Tag Archives: Jesus

Christian Sexual Prowess

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Yesterday I wrote about the fact that every guy asks the question am I good in bed?  How we answer that question is critical to our core confidence as a man.  We can wish it wasn’t that way.  We can try to over spiritualize it.  We can blow it off with joking and hiding.  But it’s still going to be there.  We question our sexual prowess as a man and we in the Christian community MUST have an answer.

At first glance it seems that as a “Christian” that there is no way that I could answer that until I’m married because I’m not supposed to have sex.  Often because we are so worried about sex outside of marriage and the costs that come with it, we end up telling men that they should just table the question and then “presto” answer it on their wedding night.  But in my opinion that is not good enough.  That might have worked a couple of generations ago when people got married by 25 but it won’t work now.

It’s a good thing to direct people to wait until marriage to have sex but it is not ok to wait until then to help them answer their question about sexual prowess.  They are going to answer it somehow.

We need to stop answering the sexual prowess question with a sexual ethics answer.  We need a different conversation.  Sexual prowess and sexual experience are not the same thing.  Thinking they are the same leads to men that are either having sex to answer the question or men that are living with lack of intimacy, touch and confidence in their ability to deliver.  Neither of those are acceptable.  The ironic thing is that our Christian theology actually does answer the sexual prowess question.

The first thing we have to do is realize that God has ultimately created us as sexual beings. It only takes one chapter in the bible for God to bring up sex.  We all have the tools, and I don’t just mean that we have the right “equipment”.

If we believe in a God that created us good, then we must start with the premise that God’s answer to do I have what it takes sexually is yes.  Let that sink in for a minute.  God says, “I have given you what you need here.  You can do this.  You have what it takes because I gave it to you.”

This is core.  Yes we are messed up because of sin. Yes we may have been wounded in this area in even horrible ways.  But at the core of who we are as a man, at the very center of it, we are created with sexual prowess.  It’s there, somewhere, no matter what our experience tells us.

The problem is we take sex out of context and turn it into it’s own question.  It becomes about performance which just kills us as men.  We fear failure.  We fear that we won’t be able to come through and when we make the act of sex the scorecard we are in trouble – even if we are “good” at it.

The act of sex was never intended to be that.  God did not create sex in it’s own context.  Sex is a part of a larger question.

Sex is not intended to be about performance.  It’s about loving another person.  It’s about trust, strength, intimacy and passion. It’s about giving and receiving. It’s about being a good lover, not about being a good performer.  This is why married sex (even in secular research) is described as the best sex.

If I try to answer the sexual prowess question without answering the intimacy question then I’m in trouble – even if I’m married.  Sex is not the goal.  In a sense it’s one of the means to the goal within the context of marriage.  As a stand alone thing, sex will not satisfy.  It will never answer the question.

If you are a good lover, you will be “good in bed”, or at least you’ll figure out how to be.  If you love well, the sex part will be there because there will be the context of trust, intimacy and passion to work on it.

The question we need to be asking is, “am I a good lover?”  It’s actually a lot harder question. If we need the woman’s approval we can’t be a good lover.  If we can’t be strong enough to be vulnerable, then we can’t be a good lover.  This is why women at their core are attracted to strength.

It’s a huge issue for us as men.  Becoming a lover is actually a stage of development just like learning to be a warrior.  Hence the wise saying, “Never give a man a sword who can’t dance.”

The good news is that we can work on all of this without having sex.  We can become lovers.  We can work on how to have intimacy and good physical touch (I’ll say more about how to do this soon).

Here’s the bottom line.  As a man growing in Christ, my sexual prowess should be growing because my identity and confidence in Him grows along with my capacity to give and receive love.   If I’m truly confident in Christ then I’ll have the freedom and strength to be a good lover – and as a part of that to be “good in bed.”

Are You Good In Bed?

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Earlier this week I shared about three questions that all men wrestle with in some way.  “Are you good looking or not?” “What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?” and “Do you have a small or big penis?” All of us have answered these questions in our head, but almost no one has answered them out loud – at least not in any meaningful way.

And yet how we answer them affects many aspects of our lives, none more so than how we interact with women.  This is because all of these answers affect the core confidence we need that in order to pursue, attract, and eventually love a woman.

These questions have to do with three areas of our life – our self image, our shame, and our sexual prowess.  I’ve written a lot about our self image, and I wrote this week about our shame.  Today I want to talk about the third question.  So buckle up men.

The issue of having confidence sexually is gigantic in how we feel about ourselves as men and therefore how we interact with women.

First, let’s just admit that this is true.  Men are about performance.  This is why everywhere you turn you see sexual enhancement drugs, workouts, and techniques.  A man’s greatest fear is failure.  As Eldrege says, every man is asking, “Do I have what it takes?”  No where is this more true, or more scary and vulnerable, than sex.  Nowhere!

Every guy is asking the question do I have what it takes to be good sexually with a woman. In simple terms – “Am I Good In Bed?”  Every Guy.  Our answers are all jacked up.

Most of us began to have the question answered when we were very young.  There are so many factors.  Do you have a father that even broaches the subject?  What happens in the boys restroom in elementary school?  What are you comparing yourself to?  The guy next to you?  The guy who developed before you?  The guy in the porn video? (Average age a male sees internet porn for the first time is now 11).  It can also be affected by our view of sex, abuse, being emasculated by peers or parents or both.

Sometimes the answer is that we are “small” and that we don’t have what it takes.  Often we get no answer at all.  Almost never do we get a positive answer in the right way.

So we of course go and try to answer it.  We might dominate women or become extremely sexual to prove our prowess.  This is the guy who lives for sex and is always out to, “get some”.  We might seek to control the answer by fantasizing or looking at porn.  But this usually just brings about shame, and can undermine the question once again.

And in the Christian culture, for the most part, we are told to bury it, kill it, or starve it.  In fact, we are told basically, “Don’t look, don’t touch, don’t explore, but don’t worry you’ll magically know what to do when you get married.”  It’s like there is supposed to be a Christian switch when it comes to sexual prowess.  Don’t have any, and then man up and have it.  Really?!

It seems to me that most Christian guys end up in one of two camps.  Be a Christian but have sex anyway which leads to the obvious problems.  Or, we go without touch, without intimacy and therefore end up freaking out when we get to it. Sex becomes this taboo thing. We end up having fear and passivity around women, especially a woman we are really attracted to.  We don’t know what to do, partly because we aren’t sure we could do it – as in literally “do it”.

We live in a culture in which the average guy gets married at  28-29 years old.  What that means is that in the Church we are asking a guy to go about 15 years of his life (during the most crucial time when he is answering all of his life’s questions – including this one – for the first time) to not have sex.  My contention is this:  We can ask him to not have sex, but we CAN NOT ask him to not have an answer to this question.  Because he WILL answer it.

While this affects how we interact with women, its much bigger than that.  This answer affects how I do other things in my life.  It affects how I relate to other men, how I relate to my own body and self image and even how I interact at work and play.  This question matters.  I would submit that even if I’m called to celibacy in the kingdom, I’d still better have an answer to this question. It’s crucial no matter what.

In my next post I’m going to take a stab at what I think the Christian community can do to help guys answer it.  But before we can get help, we need to check what our answer is to the question right now.

Do you have what it takes to be good sexually with a woman?  Where does that answer come from? How have you tried to answer it?

Shame Crushes Confidence

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I know of a wise older gentleman who asks men that visit him three questions: “Are you good looking or not?” “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” and “Do you have a big or small penis?”

It’s kind of funny. It’s sort of offensive.  It’s for sure brilliant.

How a guy answers those questions is everything.  Does he answer honestly – even with himself?  Where does the answer to each question come from? They are all relative questions – what is it that guy comparing his answer to?  When was the first time he answered each of those questions?  What answer has the world, his dad, his God given him?  Every guy has answered those questions in his head – just not out loud.

Most men spend their life affected by their deep seeded answers.  They either run from it, avoid it, cover it up, or rail against it with anger.  The kicker is most of us have the wrong answer, or at least the wrong idea of what the answer means.  Very few of us own our answers.

They are the type of questions that haunt our confidence in who we are as men.  We often look for the answers from women.  It’s why single men don’t act  and why married men are afraid of their wives.

The kicker is this, most women don’t really care that much about any of those questions. But how you answer them will affect everything you do with women – whether you are married or single.

These three questions (or similar ones) get at the heart of three areas of our life that we are insecure about.  Our self image, our shame, and our sexual prowess.

I’ve written a lot about our self image, including when it comes to how we view our looks. Later this week I’ll write about the sexual prowess question.  But today, I want to focus on the second question.  What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?

This question has to do with shame which flies in the face of the gospel.  For some there is fear of being found out, for others the fear of being disqualified.  Many have been carrying it as a secret for a long time.

The funny thing about the worst thing you’ve done question is there’s a good chance it’s not actually the worst thing you’ve done.  It is however, what you are most of ashamed of.  But most of us have never actually said this out loud, to anyone.  Many have not even said it to God. Shame is a powerful tool of the enemy.  Shame means we are unreconciled with God. Think about that.

Shame causes us to look away when we shouldn’t.  It causes us to withdraw, back down or act out when we think it might be exposed.  What we hide in the dark, makes us afraid of the light – and freedom (as well as confidence) is in the light.  Worst of all, it holds us back with Jesus because He brings light to everything.  As a secondary problem it holds us back with people – including the opposite sex.

Shame crushes confidence.

The only way to crush shame is to bring it out into the light and deal with it.  It’s the only way to know which parts of it are our fault (so we can repent) and which parts aren’t (so we can heal).

We have to start with the truth that Jesus is serious about both forgiveness and healing.  If we don’t believe that then we will spend our whole lives in the dark.

You see the follow up question to what is the worst thing you’ve ever done is this, “Do you know that you are forgiven for that?”

Either the cross took care of every sin or took care of none of it.  There really can’t be any in between.  So if I think that Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us, then I have to figure out how to believe that I’m forgiven for the worst thing I’ve ever done.  We know it intellectually and biblically. But most of us don’t live out of it at all.

Here’s the truth.  Because of the cross, you are forgiven for everything you’ve ever done, everything you’re doing, and everything you ever will do.  That’s either true or we are screwed.

There are also some of us who are carrying shame because of something that happened to us that we have falsely interpreted as our fault.  Again, the only way to get at this is to bring it into the light.  Once it’s in the light, we need to know that Jesus, through the power of the resurrection makes all things new.  There is nothing that can’t be made new – nothing.

What does it mean to bring something into the light and deal with it?  I think it means bringing it before God and someone else.  I think to own it means to share it with someone. This can obviously be dangerous.  But we have to take the risk. If we don’t have community, pay a few bucks and see a Christian counselor – hey married people do it.

If we don’t then we will continue to shrink back.  Shame will keep us dating no one (or the wrong people), fearing commitment, or if we do somehow get married, insidiously impact our marriage.

What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?  Who have you told?  Do you know you are forgiven? Really forgiven?

The Marriage Is Hard Movement

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The other day over lunch a young friend said, “I think it’s the trendy thing in the Christian world to make sure that everyone knows that marriage is hard.”  Haha – Amen.  For sure in the hipster Christian world it is.  In fact it’s so trendy that if your marriage isn’t “hard” then you aren’t cool, must not get it, and are probably heading for disaster.  Man we have over thought this thing.

To begin with it seems sort of counter productive to keep telling this to a group of people (those aged 18-29) that aren’t getting married.  Only 20% of them are married.  So if the goal is to warn people – well then – good job!  Seems to be working.  No one is rushing into marriage.  In fact they are rushing away from it.

As the divorce rate rose in the late 20th century, the Church rightly reacted to re-estabish marriage as a covenant and not just a contract.  They wanted people to make sure they knew it was permanent and that even when it’s hard you hang in there – because less and less people were.  All good so far.

But I believe as an unintended consequence we’ve now got a Christian culture that has made an agreement with the enemy by accident.  They’ve made marriage out to be harder than singleness.  The words Marriage and Hard are now interchangeable in Christian culture.

It doesn’t help that a lot of this generation’s pastors bringing this message are generally kind of joyless to begin with. (For free – one thing the New-Calvinists and Emergent Church leaders have in common – They’re both mad).  These people want to make sure that everyone gets the seriousness of marriage, which is great.  But if we let that steal the joy of marriage then both the married and unmarried are screwed.

On top of this our generation whines a lot.  I’m a part of it.  Think about it.  My job is hard, my school is hard, singleness is hard, times are hard.  Everything seems to be hard and everyone wants to make sure you know that they are suffering just as much as you. Hardness is a badge of honor.  Joy isn’t even on the radar.  I’m dead serious.  There’s a spirit of complaining that is rampant in our world. Can you picture your grandparents sitting around talking about how hard any of those things are?

We spend more time complaining than doing something about it.  How many men’s “accountability” groups are really “share your problems” groups.  “Yeah Bro, that’s tough.” is about as much help as we offer each other.  We’re all about empathy and understanding, which are important.  But at some point, it’s time to actually deal with your stuff, not just have a great premium beer while talking about it.

Marriage is hard because dealing with our sin and woundedness is hard – and marriage forces the issue more than any other relationship.  But marriage isn’t the problem.  We are.  We don’t need to be afraid of marriage – we need to deal with our crap.

Over the years I’ve walked with a lot of people in tough marital situations.  What usually happens is this.  I listen to a guy for about half an hour pour out all that is wrong with his wife.  Then I ask a couple of questions.  And the next thing you know I’m saying something to the effect of, “This is really about you.  You need to deal with . . . ”

Now sometimes a guy has been sinned against or his wife is really going through something horrible and I’m not negating that type of thing.  But about 90% of the time when a guy says to me that marriage is hard what he really means is, “I don’t want to –  face this wound, deal with this sin, make this change or grow up in this way.”

The truth is that in the long run, marriage is not “harder” than singleness.  All research I’ve ever seen (almost all secular) says that married people are happier, have more and better sex, make more money, live longer and impact society more.  It’s a societal foundation. That’s not to say that being single is “wrong”.  Some are called to celibacy and some are single for other reasons.  My point is that a whole lot of this trendy “marriage is hard” stuff is more about sounding deep than actually dealing with deep stuff.

Maybe most importantly, we need to realize that hard and bad are not synonyms – even if our comfort culture tells us they are.  In the kingdom, hardness and joy are not opposites.  That fact is part of our witness.  But we lose our witness if we leave out the joy part.  Read that again.

As singles looking to be married we need to walk a line here.  We need to realize that marriage is not sex and romance on demand and it certainly won’t solve all of our problems. But we need to not give into the lie that it’s so hard that we probably can’t do it.  Don’t resign to it being bad.  It also would be good to start dealing with our sin and woundedness now.

I’d encourage married folks to think about what you mean when you say it’s hard.  What’s the point you’re really making?  Why are you making it?  As a warning?  As an excuse? Are you dealing with what is specifically making it hard right now?

The Meek Will Not Inherit A Wife

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A few years ago I was talking with this woman I liked, when she said, “You know what, I’m so tired of Christian guys.”  I laughed, cringed, and completely understood what she meant.

She didn’t mean that she wanted to date/marry an unbeliever or that she didn’t love Jesus. She meant that she was tired of the over thinking, over spiritualizing, over nice acting “Christian” guys, of which at the time I was one.

Now, to be sure, this girl had her own issues.  But the fact remains, we have a real problem within the Christian community when it comes to dating.  It’s everybody’s fault.

We (meaning the Church big picture) have this extremely weird double standard going on where we tell guys to be basically be nice and get in line, while following all the guys who don’t.  We say don’t date around, don’t ask anyone out if you don’t know you can marry them, guard the girl’s heart, but oh by the way – lead.  What the heck?!

What we’ve created is a whole lot of nice guys that don’t act.  And when they do act they end up doing so in a weak way.

I used to be completely frustrated at the fact that the “bad guy” would always somehow have the girl, and I, who was of course the “good guy” didn’t.  But while it’s true that some of these guys were bad, what most of them were was confident, regardless of their goodness or badness.  I on the other hand, when I really liked someone, was not.

When it comes to being attractive to females, confidence is perhaps the single most important factor.  Not even a lot of females can name this, but it’s a fact.  It’s more important in terms of initial attraction than just about anything including but not limited to: looks, money, spirituality, brains, ambition, drive or sexual prowess.  Although all those things both affect and are affected by confidence.

Women describe this different ways but it is core to what they are looking for.  They want, “someone who knows who they are”, “who knows what they want”, or “who is comfortable in their own skin”.  However they describe it they are attracted to it – they respect it.  And respect is the key.

We as men, have to get a handle on this, and most of us don’t.  We think we do, but we really don’t.  It takes some real courage to confront our lack of confidence.

I’m not talking about arrogance.  Although, arrogance is more attractive than boring or weak.  It is more attractive than fearful (although most arrogant people are masking fear). And this is important: Passivity is not the opposite of Arrogance.  Humility is. And humility is not about being weak.  

It’s more than semantics.  Humility is not interchangeable with weakness, meekness, or passiveness.  You cannot be insecure and humble at the same time.

Yes Jesus said the meek shall inherit the earth.  But meek as we mean it in our culture (tame, mild, bland, unambitious are given as synonyms) is not what Jesus meant.  He was none of those things.  That verse does not mean the scared and passive will inherit the kingdom.  And they for sure will not inherit a wife.

It’s a double whammy.  Confident guys get dates because they are attractive to women, and because they are confident enough to ask.  They act because they are less afraid.

But here’s the best part, a lot of Christian spokesmen seem to think the answer is telling the non-cofident guy to man up.  That is completely ridiculous.  What we need to do is two things.

First we need to help guys dig deeper into why they are insecure and passive to begin with.  The spokespeople don’t like this because it requires actual work instead of just sounding cool in a sermon or book.  But it’s essential.  We have to figure out why we are scared.  What is it that makes us insecure around the women we want to pursue.  Actually at a broader view – what makes us insecure anywhere.  Where is that coming from?

Jesus was not insecure and if we are going to follow Him then that means facing our insecurities and growing out of them.  As a side benefit, as we do, we become more attractive.  Growth is hard work, but I promise you this – Growth is Hot.  Dead serious.

Secondly, we need to give men tools in interacting with women.  Here’s why.  Men are afraid of what they don’t know how to do.  We loathe failure.  So if I’ve spent most of my life not knowing what to do with women, guess what – I’m going to be insecure in that area.

All men are confident in what they know how to do and unconfident in what they don’t know about.  Therefore if we want Christian guys to have confidence and “man up” as it were, then we need to give them the tools, not just a pep talk.

I’ll have more to say about his later this week, but for today let me leave you with a couple of questions.

When are you confident?  When are you not?  When is the first time you can remember being passive?  Do you have the tools to pursue and marry a woman?

What If Marriage Was Fun?

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I’ve always liked weddings. People are mostly happy and they’re fun.  I’ve also officiated several weddings.  To me it is literally the best seat in the house.  You get to stand with two people (who you already love) as they say their vows and make a covenant with the Lord.  It’s awesome!  Sometimes they are nervous or stumble over words.  Sometimes they are focussed.  But always they are happy.

Happiness you see, is good.  Seriously, it really is.  It’s ok to want to be happy.

One of the things I’ve seen more and more of the last decade is this tendency in Christianity to try to walk back the fun.  It’s as if people seem to think that if the ceremony is more solemn that the people getting married will be less likely to get divorced. Really?!

Now I get it, I really do.  We want people to understand how big of deal it really is. It’s the second covenant of your life.   And it is just that – a covenant not a contract.  But that is good news not bad.  If it were just a contract, it wouldn’t be worth the celebration.

We also often want the people in the audience to get it.  And I get that too.  It’s great to charge the people to stand with this couple, a great reminder to those that are married, and good thoughts for those that aren’t as they consider whether or not they want to be. But here in lies the part that bothers me.

Where is the Joy?

Joy is a good thing and it is a part of marriage.  You are supposed to be excited.  What really is the point of trying to temper that?  “Let’s make sure everyone knows how somber this is so that later when it’s hard you’ll remember.”  Really?!

Marriage was created before there was sin not as a response to it, so we shouldn’t look for it to solve all of our problems. But that also means it’s a stand alone good thing. If our message is constantly, “Marriage is really tough”, “Make really, really, really sure you want to get married”, “Once you go down this path, there’s no turning back – and it’s a long road”, etc., then we can end up pushing a group of people (everyone under 35) who already aren’t getting married, further away from marriage.

I’m not suggesting that we stop telling people the truth.  In other words I’m not saying that we in the Church should soft sell marriage.  But I think we need to understand that when we say all of this stuff to the general public (be it sermon, wedding message, book, or blog) that most of the people we are talking to are already scared crapless of marriage.  They are not rushing into marriage, they are rushing away from it.

We need to stop reacting to a problem from 20 years ago and start reacting to the one we have now.  People are not getting married.

We need to share that marriage is indeed hard, but we also need to share that it is worth it. We need to realize that no one can actually understand a lot of it until they are married anyway and we are not doing singles a favor by scaring them or turning them into some sort of solemn, unfeeling, drone dater.

Dating, marriage, all of it should be fun.  It’s not just fun.  But if it’s not fun at all, then you know you’re in trouble.  (Bonus – This could be said about community, mission, worship, and on and on).

One of the fruits of the Spirit is joy and if marriage comes from the Spirit, well then. . .

It’s even in the Bible –

Ecclesiastes 9:9 says, “Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love all the days of this meaningless life God has given you under the sun”

Proverbs 5:18 – “May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.”

Song of Solomon – Well there is just a whole lot of joy going on here!

Marriage can be work, even hard work.  But it doesn’t have to be joyless work.  God created it when He saw that Adam wasn’t enjoying being alone.  Adam had it perfect right?  Perfect relationship with God.  Perfect relationship with nature.  But it wasn’t right yet.  There was a piece of his joy that was not complete.  God didn’t look down and say, “Well Adam’s got it pretty good, let’s make it harder”.  No, God wanted to make it even better.  

I bring all of this up because I think as those of us who don’t feel called to celibacy struggle to wait, pursue, try, quit, breakup, date, try to get a date and so on, we need to not be afraid of marriage.  We need to not feel like it’s all serious, all of the time.  It’s not the end of fun – it’s the beginning of a deeper fun.  Joy should be a big part of it.  In fact, I’d submit that its one of the main ways that you’ll know if you find it.

You Don’t Marry A List

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At some point when I was a young Christian single I made a list.  You know the list I’m talking about.  The list of things that I wanted in a wife.  I’m not sure if I was encouraged to do it or if I just did it on my own, but I made it.  Several times actually.  One in college for sure and another one right out of college, a couple of other random times.

There’s a lot of interesting things about this idea.  I mean I get it.  The whole idea is don’t settle for less than God’s best for you.  But there are some serious problems here as well.

For starters there is an entire shift that needs to be made in the Church.  We are often so concerned with getting it wrong, that we don’t end up getting it at all (read that sentence again and apply it to about half of Christianity as we know it – but I digress).

There is the overriding concern that we have to keep people from “marrying wrong”.  I think 20 years ago this was maybe true.  That time is over.  People aren’t marrying wrong but along with that they aren’t marrying right either.  So maybe instead of worrying about settling for less than God’s best, we should worry more about what marriage is, how to know if I’m called to it to begin with, and how to pursue it – then let the chips fall where they may. “The List” might well keep you from “marrying wrong” but it also might keep you from marrying at all.

Secondly the list turns us into consumers.  That’s because the list, while having to do with the attributes of the other person, usually ends up being about me and what I want and expect.  Now again, there is an element of good here.  We should have some standards for who we would date/marry.  But if/when the list moves from the essentials (they must love Jesus) to the personal (they must be joyful) to the trivial (they must be blonde) we start sliding into what we prefer instead of what God commands.  And that is dangerous grounds for lots of reasons.

If we make the list based solely on our needs and wants, we are in danger of making it all about us.  And that is not biblical love or marriage.

Instead we should flip the script big time.  We need to figure out how to love another person vs. being focussed on having to be loved by another person.  Don’t get me wrong, you should definitely not marry someone who doesn’t love you.  But if our focus is on this other person being the answer to our life questions then it will be impossible to love them.  If we get married, our commitment comes from our decision to love them, not the love we receive from them.

We need to get away from this idea of finding this person who will be perfect for us in every way.  This person who will “meet all of our needs and desires”.  This person who will magically give us our worth and value within that relationship.  That’s called an idol.  It’s not the point of marriage.

When we date, or search for someone to date, with that stuff going on we are never going to get married.  No one can live up to that.  And if we do get married then that marriage will be in trouble.

Which brings me to the final problem with The List.  You don’t marry a list.  You marry a person and no matter what you think you know about them, you don’t know anything yet. Even if you can check everything off the right way, you still have no idea how all of it is going to play out over the next decades.

It’s like school vs. the work environment.  There’s passing all the tests and learning the information.  But that’s not the same as putting it into action in real time and real life. That’s part of the adventure of marriage.  It’s what makes your story together happen.  It’s good to pass the test but it’s a lot more fulfilling to live out the actual adventure, failures and all. People, along with their needs and desires, change as their story develops.  You and I are not exempt – neither are our spouses if we marry.

For proof of this ask yourself if you list at age 20 would be the same as your list today. Mine isn’t.  There are three or four things that have always been on the list, but other things have changed as I’ve grown and changed.

What’s on your list?  What is honestly important to you?  Not just the “right/holy” answers but what really matters. . . to you?  What parts are trivial?  Has the trivial ever gotten in the way of commitment?

God’s Plan For Marriage

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Several months ago. while talking about my upcoming marriage, an encouraging friend said, “It’s amazing.  You’ve had to wait all this time.  And this whole time God had this plan and person for you.”  I just kind of grinned.  After 20 years of singleness in the Church, I’ve heard it all.

You know he might be right, but if he is then we’ve got a God who has changed his mind about marriage.

Here’s what I mean.  If we play out that there is one person for you from the beginning and that God has a plan to bring you a perfect Christian soulmate, then God has changed His mind about how to deliver it.

It seems that early on God wanted us to grow up and get married at about 14.  Now this makes some sense.  I mean we hit puberty in our early teens (or earlier) so let’s do this deal.  Besides, you might only live to 40 so all the more reason.

But it gets better.  God also decided that for centuries he would deliver this soulmate through arranged marriages.  Now before you get in your head the perfect scenario for this where all parents are believers and they only hook you up with the hot chick, think again and ask yourself if you’d like your parents to pick your spouse for you when you were about 10.  As the song goes, “At 3 I started Hebrew school, at 10 I learned a trade.  I hear they’ve picked a bride for me, I hope, she’s pretty. . . Tradition.”

Not only that, but this was only done within your caste.  God didn’t want anyone to marry up or down economically or socially.  He just wanted the deal done.

But then God decided that in the “New World” things would be different.  Each person should now go and find their own spouse and everyone would have full right of refusal. (Unless you were a woman who kind of had to say yes to someone because you couldn’t get a job).

But God wasn’t done.  Not by a long shot.  He decided that even though he had this perfect person “planned” for you, that he wouldn’t be revealing that right away.  Now early on, he only made you wait until you were 18-23 (after all, He had already pushed back adulthood by 4 years – he was just getting started).

God enjoyed holding out on us so much that He decided to keep pushing the limit. In fact over the last 40 years He has been dropping the amount of people to receive the “great reveal” before the age of 29 by about a percentage point per year so that now in 2013 only 20% of those people currently receive this revelation.

To sum up God’s “plan”, if you were born 500 years ago He revealed your “one” to your parents when you were a kid.  If you were born 100 years ago He revealed to you by 20. And now, He’ll reveal it to 1 in 5 of us by 29.

Is that the message we want to send single people?  Because essentially when we drop the “God has someone for you, just wait on it”, that is what we are saying.

Here’s the truth, this whole idea is way more about western culture affecting theology than the other way around.  But worse, when we combine it with our culture, it sets up to fail, both in finding a spouse and in staying married.

I believe that marriage was meant to be a calling and a choice.  So is staying married.  Like any other calling you can of course walk away from it.

But this idea of having to find God’s one person that is perfect for me is a crazy way to go about singleness, even if it were to be true.

Among a myriad of other problems, it helps turn us into consumer daters.  We end up looking for this person that fits whatever we think God would have for us.  Right away we are in trouble.  I mean find the person who says, “God has this person planned for me who doesn’t meet all my needs and has all these personal issues”.  At the very least, if you are going to believe that God has one person for you to marry, flip the script.  In other words ask who you are perfect for instead of who is perfect for you.  That will get you a step closer to truth – Heck, that’d I’d maybe buy.

Look, I’m not suggesting that we go back to having our parents marry us off at 14.  We don’t live in that culture.  We live in this one.  I’m also not saying God doesn’t bring people into our lives because I know for sure that He does.  What I am saying is that we need to quit treating our singleness as if God is the Great Witholder and I just need to be good, and wait out this person He currently refuses to reveal to me.

God’s main plan is for us to know and walk with Him.  That is our first calling and vow.  After that we need to ask, are we called to celibacy or marriage? Then we need to pursue that calling with God, figuring out stuff that gets in the way.  We in the Church to stop giving out sleep at night theology and help people do those three things.

Who Diagnoses Your Life?

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One night a couple of years ago I began to have severe pain in my abdominal area.  At first it was small, but as the night wore on it got worse.  I remember being at the gas station and barely being able to get out of my car.  I went home and went to bed.  I was breaking into chills and sweat.  As I laid there I began to think of the possibilities.  Could it be my appendix?  An ulcer? Worse?  Was it food poisoning?  I thought about what I ate that day and self diagnosed that indeed that Ranch dressing and salad was the culprit.

I stuck it out and the next day felt a little better.  But I was still hurting some.  I took it easy, went to the bathroom about 10 times and by the next day I was practically normal. Looking back I think about how stupid this was.  What if it would have been my appendix?  At what point would I have self diagnosed that?  At what point would I have called for help?  The funniest thing is I actually know doctors.  It’s not like I even had to start with the hospital.  It could have been disastrous.  If I’d gone down that night in my house who would have known.

It’s one of the perils of being single.  28% of Americans live alone.  That means that somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of singles live by themselves.  This can be bad for practical reasons as I’ve written about here.  There really is a safety factor.  What if you fall or pass out etc.?  What if I had self diagnosed wrong?  Who would know?  On top of this many of us work alone, or at least without a big office?  How long would it take for someone to know you’re missing in action?

But the safety factor pales in comparison to two others.

The reality is it’s pretty easy to get isolated.  Now I don’t mean that you don’t see or work with other people.  Of course we communicate and live in the real world.  But it is very easy to avoid real community and therefore end up without anyone speaking into our lives. As bad as self diagnosing a physical problem wrong could be, misdiagnosing our lives is worse – and we all do it.

All of us are deceived about our own story.  We misdiagnose both our sin and our wounds.

We look at our sin as minor and we never know the impact it has on others.  There is sin in our lives that never even sees the light of day because no one else is there to view it.  We might literally not even know we are doing it.  There is often no one to see it or call it out. There is no one to confess to.  We desperately need this.

Maybe worse, we end up believing lies about ourselves that affect everything we are doing.  If we only have our view of our story, we are in real trouble.  Things that were never our fault end up being.  We end up agreeing with ideas about our hurt that simply aren’t true.  We can spend our whole time fighting against things like, “I’m ugly”, “I’m stupid”, “I suck” etc.  It’s hard to see God’s view of us if we don’t have people in our lives who know our story and can speak into it.

In short we will take responsibility for stuff that isn’t our fault and brush off the stuff that is.  Everyone does this, married and single, but as a single person we are more likely to face little or no resistance to it.  And that is a problem.  We can hide if we want to – and we often do.

Some of us are thinking food poisoning when we need to be thinking appendicitis.  We need to reach out for some help.  Even if we have tried before and gotten burned.  We have to fight for community as a single person.  There is no doubt that it is harder.  Maybe not if you are 25 but as you hit 30-40 it is harder as a single.  I’m not whining, that’s just reality.  The Church culture is not set up for us.  28-40 is when all your crap hits the fan and you can not face that alone and win.  You just can’t.

If you misdiagnose your life at 25 you have a chance.  Do it at 35 and you’re screwed.  

1 John 1:5-7 says, “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.  If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”

As a single we have to find this.

Who besides you has a view of your story?  Who helps diagnose your life?  Where are you being deceived?

Christians Should Have More Sex – And Talk About It

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One of my pastor’s favorite lines is, “The problem with our church is that our singles are having too much sex, and our married people are not having enough.”

Every time he says it there is initial laughter at how funny that is, followed by a sort of uncomfortable chuckling at just how true it is.

It’s an interesting dynamic.  There is the idea in our culture about married sex vs. single sex.  As in, married sex is boring or non-existent and single sex is all about the hot passion. This is wrong both statistically and morally.

What’s interesting to me is that it seems married people are constantly willing to tell their single friends all about their lack of sex.  I can’t count the conversations I’ve had like this. It’s kind of mind boggling really.  Married people are constantly telling me about the sex they don’t have.  Very rarely are they telling me about the sex they do have.

Now I’m not talking about when a friend is sharing their life with me.  In other words there are men that I walk with and we all have struggles.  There are other men that I mentor and they are just letting me know what is going on so that I can walk with them.  That’s all good and honesty is vital in all of that.  We all go through different stages and issues.  Sexual struggle in a marriage can certainly be one of those.

What I’m talking about is this general idea out there that sex in marriage is not so great.  I feel like that is not really the best thing to tell single people.  What is the message exactly? Is the Christian community’s message, “Whatever you do, don’t have sex outside of marriage, wait for marriage.  And by the way, it’s not really that great then either.”  Really?!

I get that telling a wide eyed 20 year old that marriage is not a sex on demand scenario is probably pretty wise.  But constantly sending the message to the average Christian single that sex in marriage is always infrequent, hard work and often not good, seems kind of counter productive.

Let’s get real.  Even in the “evil and dangerous” secular world, the statistics don’t back this up.  In all the research I’ve seen married people have more and better sex than single people who are trying to have sex.  40% of married people have sex twice a week, compared to 20-25% of single and cohabitating couples.  Not only that but a significantly higher percentage of married men and women say sex is emotionally and physically satisfying than single people.  To top it off, married couples are more likely to hit orgasm – so that’s nice.

This isn’t to make light of the struggles that many married people have sexually.  I’ve walked with some people through tough stuff so I know it’s real.  But we need to do some things differently here if we are going to be honest and encourage single believers toward marriage.

To begin with, as my pastor says, married people need to have more sex.  Seriously.  For about a hundred reasons.  If you aren’t, then you HAVE TO get help and figure it out.

Next, married folks need to realize that what they say about sex has impact.  They also need to realize that the biggest problem out there right now isn’t single people rushing into marriage for sex, it’s that they are running away from marriage period.  The context has changed.  You are not doing the single person any favors by downplaying sex in marriage.

Finally, we need the married people who are having sex to be more real.  I remember one time talking with a friend after his ten year anniversary trip.  He said, “Bro, gotta tell ya. Great trip.  Stayed at the cabin.  Man, that cabin will never be the same.  I mean . . . wow. I don’t know if you’ve had premarital sex at all but I have.  And it is nothing compared to what happened this weekend.  I mean when there is trust, commitment and intimacy, all things are possible. . . just trust me on this. . . wow!”

Now that’s a ringing endorsement of marriage.  I’m in!

I think there is this tendency with married Christian couples to only talk about sex when it isn’t going well.  We need you to talk about it when it is.  We don’t need the details.  My friend didn’t say what positions they tried.  He didn’t video it and post it to facebook.  But he did share how he felt about it.

It’s true that we need realistic expectations.  What we don’t need is a message that says, “make sure you wait for it, but it’s not that great.”

What message have you received from married believers about sex?  Has it made you more or less excited about marriage?