“Behold, you are beautiful,
My beloved, truly delightful.
Our couch is green;
The beams of our house are cedar,
Our rafters are pine.”
Song of Solomon 1:16-17
Welcome to the Pure Passion Series!
It’s about the Song of Solomon and how it IS an allegory of God’s love for His people, which, these days, means Christ’s love for His Bride, the Church. BUT ALSO, the Song of Solomon is a song of the joy, beauty and worship of God through sex and how, YES! This is the desire of the heart of God for every marriage.
But most, this series is about how I am asking lots of questions {ones I NEVER asked before} and walking a journey that has been in the making my whole life. It’s messy and broken, like everything else in life as we work out the redemption of our bodies through the hope of Christ in the midst of a devastatingly fallen world.
And it’s full of fight. For strongholds of lies to be broken. For my marriage (and yours) to thrive. For the truth of my life to be a song to the next generation that leads them to Jesus. For sex to be God’s in a brilliantly clear way that rises above the clanging of its vast degradation by the world.
It’s about living whole. It’s where I begin to trust God in EVERY area of my life, even and especially in the area of sex and sexuality. It’s living radically where I push through walls of misplaced shame, paralyzing fear, and crippling doubt. And, as a wife, it’s becoming whole in the only way that I truly can—through the experience of the one-flesh relationship of covenant marriage.
So, I am letting goof the holding-back kind of thoughts that would look at sex as hollow. That ‘thing’ at the end of the day that wants to take my last drop of strength. Or something meant to satisfy men and leave women empty.
I’m also saying ‘no’ to the lies of the world about sex. The ones where great sex is the goal. Whether it’s the insinuation that the excitement of a one-time hook up is the way to the best sex. Or the lie that sexual pleasure must be heightened by domination that edges closer and closer to slavery. Or any falsehood that might weave into my thinking, lifting up a standard of sex or sexy through Hollywood, mass marketing, or pornography that beats down my self-image and steals my desire.
It is ALL Hollow. A chasing after the wind. The wood, hay and stubble that is burned away.
So I will choose the path to becoming whole, not hollow, through sex. By walking with God and my husband, I will constantly seek to find ways to grow in my understanding and practice 🙂 of sex. I will NOT be afraid to dream big. I will relentlessly pursue God’s perspective and not settle for the pat answers that many good Christians have given for many years.
And I will constantly affirm God’s desires for sex in my marriage. It’s a green couch, cedar beams and pine rafters 😉 A place of vibrancy and growth. Life-giving for both of us. A place of worship. A mysterious and glorious one-flesh union that requires my mental discipline so that it can be. (Did you know that 80% or more of sex for women is in the mind?? More to come on this.)
Someone who I love and respect told me that she keeps waiting for ‘more’ in this series. That encouraged me because I am waiting and hoping for more too. I feel like I’ve been given broad brush strokes and some pretty sweet views of the final glory of it all. Yet there’s a humbling sense of great depths which I cannot fathom, even as God in His Grace longs to deepen my understanding (yours too).
I can say the same thing about the journey Home to Heaven too.
There are truths, promises, that guide us in everything. We are beautifully righteous in Christ. God is faithful, good and loving all the time. We are not who we once were AND ALSO are becoming what we will one day be. It’s the now but not yet that spurs us deeper in and further up. I can say that the light has shone for me in the area of sex so that I see in it all of the truth of God and the waiting and hoping for more of Him with a vividness that I never had before.
This is why I know I won’t give up the fight or go back to the murky confusion. Because my journey with sex, finding God in it, becoming one with my soul mate, and healed and whole in the process is meant to profoundly shape what it means to be God’s in this world…for the rest of my life.
I cannot have my heart’s desire for deepening intimacy with God and a ho-hum sex life.
I’m looking forward to continuing this journey. I hope you are too!
Read the entire Pure Passion Series here!
Join me next time for Pure Passion :: From Folly to Fun
