Lighthouse Baptist Church
and Christian Academy

God created human beings to be sexual. Sex comes from the Latin word secare, which literally means "something has been cut apart that longs to be reunited."

And the Lord God said, "It isn't good for man to be alone; I will make a companion for him, a helper suited to his needs.

Genesis 2:18 (Living)

The male by himself cannot be fully in the image of God, nor can the female. The phrase "the image of God" presupposes the idea of relationship.

God created in you this sustained interest in sex and sex appeal so that you would not be lonely. In other words, God designed you to mate for a lifetime.

It is God who directs the lives of his creatures; everyone's life is in his power.

Job 12:10 (TEV)

God put within every human being an appetite [which is never satisfied] so you could always feel incomplete, needy, and require human stimulation and companionship.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply

Genesis 1:28 (KJV)

Human sexual expression bears the glorious fruits of celebration, joy, intimacy, and worship. But it can also bear the rot of shame, fear, and defilement. It provokes intense longing, absolute disgust, unrelenting attraction, debilitating dread, indescribable joy and utter repulsion.

Sex is meant to arouse and fulfill a longing for intimacy so that you may connect with another human being. To bond with another human being in love, trust, and forge a relationship, God created in you the initial impulse of sexual attraction for physical pleasure.

You should be faithful to your wife, just as you take water from your own well. [16] And don't be like a stream from which just any woman may take a drink. [17] Save yourself for your wife and don't have sex with other women. [18] Be happy with the wife you married when you were young. [19] She is beautiful and graceful, just like a deer; you should be attracted to her and stay deeply in love.

Proverbs 5:15-19 (CEV)

It's good for a man to have a wife, and for a woman to have a husband. Sexual drives are strong, but marriage is strong enough to contain them and provide for a balanced and fulfilling sexual life in a world of sexual disorder.

1 Corinthians 7:2 (Msg)

The husband should not deprive his wife of sexual intimacy, which is her right as a married woman, nor should the wife deprive her husband.

1 Corinthians 7:3 (NLT)

Many people believe it is your spouse's responsibility to provide you with sexual satisfaction. WRONG!! You must take responsibility for your own sexual happiness rather than expecting your spouse to assume that responsibility.

It is a myth to assume that a husband has some sexual rights that a woman does not have. A wife has as many rights as her husband does and the husband has few rights as his wife.

The husband-wife sexual relationship either begins or ends with mutuality. Husband and wife are equal in God's sight; however, they both have mutual rights and responsibilities.

Out of respect for Christ, be courteously reverent to one another.

Ephesians 5:21 (Msg)

A wife has the right to have her own needs met, she may be initiating or become more expressive as to what brings her pleasure.

The husband-wife relationship is to depict the kind of love Christ gives to the Church.

Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church - a love marked by giving, not getting.

Ephesians 5:25 (Msg)

In the same way, a husband should love his wife as much as he loves himself. A husband who loves his wife shows that he loves himself.

Ephesians 5:28 (CEV)

On my bed night after night I sought him, whom my soul loves.

Song 3:1 (NASB)

Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my dearest compared to other men. I love to sit in its shadow, and its fruit is sweet to my taste.

Song 2:3 (TEV)

Why did God create sex? For three reasons:

1. To provide unity. It is a physical expression of a spiritual and emotional truth that the Bible says five times, "The two shall become one." Sex is far more than just a physical act. It has profound spiritual and emotional complications and implications to it. It provides unity. It bonds a husband and wife together.
2. To provide enjoyment. God gave us sex for the mutual pleasure of both the husband and the wife. Sex is a gift.
3. To produce children. The first command that God gave to man was, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth." That is the only command that man has ever been able to keep. You're all here and obviously we did a good job of being fruitful and multiplying.

The sad truth is many couples, the only thing they have to show is the third benefit - the produced some kids. But there certainly isn't any unity and probably very little or no pleasure in their sexual relationship.

Today we're going to be doing a message on Fanning the Flames of Romance. I want us to look at keys to sexual fulfillment. The Bible gives us many keys.

1. CULTIVATE HEALTHY ATTITUDES

Unfortunately, it's very easy to get the wrong attitudes. You can pick them up from a lot of different places - the schoolyard, media, bad experiences, your parents, from the home you grew up in. How do you get God's right, correct attitudes? By reading this book. As you read this book, it will teach you the attitudes you need for healthy, sexual relationships. It's all here. Your attitudes determine your actions. When you understand this book, a lot of your sexual problems will vanish.

We don't have time to look at all of what God has to say today.

For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected, but all is to be received with a prayer of thanks.

1 Timothy 4:4

The Bible says that everything God created is good. Does that include sex? Yes. It includes your sexuality. God made men to be men and women to be women.

Men and women are not equal. Women are vastly superior to men at being women. Men are vastly superior to women at being men. And God made you to be you. And if he made you a woman/man he gave you that sexuality for a reason. The Bible says that everything God created is good. It's part of what God made you to be.

Sex is not sinful. It's not even a necessary evil. It's the perversion of sex, the misuse of sex, the abuse of sex that's wrong. But sex in its right place between a husband and a wife is exactly what God created. We should accept it without guilt and without shame.

The Bible says that lovemaking between a husband and a wife is actually a sacred activity. "Honor marriage, and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between a husband and wife." Sex is not dirty. It's holy. It's not bad. It's sacred. It has profound spiritual implications. That's why you're to reserve it for marriage only.

Redbook magazine took a survey. Redbook is not exactly a Christian magazine but this is what they discovered. In a survey of women all across America they discovered that the greater the intensity of a woman's spiritual convictions the more likely she is to be highly satisfied with the sexual pleasures of her marriage. "In other words, sexuality and spirituality go together. ... The most sexually fulfilled women were the most spiritual women." Of course! Because God intended it to be a spiritual, emotional and physical bond between two people. When you're missing part of the elements, you've missed part of the enjoyment. God wants us to have the right attitude.

Part of the problem is, even in Christian homes, we often teach sex in the wrong way. A woman once told me, "I had a hard time shifting gears. All my life, growing up, in church I was taught don't and no! Then I got married, went through a thirty minute ceremony and everything became Yes, ok, great, fantastic, go for it! It was a pretty hard switch."

Parents, we don't need to teach our children, "no". We need to teach our children "Wait". There's a big difference. Wait does not mean evil, it does not mean bad or wrong. Wait means God has a better idea. You'll save yourself a lot of emotional heartache and mental scars and sometimes physical scars if you will wait for the realm that God has placed sex in.

Be happy, yes rejoice in your wife... Let her... tender embrace satisfy you. Let her love alone fill you with delight.

Proverbs 5

There's some dots in this verse because I had to actually edit this verse for a "G" rating on this sermon. The Bible is very explicit, yet I didn't feel like I could print the whole verse. God is not embarrassed by sex.

It says, "Let her love alone fill you with delight." That word is one of the strongest verbs in the entire Hebrew language. It literally means, "be intoxicated... be ravished... be enthralled... be exhilarated... let your mind be blown away..." One of the translations says, "Let her steal away your senses." That's the Bible talking about sex. That's God talking! God's ideal for sex in marriage is that it is fun and fantastic. Very different from the way most people think the Bible teaches about sex.

The Bible also teaches that sex, when it's properly used between a husband and wife, actually glorifies God. "Use every part of your body to glorify God." It says every part. God didn't make some parts of your body good and some parts evil. God didn't make some parts of your body to be open about and others to be ashamed of.

One survey showed that 40% of religious women said their biggest hang up was inhibition. They don't understand God's understanding of sex. God's view is not some inhibited, bound up kind of attitude.

Summary: The Bible says that when a husband and wife make love that pleases God. God smiles when he sees His creation doing what He created it to do. It is not a necessary evil. It is not wrong. It is not just something you put up with in order to have children. God delights in watching His own creation enjoy what He gave them.

2. WE NEED TO LEARN TO COMMUNICATE HONEST FEELINGS

The Bible says in Proverbs 13:17 "Reliable communication permits progress." To restore the passion or even to make a good thing better in your marriage, you have to be open and honest and frank about your feelings. It is amazing to me that in our society everybody in the world is talking about sex except couples. In the marriage it's often a taboo thing. You don't ever talk about it. But if you want to make your marriage better, restore passion or make a good thing better, you need to be honest about your needs, your desires, your wants, what you like, what you dislike, the other person's needs and wants. You listen and there's a free exchange.

There's the old idea that sex is just doing what comes naturally. If you do just what comes naturally, you're probably 100% wrong. What you do is you do what you like and what you think is great. But the person you married is very different from you. They're wired differently. In the first place, they're a different sex. As a result, if you do what you like and what you think is good and right, you're probably not meeting their needs. The only way you know what your mate needs is if you talk about it. If you've never talked about it, you really don't have a clue. You're just guessing. It is a mistake to assume that what you like, is what your husband/wife likes. You need to communicate.

You have to be willing to learn, to experiment. Part of the problem is, when we communicate we always tend to communicate in vague terms. Particularly about sex. We beat around the bush. We never just say what we feel. You need to practice being more specific.

Example of vagueness in a marriage:

• A vague statement is, "I want you to come home early" A more specific statement is "I'd like you to be home by 5:00 Eastern Standard Time." That's specific.
• Vague is, "I'll do it later." Specific is, "I'll do it before the decade ends." If you say, "I hit a sale today." that's very vague. More specific is, "Don't try using the Visa card because it's over the limit." If you say to your husband or your wife as they're leaving the house, "Honey, you might need gas." What you really mean is, "Good luck getting to the corner." You have to be specific.

You have to be specific. You have to be very clear and very detailed. You must be willing to communicate. And you must be willing to be coached by your mate. Let them tell you what works best. Let them tell you what they like, what they need, what they desire, rather than simply assuming. The Bible says, 1 Thessalonians 5:11 "Encourage each other and build each other up."

How do you do that?

Communicating honest feelings about yourself sexually or about your sexual relationship with your spouse isn't easy if you didn't grow up in a home with healthy attitudes and open communication about sex. You may feel like this poor fellow who feels like there is a barbed wire fence going down the middle of his bed.

Stop criticizing or questioning and start expressing yourself. Remember, criticism triggers defensiveness and questions stifle and create demands. Instead of "Was that good for you, honey?" It's "I really enjoyed you tonight." Or replace, "Are you feeling anything?" with "Wow! I love to touch you." Or instead of "What about tonight?" it's "I'd really like to play tonight." Expressing yourself will open up incredible doors to intimacy. Take the risk. You'll find it's well worth the risk in terms of the intimacy that results.

Stop questioning and just start saying what you feel. Every time you do a question, it becomes a demand.

We need to cultivate healthy attitudes and we need to communicate honest feelings. The Bible says there's a third thing you need to do to maximize your sexual relationship with your husband or wife.

3. CREATE HELPFUL ADJUSTMENTS

The Bible is very specific about this.

The marriage bed must be a place of mutuality - the husband seeking to satisfy his wife, the wife seeking to satisfy her husband. Marriage is not a place to 'stand up for your rights.' Marriage is a decision to serve the other, whether in bed or out.

1 Corinthians 7:3-5 (Message paraphrase)

When you married, you gave your partner right to your body. If you didn't want to do that, you shouldn't have got married. That's part of what marriage is all about. The Bible says, "The two shall become one." The Bible says the man does not own his body anymore and the wife does not own her body any more. That's why you should only marry someone who is totally committed to Jesus Christ, otherwise they may take advantage of that. They may misuse or abuse that. Someone who is in love with Christ is not going to do something that's harmful to you. So you give up your right when you marry. The Bible says you are to use your body as a husband or as a wife to meet the sexual needs of your mate. That is the exact opposite of what the world teaches. Our culture, when it comes to sex, says the whole idea of sex is How much can I get and how soon can I get it. It's all selfish. The Bible flips that completely over and says, What can I give and how can I meet your need. The Bible says that either partner may initiate love making. The issue is how can I serve you, how can I meet your needs.

Sexual relationships are a skill and an art.

The Bible says in 1 Peter 3 "You husbands must be careful of your wives, being thoughtful of their needs." Husbands, if you don't learn what makes her tick you're going to learn what makes her ticked. It is a life long discovery. Women are complex enough that it will take you your entire life, learning more and more about your wife and what her needs are.

Song of Solomon 6 says this, "You have made me eager for love." He's talking about the atmosphere that you set up for your love making. The atmosphere for sexual relationships.

Men are famous for underestimating and undervaluing the atmosphere in which a sexual encounter takes place. Who cares where? is what the average guy is thinking. But women are very concerned about the context of a sexual relationship.

I have a check list of environmental concerns for ignorant husbands. Any or all of these may apply to your situation or you can ask your wife for a personalized list.

• The curtain is not shut tight enough.
• The door is not strong enough.
• The light is too bright.
• The light is too dark.
• It's too hot.
• It's too cold.
• You need to shower.
• You need to shave.
• You need to brush your teeth.
• The kids are still up.

Fortunately, God put an entire book of the Bible in the Bible and committed it to sex within marriage. It's a sexual manual in the Bible. It's called the Songs of Solomon. The Songs of Solomon is a love poem. It takes you through a relationship between a man and a woman, courting, engagement, the wedding, the actual wedding night. Then, as the marriage matures, it describes mature love and a maturing sexual relationship. The problem is it's written in poetry and the original translators who did it in the "thee's" and "thou's" didn't want you to know what it was all about. They were a little embarrassed by it. You really need to go by a modern translation to understand the Songs of Solomon.

One of the things it does is give us advice on atmosphere. These are things right out of the Bible, things that will make your sexual relationship with your husband or wife better: Privacy (2:5), unhurried time, complimenting each other, attractive attire, affectionate touching, having special places together, using fragrances (God gave you five senses), intimate talk and total commitment.

These are all atmosphere. Affection is the atmosphere, sex is the event. Affection happens all day, it's the kind words, the little notes, the call on the phone, the flowers, the caress ad loving look, the affirming word. In the atmosphere of affection there is a set up for the sexual relationship. Atmosphere happens all the time.

Men, you also need to understand that your wife needs to be emotionally prepared far more than you do. Men are kind of like light switches. You can turn them on pretty quick. You just flip the switch and the light turns on. Sometimes the light is on but nobody's home. But the light is still on. They're not thinking with their brain.

Women on the other hand, are more like irons. They warm up slowly. They do get hot, but it takes a while.

Another: Men are microwaves. Women are crock pots. (I didn't say cracked pots. If you say that you'll be in a stew.) They warm up more slowly. It takes T-I-M-E.

Sadly many couples fall into the trap of hurting and manipulating each other by withholding sexual relationships. The Bible is very clear that when you withhold sexual relationships from your wife or your husband, simply because you're too busy or simply because you're not interested.

The Bible calls that sin. It's a sin. 1 Corinthians "Do not cheat each other of normal sexual relations, unless you both decide to abstain temporarily to make special time for prayer. But afterwards you should resume relations as before, or you will expose yourselves to the obvious temptations of Satan."

Sex is never to be used as a weapon or a reward in marriage. Some of you are thinking, "I just don't ever feel like it." As your pastor I would say to you, "Find out why." Find out why you don't feel like it. There may be a hundred legitimate reasons for that. It could be biological, hormonal. It could be as simple as you're too tired because your schedule is too heavy. It could be unresolved conflict or any number of a hundred legitimate reasons. But every one of them can be solved. So don't let your marriage die.

And don't just say we're not going to work on it. One of the common causes is this hurried lifestyle we live in where we're so busy and so rushed all the time you're tired, you flop into bed and sleep sounds like a whole lot better thing. As your relationship goes on your schedule squeezes out your time alone together. Or maybe you're on business trips all the time. Because of that you have to intentionally set up a planned time to spend time together. Put it in your notebook. Schedule it just like everything else.

Either party is free to initiate love making. It says, "Do not cheat each other of normal sexual relations." Why does God say this so strongly? Because it is an obvious temptation. When you ignore your mate's sexual needs you are setting yourself up and setting them up for temptation. It is a very dangerous thing to do - to let this area of your life slide. When you go on a diet, how often do you think about food? A lot more than when you're not on a diet. It's like that's all you can think about. And this happens when you deprive your mate of a normal sexual relationship. Especially for a man the way he's wired up biologically.

If you don't create a magnet in your home I guarantee you Satan will gladly create a magnet in the world for your mate. And they're everywhere. I want to challenge you to make your marital grass so green that everybody else's looks brown. Decide that if my husband/wife is going to have a great lover, it's going to have to be me. Begin to work on it. I challenge you to commit yourself to working on this, praying about it, getting whatever help you need to the point that your husband/wife would say "I would be a fool to give this up." One man told me, "Why would I ever be interested in a used car on the street when I've got a Mercedes at home." It's your choice. I challenge you to work on developing some adjustments.

I realize, as your pastor, that for some of you this has been a very painful message to hear. Few areas can create more hurt and more disappointment and more frustration and more bitterness than the area of sexual relations. It creates a lot of conflict. I want to say to you that sexual problems do not get better by themselves. You have to work at them. You have to be intentional. Help is available if you will just get it, if you'll be willing to open up and talk. There are books and there are counselors and there are seminars. Some of you have seen God do miracles in your finances. Some of you have seen God do miracles in your own health. You may have seen God do miracles in your children. He also does miracles in the area of sexual relationships.

Father, I want to thank You for the gift of sex. Thank You that You made women to be women and men to be men. Father, today I'm sure there's a lot of confusion about sex because people have misused it and abused it and perverted it and exploited it. I'm sure there's a lot of hurt in this room. I pray for couples who have been unable to talk about the pain and the hurt and the rejection and the frustration that they feel. Help them to be able to open up and begin to share. I pray for the women and the men who have been sexually used and abused. Only You can understand the depth of their pain and their shame and their fear. Would You release them from the fear of getting help? Help them to see that You have the power to neutralize the past and sexual brokenness can be healed if we're honest and we seek help and are willing to get well.

I pray for wives and husbands who ache for a vital affirming sexual relationship with their mates. Help them to not give in to the temptation to look elsewhere. But help them instead to get the help that they need that could start changing the relationship. I pray for couples who've grown cold toward each other. Would You melt some hearts today and replace the bitterness with forgiveness and a willingness to act in loving ways.

I pray for the single adults and those who have gone through a divorce, who are struggling to remain sexually pure when everything in our society pressures them to chuck it all and ignore Your commandments. Strengthen them and let them feel the smile of Your presence on their lives as they seek to do the right thing.

Finally I pray for our kids and our teenagers. They need your grace to make it to marriage without misusing or abusing the gift of sex You've given them. Help them to understand that waiting is for their own benefit. Lord, I want to thank You for a church like Lighthouse that deals with all the issues of life. Jesus Christ, we want Your best in every area of our lives and we gladly follow You. We want You to be number one in this area too.

Then would you pray, "Dear God, work a miracle in my sexual relationship with my wife/husband. Help us to get the help. Help us to apply Your word to our lives. In Jesus' name. Amen."