Making Marriage Work (17 page)

There must be a sacrifice of selflessness even in your sex life. The plan of God for your marriage is bigger than your “feelings.” If you are too tired to enjoy your husband, you are too tired to enjoy anything else wonderful that God has planned for you.

First Corinthians 7:4,5 continues to discuss this issue:

For the wife does not have [exclusive] authority and control over her own body, but the husband [has his rights]; likewise also the husband does not have [exclusive] authority and control over his body, but the wife has her rights].

Do not refuse and deprive and defraud each other [of your due marital rights], except perhaps by mutual consent for a time, so that you may devote yourselves unhindered to prayer. But afterwards resume marital relations, lest Satan tempt you [to sin] through your lack of restraint of sexual desire.

Satan hates the purpose of sex because its ultimate expression is new life. Sexual fulfillment releases tension, is enjoyable, and brings a bond of unity that is unlike any other. It truly does minister new life. A consummated marriage may bring babies into the world, but even long after a woman is of childbearing age, the intimacy of the marriage bed continues to bring new life to her relationship and union with her husband. God is the one who put a strong sexual drive in men and women because He loves new life on every level, and He wants us to be drawn to its potential.
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New life is the very thing that Satan abhors, so beware if you are caught in his temptation to lure you away from intimate time with your spouse. When I teach on this subject in my seminars, the auditorium, filled with thousands of listeners, goes suddenly still, or people begin to laugh and giggle. People get very uncomfortable when the subject is mentioned. I know for a fact that more married couples have problems in this area than those who don’t, and I also believe if proper instruction came from the church, much of it could be avoided. Of course we should approach the subject respectfully, handling it with great propriety, but to ignore it is a big mistake.

At one of my meetings, a lady stopped me before I went to the platform and asked, “Are you going to teach on sex, communication, and money tonight?”

I said, “I’m going to try to.”

She said, “You may need to call out the vice squad.”

Sex is obviously the least talked about yet the greatest threat to the success of our marriages. When we have our audience complete questionnaires we get the same response everywhere — sex, communication, and money are the greatest sources of stress in marriages. Oddly enough, these three great obstacles to relationships are intertwined with each other and are doorways to the greatest areas of blessing that God designed for us.

If you are too upset with your spouse to make love to him, it is probably more important to lovingly offer yourself to him at that time than ever before. The act of sharing what God has encouraged you to give and what Satan is tempting you to withhold is to resist the devil and draw near to God. Obedience is a powerful weapon against the tempter. When the two of you come together as an act of obedience to God’s plan for your life, you are telling the devil that you are keeping your promise to each other and you are ignoring his attempts to steal your power of agreement with each other.

Now some readers are cheering me on, but others need to stop and think about this for a moment. Let the truth of God’s plan for men and women settle in on you. Didn’t He say, “be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it?” So what is the devil going to try to stop you from doing? He’s trying to stop you from God’s command of blessing in your marriage.

First Corinthians 7:4 says that a married man and woman’s bodies do not belong to themselves, but to each other. They each have rights that should be yielded to the other. This verse is telling married couples that they have equal rights to each other, and should not withhold loving attention to the other or Satan will have free reign to tempt them to sin. Continual rejection to this intimate expression of love will tear down the self-esteem and sense of self-worth of the spouse who is being turned away.

A woman once told me that her husband was leaving her after twenty plus years of marriage. I know and love this woman. She had been sick for a long time and just hadn’t felt good. She wasn’t so sick that she couldn’t motivate herself to get up and accomplish things, but she was consistently “worn out.” Consequently, she completely abandoned her husband sexually because she didn’t feel good. Unfortunately, if abstinence in marriage becomes habitual it is sometimes difficult to approach each other again.

Obviously there are times when a person is genuinely tired or under extenuating circumstances that may preoccupy the attention of a spouse, but even through those times affection can be communicated. But if the excuse of tiredness is used too often, a person is asking for trouble. Many times, however, a woman will say “no” to her husband just because she doesn’t feel like she wants to stop what she is doing and spend time with him. If a woman (or man) frequently refuses this focused time with their spouse, they need to realize that they are being selfish.

There are times when circumstances may preoccupy the attention of a spouse, but even through those times affection can be communicated.

More understanding needs to be gained in the area of marital sex. Couples need to give tender attention to each other out of respect for the needs of their spouse, without making ridiculous demands, realizing that not all people are alike. Some have stronger desires than others do, and it is important to remember that God designed this sexual drive. To consistently reject your partner in this area will quickly tear down their feelings of attractiveness and desirability. It damages self-worth.

Hebrews 13:4 says,

Let marriage be held in honor (esteemed worthy, precious, of great price, and especially dear) in all things. And thus let the marriage bed be undefiled (kept undishonored); for God will judge and punish the unchaste [all guilty of sexual vice] and adulterous.

Marriage is no longer being held in honor by the world, and that same deception is seeping into the church. But the Bible says to hold your marriage in honor. Esteem your marriage partner as worthy, precious, and of great price. Consider your relationship as especially dear in all things and let the marriage bed be kept pure. For God will judge and punish the unchaste — all guilty of sexual vice — and the adulterous.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t be forgiven for sin, but sin brings its own punishment. The more we live a holy life, the happier we are going to be and the more we are going to enjoy God’s blessings. There is nothing worse than an internal heaviness from knowing that we are not living right before God and from being in bondage to something that we neither want nor from which we can get free.

I have heard a good number of people teach on this Scripture and say that because the marriage bed is undefiled, a married couple can do anything that they agree together to do and it’s all right under the guise of marriage because this Scripture says the marriage bed is undefiled. But
Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance
brings out the meaning of “undefiled” as “unsoiled” and “pure.” This expresses the proper translation of this verse as saying that the marriage bed is pure, and it is to be kept pure.

I don’t agree with the teaching I have heard stating that a married couple can do anything that they want to do or that anything that feels good is all right between them because they are married. I believe that there is a knowledge on the inside of us of what is holy and what is not. God gives us wisdom for what is natural and what is not. The Bible tells us to stay away from unnatural acts and perversions.

Pornography, for example, is definitely a perversion. Those who feast their eyes on it will come in to bondage to it. There are certain triggers that Satan uses to set up the spirits that can gain strongholds in a person. Playing with these temptations is like playing with a loaded gun. No one can afford to play games with things that have been strongholds in their lives.

If people have been caught up in adultery, it did not just happen overnight. They didn’t just wake up one morning determined to be in an adulterous affair. The idea of it started in their mind long before they acted out their fantasy. Initial compromise was made over little things that they knew they shouldn’t do. Perhaps they had lunch with somebody when they knew they shouldn’t have gone to lunch together. Perhaps they took somebody home or picked someone up for work without telling their spouse and soon found it difficult to explain.

The more difficult it became to tell the truth, the more the person entertained the idea that something more was in fact happening besides an innocent ride. Perhaps they got into a personal, private conversation with someone that they shouldn’t have had. In our ministry we are extremely careful and possibly even go overboard about not opening any doors for anything like this to take place.

No one should consider themselves exempt from this temptation. The devil hates marriage and will pursue the fruitful and happy unions of productive, life-giving couples. It is better to be extreme in protecting our marriages than to be too loose and ask for problems. When things come into our minds that shouldn’t be there, we need to cut them off because if we play the mind game, we are inviting the next step of temptation. James 1:14,15 defines the destructive path of temptation:

But every person is tempted when he is drawn away, enticed and baited by his own evil desire (lust, passions).

Then the evil desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully matured, brings forth death.

You have to discipline yourself when the warfare first begins in your mind. The battle is won or lost by what you decide to do at the point of temptation in the mind. James explains that first the evil desire is conceived. If entertained, it causes you to act in sin, and sin in its full maturity will bring death. Death will come to your marriage, your hopes, and eventually your life if you continue to give in to temptation.

Your eyes are the window to your soul. What you see is what you start to think about. I know that most people will admit that movies can and do impact our lives. I now know to turn off certain types of movies, but when television first started showing movies filled with pornographic scenes, it took many of us by surprise. We weren’t expecting the producers to give such a graphic display. We were caught up in our interest of the story when suddenly there was a pornographic scene that we allowed ourselves to watch. Then at times when we didn’t want to see that scene again, flashbacks came, and sometimes for months, or even a year later, we still saw flashbacks to suggestive portrayals of temptation.

When we open our eyes to blatant temptation, we invite the vision of its maturity into our soul and place it where the enemy can use it against us whenever he wants to. Safeguards need to be placed in our life. Some magazines, and even advertisements that come to your home, can be filled with images to inspire lust in your heart. Even advertisements from department stores are full of women and men half clothed. Life-sized billboards of a man or a woman in skimpy underwear line our streets.

While we cannot stop temptation from coming to us, we can ask God to give us power over the temptations to keep us from taking the next step that leads to sin. We may have to plead the Blood of Jesus over our soul to even ride up and down the street! It is a mistake to think we can resist temptation on our own. We need to ask God to keep our minds cleansed and give us the power to live holy lives because the devil is out to destroy marriages and homes.

We need to work at keeping the marriage bed undefiled because Satan will certainly use all the junk that is out there to destroy our blessings. Married couples should protect their freedom and liberty to enjoy each other, and be quick to ask God for help in times of weakness to temptation. Keep in mind that every good gift and every perfect gift is from God. (James 1:17.)

I love and enjoy my husband. We have a good time together. Coming from an abusive background, I wasn’t always at ease with my own sexuality. I share this only because I know a number of people admit to the same “hang-ups” that I had, and these obstacles are a threat to God’s plan for our relationships. I believe that my own honesty will help others break loose from their own bondages.

I was rigid, didn’t want any lights on, and wasn’t going to open my eyes. I had real problems because of the way that I had been treated before I married Dave. I had enough sense to sexually submit to my husband, which I think was good. Somehow I knew that continued rejection could cause temptation in a man to go find somebody else, and, of course, I didn’t want that. But I never really enjoyed our sex life because I had been hurt and wounded so bad.

People have asked me to teach on this subject, but I always felt like I wasn’t qualified to teach on sex because I’d had some problems myself. But the Holy Spirit spoke in preparation for the teaching in this book. This is what I felt like the Lord said to me, “Most people have problems in this area. There’s more people that have problems with this than there are people who are free.”

The largest number of people in prayer lines are there because of marriage problems. There are only a precious few marriages where both partners are totally free, where their marriage is sin free, and they have holiness in their marriage. Too few couples are liberated to enjoy each other.

Most of the time, one or both of the partners has some kind of problem that neither of them wants to talk about. It is not easy to teach on such a private subject before thousands of people who have different convictions in this area. But I felt like the Lord told me, “You had problems and most of your audience still have problems. No one is better qualified to teach someone with problems than a person who has had the same problems and come out of them.”

When our friend Roxane married Paul, she had never been abused. She never had any serious problems. She grew up in a right situation and yet she still admitted that she had to tell herself, “Roxane, this is O
K
. There’s nothing wrong with sex. The devil tries to present sex as dirty, but sex was God’s idea.”