Think back. If you grew up in church what was the predominant message passed down regarding sex? How would you like to see the church engaging in this conversation? What do you hope your child’s view of sex is?
So many grew up with this message, “Sex is dirty, nasty and wrong. Save it for the one you love.”
Instead of….
“Sex is a pure, wonderful, beautiful, God-ordained gift that seals two people together. It is a blessing to save it for the one you marry.”
Sex is a God-ordained gift that is an act of worship between a husband and wife within their covenant. It is all-inclusive. It is physically beautiful, an emotional expression of love and commitment, a spiritual binding of souls, and a mental activation of neurotransmitters that bond us to our love.
So why is the Church so afraid to champion this amazing gift? Why have we gone quiet, avoided the subject, and sat silently by while culturing is targeting us, our spouses, our children with un-Godly messages regarding sex? Why have we resorted to using the Bible as a rule-book and only focused on what to do and what not to do? Why are we going quiet on why sex is so amazing and how, if a couple is pursuing the Lord and one another, sex actually keeps getting better and better in marriage? Why are we not pushing back on culture’s message that tells us the best sex you’ll have is before marriage, outside of marriage, or only in the first year of marriage?
Research tells us this is simply not true! Married couples have the most frequent and the best quality of sex.
Sadly, research also tells us that children will be introduced to porn around the age of 7 years old. 96% of young adults (churched attendees included) are accepting or neutral regarding pornography. Pornography has the same impact on your brain that heavy drugs do. You can look up research on brain scans regarding this. In 2016 alone, pornography was consumed at the rate of 4.6 billion hours in ONE year alone. That is 524,000 years or 17,000 complete lifetimes. Lord, help us. Only 3% of Americans wait until they are married to have sex. From 2012-2016, 41.2 percent of women conceived out of wedlock. These stats are from Tim Challies “10 Ugly Numbers Describing Pornography Use in 2017” and “Abstinence Statistics” from Statistic Brain.
The good news is, if you have struggled with sexual temptation, you are not alone.
The bad news is, culture is speaking louder than the church. That’s why I am SO thankful your church is not afraid to talk about sex. We must champion sex in our homes, in our marriages, in our churches. Culture has scared the big-C Church away from entering into this conversation.
So where do we start?
We educate ourselves. Yes, the statistics feel overwhelming. But when we are educated and truly understand God’s design and the physical, mental, relational, spiritual implications of sex, we would respect God’s design. And the statistics would improve.
We start at home. We start by taking care of our marriages and celebrating the gift that marriage is. We allow for spiritual transformation in our heart and recognize this is needed as much or more than behavior modification.
Let's work together to not only start the conversation, but to change it too!
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