk through Some Tough Things of Giving Grace to Each Other in Forgiveness and Aspects of Where You Just Wish like Hey I Didn't Sign up for This Analysis Can Be This Difficult, but I Want You to Remember That That Doesn't Mean Your Marriage Is Broken Because God's Greatest Desire Is to Make You and Me More like Himself, and He Uses Those Season.

Sometimes Intermarriage, Sometimes Very Specifically in Our Sex Life. They Teach Us about the Nature of His Love for Us That He Forgives Us That He's Gracious Towards Us That He Gave Himself for Us and I Hope This Gives You a Sense That God's Picture of Sex Is Puzzle Sex Is so Rich and Here's Why. Because It Gives You Purpose and Context in Whatever Season You Might Be If Your Decision Right Now, Celebration and Intimacy and You Feel Close with Your Spouse and Quarantine Actually Has Been Great for You Because You're Spending so Much Time Together.

Then Praise God Enjoyed but If You're in a Season Where You're Encountering Significant Struggle Where Sex Represents Conflict and Pain for You. Look at the Front of That Puzzle Box.

What Is God Trying to Teach You Inviting to Teach You about the Nature of His Covenant Love for Us and I Love That Because It Gives You Purpose It Gives You at Redemption in Every Aspect of This of This Part of Your Marriage That You Might Be Struggling through Now.

I'm Not Sure Where You Might Be on the Spectrum. Not Sure What You and Your Spouse Might Be Going through, but I Encourage You to Remember What's on the Front of That Puzzle Box to Give You Some Perspective. What Is God Wanted Teach You about His Love, and How Does the Example of His Love Help You to Love One Another. We Been Listening to Dr. Julie Slattery Give a Powerful Message on the Love I Commuted Virtual Cruise and Tell You What She's Talking about Stuff Nobody Wants to Talk about Now. Yeah, Given Perspective, the Midnight She Said It There at the End It's Very Difficult.

You Know the Thing We Never Thought Going to the Marriage Would Be Difficult Was the Bedroom. We Just Thought Oh My Goodness, How Hard Can This Be, and We Struggled and Another Couples Listening Right Now That Are Really Struggling and Julie Gives You Hope As I Was Listening to That Last Part When She Says, How Does His Love. Teach Us to Love One Another. Well, I Would Have Never Guessed before We Got Married That I'm Continually Looking at God's Love and Bringing That God's Love into Our Marriage into Our Bedroom into Our Parenting, but It's That Continual. Looking Back to the Cover of the Puzzle Piece Which Is Actually God's Word and It Makes Me Realize We Have To Be in God's Word. We Need to Be in Community with Other People Who Are Always Guiding Us Back to God's Word and His Plan That I Think You Know Listening to a Message like This, You Ask This Question Should My Spouse and I Talked about This.

Yes Yeah I Think This Is One of the Hardest Topics to Talk about Marriage Just Difficult. You Just You Feel Hurt You Feel Rejected or Whatever You're Feeling and You're Afraid a Conversation about This Begins the Healing Process. What Would It Look like I Mean This Kinda Sounds Weird, but If We Wait Just Every Night Pay, Lord Jesus, Help Us with Our Physical Intimacy Every Night Would Appear That Yes, Why Wouldn't We Do It. I Think like I Would Just Say Hundreds Not Just Praying about It but Talking about It with Your Spouse.

I Mean You Know of but It's Been Easier for Me to Preach about It to a Thousand People Then Walk in the Bedroom Where the Kitchen and Say Hunting. Can We Talk about Our We Would Say Why Do We Have To Talk about It.

Let's Just Do It Now, Why Would You Be an Honest Fear. When We Have Struggled. I Don't Want to Talk about It. It's Uncomfortable and Julie Is Open Open the Door to Say Have a Conversation. I'm Guessing There Is a Spouse Listening to Her or His Spouse Is Not Listening Same Time and You're Feeling Right Now. I Really Want to Talk to My Husband or My Wife about This. I Would Say Go for Yeah Ask God to Enter the Conversation or Listen Together and Then Talk about and Who Bring Healing to Them. Wilson's Recommendation the You and Your Spouse Listen to This Message, Together Great Idea. The Messages from Dr. Julie Slattery Just Go to Our Website under Time When the Two of You Can Listen Post Recording and Have a Conversation about the Subject. This Is One of the Messages That Was Presented This Year on the Love I Commuted Virtual Cruise and We Are All Glad That the 2022 Look like to Be the Marriage Cruise Is Not Going to Be Virtual.

It's Going to Be Face-To-Face in Person on a Boat in the Caribbean with the Warm Winds of the Ports of Call and Great Speakers and Great Food. Just a Great Week Together All of Our Lovely Committed Marriage.

Cruises Have Been so outside. We Expect It's Going Be the Same This Year Were Starting to Fill up Quickly This Week Were Making a Special Offer to Family like Today Listers Back Cruising Event Lowest Cabin Prices for the Rest of the Year Are Available Right Now You Can Call One 800 FL Today to Find out More or to Reserve Your Cabin over the Phone. There's Also Information about the Clues on Our website@familylifetothe.com but again, let me encourage you reserve your cabin today and join us valentines week of 2022 for the love like you mean it.

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We'd love to have you with us and with that, we gotta wrap things up for this week. Thanks for joining us. Hope you and your family are able to worship together in your local church this weekend and I hope you can join us back on Monday.

In fact, if you know somebody who's a single mom encourage her to tune in Monday because of Peggy Sue Wells and Pam Farrell will be here with us to talk about some of the best decisions any single mom can make. Hope you can tune them for that.

On behalf of her host statement and Wilson on bobble. Have a great week and will see you Monday for another edition of family life today family like today is reduction of family life accrued ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most