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Trying to Understand Men Humorously Helpful Insights for Both Sexes The Old Excuse I used to get annoyed when middle-aged men claimed their wives did not understand them. What a transparently false excuse for being dissatisfied with one’s wife! Men freely admit to being mystified about women, but men are easy to understand, and women, being more perceptive, can read their partners like a book, right? Then I started counseling women who had been married for 20 years or more. I was staggered to discover that although they loved their husbands and in one sense knew them thoroughly, there was indeed a real sense in which they didn’t understand their husbands. In a survey, marrieds were asked to name their best friend. Women typically named another woman, whereas most men either named their wives or confessed to there being no one in their entire world that they could call their best friend. This highlights how isolated most men are, and how dependent they are upon their wives for companionship. There simply seems to be something about being male that causes this aloneness. It is so basic that it is even found in the animal kingdom. In a wide range of animal species, females generally group together with each other and with the young, whereas mature males are loners, usually relating to their own species only to fight other males or mate with females. It might take a husband years to realize just how mistaken was his presumption – and his wife’s presumption – that his wife understood him. The typical husband’s reliance upon his wife for companionship and emotional support makes it a chilling experience when he finally concedes she seems incapable of understanding him. Can you imagine how devastating it is to feel there is no one on the planet who knows and understands you to the degree that you crave and deserve? If genuine, and not a mere pick-up line, “My wife doesn’t understand me,” are among the loneliest words in the English language. Not only that, the inability of most men to get close to each other usually leaves him feeling unable to turn to anyone for solace, unless it be another woman. He is strongly pressured either to try that, or try to protect himself from further hurt and disappointment by withdrawing somewhat from his wife and hope he can bury his pain in his job or other activities. When this happens, wives start complaining; never dreaming of the role they have played in making their husbands act this way. The failure of wives to understand their men causes me to wonder how many men understand themselves. Yes, they know what they feel, but do they know why they feel that way? It’s the why that brings real understanding. It opens the way for change and a deeper oneness in relationships. Sex Generalizations All men have Y chromosomes. There are not many other statements about the sexes that can be applied with total universality. The vast majority of statements about the sexes are of the order men are taller than women. In other words, for most statements you will find a significant proportion of exceptions, and if you happen to be an exception, there is usually no cause for embarrassment. You or your partner may well delight in the fact that you are exceptional. There is nothing perverted about the fact that some men like tall women, for example. Sex generalizations provide useful clues to look for differences between you and your partner, but never accept any as gospel. You must thoroughly test each clue before assuming it applies to your relationship. I once dated a woman who in many ways was more masculine than myself. In measures in which men usually excel, she was more in the masculine direction than me. And yet I found her exciting, sexy, fascinating. By now many of you are beginning to wonder about me. Let me add that in areas where women usually excel, she was also better than me. She was just good at everything! Are Women More Complicated Than Men? There seems a common belief that women are more complicated than men. This belief has perhaps contributed to more marriage problems than any other belief. Men generally conclude from it that women are so hard to understand that there’s no point in even trying to understand them. (Women who try to maintain an aura of mystery may be doing so to their own hurt.) And women tend to assume that men are so easy to understand that there is no need to even try to understand them better. So when it comes to better understanding the opposite sex, it’s often the case that men feel defeated before they start and women barely see a need to start. ‘The Male Ego’ ‘The male ego’ is a very misunderstood thing. Some women show their ignorance by assuming there is no female equivalent and so imagining that in this area men are the weak, silly ones. For ‘the male ego’ substitute the words ‘a man’s need to feel masculine’. A woman has an equal need to feel feminine. A woman’s sense of femininity, however, usually focuses more on her physical appearance, and a man’s sense of masculinity focuses more on performance. Men and women, from an early age, are driven by a compulsion to conform to what they perceive to be the characteristics of their gender, even if this involves self-torment that could lead to death. Young men might endanger their lives by reckless acts to ‘prove’ their masculinity but young women are much more sensible and mature. Or are they? Ever heard of anorexia? Young women in the western world come to the ridiculous conclusion that to be feminine is to be thin. As a consequence, there is hardly a woman who has not at some time deprived herself and hated her body because she is not as skinny as she believes femininity requires. For some, this becomes more important than life itself. As many women feel duty bound to deprive themselves of the physical nourishment they need, many men feel the compulsion to torture themselves by emotional deprivation. Unless you are so ignorant as to think that a woman with anorexia can easily reverse her relentless march to starvation, do not imagine that men can easily stop being driven by the need to afflict themselves. All Christians have a good idea about how Peter must have felt after denying his Savior. He was mortified. He had failed as a Christian. However could he live with himself? This knowledge of what it’s like for a Christian to feel he’s failed as a Christian should give Christian women some idea of how a man can feel if he thinks he has failed as a man. It’s not necessarily a sign of weakness or failure, it might simply be a sign of very high standards. If people fail in their career, they might be able to change careers. But people are stuck with their gender for life. If a woman feels she’s failed to be a woman, or a man feels he’s failed to be a man, it’s an inescapable dilemma. What a man feels constitutes masculinity may well astound you. It will vary considerably from man to man, depending upon idiosyncrasies in that person’s male role model at critical times in his childhood. It’s embarrassing to admit the concepts of masculinity I’ve been lumbered with. After these confessions, if ever you see a tall, skinny guy skulking down the street with a bucket over his head, please don’t tell everyone who it is. Most men are stuck with equally weird concepts that embarrass and torment them. Here are some of the things that at times would have caused me to feel a failure as a man: show emotion open a car door for a woman buy flowers wear deodorant wear long underwear eat toast that was not almost burned. How Could This Be? I lived with both my parents and my maternal grandparents. I was very close to my grandfather – in some ways closer than I was to my father – but for some reason my Dad was my role model. (Dads are far more important than many people realize.) Interestingly, my grandfather wore long underwear and deodorant and ate lightly toasted bread. My father, however, did none of the things listed above. Had I not had a father I would have gleaned my concepts of manliness almost entirely from observing my grandfather. Had I been deprived of both, it would have been some other male or males. Television may have played a part. Had I been a child today, it might – perish the thought – have been Homer Simpson. As a child I viewed opening a car door for a woman as assuming a role of total servitude, and it was not manly to so grossly humiliate oneself. I saw deodorant as a sneaky attempt to feminize men by making them wear perfume. I thought long underwear looked ridiculous and that it was therefore humiliating to wear, and that it’s unmanly to give in to cold. My father never told me any of these things but he never opened a door for Mom, and never wore deodorant or long underwear, so I was sure a real man would avoid those things. The rest was my childish attempt to rationalize my Dad’s behavior. Let’s examine the toast issue in a little more depth. My father liked toast that was so dark that it was almost burned. He had other eating peculiarities but they didn’t affect my view of masculinity. I think my father could have had his toast preference without it influencing me, but he made a little bit of a fuss about it by complaining if his toast wasn’t done to his preference and I guess my Mom must have complained about his preference. So here I’m seeing a difference between Mom and Dad – a difference between my ideal man and my ideal woman. And if they were to differ, I’d identify with my male role model. Neither she nor my sister (my only sibling) liked toast that way. They were not men. I didn’t like toast that way either, and I was not yet a man, so this helped confirm to me that a real man must eat burned toast. Furthermore, there were aspects about burned toast that seemed macho – it tastes a bit bitter, is rough, hard, and it is messy because ugly black crumbs go everywhere when you eat it. This macho aspect is significant. Men often get stuck with the unshakable feeling that they must endure unnecessary pain and unpleasant things just because choosing something they would actually enjoy more would cause them to feel failures as men. A lot of women feel this same way toward men. They think if something looks nice or feels nice, then it’s not suitable for a man. They feel a man must have something that’s plain or ugly or rough or in some other way unpleasant. Childish My thoughts about masculinity were childish concepts, typical of a child’s attempt to grapple with reality and interpret the adult world. There was nothing foolish or unintelligent about it. It was a good attempt for someone so young. When a little boy or girl looks at a key male figure, he or she is unable to discern exactly what distinctives about that male figure are in line with society’s concept of the ideal man. They are likely to seize as a significant feature of masculinity anything that differentiates their role model from the other women and children in their life. When a boy matures and gets to observe other examples of manhood, he may discover that his concept of masculinity is a little warped, relative to society as a whole. He may realize he’s zeroed in on one person’s idiosyncrasy rather than a significant male attribute, but don’t imagine he can instantly change. Some of these things have become so ingrained that whether he likes it or not, he’ll take them with him to his grave. Rationally he might know that certain behavior is acceptable, but emotionally such behavior might be mortifying for him. So in my case, for years I would shiver rather than wear long underwear, I would eat toast I didn’t like, and act in a way that made me less popular with girls (refuse to wear deodorant, or to buy flowers or to open a car door for someone) rather than face the mortifying prospect of feeling I had failed as a man. Critical Time The problem is that I reached these conclusions at a critical time in my development. You are probably familiar with animal experiments which have demonstrated that there is a critical period in an animal’s life during which it will become locked in to certain behavior. If, for instance, at a certain age a young female mouse is deprived of nesting-type material to play with, it will never make nests when it matures and has babies, no matter how much material it then has. Animals reared by hand often identify with humans rather than their own kind. You can put them with their own species as soon as they become independent, but chances are it will be too late, and they will never breed. Unless you were childhood sweethearts, by the time you met your man he had long passed that critical age that determines his concept of masculinity. This does not mean change is absolutely impossible. It does mean that you are dealing with something very, very strong. Are Men the Stupid Sex? Women are just as affected by these things. It’s a well-established fact, for instance, that even though they sometimes try hard not to fall for the trap, daughters of alcoholic fathers frequently end up marrying alcoholics. If you still think it weakness that mature men should be influenced by childhood experiences, consider how a girl’s brief experience of sexual abuse can affect her for a lifetime. Yes, that’s an extreme example, but don’t tell me any of us can easily brush aside past experiences, especially those in our formative years. A man’s concept of masculinity may bind him, but do not imagine women are free from similar pressures regarding their femininity. Remember that a woman’s concept of femininity is more tied up with appearance. Almost every woman endures unnecessary discomfort and stress in order to look more like her conception of the ideal woman, by dieting, hair removal, wearing uncomfortable shoes, and the list goes on and on. We have already mentioned how some women’s belief that to be skinny is to be feminine drives them to endanger their lives. We know how irrational anorexia is, and how resistant it is to treatment, but even when we do not understand it, we don’t use someone else’s torment as an excuse to feel superior. As I’ve hinted, a man might be lumbered with some very weird concepts of what it means to be a man. It is no more his doing than that of a dangerously thin woman who feels that in order to be a real woman she must lose still more weight. Just as anorexia is frighteningly difficult to treat, so it is extremely difficult to liberate a man from bondage to false concepts of the demands of being masculine. The Temperature Rises One thing a man could easily have gathered from his role model is that it is unmasculine to wash dishes or take out the rubbish. Understandably, this subject can infuriate a woman, but just for a moment, try to see what’s at stake. Anything that touches a person’s concept of what it means to be a man or woman can become a highly emotive subject, with that person’s whole sense of self-worth at stake. I think you have some idea of what would be involved in asking a man to walk down the street wearing a dress. He would feel humiliated because that behavior is considered feminine. For him, washing dishes might be no less feminine. Of course, for some men it’s not an issue. It hinges very much on their childhood male role model’s attitude to washing dishes. Certain household chores can become a dangerously hot issue if it threatens a man’s masculinity and the wife doesn’t realize it. She will simply imagine all that is at stake is a little physical effort. She’ll assume he’s lazy and selfish, not realizing that his whole sense of self worth is at stake. Remember a woman’s sense of worth as a woman focuses more on appearance, so imagine how she would feel if her husband said, ‘If you love me, you won’t waste our money by removing facial hair.’ It will take no effort whatever for her to follow that request, and it makes economic sense, but most women know what devastating emotional effect it would have on many women to go through life showing facial hair. So now they should know how it can feel to make washing dishes a test of love for some men. This, of course, is just one example. There are thousands of peculiar possibilities, and identifying the critical factors in your partner’s concept of masculinity can be most difficult. Failure to recognize it, however, will cause enormous marital problems. If it’s intricately bound with their concept of what is required of a real man, something as simple as saying ‘I love you’ or ‘I’m sorry’ can be as shattering to some men as the thought of a double mastectomy would be to their wives. Stinking Thinking The way we are brought up affects us far more than we are ever likely to realize, and there are still more factors than that involved in disputes between men and their partners. Consider my reaction when I discovered that a woman I was dating was repelled by the smell of my oily skin and she wanted me to wash before getting close to her. To her, the matter was simple: I was on the nose. I was lazy, dirty and inconsiderate if I didn’t change immediately. For me, unfortunately, much deeper things were involved. It’s well established that women usually have a more acute sense of smell than their partners and that female physiology causes them to sweat less and so they are usually less exposed to the odor. Added to this physical difference, however, is the fact that in our society mothers teach their daughters to detest the smell of body odor, whereas they are usually more tolerant with their sons, whom they expect to be more active and work up a sweat. The revulsion that western women typically feel toward the smell of body odor is so real that they find it almost incomprehensible that it is actually a learned response. In the words of Julie Bawden Davis, “Smelling is a learned behavior. What smells good to one person can make another nauseated.” It’s just like people almost vomiting at the thought of eating snails whereas other people find snails delicious. Few non-western societies wash as much as we do. People in many cultures find the smell of deodorized westerners repulsive. They much prefer the smell of members of their own society, whom we would regard as stinking with B.O. Source: Julie Bawden Davis: Health & Fitness News Service Wednesday, December 24, 1997 Taste and smell are closely related and one reason why I was hurt by this woman’s reaction is that I had proved for myself that one can put aside strong personal aversions. When on a foreign mission field, I taught myself to override food prejudices I had grown up with. Out of love for the people God had called me to, I ate dog, sea slug, pig brain soup, snails, seaweed, duck eggs with the duckling inside about to hatch, and I so changed my mind-set that I was actually disappointed that I missed the opportunity to eat rat. So I knew we are not helpless victims of the aversions we have grown up with. But my hurt went deeper. Far more than men, western women are taught to see their natural bodies as inadequate and needing to be hidden behind such things as make-up. They also grow up to regard natural scent as something external, like dirt. Although I’m as much a westerner as anyone else, I don’t see it this way. Any student of nature will know how important natural scent is to courting in the animal world. I regard my scent as being as much a part of me as any other part of my body. For a woman to say she does not like my natural scent and that she could only tolerate me if I removed it or covered it with artificial scent, is to me equivalent to her saying, ‘I love you but I can’t stand the sight of your face. Don’t get me wrong: you’re a nice guy; it’s just that your face makes me feel sick. I don’t know how anyone can tolerate it. I don’t want you near me unless you hide your face so that I don’t have to see it.’ I was not exactly delighted to learn that although smell is very important to women, they find a lump of soap much more desirable than me. I know you’re laughing – and I’m glad you are finding this entertaining – but I still find it a sad fact of western life that women prefer the smell of soap to the smell of their own men. Imagine a man being so corrupted by airbrushed photos of supermodels that he insists that his wife always covers up in his presence because he feels revulsion at the sight of a normal woman. I see the attitude toward smell that the typical woman in our society has as being tragically similar. I don’t expect to change a solitary western woman on this point. Till my dying day, the women I mix with will find the real me nauseating. They will treat me like stinking garbage unless I mask what I am really like. Regardless of whether I comply with their demands and cower in shame behind soap and deodorant, I will continue to feel hurt, and almost no one will understand. Couples can find themselves looking down the barrel of an equally emotive issue when they discover they have totally opposed feelings toward certain aspects of lovemaking. One can find something repulsive and focus on his/her own feelings of disgust so much as to be barely aware that this reaction sends the other partner reeling under the pain of deep rejection. If you find distasteful an aspect of lovemaking that your partner desires, get inside you partner’s shoes by imagining how you would feel if your partner recoiled at the thought of kissing your lips; regarding it as disgustingly unhygienic and uncouth. Let’s soar beyond specific examples to uncover the crux of the issue: what one partner sees as a superficial matter, but needing urgent change, can to the other seem like the most painful rejection. And a change that to one seems as easy as breathing, to the other can be like demanding a sex change. Update: Long after writing the above the Lord finally gave me a wife. There was nothing hasty about our relationship. Although we quickly fell in love and spent very many hours every single day on the phone with each other for over three years, we lived on opposite continents and did not meet until we married. I was wondering about the smell issue because it was totally unknown factor. To my astonishment, my wife adores my body odor – even when I haven’t showed for days. Getting a Man to Change Now of course I’m not saying men and women shouldn’t try to change. What I am saying is that they should realize that what they are asking of their partner could be far more costly than they ever imagine. I am also saying that the most loving and effective way to bring about change is not to make change a test of love, but to attempt in an unpressured way to change the deep seated view of masculinity that the man has been lumbered with. And wives must realize that to ask their men to do something that shatters their self-esteem is a double whammy for any man who feels that to submit to a woman is to lose his masculinity. A girl I once dated tried to tell me how good it made her feel if I opened the car door for her. It moved me a little to think it was important to her, but she was way off in assuming I would immediately do it. Of course, I would do it, she thought. After all, I’d want her to feel special. But she didn’t feel awful if I didn’t open the door, she simply felt neutral. She had no conception of how awful she was asking me to feel, just so that she could feel special. She had no idea how unloved she was making me feel, by pressuring me to make her feel extra loved. For me, opening a car door for a woman was roughly equivalent to bowing down and kissing someone’s shoes in public. (It was the feeling of public humiliation that was the hardest to bear.) What went a huge way toward curing me was being driven to my work a couple of times by a woman manager (many positions higher than me) and she opened the car door for me! That did wonders for showing me that opening a car door was not necessarily telling the whole world that you are under the thumb. Another help was a male friend of mine doing the same thing for me. It wasn’t that I discovered how good it feels to have a car door opened for one. I assume it meant a lot more to my girlfriend. But what it did was enable me to open a car door for her without feeling mortified. Don’t, however, imagine it’s a simple matter of your man seeing some other men behaving in the manner you would like him to behave. I loved my grandfather dearly, but you will remember that I was utterly unmoved by his attitude to deodorant, etc. It could do the trick if those men acting the way you want are people whose masculinity your man admires. If, however, you deliberately point out this behavior to your man (rather than let him discover it for himself) you could undermine everything. Here’s why Some women who leave their husbands are later amazed to see how their former husbands treat their new partners. ‘If my husband had treated me like that, I’d never have left him!’ they exclaim, looking on in wide eyed disbelief. A major reason for the change is that the first wife made a big deal about the behavior she wanted changed. This alerted the husband to the importance of this behavior and increased his motivation to change, but it was still an enormously difficult thing for him. Her nagging, or whatever, didn’t make it the slightest bit easier for him. Moreover, because she made such a big deal of it, for him to then change would make him feel he was proving in his eyes, his wife’s eyes, and possibly the world’s eyes that he was under his wife’s thumb. Now for many a man, this is not simply a matter of pride. Feeling he is under his wife’s thumb makes him feel he has utterly lost his masculinity – that he has failed as man. Giving into his wife on this issue could affect his sex drive, his work performance, even his desire to live. With a new partner who puts no demands on him, however, he’s free to express his love by doing something his former partner had shown him that women like, without feeling emasculated by thinking that his wife has dominated him. Of course, I’m not suggesting for a moment that the solution is to end the relationship! I am, however, alerting you to the bind a woman can put a man in. To Your Advantage You are sure to have sometimes worn a new dress or had your hair done differently and your husband hasn’t even noticed. That irks you. It makes you feel unappreciated. Nevertheless, it is a characteristic of husbands that works in your favor. Yes, he might have missed that more positive change until you drew his attention to it, but it also means he is probably oblivious to your fatter-tummy days, that wrinkle, how you look when you have just woken up, and so on. You needed that boost when you thought you looked good because you almost certainly see yourself through more critical eyes than your husband does. A psychological study showed that men usually see their wives as more attractive than their women really are. The man you really want, and the man you think you want, are quite different people. The last thing you really want is someone who pays close attention to your real physical appearance, because that person will be critical of you whenever you look less than stunning. What you really need is someone with an idealized image of you, and only your husband has that. Do that bit extra from time to time to make yourself more attractive, but be mature enough in your understanding of men to bluntly draw your husband’s attention to your new dress, or whatever. And realize that he does not have to be greatly impressed because for ninety percent of the time he thinks more highly of your appearance than you do. Moreover, unless you are way above average in knowing your man’s tastes, most of your changes will appeal to you and not to him, anyhow. In fact, most women dress primarily to please themselves rather than their husbands and yet they still expect their husbands to be greatly impressed. It’s the female ego. If you really understood, you would realize that many things that annoy you about your man actually work to your advantage. To give a totally different example, a woman used to hate the way her husband always double checked on her. ‘Did you remember to put out the cat?’ ‘Are you sure you locked the door?’ And so on. After years of letting this irritate her it finally hit her: this man was a highly regarded accountant. The prosperity she continually enjoyed hinged on the fact that she had married a man who would meticulously double check everything. Sure your man has infuriating faults, but chances are that you have more of a treasure in him than you realize. Wrap Up Being gentle, communicating feelings, spending more time with the kids, being romantic, in fact most things in which you would like your man to be different, have at least one root in a man’s upbringing and has become so much an integral part of who he is, that change is a painful, threatening thing. Take being romantic as an example. You might think the fact that he sometimes managed to act romantically when you were dating proves he is quite capable of it and it must be mere callousness that keeps him from acting the way you would like. But remember that everyone’s perception of how a dating person should behave is different from their perception of what is expected of someone in a permanent relationship. In your husband’s eyes, the proper difference between before and after is probably greater than you realize. Furthermore, you may have totally underestimated what he suffered emotionally by acting romantically earlier. Many men see it as groveling. They squirm inside and feel totally humiliated just to buy flowers or say ‘I love you.’ Would you walk down the street in nothing but your underwear to prove your love for your man? You might, if absolutely necessary. But you would not want to make a habit of it. And you would question his love if he continually expected it of you. That’s the sort of emotional cost many women unwittingly expect their men to pay. I have no wish to leave you with the impression that change is impossible. Not even recovery from sexual abuse and anorexia is impossible. Christians are even lucky enough to have such contact with God that they can pray and see the impossible happen. We must understand the dynamics of what is involved, however. It is too easy for a woman to mistakenly think something is mere stubbornness in her man and take it as proof of lack of love. Make this error and suddenly more will be at stake than should be the case. Chances are that your husband is far more loving and caring, and endures far more misunderstanding than you realize. Final Thought You know how famous men are for refusing to ask directions. When lost and there are people able to help, who needs a fool who stubbornly insists on finding his own way? When dangerously lost, with no help in sight, who is it that suddenly needs a wise man endowed with navigational skills honed by years of careful practice? Rather than foolishly despise your partner’s uniqueness, delight in it. One day your life or something you treasure could depend on it. Other valuable webpages: Supernatural Solutions for Habits & Things You Dislike About Yourself Putting Holy Fire in Your Marriage Serious, Do-It Yourself Healing From Emotional Pain Healing from Sexual Abuse To God, you are special

An inspiring account of one woman’s determinationto hold on to her marriage against all the odds Summary: In this era of disposable relationships, Carol displayed the determined faithfulness that Christians should be renowned for. For 26 years, Carol and Dave ( To protect her husband and others from embarrassment, real names have not been used) had a very special marriage. Then Dave inexplicably and dramatically changed. He became deeply embittered against Carol and finally walked out on her. His behavior was so obnoxious that many friends and counselors – even Carol’s fundamentalist pastor – counseled divorce. Instead, Carol continued to look to God. After almost two year’s separation, Dave returned home, yet still he avoided Carol, not even lifting a finger to help when she was totally bedridden due to cancer treatment. Drawing upon the supernatural resources of Almighty God, Carol fought natural feelings of resentment and prayerfully continued to persevere with the marriage. Now, five years after the crisis began, Dave has undergone a painfully slow but vast improvement and Carol, displaying the very faith in God that has brought her this far, is believing that even greater things are ahead for their marriage. Carol’s story: I was married to a wonderful man who was my high school sweetheart. I shall call him Dave. We had three children who were his life and who had made us both very proud. Dave was an excellent father. We were Christians, very active in our church, and although we were opposites, we got along well, each of us enjoying very different interests. As he told me often, we had the best marriage he knew of and all our friends seemed to agree. Life had been like a fairy tale for me. I had no reason to believe that it would ever change. Then several things happened that, I believe, contributed to the midlife depression that hit Dave. First, he sought a promotion at work that he had counted on for several years. Someone else won the position although Dave was probably more qualified. Soon after that, a man who had been like a father to Dave passed away. After that our two oldest boys left home within a year of each other to go to college. Then our remaining son began to rebel and got into serious trouble. Dave soon became very irritable, which was totally out of character for him. In his eyes I could do nothing right and just the sound of my voice seemed to put him on the edge. He seemed to look for reasons to get angry with me in order for us not to speak to each other. He acted as if everything about me disgusted or repulsed him. He stopped doing anything around the house and tried his best to work extra hours so that he didn’t have to face me as much. I tried, time and time again, to talk with Dave. He refused to admit there was a problem and when I pushed too hard, he’d simply scream that I was the problem. He accused me of ‘going crazy,’ of needing psychological counseling, of yelling when I was speaking quietly, and blamed me for anything that went wrong during his day. He acted as if he would explode if he was forced to speak to me or look at me. It even entered my mind that he might try to physically hurt me; something I’d never have dreamed previously. One day he simply did not come home. I knew immediately that he had left me. Our youngest child was still at home, causing problems and his father exiting at this time only made his rebellious behavior worse. We did not hear from Dave for almost a month. I spoke to his best friend, in whom he confided somewhat. He said Dave had told him that he hated me, never loved me, never should have married me, and that the children never should have been born. His friend was as shocked as I was. I tried to give Dave space. Shortly, my sons came home for the summer and my three children went together to see their father at work. He told them he was embarrassed and that they shouldn’t worry because he’d be home in ‘a couple of weeks.’ He said some very harsh things about me. I was shocked to hear how he’d run me down to my own children. He would never have done that in that past. I tried to immerse myself in activities. I had a full-time job as well as a big leadership role in my church. I also spent much time working in a nonprofit ministry of which I was the director. Often, however, I was unable to concentrate. It seemed that everything I tried to do, even simple tasks, took all my effort. I began to spiral into depression. After a time, I could not control the tears and was almost afraid to go to church because I was sure to make a spectacle of myself. I felt as if I was standing at the edge of a black hole and a physical force was pulling me down into it. I was terrified of what might happen to me if I didn’t have the strength to resist it. I confided in my gynecologist, who immediately recognized the symptoms of depression and prescribed an anti-depressant. Within a few days I began to feel the benefit of the medication and soon I was able to handle my emotions better. I continued, however, to cry a lot. Tears were probably a blessing because, along with prayer, they were the only thing that seemed to relieve my stress temporarily. I began to read all I could find about midlife crisis but I found little written on the subject. I believe God led me to Jim Conway’s book Men In Midlife Crisis, Chariot Victor Pub. It saved my sanity to realize that this was something that had happened to others and that some had even survived it. Prior to that, I had no idea what had happened to my husband and could only see that he had become a monster. Midlife Crisis If you hear of a man (or less often, a woman) who has been a faithful spouse and parent suddenly deserting his/her family, there is a good chance that midlife depression is a factor. Sufferers could destroy their entire family before the natural progression of this condition (lasting up to 7 years) comes to a slow, painful end. Midlife crisis has been the butt of jokes in our society. It brings to mind visions of men who cannot face the fact that they are not as young or sexy as they once were; men who seem to think that a toupee or a little red sports car will renew their fading youth. However, midlife crisis (for lack of a better term) is very real, despite what some psychologists say, and very destructive to families. It has become an epidemic about which most of us know dangerously little. Midlife crisis is an illness, a chemical imbalance that either is or highly resembles a typical affective mood disorder (clinical depression or bipolar). If recognized, it can be treated. The signs are sleeplessness, anxiety, repetitive thinking and talking, weight loss or gain, irritability. During this time suffers might seek help; once they are in the middle of it, however, they are much less likely to do so. Factors that can contribute to the onset of midlife crisis between the ages of 35-50 include the loss of a promotion or job, a death of a close family member, the empty nest, and/or rebellious teenagers. My husband suffered all of these and spiralled into a depression and strange behavior that became so bad that he left me for two years. During this dark time, I read all I could get my hands on about midlife crisis and found precious little written on the subject. One good resource I highly recommend, however, is Men In Midlife Crisis by Jim Conway, Chariot Victor Pub; ISBN: 1564766985. It is written by a pastor/professional counselor who himself experienced midlife crisis. This book saved my sanity, enabling me to understand that this was something that had happened to others. Prior to reading the book, I had no idea what had happened to my husband and could only see that he had become a monster. Dave hid from me, our children, and friends, becoming a workaholic, dedicating his life to making money. He was obsessed. It was hard for me to understand how he could even function through a day at work when he was so irrational each time I saw him. He was almost a double personality. Many people would tell me that he seemed just like the same old Dave to them. He only allowed those very close to him see his acting out. When he wasn’t working, he was holed up in his apartment in the dark, with the TV on, or asleep. He didn’t answer the phone or the doorbell. I tried to not bother him most of the time, sensing that he needed to be alone, but occasionally I could not resist checking on him to make sure he was all right. Usually he looked terrible: unkempt, needing a bath, a shave, and haircut. He aged greatly during this time. At times he showed signs of mania, announcing that he was having the best time of his life. He often said he felt 20 years old again, only much, much wiser. Sometimes he would extol his own virtues to the extreme (telling me that I’d never find another man as good as him, etc.) which would have been almost funny had it not been so alarming and out of character. At times he was irrational. Other times he was miserable and full of self pity and it was always my fault. He told the children that the reason he could not live with me any longer was that when we rented movies, I chose ones he couldn’t tolerate. He would often line the kids up and pace up and down in front of them, yelling the same things over and over for 30 minutes at a time. When I confronted him and tried to make him identify the problem, he would only say ‘You know what it is. Don’t act so innocent.’ I truly did not know what I had done and he never did tell me. I worried about him possibly considering suicide. Resigned to the fact that he was not coming home, I had divorce papers drawn up and presented Dave with them. He had agreed to meet me in a restaurant because he said it made him ‘uncomfortable to drive down our driveway.’ He would not answer any of my questions or discuss a divorce, but simply sat and grinned at me sarcastically while I poured my heart out to him. So I left him sitting in the restaurant with the papers and told him I’d contact him again in a month. When I did, he said he had thrown the papers away. I knew then that he really did not want a divorce. I also realized for the first time that he was no longer in control of his actions. I believe his mind was spinning and he could not stop the horrible thoughts he was having, however irrational they had become. Some men who reach this point realize there is something very wrong and are willing to go for counseling. Dave, I believe, realized there was a problem, but was terrified of it and also had a macho attitude which kept him from admitting it or seeking help. It was easier to blame me. Of course, I was not a perfect wife. Although I don’t feel I was the cause of Dave leaving home, there were still things about me that needed to be addressed and changed. I began to spend much time in prayer and in seeking God’s will. I went through a very painful process as the Lord started to show me myself – through his eyes. It was a time of growth and although I’d never choose to go through that trying time again, I would also not choose to change it if I could. The experience has given me great strength and God had the freedom to teach me so much because he had my undivided attention. I sought advice and help from all the normal places. I went to three counselors, all ‘Christian,’ who talked about my own self-esteem and helped me see there were things I had to do to take care of myself during this time. After a month or two, however, they spoke of ultimatums and ‘making a decision’ and ‘getting on with my life.’ Mostly they made me feel as if I was being a doormat. My self-esteem was not necessarily boosted by talking with them. I spoke to my pastor several times and he gave me some insight on the workings of the male mind. However, he, too, although a fundamental Bible-preacher, advised divorce because Dave had ‘committed emotional adultery.’ I decided not to consult my pastor again, nor the counselors. I pledged to myself to get my counseling solely from the Bible and from friends who took the commandments of God literally. I had to hang on to the Scriptures in order to continue to even function at that point. Grantley Morris was one of the lifesavers tossed to me when I felt as if I were drowning. Although his website had no information specifically about midlife crisis, there was much that I needed to hear – many words of comfort and instruction which were a great help to me. I believe God lead me to this website where I could learn much. We have never met in person, but Grantley was always available by e-mail, always advising me to wait on God, sometimes encouraging me to stop whining, and sometimes building me up in the Lord. God also provided some female friends who stuck by me. Although they were quite angry at the way Dave treated his family, they supported me in not going ahead with a divorce and encouraged me to understand my husband and pray for him. I have found in talking with other women in a similar situation, that friends like this are a rare commodity. Most of them get tired of hearing you whine after a few months and begin advising that you ‘get over it’ or ‘dump him.’ I had those kinds of friends too, but there were two saintly women who upheld me and counseled me to respect what God says in his word about the marriage vow. One man, Dave’s good friend, who had been a longtime family friend as well, also counseled me from a male point of view, always telling me that he believed Dave would return, and encouraging me to wait. I consider myself very blessed to have had such friends. Although I would never have considered myself a dependent wife, when Dave left, I was scared and alone. Often the pain was so great that I didn’t know if I could live. Many nights I would collapse on the floor, unable to word a prayer, simply crying out ‘Help!’ I was broken. He was my one true love. I had been married to this man since the age of sixteen. We met Dave while I was still in elementary school and we started dating in high school. Because Dave was in the military, we moved far away from both our families, after we married. We only had each other to depend on. I always felt I could tell him anything, and that he was my best friend. I didn’t worry about keeping anything from him, even my ‘ugly side.’ He knew me inside and out. Although not an open person by nature, he was able to share with me emotionally as well. Now there was no one who could help me other than God. I believe that the Lord finally had me where he wanted me – dependent only on him. I gained a great compassion for those who are hurting from marital difficulties. I began to exert sheer will in order to function physically. I became adept at many skills that I hadn’t possessed before. I learned how to fix a leaky faucet, and to replace the end on an extension cord that I whacked off while trying to trim an endless row of shrubs with electric hedge trimmers. I was very proud of such accomplishments because Dave had always handled them. I was proving that I could live on my own if I had to. Daily I was spending two, three and four hours with the Lord, praying, reading the Bible, or simply listening to God. Much of that time was spent outside, where I could be surrounded by nature. I also became great friends with our family dog, who I’d simply tolerated before. The Lord even used the dog to make me feel safe when I was alone at night. That pooch became a good friend to me and often soothed my loneliness by simply lying down next to me when she sensed I needed a warm body close by. All this was therapy for me. The Lord was very creative in providing me with strength sufficient to allow me to continue putting one foot in front of the other. After a while Dave lost his feeling of euphoria. He became depressed and full of self-pity. Whenever any of the family saw him, he bemoaned all that he had missed out on or lost because of us. (I was the major villain in his life, although at times he included the children.) He often went on long road trips, not telling anyone where he was going or how long he would be gone. We worried that he would get in an accident on the other end of the country and no one would know where he was. He went to great lengths to hide our separation from his family, who only saw us annually. He made up all kinds of stories to tell his parents so that it seemed he still lived at home. He also pretended to everyone where he worked that he still lived at home. Later, when that became too difficult, he said I lived with him in his apartment and that we were selling our home. When he left, Dave didn’t take a thing with him. All his clothes were left in the closet. He didn’t even have an extra pair of socks. After about six months, he began to break in to the house (I’d had the locks changed) and steal things. He even took the furniture off our front porch and stuffed it into a utility shed where he was living. During the next two years, he purchased a home, five vehicles, a big screen TV, furniture, expensive home appliances, and was considering a boat (he had always hated boats prior to this time). As nearly as I could calculate, he spent over $65,000 and maxed out all his credit cards. This from a man who had pinched pennies most of his life. In the meantime, he canceled my credit cards, closed our joint bank accounts, and refused to help me with bills. It seemed he enjoyed the fact that I might be suffering financially and had a need to punish me. Although he was away from home for almost two years, my husband never became involved with another woman. Typically, men with midlife crisis, seek comfort through an illicit relationship which only causes further pain for all involved. Dave had problems with impotence, which was probably a blessing from the Lord. I am told male impotence is a common problem for men who are suffering midlife depression, and some men set out to prove they can be a man with another woman, concluding that their wife is the problem. I suppose a few, like Dave, do not wish to take the chance of being humiliated in front of a new lady, so they simply shut down sexually. The sexual acting out can only make things worse. I thank God that I did not have to face that hurdle. The Lord promises in his Word that he will not allow any more hardship than we can carry. Maybe I couldn’t have handled that one. After two years of enduring what seemed akin to the death of my husband (he no longer existed as I had known him) I went for a mammogram a few months late. I was told I had breast cancer and that I’d need surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. I was in a daze to say the least. My sons came to my rescue and lent me the adult strength they had gained through this hurtful time. I decided not to tell Dave. I did not want to face his nonchalant rejection and would not have been surprised if he had laughed or said that I deserved cancer because I was responsible for his misery. However, my oldest son informed him and Dave came to the hospital about an hour before I checked out. I think he was waiting to find out for sure that the lump the doctors removed was definitely malignant before he showed up. I was too sick to care much if he was there or not, but he followed us home and stayed. If I had known then what I know now, I’d have probably refused him entrance into the house, but again, God was in control rather than me. After about a week, I was feeling much better physically and friends and family had left. Dave and I were alone. Dave retreated into a shell where he remained for nearly a year, improving only painfully slowly. He slept most of the time. He would go for days without uttering a word. Whenever we passed in the hall, he would step aside to avoid being close to me. I could not allow myself to be affected too deeply by all of this because I was in the middle of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. I had to give Dave over to God and take care of myself. Several times I was so sick from the chemo that I went upstairs to bed for several days at a time. Dave remained in the house downstairs, never leaving, but not so much as asking if I needed a drink of water. Several times I had to call a friend to help me get to the bathroom because I was so weak and Dave would not or could not function. He was like a zombie. As I began to get better, Dave started to improve as well. His progress was very slow and sometimes I wondered if I was only imagining it. Significant family events helped Dave take tiny but important steps. Our oldest son, for example, did a very wise thing by including Dave in his wedding party. Not wanting to hurt me, our son asked my permission to include Dave. I struggled because my first reaction was that Dave didn’t deserve to even attend, but I knew this attitude was wrong. Dave’s participation was one of the things that said ‘you’re still a part of our family and we are ready to forgive and include you again.’ During the crisis time, all of our children were married within the space of a year. The first wedding was while Dave and I were separated and it was bitter-sweet due to the way that he acted. Then our oldest married and included Dave in the wedding party. Our youngest son’s wedding took place in our backyard where we hosted 300 people. It was quite an undertaking and was the first ‘project’ that Dave took an interest in after he came home. It seemed that it was something he could succeed at and he took joy in setting up a tent and chairs, filling the pool with balloons, and manicuring the yard to perfection. He even appeared to enjoy paying for our portion of the expenses. It seemed to be his return to the responsibility of fatherhood. When our first grandchild was born, Dave did not even seem interested. I often placed the baby in his lap and after a few minutes he would return her to me. As she grew, he slowly warmed to her. Later on there were times when he seemed hurt that she ‘didn’t like him.’ I tried to point out that you must spend time with a child and show interest for them to feel comfortable with you. He began to try a little to build a relationship with the baby. Another time, after attending a play, he commented to me about how our oldest son had done an excellent job. I told him that it would mean a lot for him to repeat the compliment to our son. That day at lunch, we were all together and Dave did just that. It might seem a small thing, but it was a big step for Dave. Small things like that were the baby steps that it took for Dave to become himself again. Dave began to do little things that reminded me of the old Dave and eventually I was able to stop walking on eggshells around him and relax a little. I seldom pushed him because I was sure that God was to be the one to heal and change him rather than me. I knew that I had to be patient although it was difficult. For years he was unable to have any kind of physical relationship. Intimacy, whether emotional or physical still frightens him, but he is making great strides. I can only trust that God will bring him back 100% or better. I believe that when God restores, you usually get more than you had in the first place, so I’m counting on an even better relationship than our original one. Today Dave has improved to the point where he is nearly himself again. He does not talk about the bad times. It seems he simply cannot face them. Sometimes I think he does not even remember some of the horrible things he said or did. Maybe he just wants to forget. I continue to pray that someday he will do what the Lord expects of him and ask my forgiveness. It would mean so much to me. However, the Lord expects me to forgive as well, even before forgiveness is asked for. So I state to the Lord and to myself almost daily that I forgive Dave of all the hurt he caused me. I don’t always feel forgiving and I continue to experience bitterness at times. Forgiveness is a process – in my case, at least, a slow one. But if one prays and states it often enough, in time it will become complete. It has been nearly five years since the beginning of Dave’s midlife crisis, depression, breakdown, or whatever term best describes what happened to him. God has blessed my family so much that I am almost fearful. But I am grateful as well. Dave now wants to be with me almost every spare minute that he has. Although he can’t seem to talk about it, his actions speak loudly. I long to hear him say that he loves me, and for him to be romantic as in the old days. But I know, too, that love is commitment, not flowery words. I try my best to continue to wait on God for the fulfillment of his promise. And I thank Him daily for His grace. I feel impressed to tell my story because I know that there are many women (and men) who are facing this pain which seems to come out of nowhere to strike unsuspecting families who are totally unprepared to fight back. Many have no clue what has happened to their former husband or wife and simply assume they’ve changed into a monster. It is not an easy process to survive, but there is hope for families experiencing this crisis. On one of my dark days I asked God to please allow me to help someone else who would follow me in this process. I prayed that something good could come from it. God has already given me the opportunity many times, and now, through this webpage, He is allowing me to share with others. I am thankful. During the bad times, I cannot say God spoke audibly to me or that there was any miraculous occurrence or vision. I cried, I pleaded, I begged for God to give me a sign, to tell me what to do to fix things. (I am, like most women, a notorious fixer!) The only message I received was ‘wait.’ It was not what I wanted to hear. It was frustrating. Frankly, it made me mad and I often railed at God. However, it was crystal clear that it was God’s way and it was what was best for me. He always gives the best advice. I desire for another marriage to be saved through someone else reading this account and realizing that they too can be given the strength to wait for a family to be healed. God bless. Other Webpages about marriage True Love: Marital Love at it’s Best See Romantic fiction: The Hidden Enemy How Holy Wives Express Marital Love: Smashing inhibitions and Misconceptions. How to Increase Your Wife’s Sexual Responsiveness (Partly written by Carol) Putting Holy Fire In Your Marriage

Getting a man to a marriage counselor is about as easy as getting anyone to volunteer for a full strip search in a crowded room of gawking onlookers. The average man finds it absolutely humiliating. And uncalled for. Many men would consider it betrayal merely to contemplate revealing the privacies of one’s marriage to a third person. They view it is an almost unforgivable breach of trust that attacks the very foundation of marriage. Many a man would also regard his wife suggesting the involvement of a marriage counselor as playing dirty. In his eyes, it is his wife conniving to get outsiders to gang up on him, just to get her own selfish way. The whole concept of resolving problems by talking about them is far more a feminine approach than a masculine one. Almost everything about counseling is more suited to women than to men. As such, it is strongly biased against men, just as it would be unfair to expect women to agree to settling marital differences by arm wrestling. If it is cruel to expect a man prove his love by demanding he go to work in high heels and lipstick like a woman, then it is an act of cruelty or ignorance to expect him to prove his love by solving marital problems like a woman by him submitting to marital counseling. Most wives regard male resistance to counseling as pig-headed stubbornness and callous indifference to their wives’ needs. This feminine perception, however, is frequently just as much a reflection of a wife’s inability to understand men, as her husband’s need for marriage counseling is, in part, the product of his inability to understand women. Nevertheless, if you have read everything you can and tried everything you can think of, and the problem still threatens your marriage, marital counseling might be the only option. So how can you persuade your husband to see a marriage counselor? I have written a webpage to help motivate men either to undergo marital counseling, or to change so much that their wives become convinced that all need for counseling has vanished. Have a look at the webpage and see how it might help you. You might decide to give your husband the web address of the page, or print the page for him, or read it to him, or get ideas from it to share with him. The Webpage

My husband was brought up on a farm. That pretty much sums up his sex education. It is a real blessing to read Understanding Your Wife’s View Of Sex and know that at least one man really understands his wife’s view of sex, and is willing to accommodate it. Yet I believe you have done the right thing in reminding wives of their equally solemn obligations to their husbands. I’m now a widow, after 38 years of marriage. My husband showed nothing like the kindness and consideration of the writer of that webpage. In fact, here’s how I initially reacted to parts of the webpage. Gone all the time but just showing up for sex For a few months my husband was working away from home, and would only get home at the weekend. I don’t remember him ever asking me what kind of a week I had had, struggling with four little kids on my own. There was usually only one thing on his mind – the bedroom. “Is there anything I can do to reduce your stress level?” I asked her. On reading this I laughed sarcastically at the thought of my husband ever being considerate enough to let me off having sex because I was exhausted or unwell. Dream on! He seemed to specialize in demanding sex in the most inconvenient of times and places, with total disregard to my feelings. She found herself trying to stay up as late as possible, so that I would be so exhausted as to fall straight to sleep. Been there, done that! My wife had been “sleeping with the enemy” and the “enemy” was me! I can certainly relate to that! “Or what if my wife develops breast cancer and requires a mastectomy?” I never had to face that, but if ever I was lying in bed sick – I was in the right position, wasn’t I – it would be a shame to bypass such an opportunity! Considering that was what my marriage was like, week after week for 38 years, why did I choose “the wives should obey their husbands” scenario – especially since, as so many abused women have found to their sorrow, many male church leaders seem incapable of understanding the distress abused wives experience on a day-to-day basis? Even in our politically correct climate, while ministers are very quick to point out the wives’ responsibilities to their husbands, the converse is seldom heard. Yet Scripture is quite strong on this point! Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Colossians 3:19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. 1 Peter 3:7 Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers. These days we often hear the expression “friendly fire.” Some church leaders are very good at doing this to wives in their congregations who are struggling in an abusive marriage. I remember one elder saying to me: “Your husband seems a very easy person to get on with.” I snapped back: “As long as he’s getting his own way!” Although I didn’t suffer in my marriage nearly as much as some wives, I quite understand why some women have become disillusioned with their church and – mistakenly – with their God. Often these hurting women are treated as being wholly responsible for the disharmony in the marriage. My heart goes out to them! One experience where I sought help from a minister, was particularly hurtful. With great difficulty I shared with this man what was distressing me the most; that my husband had insisted on what I consider to be degrading, perverted acts, despite me pleading that he not do it. Although I was facing this minister across his desk, his reaction caused me to feel that his office had suddenly lengthened, and that this man and I were at opposite ends of a 20 foot room. On hearing my muffled words, the minister had immediately swung around in his swivel chair so he didn’t have to look at me. I felt totally rejected. He proceeded to say in a cold voice, “Naturally, I only have your side of the story. Would your husband be willing to talk to me?” I gave this minister our home phone number and he rang my husband. My husband’s reply (related to me by the minister) was, “I don’t have time to talk to you!” Any hope I may have had dissolved. This incident so hurt and humiliated me that I was unwilling to share it with any of my friends. Had I done so, I am sure some of them would have been even more adamant about my right to leave my husband and seek my own happiness. So why didn’t I? I do not consider myself infallible. In explaining why I stayed in the marriage, I can only speak for myself. If anyone devoted to Christ, after seeking to die to self and to receive God’s understanding of his Word, were to disagree with my view, I have no right to consider myself more able to hear from God than her. There is one basic reason why I stayed: I had promised God to obey my husband. Ecclesiastes 4-6a When you make a vow to God, do not delay in fulfilling it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow. It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it. Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. And do not protest . . . “My vow was a mistake.” Not only had I promised to obey my husband, I had also promised to stay married to him. And it was only because I had a personal relationship with God, that I was able to endure the ongoing mental and emotional cruelty my husband kept dumping on me. I must point out, however, that my husband was faithful. I was also blessed in that he was not violent. He seemed so driven by the S word that even if he had raised his hand against me he would most likely have got sidetracked – again! Nevertheless, friends of mine felt that I would have been justified in leaving him; that I shouldn’t have sentenced myself to penal servitude for all those years. But if life was about us making sure we get fairly treated, there is no way Christ would have come to earth and let himself be unfairly treated. And Scripture repeatedly urges us to follow Christ’s example that we might share in his reward. My children had no problems with my husband. Did I have the right to deprive them of the constant presence of a good father and provider just for the sake of my own personal happiness? And what right did I have to deprive my husband of his children? And I couldn’t evade this Scripture: 1 Corinthians 7:4 The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. So how could I in all conscience deny my husband access to my body? Yes, he had Scriptural obligations to me that I felt he ignored. He wasn’t even a Christian. (Yes, I had foolishly disobeyed God by marrying a non-Christian.) But since when does someone acting like a non-Christian give me the right to act like a non-Christian? Of course, I didn’t always like what the Bible said, but that didn’t change what it said. I was particularly challenged by the book of Hosea. God was determined to help the Israelites understand how much he loved them in spite of their constant rebellion against him. So he told Hosea, one of his prophets, to actually marry an adulterous woman, (who had possibly been a cultic prostitute in the service of Baal). Her ongoing unfaithfulness to her husband Hosea, became a living parable of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God; and God’s willingness to forgive them and be reconciled to them. Speaking of Israel, the Lord said: Hosea 2:14, 19-20 Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. . . . I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD. But Hosea must have had a much better disposition than I did! Over the long years of my marriage I grew very bitter toward my husband; and although I obeyed him by yielding to his sexual demands, it was usually with gritted teeth, and with a snarling resentment burning inside of me. So I was appalled when God made it clear to me that not only did my actions toward my husband have to be right, my attitude also had to be right. And he gave me this Scripture: 1 Peter 3:1-4 Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty . . . should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. I was an absolute stranger to “a gentle and quiet spirit”. But then, at some stage, I noticed the phrase “in the same way” near the beginning of that passage. In the same way as what? I checked the context: 1 Peter 2:21-23 To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth. When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. So I decided I needed to rely on God’s grace to develop in me a Christlike, “gentle and quiet spirit” and trust the One “who judges justly” to take care of consequences. Wives have an awesome privilege – and an awesome responsibility. By being cooperative whenever her husband asks for sex, a wife is lessening the possibility that he will be tempted by women outside the home. Though no defense is foolproof, wives are God’s first line of defense in morally protecting their husbands. Proverbs 31:11 says of a wife of noble character, “Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value.” Actually, the KJV renders it, “he shall have no need of spoil.” (That is not the weird rendering that it may seem at first reading. It is a reference to the spoils of war and is so translated by the NIV in every other instance, with the exception of one expression that it chooses to paraphrase, rather than give a literal rendering. I have always taken this to mean that because I was always available, my husband never needed to go making conquests elsewhere. The following is every occurrence of the word used in Proverbs 31:11. In each verse the English translation of the Hebrew word is highlighted. Genesis 49:27 Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he divides the plunder . Exodus 15:9 The enemy boasted, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake them. I will divide the spoils ; I will gorge myself on them. I will draw my sword and my hand will destroy them.’ Numbers 31:11 They took all the plunder and spoils, including the people and animals, Numbers 31:12 and brought the captives, spoils and plunder to Moses and Eleazar the priest and the Israelite assembly at their camp on the plains of Moab, by the Jordan across from Jericho. Deuteronomy 2:35 But the livestock and the plunder from the towns we had captured we carried off for ourselves. Deuteronomy 3:7 But all the livestock and the plunder from their cities we carried off for ourselves. Deuteronomy 13:16 Gather all the plunder of the town into the middle of the public square and completely burn the town and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the LORD your God. It is to remain a ruin forever, never to be rebuilt. Deuteronomy 20:14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies. Joshua 7:21 When I saw in the plunder a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath. Joshua 8:2 You shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king, except that you may carry off their plunder and livestock for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city.” Joshua 8:27 But Israel did carry off for themselves the livestock and plunder of this city, as the LORD had instructed Joshua. Joshua 11:14 The Israelites carried off for themselves all the plunder and livestock of these cities, but all the people they put to the sword until they completely destroyed them, not sparing anyone that breathed. Joshua 22:8 saying, “Return to your homes with your great wealth – with large herds of livestock, with silver, gold, bronze and iron, and a great quantity of clothing – and divide with your brothers the plunder from your enemies.” Judges 5:30 ‘Are they not finding and dividing the spoils : a girl or two for each man, colorful garments as plunder for Sisera, colorful garments embroidered, highly embroidered garments for my neck – all this as plunder ?’ Judges 8:24 And he said, “I do have one request, that each of you give me an earring from your share of the plunder .” (It was the custom of the Ishmaelites to wear gold earrings.) Judges 8:25 They answered, “We’ll be glad to give them.” So they spread out a garment, and each man threw a ring from his plunder onto it. 1 Samuel 14:30 How much better it would have been if the men had eaten today some of the plunder they took from their enemies. Would not the slaughter of the Philistines have been even greater?” 1 Samuel 14:32 They pounced on the plunder and, taking sheep, cattle and calves, they butchered them on the ground and ate them, together with the blood. 1 Samuel 15:19 Why did you not obey the LORD? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the LORD?” 1 Samuel 15:21 The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder , the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the LORD your God at Gilgal.” 1 Samuel 30:16 He led David down, and there they were, scattered over the countryside, eating, drinking and reveling because of the great amount of plunder they had taken from the land of the Philistines and from Judah. 1 Samuel 30:19 Nothing was missing: young or old, boy or girl, plunder or anything else they had taken. David brought everything back. 1 Samuel 30:20 He took all the flocks and herds, and his men drove them ahead of the other livestock, saying, “This is David’s plunder .” 1 Samuel 30:22 But all the evil men and troublemakers among David’s followers said, “Because they did not go out with us, we will not share with them the plunder we recovered. However, each man may take his wife and children and go.” 1 Samuel 30:26 When David arrived in Ziklag, he sent some of the plunder to the elders of Judah, who were his friends, saying, “Here is a present for you from the plunder of the LORD’s enemies.” 2 Samuel 3:22 Just then David’s men and Joab returned from a raid and brought with them a great deal of plunder . But Abner was no longer with David in Hebron, because David had sent him away, and he had gone in peace. 2 Samuel 8:12 Edom and Moab, the Ammonites and the Philistines, and Amalek. He also dedicated the plunder taken from Hadadezer son of Rehob, king of Zobah. 2 Samuel 12:30 He took the crown from the head of their king – its weight was a talent of gold, and it was set with precious stones – and it was placed on David’s head. He took a great quantity of plunder from the city 2 Kings 3:23 “That’s blood!” they said. “Those kings must have fought and slaughtered each other. Now to the plunder , Moab!” 1 Chronicles 20:2 David took the crown from the head of their king – its weight was found to be a talent of gold, and it was set with precious stones – and it was placed on David’s head. He took a great quantity of plunder from the city 1 Chronicles 26:27 Some of the plunder taken in battle they dedicated for the repair of the temple of the LORD. 2 Chronicles 14:13 and Asa and his army pursued them as far as Gerar. Such a great number of Cushites fell that they could not recover; they were crushed before the LORD and his forces. The men of Judah carried off a large amount of plunder . 2 Chronicles 15:11 At that time they sacrificed to the LORD seven hundred head of cattle and seven thousand sheep and goats from the plunder they had brought back. 2 Chronicles 20:25 So Jehoshaphat and his men went to carry off their plunder, and they found among them a great amount of equipment and clothing and also articles of value – more than they could take away. There was so much plunder that it took three days to collect it. 2 Chronicles 24:23 At the turn of the year, the army of Aram marched against Joash; it invaded Judah and Jerusalem and killed all the leaders of the people. They sent all the plunder to their king in Damascus. 2 Chronicles 28:8 The Israelites took captive from their kinsmen two hundred thousand wives, sons and daughters. They also took a great deal of plunder , which they carried back to Samaria. 2 Chronicles 28:15 The men designated by name took the prisoners, and from the plunder they clothed all who were naked. They provided them with clothes and sandals, food and drink, and healing balm. All those who were weak they put on donkeys. So they took them back to their fellow countrymen at Jericho, the City of Palms, and returned to Samaria. Esther 3:13 Dispatches were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces with the order to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews – young and old, women and little children – on a single day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods. Esther 8:11 The king’s edict granted the Jews in every city the right to assemble and protect themselves; to destroy, kill and annihilate any armed force of any nationality or province that might attack them and their women and children; and to plunder the property of their enemies. Psalms 68:12 Kings and armies flee in haste; in the camps men divide the plunder . Psalms 119:162 I rejoice in your promise like one who finds great spoil . Proverbs 1:13 we will get all sorts of valuable things and fill our houses with plunder ; Proverbs 16:19 Better to be lowly in spirit and among the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud. Isaiah 8:4 Before the boy knows how to say ‘My father’ or ‘My mother,’ the wealth of Damascus and the plunder of Samaria will be carried off by the king of Assyria. Isaiah 9:3 You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as men rejoice when dividing the plunder . Isaiah 10:2 to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. Isaiah 10:6 I send him against a godless nation, I dispatch him against a people who anger me, to seize loot and snatch plunder, and to trample them down like mud in the streets. Isaiah 33:4 Your plunder , O nations, is harvested as by young locusts; like a swarm of locusts men pounce on it. Isaiah 33:23 Your rigging hangs loose: The mast is not held secure, the sail is not spread. Then an abundance of spoils will be divided and even the lame will carry off plunder. Isaiah 53:12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. Jeremiah 49:32 Their camels will become plunder, and their large herds will be booty . I will scatter to the winds those who are in distant places and will bring disaster on them from every side,” declares the LORD. Jeremiah 50:10 So Babylonia will be plundered ; all who plunder her will have their fill,” declares the LORD. Ezekiel 7:21 I will hand it all over as plunder to foreigners and as loot to the wicked of the earth, and they will defile it. Ezekiel 29:19 Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am going to give Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he will carry off its wealth. He will loot and plunder the land as pay for his army. Ezekiel 38:12 I will plunder and loot and turn my hand against the resettled ruins and the people gathered from the nations, rich in livestock and goods, living at the center of the land. Ezekiel 38:13 Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish and all her villages will say to you, “Have you come to plunder? Have you gathered your hordes to loot, to carry off silver and gold, to take away livestock and goods and to seize much plunder ?” Daniel 11:24 When the richest provinces feel secure, he will invade them and will achieve what neither his fathers nor his forefathers did. He will distribute plunder, loot and wealth among his followers. He will plot the overthrow of fortresses – but only for a time. Zechariah 2:9 I will surely raise my hand against them so that their slaves will plunder them. Then you will know that the LORD Almighty has sent me. Zechariah 14:1 A day of the LORD is coming when your plunder will be divided among you. The only exceptions: In the following, the NIV chose not a literal translation, but a paraphrase. The Hebrew literally refers to being given one’s life as the spoils of war, which the NIV paraphrases “escape with one’s life.” Jeremiah 21:9 Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague. But whoever goes out and surrenders to the Babylonians who are besieging you will live; he will escape with his life . Jeremiah 38:2 “This is what the LORD says: ‘Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague, but whoever goes over to the Babylonians will live. He will escape with his life ; he will live.’ Jeremiah 39:18 I will save you; you will not fall by the sword but will escape with your life , because you trust in me, declares the LORD. Jeremiah 45:5 Should you then seek great things for yourself? Seek them not. For I will bring disaster on all people, declares the LORD, but wherever you go I will let you escape with your life . The only other time the NIV deviates is: Proverbs 31:11 Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. I am more grateful to God than I can express, that he enabled me to be obedient to him, and thus keep my husband contented and keep my marriage intact. My own parents were divorced and so I do know first hand how distressing divorce is for the children. Although it worked for me, I do not doubt that certain men will stray no matter how accommodating their wives are. Had I the misfortunate to have had such a husband, I would have been heartbroken, but at least I would have had the satisfaction of knowing I had done my utmost to prevent it.

Setting the Scene The average woman shudders at the thought of undergoing marital counseling. Even so, she has no idea how traumatic men find it. She mistakenly thinks a man’s refusal to see a marriage counselor proves he doesn’t love her. So let’s put aside the notion of actually seeing a counselor. Instead, let’s face the implications of living with a woman who thinks she should humiliate herself and her husband by subjecting her marriage to counseling. Let’s together search for the best way to handle this awkward situation. The Nitty Gritty “If it ain’t broken, why fix it?” That’s the seemingly sensible attitude most men have toward relationships. In reality, however, a marriage is like an aircraft. Not only will regular maintenance and tuning significantly improve a plane’s performance and one’s enjoyment of flying, once something is allowed to break down, the whole plane usually crashes. Then it’s too late to fix anything. It is astounding how many men suddenly get motivated to improve their marriage, only to discover that it is too late. Statistics indicate that most divorces are initiated by women and that most men did not even see it coming. Yes, their wives complained about various things, but the men weathered each storm and things always seemed to settle down again. Women typically let their anguish build up within them until they explode at the time of month when they are least able to hold it in any longer. After letting some words gush out they yet again suppress their marital pain and frustration. Men conclude that these cycles are simply a symptom of normal womanhood and so can be safely ignored. What is actually happening at such times, is that men are being granted an invaluable glimpse of what is really troubling their wives. Their marriage has a problem that can only be temporarily hidden. Left untouched, such a problem will come back to haunt you and possibly destroy your marriage. Most men who kill their marriage had no idea what they were doing. Confusion runs wild because none of us can climb inside our partners’ brains to evaluate just how serious a matter is. No one can feel another person’s pain. We can only guess. Men regularly underestimate how much their wives are hurting and overestimate their wives’ ability to tolerate marital disappointments. Husbands tend to assume women are like hypochondriacs, making a big fuss about nothing, when most wives are actually stoically trying to endure things they find almost unbearable. If your wife is an exception and really does complain without reason, this is a particular concern because at any moment she could cry, ‘Wolf!’ and it be genuine. Wives are easily shattered. Not realizing that they have married delicate crystal, husbands think it’s safe to treat their wives as if they are made of rubber and will bounce back. The consequences of this misconception are frightening. A significant reason for men so tragically misreading the seriousness of their marital situation is that the sexes are so different. What for one partner is essential for marital survival might hardly matter at all for the other. If a woman thinks a marriage counselor is needed, it’s as serious as a warning light on an aircraft’s instrument panel. You ignore it at your peril. To the pilot, everything seems to be functioning perfectly, but the warning light reveals things his own senses cannot detect. To wait until it is obvious that the plane is in trouble would be suicidal. The warning light indicates that now is the critical moment – the one window of opportunity before it is too late. If he is to avoid disaster he must disregard his own perceptions and believe what the instruments are telling him. No matter how happy you are with your marriage, it takes just one person to file for divorce. As it takes two wings to fly, so it takes two people to keep a marriage from crashing. If one wing is about to fall off, the condition of the other wing makes no difference. You know how your wing is going, but only your wife knows exactly how her wing is faring. If one partner says there is a serious problem in the marriage, that marriage is headed for disaster, no matter how secure the other partner feels. Your certainty that your wife will tough it out has no relevance as to whether you will end up yet another statistic in the long line of men shocked to suddenly find themselves without a marriage. Alternatives to Counseling Who can best determine exactly how much your wife will tolerate before walking out on the marriage? Given the uniqueness of every person, the person most able to know what for a specific woman is essential for marital survival should not be a counselor, but the woman herself. You have access to this goldmine of unique and vital information. Have you made full use of this invaluable resource? Do so, and there is a good chance that you will eliminate the need for a counselor. And when there really is no need for a counselor, your wife will know it. Men so often try hard to please their wives, only to have little of it appreciated. Loving husbands can completely miss it because a wife’s needs and marital priorities can be wildly different to what her husband had always assumed. The key issue is not the amount of effort you make, but whether the effort is misdirected. The only way to know is to coax your wife to tell you, to listen carefully and then take seriously what she says. Counseling becomes necessary when a husband has not believed his wife’s complaints. His last chance is that he might at least believe the counselor even if he refuses to believe his own wife when she says she is hurting and their marriage is in bad shape. Many a trip to a counselor or a divorce court could have been avoided had a man simply believed his wife. It is noteworthy that over and over the Bible tells husbands to love their wives, and 1 Corinthians 13:7 says that love believes all things. If your wife says she is thirsty, do you believe her? It makes no difference that you don’t feel thirsty or that it seems to you that she has already had enough water. Perhaps she has a natural need for more water than you or maybe she has an undiagnosed medical condition. Regardless of the reason, it would be heartless (and proof of your own foolishness) to think she must be stupid or mistaken because she says she is thirsty, and it would be cruel to deny her water and force her to be continually thirsty. The same applies to any other feelings a wife has. Marriage is a partnership in which constant feedback from the other person is essential. It is like blindfolding a person, handing him a tail and asking him to place it on the correct part of a drawing of a donkey that is somewhere on a wall. Unaided, it becomes a matter of sheer chance. There is no opportunity to display the slightest skill, because all feedback has been eliminated. Every part of the wall feels the same. Not even memory can help, because the person was not allowed to view the wall before being blindfolded. When done as a partnership, however, in which a seeing person guides the blindfolded one to the exact spot, the frustratingly impossible task becomes ridiculously simple. Much of marriage is like that – easy if you let your partner guide you; near enough to impossible, should you ignore your partner’s guidance and resort to guesswork. Try not to be like Leopold Fechtner. ‘My wife is always talking to herself,’ he complained. ‘The worst part is, she thinks I’m listening.’ It is tragic how many men, after years of supposing they were adequate lovers, are devastated to discover that their wives had always found their attempts at lovemaking almost as exciting as eating cardboard. When the bliss of ignorance inevitably crashes into the horror of reality, these deluded Casanovas discover to their humiliation that on a scale of one to ten they rate minus three. The astonishing thing is that had they let their wives guide them, as all men should, these men would have both multiplied their own pleasure and sent their wives to the moon with delight. They could have been heroes between the sheets. Instead, they turned what God meant to be partnership into a one-man disaster; what should have been an exquisite duet into their version of solo sex. Not even in the most intimate aspect of marriage do some men have the sense to realize the necessity of moment-by-moment feedback from their wives. Some women are so astoundingly kind and loving that for years and years they deliberately sacrifice their own happiness for the sake of their husbands’ egos. Eventually the pain of their sacrifice, coupled with their husbands’ indifference to their needs, causes the one-sided nature of the relationship to become so intolerable that the women start complaining. Ignorance of their wives’ needs should have never been allowed to drag on for so long. These men should have made them feel so loved and secure that their wives would have freely shared their secret feelings, knowing that their husbands would far rather feel inadequate than have their wives miss the slightest pleasure. A married couple are supposed to be one flesh. If you are one flesh with your wife, her pain is your pain; her pleasure is your pleasure. The extent to which this is not true is the extent to which your marriage is dysfunctional. To hide feelings from each other or to let oneself remain ignorant of the other’s feelings is as contrary to the essence of marriage as sexual unfaithfulness. Men should be the leaders. To be the leader, you must assume responsibility for any failure to create an emotional environment in which your wife knows it is safe to reveal all. You should take the lead in transparent honesty and gentleness and servanthood. It will be obvious to her whether your passionate longing is to thoroughly know her and give her your best. How shallow is your love? Many men have missed out on more than they can imagine, simply because they have misunderstood what it means to be head of the house. The role of the head is to be constantly alert to the needs of the body. The moment the body is in pain (a hand on a hot stove, for example) the head immediately knows it and takes swift action to protect the body from further pain and harm. The head makes the decisions, but with a total awareness of the body’s feelings. In reality, you are the head only to the extent to which you seek total awareness of your wife’s feelings and sensitivities. That is a measure of your success or your failure to assume the male role in your marriage. In the fool’s joy of ignorance too many men think they are head of their wives, when they have actually run from their leadership role in sheer cowardice, emotionally deserting the partner they were supposed to lead. ‘Is your wife outspoken?’ a man was asked. ‘Not by anyone I know of,’ came the reply. In general, women are the talkative sex. We men can find that tiresome at times but when you stop to think about it, God got it perfect – as usual. Only if women talk about their feelings can husbands know what is going on inside their wives, and only then can husbands function as the head. Many men think themselves great husbands because they spend lots of time with their wives, when they spend surprisingly little of it actually sharing heart-to-heart. Little wonder that pleasing each other degenerates to blind hit or miss. Not only is it essential for knowing how to please each other, wives long for intimate sharing because no matter how low an opinion a man might have of himself, his wife craves him as a person, not as a bank account or a lump of flesh. Anyone acting like a head – constantly monitoring signals from the body and alert to respond the moment the body is in the slightest discomfort – is well on the way to never needing a counselor. A head that is unaware or unconcerned that its body is suffering, however, is so dangerously dysfunctional that it desperately needs outside help. Grave mistakes are inevitable whenever we approach Christian teaching with an unchristian mindset. ‘ . . . the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man’ (1 Corinthians 11:3) was obviously intended only for people who have Christ as their head and who through that spiritual union have been supernaturally transformed. This divine transformation goes way beyond merely accepting Jesus’ teaching. It even goes beyond striving to live that teaching. It involves actually having Jesus’ teaching and attitude to life as part of your very personality. So let’s for a moment consider Jesus’ teaching. Matthew 20:25 Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. (26) Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, (27) and whoever wants to be first must be your slave – (28) just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’ Luke 14:11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled . . . To use ‘the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church’ as an excuse for selfishness, instead of an opportunity for sacrifice, is a hideous perversion of God’s Holy Word. Headship implies laying down one’s life to serve another. The apostle Paul could not have made this clearer when he said: Ephesians 5:23-24 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church . . . wives should submit to their husbands in everything. (25) Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Emphasis mine.) The Bible always explains that by headship it means acting like Christ. The Lord Jesus constantly knows our every need, our every thought, our every feeling. He literally understands us better than we understand ourselves. Not only that, our crucified Lord spares no pain or effort or humiliation to satisfy our needs and bring us comfort. Our eternal happiness means everything to him. He guides, and yet allows us to make mistakes. He has power, but never abuses it. Guidance stemming from a passion to thoroughly know your wife as Christ knows you, and a sacrificial devotion to her happiness, is what the Bible means by being the head. It means Christlike gentleness and selfless preoccupation with identifying and meeting a loved one’s needs. We latch on to Paul saying ‘wives should submit to their husbands’ and completely forget such statements of his as: 1 Corinthians 7:4 The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way , the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. (5) Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent . . . (Emphasis mine.) The equality implied in that Scripture deserves careful thought. It shows that Scripture’s conception of headship is very different to the one many Christian men have. Peter is the other Bible writer who spoke of wives submitting to their husbands. To avoid serious distortion of the Word of God, Peter’s advice to wives to be ‘like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master,’ (1 Peter 3:6) must be read in the light of the Scripture that Peter knew his readers were very familiar with: Genesis 21:9-10 But Sarah . . . said to Abraham, ‘Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.’ (11) The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. (12) But God said to him, ‘Do not be so distressed about the boy and your maidservant. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you  . . .’ (Emphasis mine.) Yes, Peter said, ‘Wives, . . . be submissive to your husbands,’ (1 Peter 3:1) but in the same breath he said, ‘Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers’ (1 Peter 3:7). So important to God is gentle consideration of a wife’s needs that the Almighty could turn a deaf ear to a Christian husband who does not display this type of love. For a good marriage, not only must a husband know his wife’s secrets, he must ensure she knows his secrets. Without this there will be needless pain. For years, Margaret had been relishing a trip to a marriage counselor as her chance to pour out a long list of complaints to a sympathetic ear. Instead, she found herself reeling. The tables had been turned, with her husband, Tom, detailing to the counselor all sorts of hurts and injustices he had suffered because of her. The tragedy is that Margaret had been largely unaware of Tom’s hurts. On the surface, Tom’s silent suffering seems noble. In reality, it had been largely senseless and needless. Had he adequately communicated his feelings, Margaret would have changed years ago. Nagging, whining and angry outbursts are usually counter-productive. Taking the time to lovingly open one’s heart and explain one’s hurts, however, is as different as surgery differs from a knife attack. Couples tend to suppose that one attempt to explain should suffice. Realistically, we are so different from each other that it usually takes numerous attempts for a partner to finally understand the other’s point of view. Effective communication of one’s needs and motives takes skill, patience, gentleness, good timing, persistence and courage. As you develop these qualities you reduce the need for outside help. When is it Safe to Give Counseling a Miss? If your wife goes quiet about seeing a counselor, it might be good news for the marriage, but most likely it is the worse possible news. Women tend to eventually stop complaining about a matter. Men heave a sigh of relief, imagining that at last their wives have adjusted. Usually, the real reason is that their wives have simply resigned themselves to an inferior marriage. If so, your wife will at best end up going through life needlessly unhappy and, although you will suffer the consequences of living with an unhappy woman, you will not even know the reason. But that’s the best case scenario. More likely, your wife abandoning the idea of involving a marriage counselor is like trying to convince herself that she can live with a cancerous tumor without seeing a doctor. It’s been wisely said that to put off something makes a difficult task hard, and a hard task impossible. Burying a marital problem can only make it more putrid. When it eventually resurfaces – and that’s inevitable – it will cause a bigger stink than ever. And by then it could have infected the whole marriage beyond the possibility of restoration. All too often, men leave resolving marital problems until it is too late to save the marriage. They keep avoiding the issue, vainly hoping that the problem would magically vanish in a puff of smoke. They do this because men usually feel as uncomfortable trying to fine-tune a relationship as they do about engaging in brain surgery. The difference, however, is that if a man has a loved one who needs brain surgery, he has no qualms about calling in an expert. Paradoxically, if his marriage needs a little work, he feels too ashamed to call in an expert. Yes, it’s humiliating. A man finds it hard even to ask for directions when he has lost his way driving. Stubborn determination to solve things independently can sometimes help a man reach his full potential. Like brain surgery, however, there are times when the only smart option is to call in an expert. If you don’t think understanding the opposite sex is a matter in which one needs additional help, you are either a cross between Einstein and Sigmund Freud, or too thick to realize the magnitude of the problem. A biblical pointer to the need for outside help in understanding one’s partner is found in Titus 2:3-4, where it speaks of older women training the younger women to love their husbands and children. When a woman says counseling is needed, what makes her husband think he is more perceptive than not just his wife but all the other men who blindly careered to marital breakdown because they left seeking outside help too late? Men find it enormously difficult to seek help and to bare their souls. Nevertheless, Christians have the advantage of knowing that ‘whoever humbles himself will be exalted’ (Matthew 18:4; 23:12). Most other people are too dense to realize it. Perhaps your wife is in the wrong and needs to change. It seems she needs independent confirmation of that fact, however, if she is wanting counseling. You’ve been unable to convince her, so call in reinforcements. If she is wrong, it should be easy to prove. Not all counselors are good, but even an average one should be neutral and not automatically take the woman’s side. Many a woman, elated to be finally dragging her husband to a counselor, has found herself rudely shocked to be shown the log in her own eye. You would need to be present, however, to ensure the counselor is not given a biased view of the real situation. If you feel uncomfortable with your wife’s choice of counselor, then by all means find one more suited to you both. For example, I can well understand at least one of you reeling at the thought of discussing embarrassing details with someone you will afterward rub shoulders with in a social or church setting. If this bothers one of you, please don’t risk your marriage because of a false feeling of loyalty to your pastor. Even the most skilled counselor can do little if one of you clams up. A caring pastor would be anxious about your choice of counselor because there are plenty of fruitcakes around. Nevertheless, if you or your wife feel inhibited with your pastor, a wise pastor would prefer you to choose someone you and your wife can be open with. So, if necessary, find another counselor, even if it means traveling across city. Still greater anonymity or distance might be available over the internet. Nevertheless, I urge that you find an authentically Christian counselor. 1 Corinthians 6:1 If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? (2) Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? (3) Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! (4) Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church! (5) I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? (6) But instead, one brother goes to law against another – and this in front of unbelievers! Although seeing a counselor is not going to law, is it seeking someone to help resolve a dispute, so the principle in the above Scripture is highly relevant. It goes on to say: 1 Corinthians 6:7 The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? So the ideal is to resolve disputes with your wife by yielding to her wishes. If you are unwilling to do this, the alternative is to seek a wise Christian to help resolve the dispute. There are counselors who are Christian but whose counseling springs from secular training rather than from the Spirit and wisdom of God. Also to be avoided are those who are spiritual but have less wisdom than skilled secular counselors. So much is required of a marriage counselor that I freely admit that I don’t make the grade. I can help some people understand their partner’s point of view – and that’s helpful – but marital counseling is beyond my ability. So it is wise to make your choice of counselor a matter of earnest prayer. Of course, give a counselor a fair chance and don’t reject someone because he or she does not support your selfishness. Nevertheless, don’t be afraid to change counselors until you find one whose wisdom and godliness you both have faith in. We earlier mentioned the biblical revelation that being inconsiderate toward one’s wife could hinder a man’s prayers. The biblical link between sin and having one’s prayers hindered is exceptionally strong. For example: Isaiah 59: 2 But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. Psalm 66:18 If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened Proverbs 15:29 The LORD is far from the wicked but he hears the prayer of the righteous. Proverbs 28:9 If anyone turns a deaf ear to the law, even his prayers are detestable. Isaiah 1:15 When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; (16) wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong Zechariah 7:13 ‘When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,’ says the LORD Almighty. So anyone steeped in the Bible will realize that Peter is saying that merely being inconsiderate toward one’s wife is to sin against her and against the Lord, and it is such a grave matter that it could interfere with your prayers. If you don’t love and fear the Lord enough for that to scare you, then consider the implications of Jesus’ teaching that unless resolved to the offended party’s satisfaction, sinning against someone should result in public exposure and church discipline. As we consider Jesus’ words on this matter, the first result will be to reinforce what a grievous sin being inconsiderate to one’s wife is. Matthew 18:6 But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. (7) Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come! Clearly, doing anything that exposes a person to temptation is a grave offense. To make a wife unhappy with her marriage is to sin against her and against God by tempting her to break her marriage vows. Making her unhappy is as much a sin against your wife and your marriage as it would be for someone to try to seduce her. Either way, it is tempting her to break her marriage vows. Whether she yields to the temptation is her responsibility. Whether you do something that causes the temptation to come, however, is your responsibility, and God will hold you accountable. Jesus goes on to say: Matthew 18:15 If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. (16) But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ (17) If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector. So the biblical principle is that if someone feels a Christian has sinned against her, and all her attempts to resolve it privately fail, she should escalate the matter by involving other Christians. Seeking counsel from Christians fits this principle and dovetails with Paul’s teaching about dispute resolution. If that attempt to resolve the problem fails – such as his refusal to even involve a counselor – it seems she has every biblical right to take it further in the church and involve still more people. Bringing it Together We have seen that regardless of how you feel about it, if your wife feels the need to see a counselor, it indicates a serious need in your marriage. If you haven’t felt desperate enough to seek outside help, it is because the problem is devastating your wife – and hence threatening your marriage – more than you realize. Like signs that you have bowel cancer, getting it checked might be very embarrassing, but ignoring it is not a sign of bravery; it is proof of cowardice. There’s nothing macho about burying one’s head in the sand. Like a person with cancer, your marriage is probably fully curable in its early stages, but it will end in an agonizing death if you delay calling in an expert. It is natural for anyone to recoil at the thought of consulting a marriage expert. So, by all means, think outside the square in a hunt for ways that you feel more comfortable with that are just as effective as counseling. Careful listening to your wife and taking seriously her perception of the marriage’s health will do much to reduce the need for counseling. If, after giving it your best shot, however, your wife still thinks counseling is needed, then it really is needed. Your wife will eventually stop trying to drag you to a counselor. It is vital that you don’t misunderstand why she no longer talks about seeing a counselor. If is because she has given up hope of ever having a truly happy marriage; supposing you will never exercise sufficient Christlike humility or care enough about the marriage to meet her needs, then it is essential that you see a counselor without delay. By the time many men are desperate enough to try a marriage counselor, it is often too late to save the marriage. Don’t become another statistic. Related Page Ensuring You’re a Man’s Man – In God’s Sight Being Head of Your Wife Have you made life’s most exciting discovery? See What Your Fantasies Reveal to make the astounding discovery that God is the wonderfully warm, exciting companion you have always longed for. You can have a supernatural encounter with God.

God & Marriage Even for those not interested in marriage, this webpage will provide significant, rarely taught insight into the heart of God and his expectations for us all. Without even considering parenthood, marriage is a thrilling and undeserved privilege, coupled with mind-boggling responsibilities. No matter how much we downplay those responsibilities, we will each face the God who cares so deeply that our every idle word will be considered on Judgment Day (Matthew 12:36). I agonize over the tragic reality that those in the most desperate need of this webpage are the very ones who are sure they don’t need to read it. They are sailing blissfully to disaster and I am clueless as to how to entice them to see enough of the danger even to bother reading this. Nevertheless, God seems to be insisting that this webpage be written. I am forced to conclude that when looking back on life from eternity, one of the bitterest regrets the average person will have is that he took his marriage too casually. No matter how much that seems like a crackpot claim, I challenge you to disagree after reading the facts below. This webpage is crafted to be most easily understood by people like me – men. If you are a woman, please go to the women’s version: God’s Heart & Marriage. Make no mistake about it: humanity’s Judge is flawlessly impartial, and holds women equally accountable. So both versions are similar but even substituting the word “husband” for “wife,” and vice versa, helps us do what is essential: to focus on our own obligations before God, not what God expects of our partner. The Unexpected Consequence of Marriage The reward for slaying Goliath included being granted the hand of the King’s daughter in marriage (1 Samuel 17:25-27). Note David’s reaction: 1 Samuel 18:18-19 David said to Saul, “Who am I, and what is my life, or my father’s family in Israel, that I should be son-in-law to the king?” But at the time when Merab, Saul’s daughter, should have been given to David, she was given to Adriel the Meholathite as wife. Later, love provided David with a second opportunity to marry a daughter of the king but again the mighty giant-killer and anointed king-to-be showed great reluctance to take upon himself such honor and responsibility: 1 Samuel 18:20-23 Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved David; and they told Saul, and the thing pleased him. . . . Therefore Saul said to David, “You shall today be my son-in-law a second time.” Saul commanded his servants, “Talk with David secretly, and say, ‘Behold, the king has delight in you, and all his servants love you. Now therefore be the king’s son-in-law.’ ” Saul’s servants spoke those words in the ears of David. David said, “Does it seems to you a light thing to be the king’s son-in-law, since I am a poor man, and lightly esteemed?” Husband, you had the audacity to marry not just a king’s daughter but a cherished daughter of the Almighty King of kings. Like it or not, your wife has a fearsome Avenger who is acutely interested in every detail of how you treat his darling. Despite the Almighty’s extreme graciousness and patience, it might be safer dating the thirteen-year-old virgin daughter of an insanely jealous Mafia boss than to marry God’s daughter. Yes, that seems exaggerated, but I have not yet begun to unpack the facts. First, some general biblical background: Without rival, the most exquisitely beautiful thing in the entire cosmos is the heart of God. He is breathtakingly loving, good, kind, patient and understanding. This most astounding Person is the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) exploded to infinite extremes. He who told us to forgive seventy times seven is the living embodiment of what he preaches. I cannot overestimate how much God is devoted to you and longs to forgive your vilest acts over and over and over. The Infinite Lord’s mind-boggling love for you provokes him to mind-boggling wrath against anyone who hurts you or lets you suffer through their greed, selfishness, neglect or whatever: 2 Thessalonians 1:6-7 Since it is a righteous thing with God to repay affliction to those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted with us . . . Why haven’t you seen God doing this? The rest of the quote explains: 2 Thessalonians 1:7 . . . when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire Likewise Peter says: 2 Peter 3:7 But the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. He then proceeds to explain why that cataclysmic day has not yet arrived: 2 Peter 3:9-10 The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some count slowness; but is patient with us, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief . . . The truth of God’s explosive desire to vindicate his beloved is much bigger than just you, however. When pure, selfless, passionate love takes on divine proportions, there are inescapable ramifications that we must one day face – and the sooner we realize it the better. You can revel in the glorious truth that infinite love means that God loves every part of you in mindboggling detail and with incomprehensible intensity. God’s unlimited love also means, however, that he loves with that same unfathomable intensity each and every person on this planet as if he or she were the only person in God’s universe. Yes, God feels your pain as if it were his own. When you hurt, he hurts. But likewise if you hurt someone, you hurt someone of infinite importance to God. In other words: to hurt anyone, is to hurt God. In short, if love is so fundamental to God that Scripture declares “God is love,” then he passionately loves and yearns to defend not just you, but everyone you have ever hurt by your sin, selfishness or neglect. A perfect judge must be utterly impartial, and there is no limit to our Judge’s love – i.e. he loves those we despise with the same “insane” abandonment that he loves us. So unless we genuinely repent of hurting others, he is compelled to focus on us that same wrath and yearning to execute justice that he longs to pour out on those who have mistreated us. This is foundational to much of Jesus’ teaching. When citing Peter above, I cut him off midstream because you will now better understand the highly practical conclusion he was barreling down to: 2 Peter 3:10-12 . . . The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. . . . (NIV, Emphasis mine.) God’s entire purpose for our lives is that we become like his Son, whose love for God and for humanity compelled him to sacrifice all. If everything about humanity’s Judge is driven by sacrificial love, then he will judge us by that standard – i.e. by how much we have acted in sacrificial love. “If everything about humanity’s Judge is driven by sacrificial love, then he will judge us by that standard – i.e. by how much we have acted in sacrificial love.” 1 John 3:14,16 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. He who doesn’t love his brother remains in death. . . . By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 1 John 4:16,20-5:1 We know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and he who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. . . . If a man says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who doesn’t love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? This commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should also love his brother. Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Whoever loves the Father also loves the child who is born of him. The purpose of this background is to highlight one critical point: if this grave matter applies to how we treat everyone, it applies even more to how we treat our marriage partners. Let me explain why: A pastor, who was spearheading a significant breakthrough in an ethnic community, confided to me that his marriage was floundering. Overcome by the need in the community, he would have a guilt attack whenever he took the slightest break from his ministry to spend time with his wife and family. This man of God knew that God’s rock-solid dependability can be relied upon more than the sun that rises without fail every single day. Loyalty and faithfulness is so much a part of God’s nature that divorce is totally contrary to who God is. The God of endless love literally hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). It turns his stomach. This pastor needed no reminder of such basics, so I zeroed in on the heart of the matter. “With millions of Christians at God’s disposal,” I said, “the Lord has only to whisper, and suddenly your community would be the focus of more evangelistic effort than you could ever equal. No evangelist is indispensable. Your marriage role, however, is far more serious. God cannot give your wife another husband – unless he kills you.” God is love, and love is all about relationships. So relationships, no matter how casual, are of extreme importance to God. Even to our enemies we have love responsibilities that we dare not neglect. Nevertheless, God’s commitment to the permanence of marriage raises the stakes even higher. If, as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, you bypass someone in need, you will be held responsible but God might send someone else to meet that need. God treats marriage as so sacred, however, that your wife has needs that not even God will let himself meet. True Love Versus Ugly Imitations A disturbingly common trap that sends vast numbers of people hurtling to devastating heartbreak is to expect a human relationship to meet needs that are so deep that only God can meet them. It is vital that you discover that your desires for perfection in a partner are actually not cravings for marriage but a deep craving for God himself and that you need to have these yearnings met by him before you are ready for marriage. Otherwise, you will be like a parasite sucking the life out of your marriage by trying to leech from your partner self-esteem, emotional fulfillment, security and other intense needs that can only be fully met by daily intimacy with Almighty God, the Perfect One. Study the following as if eternity depended upon it; conscious that you will one day stand before God to give account, not for how your partner compares, but for how you measured up. Romantic love – better called self-centered infatuation – is the short-lived exhilaration of vainly supposing you have at last found someone who will make you happy. If “all is fair in love and war” then that type of “love” is as dangerous as war. It is cruel and intoxicatingly deceptive. Its pillows are perfumed to hide the stench of death. There is an enormous difference between being intoxicated by romantic feelings and being loving. In fact, they are polar opposites. As wonderful as the fleeting euphoria of falling in love is, there is something infinity superior. I’m not a skeptic, a cynic, nor a wet blanket; I’m just affirming a fact of life that we all must understand if we are to side-step heartbreak and tragedy and soar to the pinnacle of human experience. To be in love is a fluke: by a freak of nature someone just happens to stimulate chemical reactions within you that, according to experts, might last thirty months if you are exceptionally lucky. To be loving, however, is another world. It is to be Christlike. It is not a fluke; it is a virtue, an achievement, a deliberate, praiseworthy act. Being in love is fleeting; being loving is eternal. Being in love is like having a baby. Babies are adorable. We can enjoy them and praise God for them but babies do not last. They grow. Likewise, being in love does not last and if that is all that is holding two people together they will grow apart. Falling in love is like being given a shiny new car: you did not do a thing to make it shiny or run well, but if you continue not doing a thing to maintain it and just let nature take its course, it will gradually fade and eventually grind to a halt. Whether it be measured in terms of romantic love, visual attraction or sex, the initial excitement fades with any relationship. This is perfectly normal and nothing negative – except to hollowed-out junkies ensnared by an addiction to the excitement of the new. This devastating addiction not only steals one’s peace and contentment; it gnaws away at the soul and white-ants one’s ability to have a lasting marriage. If we understood, we would flee such an addiction with the terror of someone fleeing a bomb set to explode and rip one’s life apart. This addiction reduces its hapless victims to jackasses exhausting themselves chasing a plastic carrot dangled in front of them; to someone dying of thirst in a desert pathetically stumbling after a mirage. Real love is not a whim that spurts and splutters at the fickle mercy of hormones and circumstances. It does not fizzle when hot-blooded leaps of imagination hit cold reality. It is unfazed by sagging beauty, declining abilities and changes of fortune. This unstoppable force powers on regardless. It is fueled not by the beloved but by daily dying to self and coming alive to the God of gods who sacrificed everything and became the highest by becoming the lowest. Yes, for love that never dies you must die daily. To find such love you must lose self. This love is noble, making you worthy of never-ending honor. Like an exquisite garden, it does not magically arrive; it is carefully nurtured. It is a virtue; a perpetual choice; a way of life for which you will literally be eternally grateful. Love thinks the highest of a person; forever viewing the beloved in the best possible light; always giving the beloved the benefit of the doubt. It sees beauties and finds treasures in the beloved that others miss. Love longs to know and understand everything about the beloved so that it can best serve the person. This love is forever grateful. It keeps on appreciating; never taking the beloved for granted; continually singing the beloved’s praises. It always treasures and values the beloved. It keeps no count of wrongs nor of cost. It is hopeless at remembering pain but never forgets when the beloved brought joy. Love seeks not to get but to give and give; not to be served but to serve. It craves not its own but the achievement and fulfillment of the beloved. It longs to exalt the beloved; not to put down but to lift high; not to control but to empower; not to manipulate but to liberate. In the eyes of love, to win at the expense of the beloved is to lose. It seeks not to win arguments but for the beloved to be proved right. Its happiness rests in the happiness of the beloved. It rejoices in the other’s success more than its own. When the beloved is honored, it feels honored; when the beloved is hurt, it feels pain. It willingly sacrifices everything for the beloved. Love keeps opening its heart. It is gentle but strong; soft but enduring; pliable but rock-solid. It is faithful and loyal, steadfast and true. It is dependable and pure. It stays as reliable in secret as when it is seen. It never stagnates but grows stronger by the year. This love is as eternal as God; as selfless as Christ. Empowered by the Spirit, it lets earth glimpse heaven. This love is sacred, its source is divine. It delights in God and is God’s delight. We are called to be like Jesus, who kept on loving Judas, knowing from the beginning that he would betray him. We are to love like the one who did not wait until his heathen torturers showed any remorse but forgave them while they were in the very act of killing him (Luke 23:33-34). What chance have we of doing this if we cannot even show our marriage partners such love? People today claim to be horrified about anyone not marrying for love, but marrying for one’s own happiness is marrying for selfishness, not love. If marriage is all about selfishness it is doomed to fail. Or was marriage instituted by the God of selfless love? In this description of love I have crammed much into a few words. I suggest you print it and read it over and over, while praying this: Psalms 139:23-24 Search me, God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way. Despite the importance of love, however, the motive for marrying should soar even higher than sacrificial love for a human. If the goal of marriage is anything less than the glory of God it is spiritually corrupt and as unhealthy as a life-threatening flesh-eating disease. Years ago the Lord challenged my wife: “Will you live for love or for self?” For her it was a no-brainer. To love as God loves is to truly live. She is appalled, however, at how many modern women have fallen into an arrogant, self-centered “Princess Complex”. That’s an ugly, ungodly blemish. Even the glorious King of kings has a servant heart. No matter what failings your wife may have, however, the God who lavishes you and me with his unconditional love despite our enormous failures and inadequacies, expects you to keep on loving as he does. Regardless of whatever your wife does, the fact remains set in stone that you dared marry the darling daughter of the all-seeing Lord. If that doesn’t send shivers down your spine, you have confused God biding his time with God not caring. You have got away with nothing; it is just not yet judgment time. Once, through physical union, two become one, it is way too late to back out: how you treat God’s daughter will impact you severely. In marriage, as in the parable of the talents, the King has left you in charge of his treasure and he seems to have gone so quiet about it that it is as if he has left the country. This treasure, however, is not mere priceless material goods; it is the very daughter of the Almighty King of kings, the apple of his eye. To him, she is royalty; the darling of his heart in whom he sees sensitivities, beauties and perfections that you will never perceive. Even if your life partner is not a Christian, she is loved with such incomprehensible intensity that, for her, the Exalted One ripped himself away from the majestic perfection of his celestial throne and the adoring throngs clamoring for the honor of serving his every whim. Abandoning the pristine splendor of heaven, he came alone to grubby earth to wade through its moral sewers and be despised, ridiculed and finally tortured to death, just because he could no longer constrain the perpetual volcano of his love for her. To him you must give full account of everything you have ever done to her, including any time you treated her as a common servant rather than the princess of God that she is. What Will Come Home to Roost? With that dangling by a thread above your head, let me seize an already piercing Scripture and polish it with a few words till it glares at you with the terrifying intensity God intends. Note the comments I have added in square brackets: Galatians 6:7 Don’t be deceived [its coming could be so slow that we are in grave danger of fooling ourselves into thinking we have got away with it, but it is as unavoidable as death]. God is not mocked [it is divinely guaranteed], for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap [we choose our future and seal our fate: we will end up on the receiving end of whatever we have dished out]. As surely as spitting into the wind, if we treat our wives in a less than Christlike manner it will come hurtling back to us with divine fury. Could you, by the way you treat your wife, be storing up for yourself curses such as domination, grumpiness, selfishness, impatience, criticism, resentment, or harshness? Or are you blessing yourself and brightening your future by making it your habit to be loving, cheerful, appreciative, peaceable, patient, kind, gentle, generous and self-controlled, so that these delights may come home to roost as faithfully as homing pigeons? What we give shall be poured back into our bosom in abundance – “pressed down, shaken together, and running over” (Luke 6:38). Significantly, Jesus said this not merely in the context of giving money but about loving and forgiving those who hurt us, being kind to the ungrateful, not condemning or judging others, and so on (The Context). If we reap what we sow, are you, by the way you treat your wife, blessing the garden of your near future with flowers or cursing it with thorns? Or is it even more serious? We need look no further than when Jesus spoke about separating the sheep from the goats upon his spectacular return to earth as humanity’s Judge (Matthew 25:31-46) to know that how we treat people has not just earthly implications but serious eternal consequences. Moreover, the person on whom we are likely to have the greatest impact for the longest time – and hence the person we will be held especially accountable for – is our marriage partner. Anyone familiar with my writings will know that I specialize in gentle, inspirational webpages. This time I’m uncomfortable with the message entrusted to me, but obedience to the God of Truth is not about comfort. No matter how much I might long to water down this webpage, I must die to self and faithfully expound God’s Word. The same Jesus who was so tender to those reeling under the awareness of their sin, tore strips off those whose pride or self-righteousness made them hard-hearted. For these blinded by complacency, the Perfect Teacher, who loved them with his own blood, had no alternative but to hit them with the truth to try to shock them back to reality. Regardless of how we might prefer life to be, God treats you and your wife as one. The conclusion Scripture draws from this is that “husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies” (Ephesians 5:28). So anything you do that promotes your wife’s happiness, contentment and fulfillment ends up furthering your own; anything you do that oppresses your wife ends up oppressing you. God’s Tender Heart We will later explore the surprising biblical revelation that the Holy Lord exalts physical intimacy above spiritual activities. Before examining this aspect of God’s tender heart, however, let’s ensure we are not so crude or callous as to imagine that our loving Lord sees marital duties as going little further that the satisfying of physical urges. Yes, a torturously strong sex drive can be so all-consuming as to make it difficult to think of anything else but it is vital that we do all we can to see through the haze. Your wife’s devoted and ever-vigilant Father expects husbands to treat their wives with sensitivity and tenderness: 1 Peter 3:7 You husbands, in the same way, live with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor to the woman, as to the weaker vessel, as being also joint heirs of the grace of life; that your prayers may not be hindered. (Emphasis mine.) Sex did not even rate a mention in this Scripture but every husband is expected to treat God’s daughter as the most delicate, priceless and irreplaceable crystal ware. Think of her as a cheap, unbreakable plastic mug, and even on earth you will suffer spiritually. Ride roughshod over her feelings, and God is so much his daughter’s avenger that when he acts, even your prayers for mercy might go unheeded. The last thing any of us wants is communication problems with God. Want to find yourself cut off from God’s blessings? Want to be in a crisis and have your desperate pleas to the only One who can save you go no further than the ceiling? Suddenly the implications of this Scripture hit hard: James 5:16 . . .The insistent prayer of a righteous person is powerfully effective. (Emphasis mine.) And suddenly this sends chills down the spine: Isaiah 59:2 . . . your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. All because of treating one’s wife a bit too casually . . . Peter was expounding a spiritual principle so fundamental that although it clearly applies to one’s marital partner, it extends beyond that to every relationship. Here’s the principle in black and white: Proverbs 21:13 Whoever stops his ears at the cry of the poor, he will also cry out, but shall not be heard. Proverbs 28:9 He who turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. Isaiah 1:15 When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Yes, when you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. We have seen that the God of love takes how we treat others so personally that it is as if we were doing it to him. Being insensitive to your wife’s feelings goes hand in glove with being insensitive to God’s feelings. Again, one has enormous responsibilities to one’s life partner, but this is so fundamental to the God who has no limits that Scripture applies it to all relationships: 1 John 4:20 If a man says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who doesn’t love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? James 3:9-11 With it [the tongue] we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who are made in the image of God. . . . My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring send out from the same opening fresh and bitter water? Matthew 25:44-46 . . . ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn’t help you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Most certainly I tell you, because you didn’t do it to one of the least of these, you didn’t do it to me.’ These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. We have been following thoughts generated by what Peter reveals about marriage but before leaving that quote from Peter we should note the context: 1 Peter 3:7-9 You husbands, in the same way, live with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor to the woman, as to the weaker vessel, as being also joint heirs of the grace of life; that your prayers may not be hindered. Finally, be all like-minded, compassionate, loving as brothers, tender hearted, courteous, not rendering evil for evil, or insult for insult; but instead blessing; knowing that to this were you called, that you may inherit a blessing. (Emphasis mine.) Note also the context of “don't grieve the Holy Spirit”: Ephesians 4:29-32 Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but only what is good for building others up as the need may be, that it may give grace to those who hear. Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, outcry, and slander, be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you. (Emphasis mine.) Does it surprise you that the Bible links grieving the Spirit not with how we treat the Holy Spirit, but with failing to treat people with kindness, gentleness and respect? This has significant implications for marriage. If wives were the focus of this webpage, I would have to zero in on the tongue-lashings that some women are infamous for: Proverbs 19:13 . . . A wife’s quarrels are a continual dripping. Proverbs 21:19 It is better to dwell in a desert land, than with a contentious and fretful woman. State laws are often so crude as to recognize little more than physical hurt but God knows no such limitations. He looks at the heart. To the Holy One, who sees hate as murder and lust as adultery (1 John 3:15; Matthew 5:21-22,28), fighting with one’s lips is just as criminal as fighting with fists. Of course, some men wound with their lips and, more than ever in these days of “sexual equality,” some women resort to physical violence such as pouring boiling water on sleeping husbands. In this webpage, however, the focus is on the marital obligations of husbands. When asked to rank what they most want in marriage, women typically produce a markedly different list to that of most men. High – often top – on the typical woman’s list is security. Situations beyond a man’s control can overwhelm any man, preventing him from adequately providing for his family or from protecting them from physical danger. In such circumstances, no matter how tempted he might be to feel a failure, every man should hold his head high. However, when a woman feels insecure, not because of thugs outside the house, but feels threatened or fears her children are endangered, by her own husband, that man has seriously failed. Amazingly, many women who feel this way have husbands who would never, ever harm their wives or children and often these men have no idea of the extent to which they are scaring their wives and thereby threatening their marriages. You could be excused for presuming that a one second release of anger by harmlessly throwing something unbreakable to the floor, or hitting your fist on the table, would be of no consequence whatsoever. It could be an extremely rare event that you forget almost instantly and yet it could devastate your wife, shattering her trust in you. Though you have genuine reason to see it as harmless, it could shake her to the core and damage your marriage as much as if you had beaten her mercilessly. It might seem incomprehensible that such innocent letting off steam could crush someone so immensely but, sadly, it could leave a wife nervous and on edge indefinitely. Feeling insecure in her own home week after week could eat away at a woman and, often unknown to the husband, dangerously eat away at the marriage, with the tragic possibility that sometime when he least expects it, the marriage falls irretrievably apart. None of us knows what we are capable of if we were sufficiently provoked at our weakest moment. And just because you and I have convinced ourselves that we would never physically hurt our wives does not mean our actions have always left our wives convinced. What often makes it deeply disturbing to a woman to witness just a second of seemingly out-of-control rage in her husband is that this is the person she knows is strong enough to kill her with his bare hands and with whom she is alone night after night. Too many men cannot tell the difference between a submissive partner and a scared wife whose fantasies about leaving him are hurtling toward reality. You might be so lucky as to have a wife who regards an outburst as being as harmless as you regard it, but it is far too easy for a man to fail to detect how sensitive his wife is. No husband can know exactly how much his wife can take before she suddenly cracks and ends the marriage. Are you aware that most divorces are initiated by women, and their husbands did not even see it coming? This seems impossible, and yet it happens in marriage after marriage, and usually when a woman reaches that point, the marriage is over, no matter how desperate and sincere the husband is in promising to change. It is not impossible to end up so blinded by self-righteousness that not even God could forgive you (because you see no need to seek divine forgiveness), but even if you eventually manage to see the error of your ways and truly repent, few wives, after years of suppressed anger and hidden hurt, are as forgiving as God. Every man either takes to heart this sobering fact while he still thinks his marriage is good, or there is a strong chance that he will end up adding to the statistics, no matter how sure he is that it could never happen to him. So, although I assume you recognize the obvious importance of not hitting your wife, even anger can be far more damaging than most men realize. We must remember just how vulnerable our extra physical strength can make our wives feel, since they often find themselves alone with us at our weakest, angriest moment. In this light, consider the importance of these Scriptures: Proverbs 12:16 A fool shows his annoyance the same day, but one who overlooks an insult is prudent. Proverbs 14:29 He who is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a quick temper displays folly. Proverbs 15:18 A wrathful man stirs up contention, but one who is slow to anger appeases strife. Proverbs 16:32 One who is slow to anger is better than the mighty; one who rules his spirit, than he who takes a city. Proverbs 19:11 The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger. It is his glory to overlook an offense. Proverbs 25:28 Like a city that is broken down and without walls is a man whose spirit is without restraint. Proverbs 29:11 A fool vents all of his anger, but a wise man brings himself under control. A man should seriously question how big a failure he is if he cannot make his wife feel secure at times when he is the only potential source of danger. Pause for a moment to imagine what it would be like to have had a heart transplant. Consider how you would cherish that precious new part of you. What was once a vital part of another person is now a vital part of you. Your body keeps your new heart alive and that heart keeps your body alive. Your welfare and destinies are one. The consequences of a man and woman becoming one flesh are as profound as this life-transforming surgery. The tragic possibility of a heart transplant is that the body might turn against its new organ, attacking it as if it were a disease rather than the essential part of itself that it has become. This is what it is like when a wife and husband fight. Regardless of whether they use lips, fists, threats, silent treatment, finances, withholding sex, trashing treasured objects, or whatever, it is as foolish as attacking your heart with a knife. Very many people wanted the apostle Paul dead but he was spiritually astute enough to see through the obvious. He realized that his fight was not with flesh and blood but against spiritual forces (Ephesians 6:12). One of the foundations of my marriage is that whenever my wife and I have a problem we see beyond the obvious and view it as an external attack. To fight each other would be as ridiculous as a nation choosing the moment it is attacked by another nation as the time to break into civil war. A household divided against itself is doomed (Mark 3:25). Refusing to fight each other, we stand shoulder to shoulder, resolutely uniting to fight the problem as our common enemy. When a marriage is under pressure there are two options: join forces with your partner and fight the pressure as a common enemy, or turn on each other, blaming and fighting one another. Joining forces significantly multiplies one’s power to overcome adversity, as indicated in Deuteronomy 32:30. It says that one person shall put a thousand enemies to flight and yet two shall send fleeing not just two thousand but ten thousand. In the confusion of an ambush, one seldom has the presence of mind to devise the correct strategy. One needs to develop the habit well ahead of time of closing ranks and together fighting a common enemy when even the tiniest issues assail a relationship. The tragedy of not developing this habit is demonstrated several times in Israel’s history, when the nation’s enemies turned on each other in the heat of battle; slaughtering each other instead of attacking Israel (Judges 7:22; 1 Samuel 14:20: 2 Chronicles 20:23). In the words of Jesus, a household divided against itself cannot stand (Mark 3:25). Tragic Mistake Are you aware of what Gary Chapman calls the five languages of love? People vary as to what causes them to feel loved and they usually use this as their basis of expressing love. For example, giving gifts is very important to some people in helping them to feel and express love but for some other people, gift giving is almost as meaningless as a foreign language. For them the pre-eminent way of communicating love might be one of the following: * Touch * Talking * Serving * Verbal Encouragement The key point is that a partner could put enormous effort into expressing love, only for much of it to be wasted because the method used is essentially meaningless to the other person. Often this can continue for years without the couple realizing what is happening. So it is vital to put much prayer and effort into discovering what things are most effective in making your partner feel valued and loved. You might be quite surprised at what you find. If a wife doesn’t feel loved and can’t interpret her husband’s actions as showing love, then regardless of how deeply he really loves her, as far as she is concerned she might as well not be loved. She would feel completely unfulfilled and a basic need within her that God intended marriage to satisfy is left as a gnawing ache, thus tempting her to look to another man to meet that need. Whether a wife yields to that temptation is up to her. She will be held accountable by God for how she responds but whether the temptation exists is largely up to her husband, and God will hold him accountable for his role in the existence of the temptation. As Jesus said, temptations will come but woe to him who causes them (Luke 17:1-2). If you don’t do what you can to minimize your wife’s temptation (such as failing to do all you can to make her feel loved) God sees it an equally serious offence as trying to seduce another woman. Just as trying to seduce a married woman is tempting that woman to be unfaithful, so causing your wife to feel unloved is tempting her to be unfaithful. Let’s not forget that adultery is such a big deal with God that in the Old Testament it incurred the death penalty. We dare not take risks with temptation. “Therefore let him who thinks he stands be careful that he doesn’t fall” warned Paul (1 Corinthians 10:12). Complacency is deadly. Remember Simon Peter: so certain he’d never deny his Lord. If we, who live inside our minds and bodies 24/7, can still fail to correctly gauge our own susceptibility to temptation, what chance have we of accurately guessing the danger our partner faces? We should desperately plead for God to protect us from placing burdens of self-control upon our partners that make us ever so slightly like the Jews condemned by Jesus when he said: Luke 11:46 . . . Woe to you lawyers also! For you load men with burdens that are difficult to carry, and you yourselves won’t even lift one finger to help carry those burdens. Whether it be God’s love or a wife’s love, to abuse love or a forgiving heart is a hideous act. It is a betrayal of trust on the level of physically torturing one’s best friend. Anyone who thinks he can get away with exploiting love is hurtling headlong into the rudest awakening. We have seen that there is a frightening side to God’s love: it renders him a fearsome protector of his children. Jesus gave us insight into this when he said: Matthew 18:6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him that a huge millstone should be hung around his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depths of the sea. And let us not forget: Hebrews 4:13 There is no creature that is hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. Hebrews 10:30-31 For we know him who said, “Vengeance belongs to me,” says the Lord, “I will repay.” Again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. More “Godly” than God! It is disturbingly easy to end up self-deceived and oblivious to spiritual danger; getting things so horribly wrong as to provoke God’s wrath while presuming we are being so very holy and spiritual. One of the most likely ways for us to end up in this catastrophic mess is by letting “spiritual” things take priority over one’s marriage. Few of us realize just how seriously the God of love takes it when we let family slip in our priorities. We might think that little would impress God more than sacrificially giving him our hard earned cash and yet this very act infuriates him when what you put in the offering does not have the blessing of your family. Is it right to let giving to the Lord take precedence over giving to one’s family? We see Jesus exploding the myth in reference to parents, and the same principle applies to one’s wife. In the following, we will see Jesus expounding the meaning of “honor your father and mother.” If he says the word “honor” can be stretched so far as to include money, then it has to include a whole range of other things such as respect, support, physical help, and so on. Matthew 15:3-9, 12-14 He answered them, “Why do you also disobey the commandment of God because of your tradition? For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be put to death.’ But you say, ‘Whoever may tell his father or his mother, “Whatever help you might otherwise have gotten from me is a gift devoted to God,” he shall not honor his father or mother.’ You have made the commandment of God void because of your tradition. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, ‘These people draw near to me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. And in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrine rules made by men.’ ” . . . Then the disciples came, and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended, when they heard this saying?” But he answered, “Every plant which my heavenly Father didn’t plant will be uprooted. Leave them alone. They are blind guides of the blind. If the blind guide the blind, both will fall into a pit.” See how Jesus ripped into them over this issue. He didn’t say this was some minor slip of priorities. He was saying that by neglecting family responsibilities they had totally lost it. They were blind guides. They had not been planted by the Father. They were weeds that would be ripped up by the roots. And what was their grave offense? Advising that it is acceptable to neglect family responsibilities for the sake of serving God. This is the same Jesus who said, “Sell all that you have, and distribute it to the poor . . .” We need to be extremely wary of thinking ourselves more spiritual than our partner. When God means so much to us, we have a strong bias toward self-deception in that we can “spiritualize” our hang-ups and weaknesses. In other words, we can build up a very strong biblical argument supporting our stance and convince ourselves that we have divine approval for our actions when God doesn’t approve at all but we are simply hoping to justify behavior that may be no more correct than our partner’s and might even be totally contrary to God’s ways. This is why Jesus kept insisting that we must humble ourselves, and not judge others but to focus on our own shortcomings. If there is any group of people in the Bible that haunts me, it is the Scribes and Pharisees. They seemed to be so theologically correct and so incredibly devout and so certain they were pleasing God and yet they missed it so totally that they ended up murdering the Son of God. What alarms me is that each of us continually teeters on the edge of making spiritual mistakes of the same horrific magnitude. John tells us that when the Jews were finalizing Jesus’ execution they refused to enter Pilate’s palace to avoid ceremonial uncleanness (John 18:28). That’s how deluded they were – how much they thought they were doing everything exactly as God would have them to act. These were devout Bible scholars. If they can get it so horribly wrong, so can we, if we are not extremely careful. Just as they were so sure they would never make the same mistakes as their ancestors who killed the prophets, we are in danger of arrogantly thinking we will never make the mistakes of the Scribes and Pharisees. We all know: Matthew 7:22-23 Many will tell me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, in your name cast out demons, and in your name do many mighty works?’ Then I will tell them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work iniquity.’ Neglect family responsibilities and all service and sacrifice becomes repulsive to God. Paul takes up this same theme. He says that everyone should “ . . . learn first to show piety toward their own family, and to repay their parents, for this is acceptable in the sight of God” (1 Timothy 5:4, emphasis mine). Paul continues: 1 Timothy 5:7-8 Also command these things, that they may be without reproach. But if anyone doesn’t provide for his own, and especially his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. Read the last sentence again: “But if anyone doesn’t provide for his own, and especially his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” This is astoundingly serious! I know it sounds too extreme. If you are thinking maybe Paul was just having a really bad day at the office when he penned that, I’m glad I’m in good company. The only problem is that, as we have seen, Jesus said almost precisely the same. We can’t squirm out of this by claiming, “It’s Old Testament,” or some such thing. We’ve quoted Jesus and now Paul is saying the same thing – that anyone neglecting their family life has so strayed from God that he is in danger of the same fate as unbelievers. I used to be so “godly” that I despised the adage, “Charity begins at home,” but that’s not the first time I have been so stupid as to end up more “godly” than God. Although I am still wary of people using the adage as an excuse for selfishness, there truly is a biblical basis for saying “Charity begins at home.” Charity (the King James Version word for love) most certainly does not end at home but it is the essential starting point and if ever we leave it behind in our pursuit of Christlikeness, we’ve disqualified ourselves. Would God be impressed if we stole money from the impoverished so that we could put it in the offering? Wouldn’t that infuriate him? So it is when we steal from a wife or some other family member to give to God what he says is rightfully theirs. If family members make the sacrifice of their own accord, they will be rewarded and we will be off the hook, but if we force it upon them, it is entirely different. In marriage, this principle applies not merely to money but equally to time, comfort, respect, companionship, lovemaking and so on. Physical Intimacy Now that we have gained some perspective by gaining insight into the importance of other aspects of marital love, let’s look to the Lord for some divine insight into physical intimacy. 1 Corinthians 7:5 Don’t deprive one another, unless it is by consent for a season, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer, and may be together again, that Satan doesn’t tempt you because of your lack of self-control. (Emphasis mine) That bears careful reading. Ponder the significance of both partners having to feel comfortable about it before God’s Word approves even brief abstinence for the highest motives. This means that if one partner wants to plunge deeply into prayer, and the other wants a bit of sexual fun, God’s Word – I hope you are sitting – says the wishes of the one wanting sex must take priority. That’s staggering! In this case, God requires sexuality to take precedence over what we might call spirituality. This is how absolutely critical it is that husbands and wives do everything within their power to lower their partner’s temptation to look outside of marriage for whatever manifestation of love they crave. The apostle’s sympathy for the partner for whom it is too much effort to miss sex for a little while for the sake of God, is all the more remarkable when we consider that Paul denied himself sexually – and in so many other ways – year after year after year. Here is a man who repeatedly had his flesh flayed for the sake of Christ. He is so passionate about putting devotion to the Lord above every other consideration that he refused to marry. He is astoundingly tough on himself, and yet, under the Spirit’s sway, see how soft he becomes in what he expects of others. I was initially staggered to read a survey in which a common response from both husbands and wives was that they would like more sex. I could easily understand one partner having a higher sex drive but if both want more, why do they hold back? This was a secular survey, not of people striving for sainthood by denying themselves. Upon reflection, I have identified three reasons for this survey result: 1. Stress, tiredness and hormones are among the factors that cause one’s desire for sex to fluctuate, and for no couple are these fluctuations likely to perfectly match, even if, over all, their desires are roughly equal. On some occasions the wife will have the greater sexual desire and sometimes this will be reversed. So to fully meet the other’s desires, each partner must sometimes get physical when he/she does not particularly feel like it. It is not just in relation to money that one must take by faith that “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Occasionally circumstances require that the vital Christian principles of selflessness and denying oneself should be applied to denying oneself sex. However, denying oneself sex for the sake of the other is no nobler than making an extra effort to pamper the other sexually. Moreover, if a couple restrict themselves to when both are feeling particularly passionate at the same time, they will end up having far fewer bonding times and an increase in how often they feel sexually deprived and neglected and, possibly, a little resentful. So, despite what we might have expected, the Scripture we have quoted indicates that denying oneself should most often be applied to denying one’s desire to sleep or watch TV or even to pray when one’s partner wants sex. For reasons explained in the link I Hate Sex! When Wives Want a Sexless Marriage at the end of this webpage, forcing oneself to do anything sexually that one finds distasteful can end up weakening the marriage bond. So I am not referring to doing anything like that but simply to investing in your marriage by occasionally exerting yourself to pampering your partner when she is feeling more passionate than you are. On the other hand, married people who find sex distasteful need to honor their partners by giving high priority to courageously working toward healing, by seeing a doctor or counselor. If you don’t want to do whatever it takes to heal, you should not have married. Like it or not, sex is the heart of marriage. It is what makes marriage unique. If you have chosen to marry, condemning your husband to no moral possibility of sex other than what you give him, then you have morally lost all right to put healing on the backburner. Whilst it can be damaging to one’s sex life to engage in any activity one currently finds unpleasant, one should not go to the other extreme of waiting until one moves from feeling neutral to actually desiring it before giving it a go. After conducting an extensive, in-depth survey of women willing to keep sex diaries, Bettina Arndt has concluded that for women to maximize their personal marital fulfillment they should not wait until they want sex before engaging in foreplay (Source). It applies to men, too. Often, sessions when my sexual pleasure has soared to extraordinary levels began with me having little or no desire to even bother. I simply decided to push myself – often out of a vague hope of maintaining the bond I feel with my wife. At times, I’ve wondered whether sexual arousal were even possible. Despite my desire being buried somewhere in a deep hole sound asleep, foreplay slowly awakened it and coaxed it out of hiding. Eventually, what I had doubted would be worth the effort and thought would turn into a fizzler, turned into exquisite ecstasy. It has happened often and yet I still find myself amazed at the gradual transformation of no interest into passionate desire. 2. Each partner is not getting as much as he/she wants because, at least occasionally, each prefers something slightly different. For example, one might prefer sex more often, and the other prefer longer lovemaking sessions. Each partner should strive for the total satisfaction of the other. If, however, your partner is not displaying that commitment, your obligation to selflessly serve your partner remains as strong as ever. 3. For some people, their sexual advances have only to be gently declined a very few times before they give up – not necessarily give up entirely but give up that particular type of approach. 4. The final possibility is that couples deny themselves sex because neither partner has enough time, due to giving other things – television viewing or whatever – higher priority. Despite advances in birth-control, the so-called sexual revolution and the preoccupation with sex in modern entertainment, studies suggest that couples in the 1950s had more sex than today’s couples. There are more distractions in modern society and it is not just in sport that people are more likely than ever to end up spectators rather than participants. If this resulted in merely missing a bit of pleasure, it would be of little consequence, but sex is far more than pleasure. As the creator of sex, God is the authority on sexuality and from his perspective, sex is all about bonding. If you examine biblical revelation carefully, you will discover that it is sex, not a marriage license, that makes two people one flesh (meditate, for example on the implications of 1 Corinthians 6:16). And one does not have to be an Einstein to know that for most couples, giving adequate priority to sex helps maintain that sacred bond. Regardless of whether we see our reward this side of heaven, however, we need to learn from the divinely inspired apostle. No matter how good it might be to be tough on ourselves, we greatly need Paul’s tenderness toward our marriage partner’s vulnerability. Or, looked at another way, we need Paul’s God-given awareness of just how high the stakes are. Who of us is truly aware of the cost of one slip-up? God’s View of Sex My understanding of biblical revelation is that sex makes two people one flesh in God’s eyes and that thereafter this divinely-given gift should be used to nurture this sacred, life-long union. If this is so, it seems logical to conclude that solo sex is a perversion of God’s gift, even though Scripture does not specifically discuss the matter. What happens when one partner’s limitations make intercourse impractical, however? Does God see one partner satisfying the other without any intention of intercourse as lovingly nurturing the marital bond? Some Christians have highly restrictive opinions about what has God’s blessing, even within the exclusive bond of marriage. Some even go to the extreme of believing that any sex, other than for the specific purpose of conception, is wrong. On the other extreme, some see any restrictions within marriage as contrary to God’s heart. It is certainly not for me to attempt to legislate for anyone. Each couple needs to come together before God and seek his face as to what, if any, attempts to express their physical oneness he wishes them to avoid. For complex psychological and physical reasons, people differ as to their sexual limitations, needs and fears. No doubt our wise Lord will lovingly consider this in what he reveals to individual couples. When prayerfully determining the scope of their physical expressions of love, couples must be extremely cautious about coming to any conclusion (be it restrictive or liberal) about anything not specifically stated in Scripture that ends up detrimental to their union by causing one person to feel unloved or exposed to the temptation to do something that is clearly forbidden by Scripture. Being denied what you yearn for and what makes you feel loved can be distressing and a source of temptation but this can equally be the case for being pressured to submit to something that disturbs you. Rather than sink into resenting your partner for having desires or limitations incompatible with your own, marital love is about prayerfully endeavoring to get to know your partner’s torment so deeply that you end up yearning for her contentment and fulfillment at least as much as she does, and even more than you want your own. Put another way: a key expression of being one flesh is to keep seeking to attain the point where, as implied by Paul when speaking of the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:26), when one part of the body (your partner) suffers, the rest of the body (you) feels it. And this should go beyond mere empathy to action: 1 John 3:16-18 By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and closes his heart of compassion against him, how does the love of God remain in him? My little children, let’s not love in word only, or with the tongue only, but in deed and truth. This is indeed getting highly practical. This principle obviously extends far beyond material goods to any practical way that one Christian might be able to relieve another’s distress. And if this depth of feeling and sacrifice is expected between all Christians, it must certainly be prominent in a Christian marriage, and within that sacred union, practical expressions of love must extend to sex. Blame – whether it be blaming God, yourself, your partner, or anyone else – must not be tolerated. Blaming yourself, for example, might seem humble but just as condemnation is an insidious spiritual attack, so is self-blame or any other form of blame. Instead, you and your wife must close ranks and seek divine empowering to sacrificially and passionately fight as a common enemy any difference in your desires. Obviously, one must avoid being influenced by worldly views, but it is equally dangerous to let prudishness or a negative view of God (such as imagining our beautiful Lord is harsh or wants to make us miserable) to distort our ability to hear from God on this critical issue. One must not lose sight of the tender heart of God who delights in our happiness. Ponder for example the implications of these Scriptures: Colossians 2:20-23 If you died with Christ from the elements of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to ordinances, “Don’t handle, nor taste, nor touch” (all of which perish with use), according to the precepts and doctrines of men? Which things indeed appear like wisdom in self-imposed worship, and humility, and severity to the body; but aren’t of any value against the indulgence of the flesh. 1 Timothy 4:1-5 But the Spirit says expressly that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons . . . forbidding marriage and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified through the word of God and prayer. 1 Timothy 6:17 . . . God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy Acts 14:17 Yet he didn’t leave himself without witness, in that he did good and gave you rains from the sky and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness. Psalms 145:9, 16 The Lord is good to all. . . .You open your hand, and satisfy the desire of every living thing. James 1:5 . . . God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach . . . As I have said, it would be preposterous for me to try to legislate how couples should express their marital union. Since discovering God’s heart on this is the responsibility of every couple, I have crafted a webpage to support couples seeking God’s help in working through the issues as to how God would have them express physical intimacy (see the link to Is it Perverted? at the end of this webpage). Ministry Implications Having seen the importance Scripture gives to caring for one’s family, let’s now look at the scriptural prerequisites for ministry: 1 Timothy 3:2-5 The overseer therefore must be without reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, sensible, modest, hospitable, good at teaching; not a drinker, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous; one who rules his own house well, having children in subjection with all reverence; (but if a man doesn’t know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the assembly of God?) 1 Timothy 3:12 Let servants be husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well. 1 Timothy 3:11 Their wives in the same way must be reverent, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things. Titus 1:5-6 . . .Appoint elders . . . blameless, the husband of one wife, having children who believe, who are not accused of loose or unruly behavior. (Emphasis mine.) In these quotes we have looked at three different ministry positions. I believe the following refers to yet another ministry position – being financially supported by the church for the ministry of intercession (1 Timothy 5:5-6,11-13). Even if you disagree, no one can deny the fundamental importance given to a good marriage: 1 Timothy 5:9-10 Let no one be enrolled as a widow under sixty years old, having been the wife of one man, being approved by good works, if she has brought up children, if she has been hospitable to strangers, if she has washed the saints’ feet, if she has relieved the afflicted, and if she has diligently followed every good work. (Emphasis mine.) Did you read the above quotes carefully? These Scriptures are saying that with God, no one is even in contention for consideration for a ministry position if his/her marriage isn’t up to scratch. One’s family life is fundamental to all ministry. It’s like aspiring to be captain of a basketball team. No matter how great a captain you think you’d make, you are not in contention as a captain unless you are good enough to be in the team. You never get to the point where your captaincy is so good that your playing ability is no longer critical. So it is with ministry: your marriage is absolutely critical. Let your marriage slip and you disqualify yourself from ministry, just as surely as if you fell into alcoholism or sexual sin. Obviously, if you’re unmarried, you can enjoy freedom from marital obligations – and there is much to be said for that (1 Corinthians 7:1,7,8,25-28,32-40) – but once you marry, your marriage is the foundation of your ministry and anything built on any other foundation is a farce. Remember the pastor mentioned earlier, whose devotion to ministry was driving him to neglect his wife. For God to raise up new ministers would to ease his workload be exciting but to get a new husband for his neglected wife would be sobering indeed. Husbands who wait until they realize their marriage is in trouble will probably end up divorced. Proverbs 1:23-29 Turn at my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you. I will make known my words to you. Because I have called, and you have refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no one has paid attention; but you have ignored all my counsel, and wanted none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your disaster. I will mock when calamity overtakes you; when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when your disaster comes on like a whirlwind; when distress and anguish come on you. Then will they call on me, but I will not answer. They will seek me diligently, but they will not find me; because they hated knowledge, and didn’t choose the fear of the Lord. The Inescapable Conclusion We have approached this topic from several quite different angles to reach the unavoidable conclusion: irrespective of how we look at it, marriage is not just a wondrous privilege but a terrifying responsibility. God is far too loving for it to be otherwise. The divine dilemma is that not only is God the extravagant Rewarder who passionately loves you, he is equally the Judge who reels in pain over everyone you mistreat. The Everlasting Father who delights in lavishing good gifts upon you, his treasured son, is also the Defender of the oppressed who loves like a she-bear anyone you hurt. Even God’s wrath is driven by pure, selfless love. In goodness, wisdom, love and perfection, God’s ways are infinitely superior to mine. Even my tiny intellect, however, can see compelling reasons why the Lord of all must make so severe the consequences of not acting in sacrificial love. Consider this: Was Jesus lacking in compassion when he spoke more about hell than did anyone else in the Bible? Or did compassion drive him to warn us? Would it be Heaven if it were populated by selfish people? Or would it be Heaven if its inhabitants yearned to be selfish but for all eternity were forced against their wishes to act in an unselfish way? Forced “love” is not love at all. Or would it be Heaven if its inhabitants were compelled to have some sort of a lobotomy and act like “loving” drones? Would you find it satisfying being surrounded by people who only “love” you because of some brain operation or a drug in the drinking water? That would be a hollow fake. And God is into what is real. The passionate Lord, who is nauseated by the lukewarm and wishes his people were either hot or cold (Revelation 3:15-16), would prefer enemies to fake friends. Former human beings reduced to being his mindless playthings are not in the divine plan. The Everlasting Father wants children as royal, pure and love-driven as he is. Our time on earth is our sole, rapidly disappearing, opportunity to decide for all eternity whether, in the words God spoke to my wife, we will “live for love or live for self.” How we treat our marriage partner is a strong indicator of our choice. No matter how grave your other responsibilities are in life, the Almighty Judge, in whose hand rests your eternal fate, holds you more accountable for your wife’s physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual well-being than he is likely to hold you accountable for any other person on this planet. How you treat your wife has staggeringly extensive consequences, with ramifications ranging from ones as immediate and earthly as if you were loving your own body (Ephesians 5:28), to being as final and eternal as the pronouncements on Judgment Day being based on how you treat people. The rewards of sacrificial love are just as immense and eternal as the consequences of marital selfishness and neglect are catastrophic. And this applies equally to wives. Every woman reading this, needs to be alert to the reality that humanity’s Judge is never guilty of favoritism. He sees through the fallacy that men are somehow less easily hurt. God is just as fiercely protective of their feelings as he is of any woman. Everything said in this webpage to husbands can be said with equal force to wives. With eternity hurtling toward us we must each stop pointing at others and attend to the log in our own eye. Once someone has disregard Paul’s advice of choosing the simpler, more God-focused lifestyle of remaining single and celibate (1 Corinthians 7:1,7,8,25-28,32-40), marital challenges – as frustrating and time-consuming as they can get – become a divinely ordained launching pad to spiritual greatness. What is learned about selfless love in the training ground of marriage, however, must be allowed to grow to the extreme of Christlike love – the love that knows no limits but extends even to strangers and enemies. To humble yourself is to be exalted. To make yourself everyone’s servant is to rule with the King of kings. To die to selfishness is to come alive to God and the exquisite perfection of his love. To yield to that love, letting it flow through you to all around, is life eternal. Related Links Holy Fire In Your Marriage: Stirring Up Marital Passion Marital Love at its Best Husband, Head of a Submissive Wife? A Second Look at Conjugal Rights God Loves Everyone: The Terrifying Implications God’s Heart & Marriage (The women’s version of the page you are currently on.)

Insights into Both God’s Heart & Marriage This webpage serves three quite different purposes. Even though its original purpose was to reveal God’s view of marriage, it provides invaluable insight into the heart of God and can end up changing one’s entire view of life. Moreover, its focus on marriage makes it important not only to marrieds or people seeking premarital counseling, but it is also of great value for those not currently contemplating marriage. The longer the period of time over which one has killed selfish fantasies and has an accurate understanding of marital responsibilities, the better at marriage one is likely to end up being. This vital process cannot start too soon. There are two versions of this webpage. This one is for the female half of humanity. I’m trusting you can figure out who the other page is for. Make no mistake about it: humanity’s Judge is flawlessly impartial, and holds both genders equally accountable. It is essential, however, that we concentrate on our own obligations before God, not what God expects of our partner. So if you are a man, please switch to the men’s version: God & Marriage. Both versions are similar but even substituting the word “husband” for “wife,” and vice versa, helps us do what is essential: to focus on the log in our own eyes. Without even considering parenthood, marriage is a thrilling and undeserved privilege, coupled with mind-boggling responsibilities. No matter how much we downplay those responsibilities, we will each face the God who cares so deeply that our every idle word will be considered on Judgment Day (Matthew 12:36). I agonize over the tragic reality that those in the most desperate need of this webpage are the very ones who are sure they don’t need to read it. They are sailing blissfully to disaster and I am clueless as to how to entice them to see enough of the danger even to bother reading this. Nevertheless, God seems to be insisting that this webpage be written. I am forced to conclude that when looking back on life from eternity, one of the bitterest regrets average people will have is that they took their marriage too casually. No matter how much that seems like a crackpot claim, I challenge you to disagree after reading the facts below. Anyone familiar with my writings will know that I specialize in gentle, inspirational webpages. This time I’m uncomfortable with the message entrusted to me, but obedience to the God of Truth is not about comfort. No matter how much I might long to water down this webpage, I must die to self and faithfully expound God’s Word. The same Jesus who was so tender to those reeling under the awareness of their sin, tore strips off those whose pride or self-righteousness made them hard-hearted.For these blinded by complacency, the Perfect Teacher, who loved them with his own blood, had no alternative but to hit them with the truth to try to shock them back to reality. Regardless of how we might prefer life to be, God treats you and your husband as one. The conclusion Scripture draws from this fact is that to love one’s spouse it to love oneself (Ephesians 5:28). So anything you do that promotes your husband’s happiness, contentment and fulfillment ends up furthering your own; anything you do that frustrates your husband ends up frustrating you. Male Vulnerability In my page for men I took for granted that they would immediately grasp how fiercely protective of his daughters Father God feels when they marry. I am not nearly so confident of women’s ability to understand why God feels equally protective of his sons. For insight into why men are far more vulnerable than is commonly acknowledged, I feel the need to divulge some secrets. Many women from abusive backgrounds have opened up – especially by anonymous e-mail – to let me discover how deeply wounded they still are because decades ago as children they were sometimes deprived of the right to cry, to be hugged and to receive parental approval and gentleness. These are deep human needs and if we do not get the necessary quota during our formative years, we can carry the wound with us for life, unless we acknowledge it and eventually find healing. In most families, however, it is far more likely that boys, rather than girls, will suffer this deprivation and be treated more harshly, be hugged less and shamed if they emotionally connect with their feelings and cry. Later, as teenagers, they are likely to receive more parental disapproval and putdowns than their sisters – especially from their fathers. Even as a child in a very good family, I pushed my mother away and thereafter denied myself much needed comfort because even though I was still little I had picked up society’s vibes that males should not need such things. The result was a deep ache and emptiness within me that lasted for decades. Just as external wounds make people more vulnerable – even a gentle touch could send them reeling – so it is with people whose inner wounds have not been allowed to heal. More disturbing still is the fact that inner wounds are invisible, leaving other people unable to know how to avoid accidentally hurting the person – unless that person opens up and tells them. But men are not meant to admit to anyone that they have such pain. In fact, from very early childhood, they have been forced to conclude that to ever be subject to normal human weakness – fear, tears, aching for a hug, needing someone’s help, and so on – is to fail to be a man. Women with stretch marks don’t wear bikinis. No matter how natural and common stretch marks might be, they hide them like a guilty secret. They feel humiliated and betrayed by their own bodies. This is the sort of shame that society causes almost every man to feel about having normal human weaknesses. It is why men would rather drive around in circles than ask directions. It is why they agonize in secret year after year, rather than see a counselor who could relieve their inner agony. Men are not allowed to be human. They are meant to always be independent, emotionally strong and have their act together. No matter what, they cannot escape being male and society pressures them to think that they have failed as men if, for a moment, they let their guard down and allow anyone to glimpse the truth about them. It is not surprising in the light of such pressure that some explode in anger, especially as some have been made to feel that anger is the only emotion men are allowed to express. Few men will tell me about the pain they carry. They feel trapped by society’s twisted expectations and conclude that to have the needs and sensitivities that come with being human is to fail to be a man. For many, in fact, having normal frailties seems so shameful that just to try to live with themselves they do their utmost to avoid admitting even to themselves the turmoil within them. Wives, longing for the security of having the protection of a strong, highly capable man, often unknowingly pressure their men to perpetuate this sham. Humans are complicated. For example, according to Freud, people may act arrogant because they are secretly riddled with feelings of inferiority. Things are often not what they seem. So keep seeking God for deep insights into your man. Please know my heart: the following is not in any way to put down women but to torpedo the fallacy that mere physical strength makes men spiritually and emotionally less vulnerable and less in need of divine protection than their wives. Picture Adam: the epitome of manhood, in his pristine perfection before the fall. His marriage was not some tragic mistake. If ever a match was literally made in heaven, it was theirs. Nevertheless, despite all these advantages, his wife spiritually defeated him. Look at Samson: physically the strongest of men. No man could conquer him. Delilah did. Consider Solomon: so godly that he was divinely made the wisest of men. His wives led him astray spiritually (1 Kings 11:4). Yes, God feels fiercely protective of women and sees them as his priceless, irreplaceable daughters (and I emphasize this in my page for men) but for very good reasons the Almighty feels equally protective toward husbands. The all-knowing Lord sees beyond the brittle exterior that society insists your husband erects to hide the fragile interior. When a son of his marries, Father God feels as highly protective and as concerned as you would feel if you had a fourteen year old daughter in whom a thirty year old biker was getting very friendly. The Almighty knows what an immense blessing and source of strength wives can be, but he also knows how easily hurt, discouraged and deceived men can be if their wives choose to exploit them. The Unexpected Consequence of Marriage The reward for slaying Goliath included being granted the hand of the King’s daughter in marriage (1 Samuel 17:25-27). Note David’s reaction: 1 Samuel 18:18-19 David said to Saul, “Who am I, and what is my life, or my father’s family in Israel, that I should be son-in-law to the king?” But at the time when Merab, Saul’s daughter, should have been given to David, she was given to Adriel the Meholathite as wife. Later, romance provided David with a second opportunity to marry a daughter of the king but again the mighty giant-killer and anointed king-to-be showed great reluctance to take upon himself such honor and responsibility: 1 Samuel 18:20-23 Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved David; and they told Saul, and the thing pleased him. . . . Therefore Saul said to David, “You shall today be my son-in-law a second time.” Saul commanded his servants, “Talk with David secretly, and say, ‘Behold, the king has delight in you, and all his servants love you. Now therefore be the king’s son-in-law.’ ” Saul’s servants spoke those words in the ears of David. David said, “Does it seems to you a light thing to be the king’s son-in-law, since I am a poor man, and lightly esteemed?” Wife, you had the audacity to marry not just royalty but a cherished child of the Almighty King of kings. Like it or not, your husband has a fearsome Avenger who is acutely interested in every detail of how you treat God’s pride and joy. Despite the Almighty’s extreme graciousness and patience, it might be safer for a man dating the thirteen-year-old virgin daughter of an insanely jealous Mafia boss than for you to marry one of God’s sons. Yes, that seems exaggerated, but I have not yet begun to unpack the facts. First, some general biblical background: Without rival, the most exquisitely beautiful thing in the entire cosmos is the heart of God. He is breathtakingly loving, good, kind, patient and understanding. This most astounding Person is the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) exploded to infinite extremes. He who told us to forgive seventy times seven is the living embodiment of what he preaches. I cannot overestimate how much God is devoted to you and longs to forgive your vilest acts over and over and over. The Infinite Lord’s mind-boggling love for you provokes him to mind-boggling wrath against anyone who hurts you or lets you suffer through their greed, selfishness, neglect or whatever: 2 Thessalonians 1:6-7 Since it is a righteous thing with God to repay affliction to those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted with us . . . Why haven’t you seen God doing this? The rest of the quote explains: 2 Thessalonians 1:7 . . . when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire. Likewise Peter says: 2 Peter 3:7 But the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. He then proceeds to explain why that cataclysmic day has not yet arrived: 2 Peter 3:9-10 The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some count slowness; but is patient with us, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief . . . The truth of God’s explosive desire to vindicate his beloved is much bigger than just you, however. When pure, selfless, passionate love takes on divine proportions, there are inescapable ramifications that we must one day face – and the sooner we realize it the better. You can revel in the glorious truth that infinite love means that God loves every part of you in mindboggling detail and with incomprehensible intensity. God’s unlimited love also means, however, that he loves with that same unfathomable intensity each and every person on this planet as if he or she were the only person in God’s universe. Yes, God feels your pain as if it were his own. When you hurt, he hurts. But likewise if you hurt someone, you hurt someone of infinite importance to God. In other words: to hurt anyone, is to hurt God. In short, if love is so fundamental to God that Scripture declares “God is love,” then he passionately loves and yearns to defend not just you, but everyone you have ever hurt by your sin, selfishness or neglect. A perfect judge must be utterly impartial, and there is no limit to our Judge’s love – i.e. he loves those we despise with the same “insane” abandonment that he loves us. So unless we genuinely repent of hurting others, he is compelled to focus on us that same wrath and yearning to execute justice that he longs to pour out on those who have mistreated us. This is foundational to much of Jesus’ teaching. Matthew 5:20  For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.   Matthew 7:2  For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.   Matthew 18:33-35  ‘. . . Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’  In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”   Matthew 25:32,41-46  All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  . . . Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’  They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’  He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Then they will go away to eternal punishment . . .   Luke 10:25  On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “ what must I do to inherit eternal life? ” “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”He answered: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’ “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” (Emphasis mine.)   When citing Peter above, I cut him off midstream because you will now better understand the highly practical conclusion he was barreling down to: 2 Peter 3:10-12 . . . The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. . . . (NIV, Emphasis mine.) God’s entire purpose for our lives is that we become like his Son (Biblical Confirmation), whose love for God and for humanity compelled him to sacrifice all. If everything about humanity’s Judge is driven by sacrificial love, then he will judge us by that standard – i.e. by how much we have acted in sacrificial love. The purpose of this background is to highlight one critical point: if this grave matter applies to how we treat everyone, it applies even more to how we treat our marriage partners. Let me explain why: A pastor, who was spearheading a significant breakthrough in an ethnic community, confided to me that his marriage was floundering. Overcome by the need in the community, he would have a guilt attack whenever he took the slightest break from his ministry to spend time with his wife and family. This man of God knew that God’s rock-solid dependability can be relied upon more than the sun that rises without fail every single day. Loyalty and faithfulness is so much a part of God’s nature that divorce is totally contrary to who God is. The God of endless love literally hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). It turns his stomach. This pastor needed no reminder of such basics, so I zeroed in on the heart of the matter. “With millions of Christians at God’s disposal,” I said, “the Lord has only to whisper, and suddenly your community would be the focus of more evangelistic effort than you could ever equal. No evangelist is indispensable. Your marriage role, however, is far more serious. God cannot give your wife another husband – unless he kills you.” God is love, and love is all about relationships. So relationships, no matter how casual, are of extreme importance to God. Even to our enemies we have love responsibilities that we dare not neglect. Nevertheless, God’s commitment to the permanence of marriage raises the stakes even higher. If, as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, you bypass someone in need, you will be held responsible, but God might send someone else to meet that need. God treats marriage as so sacred, however, that your husband has needs that not even God will let himself meet. True Love Versus Ugly Imitations Study the following as if eternity depended upon it; conscious that you will one day stand before God to give account, not for how your partner compares, but for how you measured up. A disturbingly common trap that sends vast numbers of people hurtling to devastating heartbreak is to expect a human relationship to meet needs that are so deep that only God can meet them. It is vital that you discover that your desires for perfection in a partner are actually not cravings for marriage but a deep craving for God himself and that you need to have these yearnings met by him before you are ready for marriage. Otherwise, you will be like a parasite sucking the life out of your marriage by trying to leech from your partner self-esteem, emotional fulfillment, security and other intense needs that can only be fully met by daily intimacy with Almighty God, the Perfect One. Romantic love – better called self-centered infatuation – is the short-lived exhilaration of vainly supposing you have at last found someone who will make you happy. If “all is fair in love and war” then that type of “love” is as dangerous as war. It is cruel and intoxicatingly deceptive. Its pillows are perfumed to hide the stench of death. There is an enormous difference between being intoxicated by romantic feelings and being loving. In fact, they are polar opposites. As wonderful as the fleeting euphoria of falling in love is, there is something infinity superior. I’m not a skeptic, a cynic, nor a wet blanket; I’m just affirming a fact of life that we all must understand if we are to side-step heartbreak and tragedy and soar to the pinnacle of human experience. To be in love is a fluke: by a freak of nature someone just happens to stimulate chemical reactions within you that, according to experts, might last thirty months if you are exceptionally lucky. To be loving, however, is another world. It is to be Christlike. It is not a fluke; it is a virtue, an achievement, a deliberate, praiseworthy act. Being in love is fleeting; being loving is eternal. Being in love is like having a baby. Babies are adorable. We can enjoy them and praise God for them but babies do not last. They grow. Likewise, being in love does not last and if that is all that is holding two people together they will grow apart. Falling in love is like being given a shiny new car: you did not do a thing to make it shiny or run well, but if you continue not doing a thing to maintain it and just let nature take its course, it will gradually fade and eventually grind to a halt. Whether it be measured in terms of romantic love, visual attraction or sex, the initial excitement fades with any relationship. This is perfectly normal and nothing negative – except to hollowed-out junkies ensnared by an addiction to the excitement of the new. This devastating addiction not only steals one’s peace and contentment; it gnaws away at the soul and white-ants one’s ability to have a lasting marriage. If we understood, we would flee such an addiction with the terror of someone fleeing a bomb set to explode and rip one’s life apart. This addiction reduces its hapless victims to jackasses exhausting themselves chasing a plastic carrot dangled in front of them; to someone dying of thirst in a desert pathetically stumbling after a mirage. Real love is not a whim that spurts and splutters at the fickle mercy of hormones and circumstances. It does not fizzle when hot-blooded leaps of imagination hit cold reality. It is unfazed by sagging beauty, declining abilities and changes of fortune. This unstoppable force powers on regardless. It is fueled not by the beloved but by daily dying to self and coming alive to the God of gods who sacrificed everything and became the highest by becoming the lowest. Yes, for love that never dies you must die daily. To find such love you must lose self. This love is noble, making you worthy of never-ending honor. Like an exquisite garden, it does not magically arrive; it is carefully nurtured. It is a virtue; a perpetual choice; a way of life for which you will literally be eternally grateful. Love thinks the highest of a person; forever viewing the beloved in the best possible light; always giving the beloved the benefit of the doubt. It sees beauties and finds treasures in the beloved that others miss. Love longs to know and understand everything about the beloved so that it can best serve the person. This love is forever grateful. It keeps on appreciating; never taking the beloved for granted; continually singing the beloved’s praises. It always treasures and values the beloved. It keeps no count of wrongs nor of cost. It is hopeless at remembering pain but never forgets when the beloved brought joy. Love seeks not to get but to give and give; not to be served but to serve. It craves not its own but the achievement and fulfillment of the beloved. It longs to exalt the beloved; not to put down but to lift high; not to control but to empower; not to manipulate but to liberate. In the eyes of love, to win at the expense of the beloved is to lose. It seeks not to win arguments but for the beloved to be proved right. Its happiness rests in the happiness of the beloved. It rejoices in the other’s success more than its own. When the beloved is honored, it feels honored; when the beloved is hurt, it feels pain. It willingly sacrifices everything for the beloved. Love keeps opening its heart. It is gentle but strong; soft but enduring; pliable but rock-solid. It is faithful and loyal, steadfast and true. It is dependable and pure. It stays as reliable in secret as when it is seen. It never stagnates but grows stronger by the year. This love is as eternal as God; as selfless as Christ. Empowered by the Spirit, it lets earth glimpse heaven. This love is sacred, its source is divine. It delights in God and is God’s delight. We are called to be like Jesus, who kept on loving Judas, knowing from the beginning that he would betray him. We are to love like the one who did not wait until his heathen torturers showed any remorse but forgave them while they were in the very act of killing him (Luke 23:33-34). What chance have we of doing this if we cannot even show our marriage partners such love? People today claim to be horrified about anyone not marrying for love, but marrying for one’s own happiness is marrying for selfishness, not love. If marriage is all about selfishness it is doomed to fail. Or was marriage instituted by the God of selfless love? In this description of love I have crammed much into a few words. I suggest you print it and read it over and over, while praying this: Psalms 139:23-24 Search me, God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way. Despite the importance of love, however, the motive for marrying should soar even higher than sacrificial love for a human. If the goal of marriage is anything less than the glory of God it is spiritually corrupt and as unhealthy as a life-threatening flesh-eating disease. Years ago the Lord challenged my wife: “Will you live for love or for self?” For her it was a no-brainer. To love as God loves is to truly live. She is appalled, however, at how many modern women have fallen into an arrogant, self-centered “Princess Complex”. That’s an ugly, ungodly blemish. Even the glorious King of kings has a servant heart. Men, too, often fail to have the servant heart that God expects of us all. No matter what failings your husband may have, however, the God who lavishes you and me with his unconditional love despite our enormous failures and inadequacies, expects you to keep on loving as he does. Regardless of what your husband does, the fact remains set in stone that you dared marry the darling child of the all-seeing Lord. If that doesn’t send shivers down your spine, you have confused God biding his time with God not caring. You have got away with nothing; it is just not yet judgment time. Once, through physical union, two become one, it is way too late to back out: how you treat God’s son will impact you severely. In marriage, as in the parable of the talents, the King has left you in charge of his treasure and he seems to have gone so quiet about it that it is as if he has left the country. This treasure, however, is not mere priceless material goods; it is the very child of the Almighty King of kings, the apple of his eye. To him, he is royalty; the darling of his heart in whom he sees sensitivities, beauties and perfections that you will never perceive. Even if your life partner is not a Christian, he is loved with such incomprehensible intensity that, for him, the Exalted One ripped himself away from the majestic perfection of his celestial throne and the adoring throngs clamoring for the honor of serving his every whim. Abandoning the pristine splendor of heaven, he came alone to grubby earth to wade through its moral sewers and be despised, ridiculed and finally tortured to death, just because he could no longer constrain the perpetual volcano of his love for your husband. To this Judge you must give full account of everything you have ever done to your man, including any time you treated God’s darling as a commoner rather than the prince of God that he is. What Will Come Home to Roost? With that dangling by a thread above your head, let me seize an already piercing Scripture and polish it with a few words till it glares at you with the terrifying intensity God intends. Note the comments I have added in square brackets: Galatians 6:7 Don’t be deceived [its coming could be so slow that we are in grave danger of fooling ourselves into thinking we have got away with it, but it is as unavoidable as death]. God is not mocked [it is divinely guaranteed], for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap [we choose our future and seal our fate: we will end up on the receiving end of whatever we have dished out]. As surely as spitting into the wind, if you treat your partner in a less than Christlike manner it will eventually come hurtling back to you with divine fury. Could you, by the way you treat your husband, be storing up for yourself curses such as manipulation, grumpiness, selfishness, impatience, criticism, resentment, or harshness? Or are you blessing yourself and brightening your future by making it your habit to be loving, cheerful, appreciative, peaceable, patient, kind, gentle, generous and self-controlled, so that these delights may come home to roost as faithfully as homing pigeons? What we give shall be poured back into our bosom in abundance – “pressed down, shaken together, and running over” (Luke 6:38). Significantly, Jesus said this not merely in the context of giving money but about loving and forgiving those who hurt us, being kind to the ungrateful, not condemning or judging others, and so on (The Context). If we reap what we sow, are you, by the way you treat your husband, blessing the garden of your near future with flowers or cursing it with thorns? Or is it even more serious? We need look no further than when Jesus spoke about separating the sheep from the goats upon his spectacular return to earth as humanity’s Judge (Matthew 25:31-46) to know that how we treat people has not just earthly implications but serious eternal consequences. Moreover, the person on whom we are likely to have the greatest impact for the longest time – and hence the person we will be held especially accountable for – is our marriage partner. God’s Tender Heart We will later explore the surprising biblical revelation that the Holy Lord exalts physical intimacy above spiritual activities. Before examining this aspect of God’s tender heart, however, let’s ensure we are not so narrow minded as to imagine that our loving Lord sees marital duties as going little further that the satisfying of physical urges. Your husband’s devoted and ever-vigilant Father expects wives to treat their husbands with sensitivity and tenderness. I have already provided a link to many Scriptures affirming that God shows no favoritism but if you need further confirmation that God does not judge with double standards, consider how the Ten Commandments merely state, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” (Exodus 20:17). Nothing is said about coveting husbands. It was quite unnecessary to spell out that God applies the same standard to both genders. Peter wrote about how wives should act toward their husbands and then immediately said: 1 Peter 3:7 You husbands, in the same way, live with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor to the woman, as to the weaker vessel, as being also joint heirs of the grace of life; that your prayers may not be hindered.  (Emphasis mine.) The words “in the same way” confirm that although husbands and wives have slightly different roles, there is great similarity between what God expects of each partner. So we can expect great similarity in how God judges each partner. Let’s see how this verse ends: 1 Peter 3:7 . . . that your prayers may not be hindered. (Emphasis mine.) So if you ride roughshod over your partner’s feelings, God is so much his child’s avenger that your prayers are in danger of going unheeded. The last thing any of us wants is communication problems with God. Want to find yourself cut off from God’s blessings? Want to be in a crisis and have your desperate pleas to the only One who can save you go no further than the ceiling? Suddenly the implications of this Scripture hit hard: James 5:16  . . .The insistent prayer of a righteous person is powerfully effective. (Emphasis mine.) And suddenly this sends chills down the spine: Isaiah 59:2 . . . your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. All because of treating one’s wife a bit too casually . . . Peter was expounding a spiritual principle so fundamental that although it clearly applies to one’s marital partner, it extends beyond that to every relationship. Here’s the principle in black and white: Proverbs 21:13 Whoever stops his ears at the cry of the poor, he will also cry out, but shall not be heard. Proverbs 28:9 He who turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. Isaiah 1:15 When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Yes, when you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. We have seen that the God of love takes how we treat others so personally that it is as if we were doing it to him. Being insensitive to your wife’s feelings goes hand in glove with being insensitive to God’s feelings. Again, one has enormous responsibilities to one’s life partner, but this is so fundamental to the God who has no limits that Scripture applies it to all relationships: 1 John 4:20 If a man says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who doesn’t love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? James 3:9-11 With it [the tongue] we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who are made in the image of God. . . . My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring send out from the same opening fresh and bitter water? Matthew 25:44-46 . . . ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn’t help you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Most certainly I tell you, because you didn’t do it to one of the least of these, you didn’t do it to me.’ These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. We have been following thoughts generated by what Peter reveals about marriage but before leaving that quote from Peter we should note the context: 1 Peter 3:7-9 You husbands, in the same way, live with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor to the woman, as to the weaker vessel, as being also joint heirs of the grace of life; that your prayers may not be hindered. Finally, be all like-minded, compassionate, loving as brothers, tender hearted, courteous, not rendering evil for evil, or insult for insult; but instead blessing; knowing that to this were you called, that you may inherit a blessing.  (Emphasis mine.) Note also the context of “don't grieve the Holy Spirit”: Ephesians 4:29-32 Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but only what is good for building others up as the need may be, that it may give grace to those who hear. Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, outcry, and slander, be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you. (Emphasis mine.) Does it surprise you that the Bible links grieving the Spirit not with how we treat the Holy Spirit, but with failing to treat people with kindness, gentleness and respect? This has significant implications for marriage. Consider the tongue-lashings that some women are infamous for: Proverbs 19:13 . . . A wife’s quarrels are a continual dripping. Proverbs 21:19 It is better to dwell in a desert land, than with a contentious and fretful woman. State laws are often so crude as to recognize little more than physical hurt but God knows no such limitations. He looks at the heart. To the Holy One, who sees hate as murder and lust as adultery (1 John 3:15; Matthew 5:21-22,28), wounding with one’s lips is just as criminal as wounding with fists. Of course, men can fight with their lips but, in this webpage, the focus is on the marital obligations of wives. More than ever in these days of “sexual equality,” some women both humiliate and inflict physical pain on their husbands by resorting to physical violence. Even without getting physically violent, however, a failure to control one’s mouth can wound so deeply as to destroy a marriage. In this light, consider the importance of these Scriptures: Proverbs 12:16 A fool shows his annoyance the same day, but one who overlooks an insult is prudent. Proverbs 14:29 He who is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a quick temper displays folly. Proverbs 15:18 A wrathful man stirs up contention, but one who is slow to anger appeases strife. Proverbs 16:32 One who is slow to anger is better than the mighty; one who rules his spirit, than he who takes a city. Proverbs 19:11 The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger. It is his glory to overlook an offense. Proverbs 25:28 Like a city that is broken down and without walls is a man whose spirit is without restraint. Proverbs 29:11 A fool vents all of his anger, but a wise man brings himself under control. As already hinted, it is appallingly easy for a woman to fail to detect how sensitive her husband is. From early childhood most boys have been taught they should grow up to become “the strong, silent type” and not divulge or even get in touch with what is fermenting inside of them. No one can know exactly how much a man can take before he suddenly cracks and ends the marriage. And once that point is reached, it might be too late to fix anything. It is not impossible to end up so blinded by self-righteousness that not even God could forgive you (because you see no need to seek divine forgiveness), but even if you eventually manage to see the error of your ways and truly repent, few husbands, after years of suppressed anger and hidden hurt, are as forgiving as God. Every woman either takes to heart this sobering fact while she still thinks her marriage is good, or there is a strong chance that she will end up adding to the divorce statistics, no matter how sure she is that it could never happen to her. Pause for a moment to imagine what it would be like to have had a heart transplant. Consider how you would cherish that precious new part of you. What was once a vital part of another person is now a vital part of you. Your body keeps your new heart alive and that heart keeps your body alive. Your welfare and destinies are one. The consequences of a man and woman becoming one flesh are as profound as this life-transforming surgery. The tragic possibility of a heart transplant is that the body might turn against its new organ, attacking it as if it were a disease rather than the essential part of itself that it has become. This is what it is like when a wife and husband fight. Regardless of whether they use lips, fists, threats, silent treatment, finances, withholding sex, trashing treasured objects, or whatever, it is as foolish as attacking your heart with a knife. Very many people wanted the apostle Paul dead but he was spiritually astute enough to see through the obvious. He realized that his fight was not with flesh and blood but against spiritual forces (Ephesians 6:12). One of the foundations of my marriage is that whenever my wife and I have a problem we see beyond the obvious and view it as an external attack. To fight each other would be as ridiculous as a nation choosing the moment it is attacked by another nation as the time to break into civil war. A household divided against itself is doomed (Mark 3:25). Refusing to fight each other, we stand shoulder to shoulder, resolutely uniting to fight the problem as our common enemy. When a marriage is under pressure there are two options: join forces with your partner and fight the pressure as a common enemy, or turn on each other, blaming and fighting one another. Joining forces significantly multiplies one’s power to overcome adversity, as indicated in Deuteronomy 32:30. It says that one person shall put a thousand enemies to flight and yet two shall send fleeing not just two thousand but ten thousand. In the confusion of an ambush, one seldom has the presence of mind to devise the correct strategy. One needs to develop the habit well ahead of time of closing ranks and together fighting a common enemy when even the tiniest issues assail a relationship. The tragedy of not developing this habit is demonstrated several times in Israel’s history, when the nation’s enemies turned on each other in the heat of battle; slaughtering each other instead of attacking Israel (Judges 7:22; 1 Samuel 14:20: 2 Chronicles 20:23). In the words of Jesus, a household divided against itself cannot stand (Mark 3:25). Tragic Mistake When asked to rank what they most want in marriage, men typically produce a markedly different list to that of most women. Are you aware of what Gary Chapman calls the five languages of love? People vary as to what causes them to feel loved and they usually use this as their basis of expressing love. For example, giving gifts is very important to some people in helping them to feel and express love but for some other people, gift giving is almost as meaningless as a foreign language. For them the pre-eminent way of communicating love might be one of the following: * Touch * Talking * Serving * Verbal Encouragement The key point is that a partner could put enormous effort into expressing love, only for much of it to be wasted because the method used is essentially meaningless to the other person. Often this can continue for years without the couple realizing what is happening. So it is vital to put much prayer and effort into discovering what things are most effective in making your partner feel valued and loved. You might be quite surprised at what you find. If a husband doesn’t feel loved and can’t interpret his wife’s actions as showing love, then regardless of how deeply she really loves him, as far as he is concerned he might as well not be loved. He would feel completely unfulfilled, and a basic need within him that God intended marriage to satisfy is left as a gnawing ache, thus tempting him to look to another woman to meet that need. Whether a husband yields to that temptation is up to him. He will be held accountable by God for how he responds but whether the temptation exists is largely up to his wife, and God will hold her accountable for her role in the existence of the temptation. As Jesus said, temptations will come but woe to him who causes them (Luke 17:1-2). If you don’t do what you can to minimize your husband’s temptation (such as failing to do all you can to make him feel loved) God sees it an equally serious offence as trying to seduce another man. Just as trying to seduce a married man is tempting that man to be unfaithful, so causing your husband to feel unloved is tempting him to be unfaithful. Let’s not forget that adultery is such a big deal with God that in the Old Testament it incurred the death penalty. We dare not take risks with temptation. “Therefore let him who thinks he stands be careful that he doesn’t fall” warned Paul (1 Corinthians 10:12). Complacency is deadly. Remember Simon Peter: so certain he’d never deny his Lord. If we, who live inside our minds and bodies 24/7, can still fail to correctly gauge our own susceptibility to temptation, what chance have we of accurately guessing the danger our partner faces? We should desperately plead for God to protect us from placing burdens of self-control upon our partners that make us ever so slightly like the Jews condemned by Jesus when he said: Luke 11:46 . . . Woe to you lawyers also! For you load men with burdens that are difficult to carry, and you yourselves won’t even lift one finger to help carry those burdens. Whether it be God’s love or a wife’s love, to abuse love or a forgiving heart is a hideous act. It is a betrayal of trust on the level of physically torturing one’s best friend. Anyone who thinks he can get away with exploiting love is hurtling headlong into the rudest awakening. We have seen that there is a frightening side to God’s love: it renders him a fearsome protector of his children. Jesus gave us insight into this when he said: Matthew 18:6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him that a huge millstone should be hung around his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depths of the sea. And let us not forget: Hebrews 4:13 There is no creature that is hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. Hebrews 10:30-31 For we know him who said, “Vengeance belongs to me,” says the Lord, “I will repay.” Again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. More “Godly” than God! It is disturbingly easy to end up self-deceived and oblivious to spiritual danger; getting things so horribly wrong as to provoke God’s wrath while presuming we are being so very holy and spiritual. One of the most likely ways for us to end up in this catastrophic mess is by letting “spiritual” things take priority over one’s marriage. Few of us realize just how seriously the God of love takes it when we let family slip in our priorities. We might think that little would impress God more than sacrificially giving him our hard earned cash and yet this very act infuriates him when what you put in the offering does not have the blessing of your family. Is it right to let giving to the Lord take precedence over giving to one’s family? We see Jesus exploding the myth in reference to parents, and the same principle applies to one’s husband. In the following, we will see Jesus expounding the meaning of “honor your father and mother.” If he says the word “honor” can be stretched so far as to include money, then it has to include a whole range of other things such as respect, support, physical help, and so on. Matthew 15:3-9, 12-14 He answered them, “Why do you also disobey the commandment of God because of your tradition? For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be put to death.’ But you say, ‘Whoever may tell his father or his mother, “Whatever help you might otherwise have gotten from me is a gift devoted to God,” he shall not honor his father or mother.’ You have made the commandment of God void because of your tradition. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, ‘These people draw near to me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. And in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrine rules made by men.’ ” . . .        Then the disciples came, and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended, when they heard this saying?” But he answered, “Every plant which my heavenly Father didn’t plant will be uprooted. Leave them alone. They are blind guides of the blind. If the blind guide the blind, both will fall into a pit.” See how Jesus ripped into them over this issue. He didn’t say this was some minor slip of priorities. He was saying that by neglecting family responsibilities they had totally lost it. They were blind guides. They had not been planted by the Father. They were weeds that would be ripped up by the roots. And what was their grave offense? Advising that it is acceptable to neglect family responsibilities for the sake of serving God. This is the same Jesus who said, “Sell all that you have, and distribute it to the poor . . .” We need to be extremely wary of thinking ourselves more spiritual than our partner. When God means so much to us, we have a strong bias toward self-deception in that we can “spiritualize” our hang-ups and weaknesses. In other words, we can build up a very strong biblical argument supporting our stance and convince ourselves that we have divine approval for our actions when God doesn’t approve at all but we are simply hoping to justify behavior that may be no more correct than our partner’s and might even be totally contrary to God’s ways. This is why Jesus kept insisting that we must humble ourselves, and not judge others but to focus on our own shortcomings. If there is any group of people in the Bible that haunts me, it is the Scribes and Pharisees. They seemed to be so theologically correct and so incredibly devout and so certain they were pleasing God and yet they missed it so totally that they ended up murdering the Son of God. What alarms me is that each of us continually teeters on the edge of making spiritual mistakes of the same horrific magnitude. John tells us that when the Jews were finalizing Jesus’ execution they refused to enter Pilate’s palace to avoid ceremonial uncleanness (John 18:28). That’s how deluded they were – how much they thought they were doing everything exactly as God would have them to act. These were devout Bible scholars. If they can get it so horribly wrong, so can we, if we are not extremely careful. Just as they were so sure they would never make the same mistakes as their ancestors who killed the prophets, we are in danger of arrogantly thinking we will never make the mistakes of the Scribes and Pharisees. We all know: Matthew 7:22-23 Many will tell me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, in your name cast out demons, and in your name do many mighty works?’ Then I will tell them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work iniquity.’ Neglect family responsibilities and all service and sacrifice becomes repulsive to God. Paul takes up this same theme. He says that everyone should “ . . . learn first to show piety toward their own family, and to repay their parents, for this is acceptable in the sight of God” (1 Timothy 5:4, emphasis mine). Paul continues: 1 Timothy 5:7-8 Also command these things, that they may be without reproach. But if anyone doesn’t provide for his own, and especially his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. Read the last sentence again: “But if anyone doesn’t provide for his own, and especially his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” This is astoundingly serious! I know it sounds too extreme. If you are thinking maybe Paul was just having a really bad day at the office when he penned that, I’m glad I’m in good company. The only problem is that, as we have seen, Jesus said almost precisely the same. We can’t squirm out of this by claiming, “It’s Old Testament,” or some such thing. We’ve quoted Jesus and now Paul is saying the same thing – that anyone neglecting their family life has so strayed from God that she is in danger of the same fate as unbelievers. I used to be so “godly” that I despised the adage, “Charity begins at home,” but that’s not the first time I have been so stupid as to end up more “godly” than God. Although I am still wary of people using the adage as an excuse for selfishness, there truly is a biblical basis for saying “Charity begins at home.” Charity (the King James Version word for love) most certainly does not end at home but it is the essential starting point and if ever we leave it behind in our pursuit of Christlikeness, we’ve disqualified ourselves. Would God be impressed if we stole money from the impoverished so that we could put it in the offering? Wouldn’t that infuriate him? So it is when we steal from a husband or some other family member to give to God what he says is rightfully theirs. If family members make the sacrifice of their own accord, they will be rewarded and we will be off the hook, but if we force it upon them, it is entirely different. In marriage, this principle applies not merely to money but equally to time, comfort, respect, companionship, lovemaking and so on. Physical Intimacy Now that we have gained some perspective by gaining insight into the importance of other aspects of marital love, let’s look to the Lord for some divine insight into physical intimacy. 1 Corinthians 7:5 Don’t deprive one another, unless it is by consent for a season, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer, and may be together again, that Satan doesn’t tempt you because of your lack of self-control.  (Emphasis mine) That bears careful reading. Ponder the significance of both partners having to feel comfortable about it before God’s Word approves even brief abstinence for the highest motives. This means that if one partner wants to plunge deeply into prayer, and the other wants a bit of sexual fun, God’s Word – I hope you are sitting – says the wishes of the one wanting sex must take priority. That’s staggering! In this case, God requires sexuality to take precedence over what we might call spirituality. This is how absolutely critical it is that husbands and wives do everything within their power to lower their partner’s temptation to look outside of marriage for whatever manifestation of love they crave. The apostle’s sympathy for the partner for whom it is too much effort to miss sex for a little while for the sake of God, is all the more remarkable when we consider that Paul denied himself sexually – and in so many other ways – year after year after year. Here is a man who repeatedly had his flesh flayed for the sake of Christ. He is so passionate about putting devotion to the Lord above every other consideration that he refused to marry. He is astoundingly tough on himself, and yet, under the Spirit’s sway, see how soft he becomes in what he expects of others. I was initially staggered to read a survey in which a common response from both husbands and wives was that they would like more sex. I could easily understand one partner having a higher sex drive but if both want more, why do they hold back? This was a secular survey, not of people striving for sainthood by denying themselves. Upon reflection, I have identified three reasons for this survey result: 1. Stress, tiredness and hormones are among the factors that cause one’s desire for sex to fluctuate, and for no couple are these fluctuations likely to perfectly match, even if, over all, their desires are roughly equal. On some occasions the wife will have the greater sexual desire and sometimes this will be reversed. So to fully meet the other’s desires, each partner must sometimes get physical when he/she does not particularly feel like it. It is not just in relation to money that one must take by faith that “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Occasionally, circumstances require that the vital Christian principles of selflessness and denying oneself should be applied to denying oneself sex. However, denying oneself sex for the sake of the other is no nobler than making an extra effort to pamper the other sexually. Moreover, if a couple restrict themselves to when both are feeling particularly passionate at the same time, they will end up having far fewer bonding times and an increase in how often they feel sexually deprived and neglected and, possibly, a little resentful. So, despite what we might have expected, the Scripture we have quoted indicates that denying oneself should most often be applied to denying one’s desire to sleep or watch TV or even to pray when one’s partner wants sex. For reasons explained in the link I Hate Sex! When Wives Want a Sexless Marriage at the end of this webpage, forcing oneself to do anything sexually that one finds distasteful can end up weakening the marriage bond. So I am not referring to doing anything like that but simply to investing in your marriage by occasionally exerting yourself to pampering your partner when he is feeling more passionate than you are. On the other hand, married people who find sex distasteful need to honor their partners by giving high priority to courageously working toward healing, by seeing a doctor or counselor. If you don’t want to do whatever it takes to heal, you should not have married. Like it or not, sex is the heart of marriage. It is what makes marriage unique. If you have chosen to marry, condemning your husband to no moral possibility of sex other than what you give him, then you have morally lost all right to put healing on the backburner. Whilst it can be damaging to one’s sex life to engage in any activity one currently finds unpleasant, one should not go to the other extreme of waiting until one moves from feeling neutral to actually desiring it before giving it a go. After conducting an extensive, in-depth survey of women willing to keep sex diaries, Bettina Arndt has concluded that for women to maximize their personal marital fulfillment they should not wait until they want sex before engaging in foreplay (Source). It applies to men, too. Often, sessions when my sexual pleasure has soared to extraordinary levels began with me having little or no desire to even bother. I simply decided to push myself – often out of a vague hope of maintaining the bond I feel with my wife. At times, I’ve wondered whether sexual arousal were even possible. Despite my desire being buried somewhere in a deep hole sound asleep, foreplay slowly awakened it and coaxed it out of hiding. Eventually, what I had doubted would be worth the effort and thought would turn into a fizzler, turned into exquisite ecstasy. It has happened often and yet I still find myself amazed at the gradual transformation of no interest into passionate desire. 2. Each partner is not getting as much as he/she wants because, at least occasionally, each prefers something slightly different. For example, one might prefer sex more often, and the other prefer longer lovemaking sessions. Each partner should strive for the total satisfaction of the other. If, however, your partner is not displaying that commitment, your obligation to selflessly serve your partner remains as strong as ever. 3. For some people, their sexual advances have only to be gently declined a very few times before they give up – not necessarily give up entirely but give up that particular type of approach. 4. The final possibility is that couples deny themselves sex because neither partner has enough time, due to giving other things – television viewing or whatever – higher priority. Despite advances in birth-control, the so-called sexual revolution and the preoccupation with sex in modern entertainment, studies suggest that couples in the 1950s had more sex than today’s couples. There are more distractions in modern society and it is not just in sport that people are more likely than ever to end up spectators rather than participants. If this resulted in merely missing a bit of pleasure, it would be of little consequence, but sex is far more than pleasure. As the creator of sex, God is the authority on sexuality and from his perspective, sex is all about bonding. If you examine biblical revelation carefully, you will discover that it is sex, not a marriage license, that makes two people one flesh (meditate, for example on the implications of 1 Corinthians 6:16). And one does not have to be an Einstein to know that for most couples, giving adequate priority to sex helps maintain that sacred bond. Regardless of whether we see our reward this side of heaven, however, we need to learn from the divinely inspired apostle. No matter how good it might be to be tough on ourselves, we greatly need Paul’s tenderness toward our marriage partner’s vulnerability. Or, looked at another way, we need Paul’s God-given awareness of just how high the stakes are. Who of us is truly aware of the cost of one slip-up? God’s View of Sex My understanding of biblical revelation is that sex makes two people one flesh in God’s eyes and that thereafter this divinely-given gift should be used to nurture this sacred, life-long union. If this is so, it seems logical to conclude that solo sex is a perversion of God’s gift, even though Scripture does not specifically discuss the matter. What happens when one partner’s limitations make intercourse impractical, however? Does God see one partner satisfying the other without any intention of intercourse as lovingly nurturing the marital bond? Some Christians have highly restrictive opinions about what has God’s blessing, even within the exclusive bond of marriage. Some even go to the extreme of believing that any sex, other than for the specific purpose of conception, is wrong. On the other extreme, some see any restrictions within marriage as contrary to God’s heart. It is certainly not for me to attempt to legislate for anyone. Each couple needs to come together before God and seek his face as to what, if any, attempts to express their physical oneness he wishes them to avoid. For complex psychological and physical reasons, people differ as to their sexual limitations, needs and fears. No doubt our wise Lord will lovingly consider this in what he reveals to individual couples. When prayerfully determining the scope of their physical expressions of love, couples must be extremely cautious about coming to any conclusion (be it restrictive or liberal) about anything not specifically stated in Scripture that ends up detrimental to their union by causing one person to feel unloved or exposed to the temptation to do something that is clearly forbidden by Scripture. Being pressured to submit to something that disturbs you can be distressing and a source of temptation but this can equally be the case for being denied what you yearn for and what makes you feel loved. Rather than sink into resenting your partner for having desires or limitations incompatible with your own, marital love is about prayerfully endeavoring to get to know your partner’s torment so deeply that you end up yearning for his contentment and fulfillment at least as much as he does, and even more than you want your own. Put another way: a key expression of being one flesh is to keep seeking to attain the point where, as implied by Paul when speaking of the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:26), when one part of the body (your partner) suffers, the rest of the body (you) feels it. And this should go beyond mere empathy to action: 1 John 3:16-18 By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and closes his heart of compassion against him, how does the love of God remain in him? My little children, let’s not love in word only, or with the tongue only, but in deed and truth. This is indeed getting highly practical. This principle obviously extends far beyond material goods to any practical way that one Christian might be able to relieve another’s distress. And if this depth of feeling and sacrifice is expected between all Christians, it must certainly be prominent in a Christian marriage, and within that sacred union, practical expressions of love must extend to sex. Blame – whether it be blaming God, yourself, your partner, or anyone else – must not be tolerated. Blaming yourself, for example, might seem humble but just as condemnation is an insidious spiritual attack, so is self-blame or any other form of blame. Instead, you and your husband must close ranks and seek divine empowering to sacrificially and passionately fight as a common enemy any difference in your desires. Obviously, one must avoid being influenced by worldly views, but it is equally dangerous to let prudishness or a negative view of God (such as imagining our beautiful Lord is harsh or wants to make us miserable) to distort our ability to hear from God on this critical issue. One must not lose sight of the tender heart of God who delights in our happiness. Ponder for example the implications of these Scriptures: Colossians 2:20-23 If you died with Christ from the elements of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to ordinances, “Don’t handle, nor taste, nor touch” (all of which perish with use), according to the precepts and doctrines of men? Which things indeed appear like wisdom in self-imposed worship, and humility, and severity to the body; but aren’t of any value against the indulgence of the flesh. 1 Timothy 4:1-5 But the Spirit says expressly that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons . . . forbidding marriage and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified through the word of God and prayer. 1 Timothy 6:17 . . . God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy Acts 14:17 Yet he didn’t leave himself without witness, in that he did good and gave you rains from the sky and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness. Psalms 145:9, 16 The Lord is good to all. . . .You open your hand, and satisfy the desire of every living thing. James 1:5 . . . God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach . . . As I have said, it would be preposterous for me to try to legislate how couples should express their marital union. Since discovering God’s heart on this is the responsibility of every couple, I have crafted a webpage to support couples seeking God’s help in working through the issues as to how God would have them express physical intimacy. Over-Sexed Men Exposed Writing about – or even experiencing – the height of earthly pleasure bores me, relative to my favorite subject: God and love. Nevertheless, for a wife to express her devotion to God and to love, she needs the following information. As I wrote earlier: love longs to know and understand everything about the beloved so that it can best serve the person. So, as much as I would prefer not to delve into this, if you regard your husband as over-sexed or resent his sex drive, you desperately need the explanation I am about to provide. On the other hand, if you are among the not insignificant number of wives who yearn for more frequent marital relations than they are getting, you not only do not need this section, it might add to your frustration. If so, I suggest you skip to the next few paragraphs and rejoin us where I discuss a too-often neglected key to sexual fulfillment. Not getting the sex you yearn for is like having to endure a severe weight-loss diet. It will not kill you but you are continually nagged by a craving for more than you are getting. Moreover, you are torturously teased by living in a house filled with the very food you ache for. Yes, that would make you grumpy, frustrated and annoyed. You find yourself daydreaming excessively about the very thing you are denied. Your preoccupation with food is far beyond that of average people but this is not– as your life partner cruelly claims – because you are some sort of food fiend or have some grotesque abnormality. A fixation on what you have been denied is appallingly normal for anyone whose body keeps screaming out for satisfaction. Even more than the pleasure of eating, what you ache for is simply for the incessant craving to end and to finally obtain a measure of inner peace. But there is much more torment than this to living with a wife who denies you sex. What is particularly distressing is that this savage “diet” is not your choice. It has been forced upon you against your wishes and it is not even because someone lovingly has your health and well-being at heart. What renders sexual deprivation in marriage significantly more agonizing than a cruel diet is that there are no positives to enduring all the discomfort. There are no health benefits to look forward to. It is not ending the sin of gluttony. There is no hope of this oppressive experience eventually boosting your self-esteem or allowing you to look better or wear more fashionable clothes. There is no goal to be achieved, nor an end in sight. Not only will it not make you feel more desirable or feminine, it makes you feel a disgrace to your gender and sends your self-esteem crashing through the floor. There is no chance of outsiders eventually admiring your self-control and what it has achieved. It is not a way to stop strangers looking down on you. In fact, you feel too ashamed to let anyone know you are being denied what others regard as basic to married life. If they knew, most would snigger and see you as a failure as a lover or as a jerk for putting up with it or, at best, pity you as a loser. If you were a husband repeatedly denied the amount or type of sex you ache for, you would feel unloved, rejected and despised, not merely by strangers and acquaintances if they found out, but by the very person you had considered your best friend – your life partner. You would have originally made the most costly decision of committing yourself to lifelong devotion, under the expectation that marriage would at last satisfy your ceaseless craving – as it has for most people. Instead, the devastating reality is that it has only worsened your anguish by locking you into never being able to receive the satisfaction that so many others would have eagerly given you. You feel conned and betrayed. Moreover, for many a man, nothing comes close to marital relations in causing him to feel loved. Without it he is likely to feel disconnected, as if he might as well have a pen friend. If one’s partner has everything you need sexually (and this would also mean so much to you emotionally) and yet she denies you over and over, it makes all her claims of loving you ring hallow. Deprivation can do strange things to one’s desires. For example, years ago I decided to eat normally but deny myself fluids so that no one would realize I was undergoing a type of fast. As my thirst increased, I found myself craving a certain passion fruit flavored soda pop that I had not only not drank for years, I had previously seldom thought of it. After breaking the fluid fast I never bothered to seek out that exotic drink and I have almost never thought of that soda pop since. Likewise, being denied basic sexual satisfaction might arouse within your husband cravings for more exotic things that particularly disturb you, and fully satisfying his basic needs might cause the other cravings to evaporate. There is another factor that might be relevant, however: if I had wanted to, I could have had that exotic soda pop. Perhaps if I were being deliberately denied that drink, that mere fact might have played on my mind, causing that drink to loom in my mind far more than it otherwise would. Here is another example: I could travel oversees if I wish but, except for once very many years ago, I have never bothered. If I were denied a passport, however, I wonder if I would develop a feeling of being trapped that I currently don’t have. So if your husband craves something sexually that you feel uncomfortable with, I can give no guarantee but if he knew you would give it to him if his craving intensified, that mere willingness on your part, without you actually doing anything, might be enough to make him feel less rejected and reduce some of the pressure he feels. On the other hand, do not presume your man is feeling loved and content just because he has settled for going without because of your disapproval. He might have been denied the chance to find out if he even likes it, but locked within him could be a yearning for someone who would enjoy the same things he imagines he might enjoy. So keep praying for guidance, rather than merely presume it is safe to keep denying him. For a woman to think, “If my husband really loved me he would stop pestering me for sex” is like a man thinking, “My wife should know I find her chatter boring and annoying. If she really loved me, she would stop sharing her heart with me.” To not want your husband sexually is on par with telling him, “Your body disgusts me but I love you, so don’t take it personally.” And to merely tolerate sex is like saying, “I despise your body but I’ll act the martyr for your sake.” It is disturbingly easy for a woman to misunderstand men in general and to degrade her husband by mistakenly assigning sinister motives to a sex drive that is as much a part of him as her menstrual cycle is to her. Please permit me to highlight this by doing something bizarre for someone of my values: going to the extreme of considering the most depraved that average, sinful, selfish and anti-marriage “sex-crazed” carnal men are capable of degenerating into. As a boy in the bygone era when society had a certain degree of modesty, I used to wonder why nude photos of women revealed their identity by showing their faces. I reasoned that it would be so much easier to find willing models if faces were concealed. But faces reveal personality. They give strong clues as to what a person is feeling. They turn a body into a person. Despite all the assertions of men treating woman as sex objects, even in selfish, lust-filled porn, average men long to think of women as persons, not mere bodies. What reminded me of this was a knowledgeable secular woman pointing out that women often denigrate men by assuming that most porn-using men seek images portraying women being dominated and reluctantly having sex. I am totally opposed to porn and have several webpages against it. I do not view it and so know little about its content but according to this woman’s studies, most porn-using males choose porn that shows smiling, happy women thoroughly enjoying themselves sexually and that this is what even average porn users crave in a sex partner. They so much value females enjoying themselves that many men even happily select porn that features women engaging in solo sex or even lesbian acts. What could be more disempowering to men than that? Of course, I am not in any way advocating or excusing any of this but it demonstrates just how much average men are not hoping for wives who passively submit to their advances. That does nothing to make a man feel wanted. A book poignantly called Lonely all the Time is by two psychologists explaining compulsive masturbators, porn addicts, and so on. What men ache for – and could turn them into sex addicts if they don’t get it – is not reluctant partners but wives who genuinely want to be physically intimate with them and totally enjoy themselves sexually. Most men long not for selfish sex but for shared enjoyment and, if they had to make the choice, many – perhaps most – would prefer for their wives to enjoy it more than they do. The Too Often Neglected Key to Sexual Fulfillment There are several possible reasons for a woman not enjoying sex, including medical issues and having suffered sex abuse. One of the most likely reasons, however, is the woman mistakenly presuming a sexual partner can consistently fluke thrilling and fulfilling a woman without her providing moment by moment feedback about what she is feeling and how it could be improved. Would you expect Leonardo da Vinci to paint the Mona Lisa blindfolded? How frustrating do you suppose he would find that? If someone so adept at painting to be considered a master is so dependent upon continual feedback, do not expect great sex without providing continual feedback. If the feedback is so inarticulate as to consist only of groans or using her hand to guide her husband, it might not be ideal but it at least gives the man a fighting chance of delivering the pleasure he longs to give. First, a word about the biggest blunder of all: faking enjoyment. A woman might mistakenly think she is being loving by doing this, but love and intimacy are a sham unless they are founded on truth. Just as you cannot intimately share your heart with someone if what you share is a lie, sexual intimacy is likewise a farce if it is based on a lie. It is not without good reason that men feel deeply hurt upon discovering their partner has sexually deceived them by faking orgasm. Not only do the male victims feel cheated, the wives have cheated themselves out of the pleasure and fulfillment they might otherwise have achieved had they persisted in being honest with their men. What makes accurate feedback so essential is that women differ from each other sexually, just as they differ from each other in every other way. Moreover, a woman’s sexual preferences and what most pleasures her, vary from day to day and even from moment to moment during lovemaking. Even if a woman understands this fact of life, and even if she avoids the calamitous mistake of giving false or misleading feedback, she can feel too insecure or inhibited to keep giving feedback or, when aroused, withdraws so much into her own world that she ceases to give any indication to her man as to whether she is deeply enjoying the experience or bored senseless. Leaving a man virtually clueless inevitably results in inferior sex. It is hardly surprising if a woman ends up having little desire for inferior sex. Men, too, get less out of it. I am not for a moment suggesting that every woman finds it easy to give the needed feedback. It is the pinnacle of intimate communication. A common problem is being unduly concerned that the man would object to being told what to do. Most men value it. Whatever the hindrance, however, and no matter how complex, honoring your marriage means giving priority to resolving this matter. In a Christian marriage, sex is one of the very few things that are absolutely exclusive to marriage. Spurning a marriage partner’s sexual advances hits at the heart of marriage. To keep denying your husband physical intimacy is attacking with a sledge hammer both his masculinity and your marriage’s foundation. What if your highly committed husband secretly believes his only hope of ending the gnawing pain is death – either this own or yours (which would open the possibility of remarriage)? For a woman to consciously use the withholding of sex as a means of trying to control her husband and get her own way is an act of treachery. Such conniving is as serious a violation of marriage as a man trying to use his superior physical strength to get his own way with a woman. No matter how repulsive you consider your husband to be, there are countless prostitutes – if no one else – eager to take your place. If you feel secure because you believe his devotion to God will keep him under your thumb, then the Eternal Lord has every reason to take very personally you attempting to exploit this man’s devotion to God. Ministry Implications Having seen the importance Scripture gives to caring for one’s family, let’s now look at the scriptural prerequisites for ministry: 1 Timothy 3:2-5 The overseer therefore must be without reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, sensible, modest, hospitable, good at teaching; not a drinker, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous; one who rules his own house well, having children in subjection with all reverence; (but if a man doesn’t know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the assembly of God?) 1 Timothy 3:12 Let servants be husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well. 1 Timothy 3:11 Their wives in the same way must be reverent, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things. Titus 1:5-6   . . .Appoint elders . . . blameless, the husband of one wife, having children who believe, who are not accused of loose or unruly behavior. (Emphasis mine.) In these quotes we have looked at three different ministry positions. I believe the following refers to yet another ministry position – being financially supported by the church for the ministry of intercession (1 Timothy 5:5-6,11-13). Even if you disagree, no one can deny the fundamental importance given to a good marriage: 1 Timothy 5:9-10  Let no one be enrolled as a widow under sixty years old, having been the wife of one man, being approved by good works, if she has brought up children, if she has been hospitable to strangers, if she has washed the saints’ feet, if she has relieved the afflicted, and if she has diligently followed every good work. (Emphasis mine.) Did you read the above quotes carefully? These Scriptures are saying that with God, no one is even in contention for consideration for a ministry position if his/her marriage isn’t up to scratch. One’s family life is fundamental to all ministry. It’s like aspiring to be captain of a basketball team. No matter how great a captain you think you’d make, you are not in contention as a captain unless you are good enough to be in the team. You never get to the point where your captaincy is so good that your playing ability is no longer critical. So it is with ministry: your marriage is absolutely critical. Let your marriage slip and you disqualify yourself from ministry, just as surely as if you fell into alcoholism or sexual sin. Obviously, if you’re unmarried, you can enjoy freedom from marital obligations – and there is much to be said for that (1 Corinthians 7:1,7,8,25-28,32-40) – but once you marry, your marriage is the foundation of your ministry and anything built on any other foundation is a farce. Remember the pastor mentioned earlier, whose devotion to ministry was driving him to neglect his wife. For God to raise up new ministers would to ease his workload be exciting but to get a new husband for his neglected wife would be sobering indeed. Husbands who wait until they realize their marriage is in trouble will probably end up divorced. Proverbs 1:23-29  Turn at my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you. I will make known my words to you. Because I have called, and you have refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no one has paid attention; but you have ignored all my counsel, and wanted none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your disaster. I will mock when calamity overtakes you; when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when your disaster comes on like a whirlwind; when distress and anguish come on you. Then will they call on me, but I will not answer. They will seek me diligently, but they will not find me; because they hated knowledge, and didn’t choose the fear of the Lord. The Inescapable Conclusion We have approached this topic from several quite different angles to reach the unavoidable conclusion: irrespective of how we look at it, marriage is not just a wondrous privilege but a terrifying responsibility. God is far too loving for it to be otherwise. The divine dilemma is that not only is God the extravagant Rewarder who passionately loves you, he is equally the Judge who reels in pain over everyone you mistreat. The Everlasting Father who delights in lavishing good gifts upon you, his treasured daughter, is also the Defender of the oppressed who loves like a she-bear anyone you hurt. Even God’s wrath is driven by pure, selfless love. In goodness, wisdom, love and perfection, God’s ways are infinitely superior to mine. Even my tiny intellect, however, can see compelling reasons why the Lord of all must make so severe the consequences of not acting in sacrificial love. Consider this: Was Jesus lacking in compassion when he spoke more about hell than did anyone else in the Bible? Or did compassion drive him to warn us? Would it be Heaven if it were populated by selfish people? Or would it be Heaven if its inhabitants yearned to be selfish but for all eternity were forced against their wishes to act in an unselfish way? Forced “love” is not love at all. Or would it be Heaven if its inhabitants were compelled to have some sort of a lobotomy and act like “loving” drones? Would you find it satisfying being surrounded by people who only “love” you because of some brain operation or a drug in the drinking water? That would be a hollow fake. And God is into what is real. The passionate Lord, who is nauseated by the lukewarm and wishes his people were either hot or cold (Revelation 3:15-16), would prefer enemies to fake friends. Former human beings reduced to being his mindless playthings are not in the divine plan. The Everlasting Father wants children as royal, pure and love-driven as he is. Our time on earth is our sole, rapidly disappearing, opportunity to decide for all eternity whether, in the words God spoke to my wife, we will “live for love or live for self.” How we treat our marriage partner is a strong indicator of our choice. No matter how grave your other responsibilities are in life, the Almighty Judge, in whose hand rests your eternal fate, holds you more accountable for your husband’s physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual well-being than he is likely to hold you accountable for any other person on this planet. How you treat your husband has staggeringly extensive consequences, with ramifications ranging from ones as immediate and earthly as if you were loving your own body (Ephesians 5:28), to being as final and eternal as the pronouncements on Judgment Day being based on how you treat people. The rewards of sacrificial love are just as immense and eternal as the consequences of marital selfishness and neglect are catastrophic. And this applies equally to husbands. Any man reading this, needs to be alert to the reality that humanity’s Judge is never guilty of favoritism. Virtually everything said in this webpage to wives can be said with equal force to husbands. With eternity hurtling toward us we must each stop pointing at others and attend to the log in our own eye. Once someone has disregard Paul’s advice of choosing the simpler, more God-focused lifestyle of remaining single and celibate (1 Corinthians 7:1,7,8,25-28,32-40), marital challenges – as frustrating and time-consuming as they can get – become a divinely ordained launching pad to spiritual greatness. What is learned about selfless love in the training ground of marriage, however, must be allowed to grow to the extreme of Christlike love – the love that knows no limits but extends even to strangers and enemies. To humble yourself is to be exalted. To make yourself everyone’s servant is to rule with the King of kings. To die to selfishness is to come alive to God and the exquisite perfection of his love. To yield to that love, letting it flow through you to all around, is life eternal. Related Links Holy Fire In Your Marriage: Stirring Up Marital Passion Marital Love at its Best Husband, Head of a Submissive Wife? A Second Look at Conjugal Rights God Loves Everyone: The Terrifying Implications God & Marriage (The men’s version of the page you are currently on.)

Stirring Up Marital Passion Surprising Biblical Insights This is the Husband’s Version *** Click here for the Wife’s Version *** Restoring honeymoon excitement is as much a holy duty as avoiding adultery. In an authentically Christian marriage, sexual enjoyment is as important as sexual faithfulness. The following is for couples who are able to meet each other’s sexual needs. If this is not your situation, please go straight to When Marital Relations are a Short-Cut to Hell. There’s a fascinating, difficult to translate Scripture that could forever change your marriage. It could even give your attitude both to pleasure and to God a major shake-up. Few people hearing of it for the first time would guess it is in the Bible. We’ll dive into the deep end of this passage, then quickly move on. Here’s the NASB’s attempt to bring to you this astounding Scripture: . . . rejoice in the wife of your youth . . . Let her breasts satisfy you at all times; be exhilarated always with her love. (Proverbs 5:18-19) The original Hebrew is so strongly worded that in grasping for suitable words, a renowned Bible scholar decided that even the expression “love-ecstasy” was not intense enough. (Reference: Commentary on the Old Testament in Ten Volumes by C.F. Keil and F. Delitzsch Volume VI: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon by F. Delitzsch, translated German by M. G. Easton Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan, commentary on Proverbs 5:18-20) “Be exhilarated always with her love” The word here rendered “exhilarated” usually means either to be intoxicated, or to go astray, to be deceived. The link between these diverse meanings is that normal, rational behavior has been over-ridden. Be it alcohol, passion, enticement, or foolishness, something has so overwhelmed a person that cautious, controlled thinking has gone out the window. This passage is saying, within the sanctity of marriage deliberately intensify your passions until you can hardly think straight; regularly so inflame your feelings for your partner that you lose control. Husbands are instructed to bring themselves to the point where they are driven by desire for their wives; to so incite their passions that they are continually mesmerized by their wives’ sensual charms. “Ever be captivated by her love,” says the NIV. “Always be transported with delight . . .” is how the Amplified Bible puts it, and it renders the very same word in the next verse “be infatuated.” “Let her breasts satisfy you at all times” The word translated “satisfy” usually means to be saturated or to drink one’s fill; to have one’s desire fully satisfied. This line therefore seems to be saying Drink your fill of marital pleasure; continually find total satisfaction in your wife. According to a highly esteemed Hebrew dictionary, even this word can sometimes mean to be intoxicated. I haven’t found undeniable proof of that meaning in Scripture, but it would be ludicrous for me to imply I could match wits with Hebrew scholars. Moreover, since the word often means to drink to the full, it’s easy to imagine how it could sometimes be used to imply drunkenness. If so, for the original readers, the close proximity of this word to the one we examined above would presumably have intensified the thought of delirium (Reference). God’s Challenge James Moffatt translated the last two lines: let her breasts give you rapture, let her love ever ravish you. “Cool it!” is what one might have expected God to say. Instead, God’s Word urges each married man to make a continual effort to get intoxicated on his wife’s love. It goes way beyond saying don’t commit adultery. It virtually tells husbands, Go overboard; get as high as you possibly can, as often as you can. Continually stir up your passions so that you find your wife’s delights overwhelmingly seductive. It’s saying don’t merely let nature take its course; get so focused on her, so enamored by her that she blows the circuits of your brain. Already this is beginning to sound impossible to some readers, so we need to take a few seconds to examine our source of information. We are delving into the words of Solomon, a man whom Scripture says had unique wisdom. Intellectually, he stood head and shoulders above everyone else. Far more significantly, however, we are reading the Word of God. Unlike Solomon’s normal experience, he had locked into God, received divine insight, and was supernaturally guided as he expressed the specific truth God wants humanity to grasp. We are reading the revelation of Almighty God, the One who not only has infinite intelligence and is the Creator of sex, but the very Person who designed and made you and knows every molecule in your body and every thought that has ever passed through your head. He alone knows precisely your potential and your every limitation. Suppose you buy a new car. After a few months, you finally get around to looking at the manufacturer’s manual. You are astounded to read the speed the book says the car is capable of. You have never pushed the car to its limits but the figure seems incredible. The truth is that your car is capable of what the book says, or you have every right to keep hounding the manufacturer until he makes your car able to reach those speeds. You can come with this degree of confidence – and greater – to the Scripture we are seeking to understand. We need to explore more of this fascinating Scripture, but we cannot proceed before helping those readers who feel hurt and offended by the very concept. Tragically, these dear people have been so deluded by fiction that they believe it should not be necessary to almost force oneself to feel passionate about one’s wife. Some shrink from even admitting to themselves that they must stir themselves up because they fear that proves they have an inferior marriage and/or wife. Like sex, marriage was God’s invention. In this Scripture, the One who made it all is telling us to delight in our marriage partner. If the foolishness of romantic fiction were correct, God was wasting his breath. There would be no need for such an instruction. At most, the Lord would merely say, ‘Follow your heart.’ Obviously, the One who knows everything there is to know about the perfect marriage has a different opinion to some of us. One final matter before plunging back into this Scripture: I am writing as if your partner enjoys marital relations. Tragically, this is often not the case. If one’s partner finds sex traumatic, one’s marital and spiritual obligation is the opposite of what we have been saying – to control one’s urges, not stir them up. If your partner rarely finds sex enjoyable, please go straight to When Marital Relations are a Short-Cut to Hell .) Moffatt weakened his translation by entirely omitting an expression found in the Hebrew text. As recognized by other Bible versions, to make the translation complete we would have to render it: let her breasts give you rapture at all times , let her love ever [ or always ] ravish you. As originally penned, the verse emphasizes that this infatuation with one’s spouse should be continual. This is true not only throughout the years, but throughout the day. It applies as much to when one’s wife is absent as when she is present. Job resolved that he would never look with desire at any woman other than his wife (Job 31:1). Obviously, to keep his vow this attitude had to dominate his behavior not only when his wife was near, but whenever any woman was in sight. True godliness is always positive. Far more than failing to break the commandments, true godliness is the pursuit of love and goodness. It’s not just dodging the world’s filthy stains, it’s glowing with the beauty of Christ. Married people’s sexual obligation is not merely to avoid promiscuity; it’s to do everything in their power to delight in their partner. Viewed from another angle, God’s way to fight temptation is not merely by avoiding the negative, but, wherever applicable, by excelling in the positive. Yes, be ho-hum about a sex siren’s pose. Find the latest assortment of “beauties” as insipid as dishwater, but banish the slightest trace of a “been there, done that” attitude toward the wife you’ve seen a thousand times. Find unclad super models as bland as raw potatoes, but thrill at the intimacy of your wife letting you see her hair in curlers. Let Miss Universe have a crocodile smile, plucked chicken skin and ostrich legs, but tingle at the thought of holding the hand that wears your ring. Let your heart skip to the moon at the sight of stretch marks caused by your baby. That’s God’s challenge. If you demand a supporting Scripture to confirm that you are not staking your understanding on just one Bible text, you will find it in God referring to Ezekiel’s wife as being the delight of Ezekiel’s eyes (Ezekiel 24:16). And we have already mentioned Job. Here is the exact quote: Job 31:1,9-12 “ I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl . . . If my heart has been enticed by a woman, or if I have lurked at my neighbor’s door, then may my wife grind another man’s grain, and may other men sleep with her. For that would have been shameful, a sin to be judged. It is a fire that burns to Destruction . . .” (Emphasis mine.) Paula put it this way: I long ago stopped thinking of the man I married as my “husband,” in the sense of someone to be taken for granted. He is my heart-throb, my lover. I treat him as I were young and single and he were the spunk I wanted desperately to win over; as if I were trying to entice the man of my dreams to marry me. Paula counseled a new Christian battling temptation to be unfaithful to his wife: If you channel your sexual energies toward your wife, the enemy will back off. Years ago, my husband went outside of our marriage to satisfy his lust. He won me back through romance and laughter. He sought to become my friend again. I did not make it easy for him. In fact, I resisted strongly but he followed Scripture’s admonition, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9). Like most women, I turned out be a push-over for romance. My husband said that if it crossed his mind to make a sexy phone call to another woman, he called me instead. He began to map my curves in his mind and told the enemy that this is the only woman he desired. This is amazing when you consider I weighed more than 250 pounds (114 kilos) at the time! True Love God is both our role model and the Fount of true love. The God who loves even his enemies keeps on loving, regardless of whether the objects of his love are deserving of it. He finds them lovable because he is loving, not because others find them desirable. He loves not because of who people are, but because of who he is. His love is driven not by what is in them but by what is in him – unlimited love. Love keeps giving. It never gives up. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1Corinthians 13:7 – RSV). In other words, true love believes in the person and thinks the best and highest of the beloved. Love is blind to faults (“covers over a multitude of sins” – 1 Peter 4:8: James 5:20). It sees desirability and beauty and perfection where no one else sees it. Love keeps praising the beloved and keeps seeking new things in the beloved to admire and delight in. Consider Brenda, a pregnant woman eagerly anticipating motherhood, which she expects will be hard, tiring work and yet exciting and fulfilling. She gives birth to a beautiful baby who, as far as babies go, is perfect in every way. But Brenda has Post-Natal Depression. The anticipated excitement vanishes. The unfortunate problem is not with the baby. The problem – in this case a medical condition – is within Brenda. This is what it is like with people bored with their partner. The problem is not with the partner. The problem is within the person who is bored. It is true that a change of partner would temporarily transform the situation, but this only masks the problem. It is like a woman with a sickness – perhaps a gall stone – that results in certain foods making her feel unwell. She will feel better with a change of diet, but the sickness is in no way cured. The problem is with her, not with the previous diet, and if the cause of the problem is not dealt with, it will only worsen. In time, not even the new diet will mask the problem. God Wants Married People to be Good at Sex Fashion, and all sorts of influences outside our control, shape our perception of what is attractive and desirable in a partner. These influences usually dominate people’s sex lives. It is clear from Scripture, however, that there is no need for this. Through Christ we can decide what we find captivating. We can gather all the firepower of sex and, like a guided missile, lock on to our partner’s coordinates, so that, fleeting distractions aside, our passions are always and only targeted at our partner. If we have let ourselves lapse into wrong habits – such as becoming addicted to porn or sinful fantasy or solo sex – undoing the damage will demand much effort, but if we end bad behavior and persistently reprogram our minds, progress will be made. The way of the world is for you to love a woman because you find her physically desirable. God’s way is the reverse: for you to find a woman physically desirable because you love her. You love her not because of spontaneous feelings that assault you but because marriage means you have committed yourself to love her for life. Therefore you don’t permit your passion to slide. You continually stir up your feelings for her. Initially, attraction to a person releases chemicals into our blood stream, giving us a pronounced high. This is divinely designed to give us the initial push, but we are then expected to put in the effort to maintain the momentum. Many of us are like a child on a tricycle, too lazy to peddle and expecting to be pushed all the time. There can be no virtue in merely being driven by chemicals in our body. And as you know, God is into virtue in a big way. Moreover, Scripture keeps stressing patience/persistence as being of immense importance to anyone who would go God’s way. Galatians 6:9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 2 Thessalonians 3:13 And as for you, brothers, never tire of doing what is right. Romans 2:7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. You finding beautiful those features of your wife’s body than almost every other man would find beautiful is of only moderate value. It might bond you to her, but it does little to bond her to you. It does nothing to set you apart from other men in her eyes. It is your reaction to the less popularly attractive parts of her body that can cause her to bond with you in a way that no ordinary man ever could. Scars, wrinkles, cellulite, stretch marks, flabby tummy or any other parts of your wife’s body that would make her cringe if seen by a stranger, can be particularly precious to a marriage. Parts of her that other men might find unattractive are the very parts that, if you are smart, give you the edge over all other men and have the exciting potential to unlock passion within your wife that you never thought you would ever see. You should not just tolerate those parts, but treasure and adore them as unique and endearing features of the woman you love. Moreover, more than any sexual gymnastics, these parts empower you to prove yourself a truly great lover. In a world where even top photographic models – the envy of millions – are forever being plastered with makeup and attacked with airbrushes, those aspects of your wife’s body that she is tempted to resent are your unique opportunity to boost the woman you love – something anyone with genuine love longs to do – and give her great boldness in being intimate with you. Regardless of whether a put-down focuses on her physical appearance or something else about her, to do anything that lowers your wife’s self-esteem is an act of stupidity that will injure your sex life as much as stabbing your own genitals. And the injury could take years to heal. The world almost measures a man’s virility by how many women he gets high on. In contrast to the world’s delusions, the Inventor of sex reveals that the extent to which a man is attracted to women other than his wife is a measure of how sexually dysfunctional he is. A man’s sexual prowess should be measured by how much more his wife excites him than any other woman. If he thinks he needs a younger, sexier partner, it’s because he is sexually inadequate. He is like someone pathetically drawn to loud, gaudy objects because his foolishly abused senses have grown too dim to appreciate real beauty. Chances are he is prematurely becoming a spent force sexually because he has squandered his sexuality on immorality. His decadent stupidity need not be blatant, physical unfaithfulness. Stealing pleasure from thoughts and sights he has no right to indulge in has ruined his appetite sexually. The devastation of this sinful folly could well be irreversible. This man’s only hope is that God is merciful to the repentant and that God loves the slighted wife. Worldliness is not, of course, the only possible cause of sexual difficulties. Merely growing older has a significant effect. For men, the decline usually begins from their mid-twenties, just as athletes begin to decline. Medical conditions or clinical depression or stress can devastate one’s sex drive. With any decline can come the temptation to bolster one’s flagging desires the wrong way and/or mistakenly blame one’s partner. For instance, some men troubled by impotence experience a temporary revival with a new partner, but it is short-lived. This phenomenon is rather like how an injured person in a dangerous situation might temporarily lose consciousness of his injury and do things he would not normally do, but it is not long before this extraordinary situation fades and he discovers the injury is still very much with him. If you are getting bored with your partner, it’s probably because you were divinely designed for variety. Our Maker’s intention is not, of course, that we go the way of the fool by seeking a new partner, but that we break monotony by using the intelligence and creativity he has endowed us with. A highly predictable, minimal effort routine is expected of animals. You, of course, belong in an entirely different class. As far as we know, of everything in the entire universe ever made to mate, we are by far the most sophisticated; God’s crowning jewel. From you is expected something truly worthy of the term lovemaking; a celebration of marital love and sensitivity extending far beyond a physical act. It’s like meal preparation, in that doing the bare minimum produces food that is bland, boring and always the same. Pour enough care and imagination into the task, however, and all the sameness and dullness disappears. You are made to love your partner with not just your animal instincts, but with the height of your intellect. You are divinely designed to express to your partner the depth of your feelings by pouring your love and intelligence and creativity into preparing, as it were, a rich variety of five course gourmet meals of romance. Let lovemaking regularly degenerate into merely a physical act – a mindless, predicable bread and water event – and of course you’ll get bored; but blame your laziness, not your partner. The cost of this type of love is so high that it’s in the same league as the reward. Early in your relationship, the effort and emotional cost was so great that you were probably relieved to discover after your honeymoon that you could get away with less. For instance, when seeking a partner, men in desperation often do highly unnatural, embarrassing, grovelling things that women find romantic – demeaning things that turn women on and turn men’s stomachs. Little wonder that men are happy to let this fall away. The problem is that a less costly relationship is a less rewarding relationship. Yes, you can lower the price, but in so doing you diminish the returns. What we get out is proportional to what we put in. The exciting thing to note is that we have been examining God’s desires for married couples. Our Lord is not the kill-joy so many people imagine. He is not only the Inventor of sex and the world’s greatest authority on the subject, he is the One for whom nothing is impossible. When it comes to creativity and mind-blowing excitement, he is the ultimate; able to do far beyond what we could dare dream. And this exciting, all-powerful God who created sensual pleasure loves you . We talk so often about God’s love that the implications rarely hit home. We recognize that God’s love is greater than that of any parent. Well wouldn’t any normal parent want their child to thoroughly enjoy marital relations when they grow up? If God doesn’t value sexual pleasure, why did he create it? Your loving Lord wants to be involved in your sex life, not to dampen your pleasure, but to bring you to new heights of fulfilment. The other side to this is that since God wants it, we can be sure that the enemy of our souls does not want it. Even this is good news, because once we realize what is happening we have in Christ the spiritual resources to break free. Since we have a spiritual enemy who wants to destroy our marriage, it is inevitable that at some time or another every Christian will find himself strongly drawn to someone other than his marriage partner. When this spiritual assault happens, the feelings will seem to be your own, but they are not from you at all. They are feelings put on you by an external, deceptive, evil power to tempt you. Of course, you will find the temptation enticing. It would not be temptation if you didn’t. Even Jesus was tempted in every way like we are. The Deceiver would be delighted to have you go on a guilt trip over feelings that say nothing about your heart but are entirely his doing. See through the delusion. Refuse to believe that the feelings are how you really feel toward the person. Temptation is spiritual rape. In this case, it is like being immobilized and sexually assaulted – forced to experience sexual feelings against one’s will. What often fools us about the demonic is that evil spirits usually exploit and aggravate a weakness that we already have. We are therefore likely to conclude that the pressures we suffer are entirely because of ourselves and not realize the role that evil spirits are playing in inflaming the situation. We must be careful not to knowingly expose ourselves to temptation, nor to think ourselves beyond certain temptations. A married woman met up with an old high school flame, whom she had not seen for over twenty years. She began witnessing to him. This seems highly commendable, except for a peculiar thing that had happened some time previously. For no apparent reason, the Lord had told her not to witness to former boyfriends. So despite her noble intentions, by witnessing to this man she was stepping out of the will of God and out of his protective covering. She was giving license to the enemy to attack her. Soon she found herself assaulted by astoundingly intense feelings toward this man. It was beyond anything she had ever previously experienced. “Like being high on drugs . . . like walking through hell . . . a viselike grip on the inside,” is how she described it. She took the right action. She told her husband and she broke off contact with this man. To her dismay, the feelings continued to rage within her. A couple of days later, despite expecting to travel to work by public transport, she found herself driving to work. On the way home, she prayed out loud about the situation that was greatly disturbing her. Then she found herself doing something she would probably have been too embarrassed to do at that volume even at home, much less in public transport. There being no cars around, at the top of her voice she rebuked the devil, commanding him to leave her. From that moment she had a significant breakthrough. Such victories are wonderful, but the enemy does not give up easily. Even after such a spiritual breakthrough a person must, wherever possible, ban all contact with the source of temptation and remain vigilant and nip in the bud any attempt demons might make to re-enter. Nevertheless, by maintaining this attitude we are safe. When Your Partner’s Desires are Less Than Yours (If this does not apply to you, you might prefer to skip to the next section: Harnessing the Power of Sex .) If your wife shows less interest in sex than you, let your desires drive you to become a more skilled lover. Don’t just focus on the grand finale, but on romancing your partner and gradually stirring her passion. Show genuine interest in your partner’s entire person, not just her anatomy. Learn how to romance, seduce and entice your partner. Spend some time and prayer dreaming up romantic things such as thinking of things you admire about your wife and telling her in love notes. One possibility is to buy romantic greeting cards and one by one over many weeks, put them where she will find them. Maybe one on her pillow. Another time, in her underwear drawer. Another, in somewhere that she’s likely to find at work, such as her briefcase. Ideally, keep it up forever. As well as choosing appropriate cards, try to write something caring, and romantic on each them. Maybe sometimes with a love note include a box of chocolates or sweets. If your partner wouldn’t feel humiliated by it, consider sending her some flowers at work, perhaps with a note saying, “Miss you.” Constantly think of ways to build your wife’s self-esteem, while ensuring that all you say is very sincere. (Wives should read: How holy wives express marital love: Smashing inhibitions and misconceptions.) In many ways, the best resource you will ever find on the subject is your wife. Seek to know her desires with greater detail and accuracy than you have ever known before. Ask such things as, “Which expressions of my love really stand out in your memory?” Encourage your wife to share her wildest romantic dreams, fantasies, longings. Allow her several days for half-forgotten longings to surface. She might have been pre-occupied with other pressures for so long that your wife might genuinely not be able to think of any. Suggest she start daydreaming over the next few weeks about what things would be a real turn on. Encourage her to keep within the bounds of what she thinks is moral, but not within the bounds of what she imagines to be the limits of what you would be willing to do. Try to make as many as possible of those fantasies become reality. Don’t resent your partner’s apparent coldness. Wouldn’t anyone want to enjoy more pleasure if they felt capable of it? Rather than feel annoyed, feel compassion. In addition to improving your sensitivity and romantic skills, keep seeking God and prayerfully researching the subject. Is your wife stressed, tired, depressed, have a medical problem? Is she too embarrassed to admit to a problem or too unaware of medical options to seek help? Could she have suffered sexual abuse in her past? (The average man has almost no conception of what a devastating effect this typically has on a woman’s sexuality. It is not something that will disappear by not thinking about it and the traumatic results can last for decades.) As you keep exploring every possible avenue, note what is happening: sex is driving you to care more deeply about your partner. Isn’t that exactly what it’s meant to do? I don’t promise a quick resolution to the problem. I promise, however, that if you let your urges act as reminders of how precious your wife is, and how worthy she is of your devotion and expressed loved, much good will flow. Harnessing the Power of Sex Almost all Christians have some area in their lives in which they are tempted to dishonor God by sinfully indulging themselves. I beg you not to twist my words as license for that. The proverb we have been examining is wedged into a passage warning against adultery (Proverbs 5:3-20). So Scripture is talking about maximizing the pleasures of marital love, primarily as an antidote to unfaithfulness, and most certainly not as an excuse for unfaithfulness, nor even self-indulgence. According to Proverbs, constantly directing your passions exclusively toward your marriage partner is one of God’s loving, practical solutions to the catastrophe we call immorality. The apostle Paul takes up this thought, reaches the same conclusion, and uncovers some significant implications. He begins by saying: 1 Corinthians 7:2 But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. The avoidance of immorality is the only reason Paul cites for marriage. It would be too great a leap to conclude that in God’s sight it’s the only valid reason for marriage, but at the very least, it’s clear that in God’s eyes, protection from immorality is a primary reason for marriage. A selfish refusal to do what one can to meet a partner’s sexual cravings is therefore a grave offense against one’s sacred marital duty. Let’s delve deeper into Paul’s thinking. He has some eye-opening insights. The verse following the one just quoted is rendered by the Amplified Bible, “The husband should give his wife her conjugal rights . . . and likewise the wife to her husband.” This is an unfortunate choice of words. For “conjugal rights,” substitute the literal translation, “the payment of what is due.” The emphasis is not on your rights. The emphasis is on your obligations – how much you continually owe your partner. We need to get the spirit of this deep into our own spirits because it stands in stark contrast to the world’s brainwashing. It is vital that we take our focus off anything we would like our partner to do for us. Instead, we should preoccupy ourselves with our obligations to our partner. 1 Corinthians 7:3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. (4) The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife This is saying that when it comes to lovemaking, a husband is just as duty-bound to submit to his wife’s desires, as she is to his. This is quite startling, given the times Scripture says a husband is the head of his wife and that she should submit to him (1 Corinthians 11:3; Ephesians 5:22-24; Colossians 3:18; 1 Peter 3:1,5,6). It’s as if Scripture gives such priority to the importance of both partners’ sexual desires being fully satisfied, that it demands an almost re-writing of the rules. Let’s continue this quoting 1 Corinthians 7 for another example: 1 Corinthians 7:3 Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. Ponder the significance of both partners having to feel comfortable about it before Scripture approves even brief abstinence for the highest motives. This means that if one partner wants to plunge deeply into prayer, and the other wants a bit of sexual fun, God’s Word – I hope you are sitting – says the wishes of the one wanting sex must take priority. That’s staggering! In this case, God requires sexuality to take precedence over spirituality. It is clear that God takes exceptionally seriously our marital obligation to do everything we can to ensure our partner’s sexual yearnings are fully met. The apostle’s sympathy for the partner for whom it is too much effort to miss sex for a little while for the sake of God, is all the more remarkable when we consider that Paul denied himself sexually and in almost every other conceivable way, year after year after year. Here is a man who repeatedly had his flesh flayed for the sake of Christ. He is so passionate about putting devotion to the Lord above every other consideration that he refused to marry. He is astoundingly tough on himself, and yet, under the Spirit’s sway, see how soft he becomes in what he expects of others. No matter how good it might be to be tough on ourselves, we greatly need this tenderness toward our marriage partner’s vulnerability. Or, looked at another way, we need Paul’s God-given awareness of just how high the stakes are. Who of us is truly aware of the price of one slip-up? We dare not take risks with temptation. “If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall,” warned Paul a little further on in the same letter. Complacency is deadly. Remember Simon Peter; so certain he’d never deny his Lord. If we, who live inside our minds and bodies 24 hours a day, can still fail to correctly gauge our own susceptibility to temptation, what chance have we of accurately guessing the danger our partner faces? We should desperately plead for God to protect us from placing burdens of self-control upon our partners that make us ever so slightly like the Jews condemned by Jesus when he said, Luke 11:46 Woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them. That’s Cheating! A pastor who was spearheading a significant breakthrough in an ethnic community, confided that his marriage was floundering. Overcome by the need in the community, Pastor Rob would have a guilt attack whenever he spent time with his family. “With millions of Christians at God’s disposal,” I reminded him, “our Lord has only to whisper, and suddenly your community would be the focus of more evangelistic effort than you could ever equal. No evangelist is indispensable. Your marriage role, however, is far more serious. God cannot give your wife another husband – unless he kills you.” How offended this devout man of God would have been had I suggested he had been cheating on his wife. Pastor Rob loved God far too much to consider such a thing! And yet that’s what Scripture says he was doing. He was cheating her, not because of his involvement with other women, but because of this lack of involvement with the woman God had entrusted to him. “Defraud ye not one the other except it be with consent for a time . . .” is the KJV rendering of 1 Corinthians 7:5, and “defraud” is the exact meaning of the original Greek. This dedicated man had been defrauding, or cheating, his wife out of what was rightfully hers, and worsening his offense by using the name of God to complete the con job. Although tragically oblivious to what he was doing, he was short-changing a woman of God and having the audacity to say that it was for God’s sake that he was ripping her off. It is notable that we usually associate marital cheating solely with having sex with another person, whereas Scripture thinks in terms of not doing enough to satisfy the needs of one’s partner. As we have already seen , we tend to think we meet our moral obligation by avoiding adultery, but God expects far more. Your Special Gift Married people have the unique privilege of being able to lower their partner’s susceptibility to sexual temptation. They can lovingly use their own bodies to shield their partners from the fiery darts of the enemy. No one else on earth can provide this unique type of spiritual protection. I guess no protection is foolproof, but Scripture highly regards this type. Suppose middle-aged Bill considers himself too spiritual to give his wife Janet as much attention as she longs for. Sleazy Sam tries to seduce Janet. Had Bill been fulfilling his duty as a loving husband, Janet would not have found Sleazy’s advances tempting. Because of Bill’s lack of consideration, however, Janet finds herself longing for things that Sleazy seems to offer. This makes Sleazy quite a temptation. Janet is entirely responsible for how she handles this temptation. Nevertheless, the existence of the temptation is Bill’s doing. Bill’s lack of consideration might have caused Janet to feel drawn to Sleazy even without Sleazy’s encouragement. So Bill is even more the cause of the temptation than is Sleazy. That makes clean-living Bill at least as guilty of violating the sanctity of their marriage as anyone trying to seduce his wife. Hopefully, Janet will defeat the temptation, to her eternal glory. But to Bill’s eternal shame, he abandoned his post as his wife’s spiritual protector. Like every husband and wife, he was meant to use his God-given abilities to shield his partner from this specific type of spiritual attack. He is accountable to God, like a watchman who slept on duty. Temptations will come, but woe to him who causes them, warned Jesus (Matthew 18:6-7). Suppose a highly desirable woman were captivated by my looks (stop laughing) and were intent on seducing me. I believe I would have an excellent chance of resisting her wiles (especially since she’ll grow mysteriously cold the instant she finds her glasses). Nevertheless, if I knew her intentions I would refuse to be alone with her because I consider it morally wrong to knowingly expose oneself to temptation. Likewise, each couple must be most cautious about exposing either of them to temptation. Be Daring Here is something that until it is tried sounds off-the-planet (and yes, like everything in love, there is a slight risk that your partner will consider it weird) but it can prove amazingly powerful and healing. Ironically, those who most squirm at this suggestion are the very ones who stand to gain most from it. Your partner’s intimate parts are an important part of the body that the Holy Lord created and declared to be good and has chosen to inhabit as his holy temple. They are also a vital part of your marital union. Everyone sees your wife’s eyes, but her intimate parts belong uniquely to your marriage. The most casual reader of the Bible’s Song of Solomon knows how much breasts feature in the lover’s conversation (eight times in this short book). The legs, thighs, feet and navel are also praised. Being highly poetical, the song has depths that are less obvious, but it seems to contain praise of the loved one’s genitals, such as referring to them as an exquisite garden. With all this in mind, assign endearing names to your partner’s private parts, and use the names regularly. I suggest very uplifting names, such as Beautiful, Precious, Perfect, or whatever. And sometimes talk directly to each private part, expressing aloud your love for it as if it were a person. For example, you might name a particular part of your loved one’s body, Sweetheart and say to it, “How I thank God for you, Sweetheart! How exquisitely beautiful you are. You’re just perfect. I love you with all my heart.” Then continue like this, verbally expressing love to this precious part of your loved one. This act of tenderness affirms to your wife the importance of a part of her that she can tempted to feel slight shame about and yet plays a key role in marriage. Directly speaking to it as a person (rather than as a mere object of beauty, like a painting, or of function, like a can opener) somehow adds to the warmth and fosters within the loved one a feeling of deep acceptance. Many people find it profoundly moving and liberating to be on the receiving end of such love, and it deeply bonds them to their partner. It can give the hearer new confidence and vaporize marital inhibitions. Of course, people without the slightest hang-up can find it an endearing and beautifully intimate expression of love, but for those who have suffered past sexual abuse or feeling of sexual inadequacy (and there can be a deeply buried aspect of this in your partner that you are unaware of) more healing might take place in a few minutes of such lovemaking than in years of counseling. Unholy Fire When discussing this webpage with a friend, she mentioned couples choosing to “stir up marital passion” by viewing R-rated movies together. Like me, my friend was appalled at the thought. I had never considered the possibility of anyone misinterpreting this webpage as license for anything like that. It is utterly contrary to the spirit of this webpage to expose oneself to sexual excitement outside of marriage in order to climax in marriage. Sex is divinely intended to bind a husband and wife together. Seeing R-rated movies breaks that uniqueness of that bond and begins to forge an extramarital bond because it arouses within viewers sexual feelings that, to some extent at least, are focused not on one’s marriage partner, but on an actor. Remember righteous Job, who refused to “look” at another woman. Additionally, such things as soft porn have the strong potential for lowering your appreciation of not only your partner’s body, but also her sexual performance. Even the bodies of movie stars are often not good enough for directors and shots of other people’s bodies are cleverly substituted, and, of course, the sexual performance is a total fabrication. Another disturbing quandary is a Christian getting pleasure out of actors breaking God's heart by sinning. Often these actors sin not only by what they do to each other but also by portraying sex outside marriage as being desirable. How perverted it would be for a Christian to be so far from the heartbeat of God as to find pleasure in something that deeply pains the holy Lord. More than Sex To avoid making this webpage too cumbersome, it has a much narrower focus than I would have preferred. Nevertheless, I feel duty-bound to emphasize in a few words that marital obligations and joys extend far beyond sex. It is not easy for men to grasp how different to themselves are their wives’ priorities and emotional needs. Numbers of men find it almost incomprehensible that for many women such things as remembering birthdays can rival sex in holding a marriage together. To make this a little more intelligible to men, I’ll put it this way: a would-be adulterer would have a much higher than normal chance of sinfully sweeping a woman off her feet if that woman felt taken for granted by her husband. Anything that weakens the marriage bond – even an annoying habit – is significant. Gary Chapman identifies what he calls five basic love languages: ♥ touch ♥ talking ♥ serving ♥ gift giving ♥ encouraging words A partner could put enormous effort into expressing love, only for much of it to be wasted because the language is essentially meaningless to the other person. Often this can continue for years without the couple realizing what is happening. And it is even more complex than there being a mere five different languages. To briefly illustrate I’ll give some personal examples. Whereas to many people the words “I love you,” are of immense importance, and some people long to hear them repeated every day, to me the words are so shallow and open to a thousand interpretations as to be virtually meaningless. I wouldn’t mind if I never heard the words. In contrast, words of praise are extremely important to me. I find the giving and receiving of presents not only hollow, but often down right offensive (when it means the person continues to misunderstand or refuses to acknowledge my objections to receiving gifts). I once dated a woman for whom one of the most meaningful expressions of love was me putting my arm around her while we were both absorbed in something else. She wanted me to waste some of the precious time we had together by going to movies or watching television together. I found this almost insulting. To me, love means doing all we can to give each other our undivided attention. It’s not a question of who is “right;” the point is that people differ wildly as to what expressions of love are deeply meaningful to them, and we must recognize this if we are to truly live these Scriptural principles we’ve been examining. Both sexes may find this tiny section helpful: A common cause of men failing to perceive their wives’ needs Some wives have the perfectly understandable tendency to let hurts and problems fester until finally blurting them out at an emotional time when the pressure becomes too great to keep the problem suppressed any longer. Then, when her emotions settle, the wife is all sweetness – maybe even apologizes for the incident – and little mention is made of the problem for weeks until it erupts in another emotional outburst. What makes this pattern such a source of confusion is that the wife feels sure she has accurately communicated her concerns, whereas she has actually left her husband with no idea of how significant the matter is to her. What to him initially seemed to have all the appearance of a crisis apparently evaporates when his wife is in a better mood. He concludes it must just have been her hormones talking. Men seem incredibly thick. They rarely realize until it is too late that there is a serious problem in their marriage. Their ignorance is amazing, but the reality is that husbands often need to act as if they are thick and ignore some of what their wives say. If a husband took seriously everything his wife says in these emotional outbursts, the marriage might have been over long ago. For instance, a woman might get somewhat abusive during such a time, or do other hurtful, out-of-character things. The husband must learn not to take these hurtful words or actions too seriously. In his willingness to overlook the offense, however, he often goes too far. Yes, the words weren’t meant the way they sounded, the outburst was excessive, but in learning to cope with the pain by ignoring the incident, husbands can miss the fact that behind it all was a genuine concern. The solution is for a wife to wait until she is in an obviously good mood, ensure she has her husband’s full attention, and then lovingly but carefully explain how significant this matter is to her. This approach is likely to have more impact than a dozen temper tantrums. It may still, however, take several attempts on the wife’s behalf for the husband to grasp the importance of the matter. Despite what many women seem to assume, husbands do not have the magical ability to climb inside a wife’s mind. They might think men are thick, but maybe if women were as skilled and perceptive as they imagine, they would realize when they are failing to communicate and find solutions. Suppose Carol is highly embarrassed whenever Bob, her husband, wears colors that clash. Whenever she mentions this to him, Bob just looks blankly and continues wearing offensive combinations. Imagine the confusion if Carol were unaware that Bob had never in his life been able to see color and, like Carol, he was barely aware that the way he sees the world is vastly different from the way Carol sees it. Carol would think he was being thoughtless by not dressing how she wished. She would be annoyed and maybe even feel unloved. Bob wouldn't have a clue what the fuss was about and would think Carol was being unreasonable. And, in fact, Carol would be acting unreasonable, but she would not realize it because she assumes Bob sees color like she does. If she understood he had no concept of color, Carol would gladly spend hours trying to explain it to him. Even then she could never get Bob to see things her way. He could gain only the vaguest idea of color, but after patient explanation he would at least understand that for some mysterious reason it's important to his wife. Women who have devoted little time to exploring the depths of their husbands’ mind and emotions, frequently make mistakes of this magnitude. They expect their men to instantly know what it is like to have feelings that are totally foreign to anything their husbands have ever experienced. There are a range of things in which we need to recognize that the difference between the sexes is so vast that at times it's virtually impossible to see things from the other's perspective. For both husbands and wives, accurate communication is an enormous challenge. We delight in many of the differences between the sexes. We must therefore bear with the difficulties that these differences sometimes present. In Perspective Obviously this webpage focuses on the sexual side of marriage. In another (True Love) I touch on the issue of romantic feelings. There is clearly very much more to a good marriage than sex and romance, and if the other aspects are neglected, sex and romance will suffer anyhow. However, a major reason for this web series is to explode the common myth that sexual and romantic feelings are largely beyond our control. We are tempted to think that we are stuck with the fact that either the “chemistry” is there or it isn’t. It is undeniable that when we are with someone we hardly know, sexual feelings often spontaneously erupt. This is a manifestation of what might be loosely thought of as the animal side of us. But to maintain these feelings year after year with the same partner takes qualities that distinguishes us from animals – intelligence, creativity and moral and spiritual values, not least of which is will-power. Love is clearly a key, but the love of 1 Corinthians 13, not the “love” of Playboy Magazine or Mills and Boon’s books – the love that moves you to serve, not the love that effortlessly makes your heart thump. Upon supposedly reaching adulthood by having a particular birthday, young people are usually congratulated. I find this peculiar. In most cases it takes no great achievement to stay alive for a certain number of years. Reaching that many years of marriage, however, is truly worthy of congratulations. It is a genuine achievement that has not just the potential for earthly reward, but eternal reward because of the spiritual qualities it takes, including overcoming temptation, plus all of the fruit of the Spirit. Marriage is a wonderfully complex and vast domain. In contrast, this webseries is a very limited and shallow glimpse at just a couple of aspects of marriage. This is unfortunate because looking at these aspects in isolation creates serious distortions. With the authority of more than forty years of faithfulness to the one husband, Bobbie bares her heart: I think too much emphasis is sometimes placed on how to improve a couple’s sex life instead of identifying and correcting the root of the problem, if one exists. Whatever happens in the bedroom is usually a direct reflection on what is taking place in the rest of the couple’s life, including outside stressors such as work pressures, illness, family problems, and so on. Communication is vital. You have to know your mate well enough to sometimes look behind the words being spoken to find the true meaning of what is trying to be communicated. If a husband is continually putting his wife down verbally or being abusive in any way, I can guarantee that the wife will not be as responsive as he wants her to be. She cannot automatically turn off the impact of the harsh words and abusive behavior when the lights go off. If a couple has developed the kind of relationship where each is as concerned about the other’s feelings and needs as much as they are about their own feelings and needs, this same love and concern for each other will be carried into the bedroom. In most cases the passion will then come naturally. The one thing that is becoming more evident than ever to me is that no matter how long you have been together, you cannot get away with taking your marriage or each other for granted. You must never stop putting effort into your marriage and continuing to work on the relationship. It broke my heart to hear of one couple who had divorced after more than fifty years of marriage. Another couple I know of divorced after forty years of marriage and devastated the whole family. The wife has never recovered. I believe the reason the divorce rate is so high is that people give up too quickly. They no longer look at a marriage as a lifetime contract which may occasionally run into snags that must be worked out. When a major problem hits they just bail out and fancifully assume they can find a problem-free relationship with someone else. I doubt there is any marriage – no matter how strong – that has not at one time or other experienced trials so difficult that they could have easily called it quits. If they stay in the boat and weather the storm together they will eventually look back and be glad they did not give up. Fire brings comforting warmth, or destruction, depending on whether it is under control. Likewise sexual passion enriches or impoverishes, heals or harms, depending on how it is controlled. It reaches its highest potential only when fully submitted to the Lordship of Christ, the One through whom this precious gift was created and entrusted to us. I refer not to obeying a set of rules but yielding to the whispers of the most wonderful Person in the universe and using his gift to express his heart – which has always been to glorify his Father and display selfless love and faithfulness. The Story so Far Sexuality and romantic attraction are each a wild stallion that can be tamed to become a faithful friend. Let it run wild and you are in grave danger of a tragic fall. Abuse it and it might even be trample you to death. Treat it wisely, however, and it will serve you well. Harness its power and it will take you to wonders that others only dream about. In creating sexual pleasure, God was displaying the magnitude of his love by entrusting to humanity a precious and powerful force for good. He was also taking a great risk. Evil finds particular delight in twisting into something that weakens the marriage bond the very thing God intended as marital glue. It delights in seizing the precious gift designed to bind a man and wife together and perverting it into a force that draws a person away from hisr marriage partner into the real or imagined arms of an intruder. God’s way for us to resist the cheapening of the gift is to treasure it even more. His plan is for marrieds to counter-attack, not by suppressing the gift – as it were, burying the talent – but by us more than ever investing the entire treasure in our partner. Our loving Father is the author of pleasure. It is only the deadly illusion of pleasure – the cheap thrill you pay for forever – that breaks his heart. Find the genuine article, and honor the Giver by enjoying the gift to the full. These webpages must not be used as weapons to try to get a partner to change. Each reader must focus on applying them to his/her own life. How to Fall More in Love with God Contains practical suggestions for re-igniting marital love When Marital Relations are a Shortcut to Hell A second look at marital rights

Serious Help for Christian Men A Realistic Perspective on Marital Intimacy A man e-mailed, thanking me for my webpages. He included his own insights into the dynamics of marital relations. Of course, there are always exceptions to any sex generalizations, but most men and women will find his observations and discoveries invaluable. They were so superbly expressed that I begged his permission to share with you an edited version of his e-mail. Preserving his wife’s privacy is paramount to this man, so he must remain anonymous, but what follows is his work. E-mails may be forwarded to him by writing to me. Just identify the webpage by providing the web address. Grantley Morris Founder of NetBurst.net It seems to me that men look to sex in order to feel better, whereas for women, willingness to have sex is proof that they already feel good. For men, sex makes the sun shine and the birds chirp (no preparation required). For women, unless the sun is already shining and the birds already chirping, sex is out of the question. Quite an oil and water scenario, to be sure. So, this being the case, the question shifts to, what is it that makes the “sun shine and the birds chirp” for women? It’s all the seemingly peripheral dimensions of the relationship that create the proper context and foundation for sex. It’s the romancing, feeling loved, non-sexual affection, being talked to, being listened to, enjoying each other’s company, having fun together, laughing, and so on. In this sense, I think that the “natural wiring” of women in marriage, that is – how they view sex and where they place it – is actually God’s alarm system for marrieds. The women have got it right. Yank sex out of its proper context (a balanced, loving, committed relationship) and attempt to relate to it as a stand-alone entity, and you’re headed for trouble. Recently I was on the road for three straight weeks (home on weekends). My wife is at home with our kids and so, while I’m away, she’s shouldering the entire burden of keeping the “homestead” functioning – making all the moment-to-moment decisions etc. – a veritable one-man band as it were. So here I am, “traveling the world,” and coming home a “sex-deprived, raving lunatic” because I’ve “gone without” for weeks at a time – and, from my wife’s perspective, gone all the time but just showing up for sex. The three week “traveling road show” has now ended, but instead of celebrating my return with a sexual reunion, my wife felt she “needed a break” from sex. Now wait a minute, I’m thinking, she’s already “had a break”! But that’s not the space she’s living in. From her perspective, without me around to help shoulder the burden of running a household, her stress level was redlining. She’s to the point of overwhelm, just trying to get through one day at a time. The stress is so high, from her vantage point, that the additional emotional pressure of feeling that I expect to have sex that night – the additional weight of that “obligation” – was just too much for her to bear. “Is there anything I can do to reduce your stress level?” I asked her. Her response to my sincere question, was, “Well, actually there is . . . Tonight, when we go to bed, if you could not have any ‘expectations’ that would make a big difference for me.” So here she was, absolutely dreading going to bed with me, because the “added weight” of feeling expected to have sex was just too much for her. She found herself trying to stay up as late as possible, so that I would be so exhausted as to fall straight to sleep, thus sparing her of the likelihood that I would try anything once we were in bed. Her energies were so preoccupied with other stresses involving the family, that come bedtime, her mind was still whirring a thousand miles an hour like a gyroscope. Consequently, sex was absolutely the furthest thing from her mind, resulting in not just zero libido, but less than zero. Yet, here I was, in my self-focus, fixated on sex – “when am I going to get my cookie?” as she would so aptly put it. I had totally lost sight of the greater picture. I could even sense her relief as I got out of bed in the morning to get ready for work. It was almost as if now she could relax because the “monster” had finally left. My wife had been “sleeping with the enemy” and the “enemy” was me! Reflecting on this as a Christian, during Lent I found myself re-examining my sexuality as well as any habits that may have a hold on me (a disproportionate desire for snacks, drinking coffee, or watching TV, and so on). These are all variations on the same theme – that is, being devoted to anything with a level of intensity that rivals our devotion to Christ. Plainly stated, the intentional break from sex that my wife and I agreed to has shone a spotlight on my addiction to sex. All the various perspectives and angles you have explored on www.net-burst.com have helped me to not just cope with this temporary moratorium on sex, but to reflect on the deeper issues at hand. This really is a LORDship issue. At one point the site raised a poignant question: something to the tune of - “ If Christ being Lord of my life meant never again having sex, for the rest of my life, would I still choose Christ over sex?” To my horror, that question caused me to hesitate. My hesitation revealed the fact of my idolatrous “relationship” with sex. This issue has become a repentance focal point over Lent and this web site have served as a sort of meditation guide to facilitate the self-reflection necessary for me to sort through the issues. An absolute God-send! Developing the personal discipline now to put marital sex in its proper place will pay huge dividends later. At some point, one of us (my wife or me) will most likely die first. If it’s my wife who dies first, leaving me suddenly single, how will I cope with the instant loss of my “sex partner”? Will I instantly fall apart and resort to porn and self gratification, and so on? Or what if my wife develops breast cancer and requires a mastectomy? Not only would her mental body image be radically altered – which in itself would severely impact her ability to relate to me – the graveness of the whole experience would most likely trivialize her view of sex even further and its relative importance in the grand scheme of things (in this case, her life or death). In such a scenario, her view toward me could very understandably be, “How could you be fixated on sex, when my life is on the line? Don’t you even care? ” Bottom line: For the Christian, (males especially), periods of “intentional abstinence” are the training ground of self-control – self-control that may (and most likely will) be called upon in the future. Thus, such “trials” are truly something to be thankful for. They are truly sent by God to make us stronger – just like weight training causes sore muscles in the short term, the ultimate result is increased strength. So it really is a matter of short term pain for long term gain. That doesn’t make the “pain” any more pleasant, but having a better understanding of the higher purpose it serves can make all the difference. Having ourselves “suffered” through such periods of self-denial, is also God’s way of equipping us with the sensitivity to understand, empathize with, and comfort others in their struggles. And ultimately, in a small tiny way, the “pain and suffering” of bringing our sexual urges under the control of Christ and experiencing the discomfort of self-denial, enables us to actually experience a fraction of exactly what Christ did for each of us – that is, “ . . . although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, and being made in the likeness of men . . . humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross . . .” Philippians 2: 6-8. Important Note for Wives by Grantley Morris I come down hard on men as to their marital obligations to sacrificially embrace hardship and even pain and suffering for the well-being of their wives, just as Christ suffered for you. The Lord tenderly cares for you and expects that same tender, selfless understanding from your husband. Nevertheless, wives have equally solemn obligations to their husbands. There is no way around it: Scripture over and over commands women to obey their husbands as devout Christians obey Christ. Under God, the apostle Peter emphasized this as strongly as the divinely appointed apostle to the Gentiles, Paul ( Scriptures ). This clashes with worldly views as much as avoiding pre-marital sex; as much as God’s ways clash with the ways of the world. We dare not twist or ignore the Word of God.

Insights for wives who want to give their husbands the best WARNING: Please read this before proceeding Please Pray Before Reading  About Sexuality Why? 1. To protect yourself. God might not want you to read a certain webpage of mine. 2. Because we need to hear from God, not from a human. You are unique and your Lord and Maker treats you as such. He personally tailors his revelation to you. I cannot do that in a webpage available for thousands to read. All I can do is plead that you seek God to do what I cannot do by personally directing you to those specific things he wants to share with you. I have undergone more soul searching and emotional pain over writing about sexuality than any other topic. I have at times pleaded with God that I could move on to other topics that would cause me less distress and would edify me more. But this isn’t about me. It’s about trying to find God’s will and submitting to it. And it’s about those people who need guidance and godly support about dilemmas that refuse to stay buried. It’s about people who find vast quantities of worldly material but little Christian help. Disturbed that despite all my attempts to write with godly restraint I might still have gone over the edge, I sought the opinion of a woman whom I believe is sensitive to the Lord's heart. As she read one of my pages she saw in her mind’s eye my hands cupped together in front of me. Fluffy cotton wool filled my hands. What she saw was symbolic and so out of proportion, but snuggled within that cozy nest sat a woman. My hands were positioned so that from that place of comfort and security she could safely view new wonders and solutions to mysteries that had previously bewildered her. That image thrilled me because this is the tenderness with which I long to treat you while acting as your servant. I think that most readers will feel I deal with these matters delicately. As individuals, however, we differ greatly in our sensitivities. My own peculiar mix of strengths and weaknesses means I can write these pages in a detached way and (usually) be less affected than if an average-looking woman walked past me. But you could be different. You might be one of those who feel uncomfortable about some of these writings; one for whom the little detail I give is too much. So I urge you to pray about which, if any, pages you should read. Your purity is one of God’s magnificent goals for your life and I would be devastated if, instead of contributing to this, I in any way detracted from the beautiful things God longs to do in you. Some pages are particularly unsuited to singles. Many people value what I’ve written on these topics. This, I think, is God kindly responding to how much my longing to serve you and my Lord has cost me emotionally in writing these pages. But what is a little pain, relative to the privilege of serving the Lord of all, and helping someone for whom he gave his all? Above all, however, if God is in anything I have written on this topic, it is confirmation of the scriptural principle that he delights in using the weak and ignorant to confound the capable and wise (1 Corinthians 1:27-29). Nevertheless, some people finding it helpful doesn’t mean you will, so here’s a suggested prayer: Loving Lord, Like no one else, you have my best interests at heart. You know my hurts, my needs, what will most comfort and encourage me, and the next step you want me to take in becoming more Christlike. So I don’t want just to read a webpage, I want to hear from you. And thank you that you want to speak to me. Cause me to choose those webpages – and only those pages – that will most help me hear what you want to say to me right now. This webpage is best read after reading How Holy Wives Express Marital Love Most husbands wish their wives would initiate lovemaking more.  It can be deeply meaningful and moving to a man. It makes him feel loved. Women usually take longer than men to get in the mood for intimacy, but don’t always wait for the feeling. Occasionally, start when you only slightly feel like it but you sense your husband would appreciate it. Your feelings will most likely catch up, but this time do it because you love your husband rather than because you love sex. And I’m sure you can think of more exciting ways of initiating intimacy than simply saying something like, “Let’s go to bed.” You might suddenly join him when he is showering, you might start whispering in his ear such things as “I crave your body,” you might . . . Well, I’ll leave that to you.   Blow away the cobwebs of predictability.  Have fun. Let loose. Act a little crazy.   The greatest thing you can do for your husband and your marriage is to heavily involve God in it. High on the list of other helpful things you can do is to delight in your own sexual pleasure.  That will keep you longing for more, and your genuine excitement about sex is one of the greatest possible turn-ons for your husband.   Many of the things that thrill a man, however, do not usually appeal to women.  So unless they had ulterior motives, selfish women wouldn’t do them. Whereas average people find many things demeaning – such a kneeling and kissing one’s partner’s feet – genuine lovers are so lost in their partner’s pleasure that even the concept that anything could be demeaning is incomprehensible. It is doing things solely for the other person’s enjoyment that turns sex into lovemaking, rather than self-centred pleasure-seeking.   As you have no doubt observed, the visual side of sex means a lot to a man.  For many a man, it means almost as much as both romance and foreplay mean to a woman. Out of ignorance, some men have sex with their wives without foreplay. I think you know that is no way to treat a woman. In the same way that some men don’t realize that foreplay should be a part of loving their wives, many women don’t understand the role of the visual in loving their husbands. Have you seen the way peacocks initiate the mating process by displaying their gorgeous tail feathers and vibrating them in a spectacular fashion? God created them to do that for their mate. I know many women find it embarrassing, but they, too, should seek to put on a visual display for their husbands in the intimacy of marriage.   Do you dress to please your husband or just yourself? The great tragedy is that the average wife seems to dress up for strangers and not for her husband. It should be the other way around. They should, at least occasionally, look far more beautiful and sensuous when alone with their husbands, than when they are dressed for a most important public event.   Do you really know what your husband likes, or do you merely think you know? Is your husband not interested in what you wear simply because he thinks you are dressing for your own ego and not for him?   For most forms of women’s clothing, it usually works out that the more impractical and uncomfortable the garment, the sexier it is  (wouldn’t ya know it!). But that’s okay. You only have to slip it on a few moments before your husband sees it. One look at you in that uncomfortable gear and – bless his heart! – he’ll be so moved with compassion that he’ll beg you to take it off. He’ll probably even stick around to supervise – just to make sure you don’t hurt yourself, of course. And on the other hand, if it’s particularly comfortable, you might get to keep it on for weeks.   Since, at least in these things, most men like variety, it might be preferable to choose several less expensive items than one that will last until he is in a nursing home. Both black and red are usually exciting colors for a man. There are other possibilities but avoid skin tones and brown.   I realize you need to be comfortable when you sleep, but when it comes to nightwear, including slippers and a bathrobe, there are some monstrosities that could remind your husband of a three year old, or his mother, or grandmother, or a bag lady. There are equally practical alternatives that won’t turn him off his food. Since your husband is about the only person who will ever see you in this clothing, and he’ll see you in it quite a lot, it’s particularly important to buy these items for him more than for yourself. Don’t buy anything in this line that you can’t return, and press him for an honest opinion, after assuring him that you are specifically dressing for him and that you don’t just want something he can tolerate but what he really likes. He probably has little idea of what is available in women’s bathrobes, so if you can drag him along when you choose a bathrobe, do so. Suggest he stroke it to consider touch as well as appearance. A paper bag over his head might reduce his embarrassment as he walks into the shop.   The male need for visual variety   As briefly explained above, variety is important to a man. But don’t despair you can go a long way toward breaking a man’s tendency to get bored looking at one body.  To revive your husband’s interest in your body, let your mind run wild in dreaming up ways to make your body a continual surprise package.   For those who are feeling adventurous, someone, who would prefer to remain nameless, has provided in  The Spice of Life  a list of creative ways of doing this. That page is not for everyone. I suggest you pray as to if and when you should read it.   Wrap-up   Seek the Creator for creative ways of expressing marital love that will satisfy a normal man’s craving for variety – a craving dangerously inflamed by living in decadent western society. As you do this, our Lord will no doubt give you ideas that will soar far above the suggestions offered in this webpage and the many in the link ( The Spice of Life ). Gently persist with new things even if your husband’s first reaction is not encouraging. It could open up a whole new dimension to him, bonding the two of you closer than ever. The Next Webpage?   In contrast to the above,  The Spice of Life  is so wild that I have reservations about even placing it on the web. How can you know whether you should read it? Only through prayer.

(Not Recommended for Singles) Please pray before proceeding. This is a semi-private webpage. It is so wild that I have qualms even about placing it on the web. It is deliberately designed not to be easily accessible. I urge you to seek the Lord as to whether it would be best for you not to read it. Please take this warning seriously, and proceed only after praying and ascertaining that you have the Lord’s permission. Variety, they say, is the spice of life. The enemy of our souls spreads the lie that the variety we crave should be met by having a variety of partners. What is really needed, however, is the variety that comes when love moves you to overcome inhibitions and creatively find as many ways as possible to add fun and surprises to your special times with your partner. Almost universally, women dress up and spend more time on their appearance when strangers will see them than when they will only be seen by the one person in their lives that a wife should want to sexually attract. Practicing the following affirms by action that your husband really is more important to you than strangers. What woman wants to be seen in public wearing the same clothes all the time? Women seek variety in what they show the world, how much more should they do this for their husbands. The goal of the suggestions is to shatter your man’s presumption that your body offers nothing new to see. The aim is not necessarily to look sexier, but to keep your husband wondering; causing him to take a new interest in your body. Always try to save the more extreme options for later surprises and aim to spread over months, preferably years, the implementation of new ideas, with all sorts of variations. Many times do nothing to touch up your body, but try to be totally unpredictable as to when those times will be. Keep him guessing. Keep your body a fun-filled surprise. Initially he’ll most likely be shocked, maybe even think it’s stupid, but he’ll never forget it. He’ll always remember that you put in the effort to do something special and memorable just for him. Above everything it is the fact that these things are an expression of your love that will make them so precious to him. Explain to him that this is your motivation. You will probably find some ideas are only worth trying once, but you’ll have the rest of your lives to look back and laugh. You’ve been daring within the exclusive confines of holy matrimony. Never again can your husband take you for granted. You’ve thrown off the suffocating cloak of predictability and become someone exciting who is fun to be with. Get excited about your surprises. A smile and a twinkle in your eye, and especially love in your eyes, are unbeatable ways of beautifying yourself. Remember the following are mere suggestions. Some won’t work for you. You and your husband are the sole experts about what gives you pleasure. But don’t give up quickly. Gently persist. You will be doing some mad-cap, unforgettable things together; sharing a laugh and a secret that only the two of you will ever know. It’s the sort of thing that bonds people. You’ll need to be gentle with your body and perhaps test some things for a day on a tiny patch of your skin to ensure you won’t have an allergic reaction. A few ideas The elimination of the need for garters or garter belt was a great leap forward for comfort, but when it comes to seeing a woman undress . . . Put it this way: after the invention of pantyhose, it’s a wonder they even bothered to invent the Pill. Incidentally, I recall an article in a old women’s magazine (the magazine was old, not the women it was intended for!) suggesting that if you are wearing old-fashioned stockings – the type that doesn’t turn a man’s stomach – and you are deliberately undressing to please your man, the most exciting way to remove these stockings is to roll them off. Sounds good advice to me. I think your only hope of enticingly removing pantyhose involves a pair of scissors. Hire from a costume shop a sexy outfit. Maybe even hire a wig to give yourself an entirely new look. Even the clothes you wear in public have potential. Try wearing just a top as a mini-dress. Use plunging necklines that in public you would wear something underneath. Pull up a half slip and wear it as a dress. Even if you’re already well endowed, maybe you could have fun with a super wonderbra or something to make you look enormous and show plenty of cleavage. Use lipstick on your nipples (maybe elsewhere). On different occasions, use different shades. After a few months, when he thinks all possibilities have been exhausted, hit him with flavored lipstick. Wrap a little tinsel around you. Another time use your imagination as to how you can deck yourself with a few flowers. One possibility would be to use a ribbon into which you poke holes to receive short-stemmed flowers. On another occasion dress yourself in nothing but a scarf or two. Another time oil your body to make it glisten. Try sticking glitter on yourself. At times try subtle things he could miss if not paying attention, such as a tiny gold star stuck on your behind. Buy lotion that gives an artificial suntan. On different occasions, go for different shades of brown. Sometimes make yourself look at if you’ve been sun-baking in a bikini. Another time go to the other extreme and find something (talcum powder?) to whiten your body. Write something cheeky or romantic on your body, such as writing on your breasts, “Hubby’s toys.” Try a pretend tattoo. On a warm day, tell your husband to wait outside the door for a couple of minutes. Lay down, put something like whipped cream over your breasts, each topped with a strawberry. Then call him in. Over months, put your pubic hair through many color changes. Try curling it. Sometimes aim to beautify it, after many weeks go for the occasional startling thing, such as bright pink or streaks. Ideally, use hair treatments that will only last a day or so, to avoid embarrassment if you have a medical appointment or some such thing. Again, don’t do this so often that it becomes mundane; the aim is to take him by surprise. Give him a strip show. There are a million possibilities that would delight him. For example, dress with lots of layers of clothes and underwear with each lower layer being briefer and hidden, and each time you expose a bit more flesh do something wild to him. If you can, introduce some music and movement (especially moving the hips and breasts.) Don’t forget that high heels are very sexy. If you don’t usually wear them, that’s not only sensible for your feet but modest as well. Can you, however, find some way of coming up with some just for a few moments for your husband? Would a friend let you borrow some, for instance? Many a woman has discovered that her attempts at stripping for her husband only seem to make him laugh. That’s fine! Laughter is an expression of happiness. It means you’re having intimate fun together. Draw or stick a little heart shape, or some such thing, on a private part of your body. Then without wearing any underwear put on a short dress or skirt and top that is very revealing when you bend over Tell your husband what you’ve done, but don’t necessarily tell him what it looks like and certainly don’t tell him where it is. Explain you’ll give him a special sexual treat (name it) if and only if he sees the shape. Then tease him. Perhaps go about your normal housework or put on a special show for him, doing all sorts of dances and movements in front of him. If he catches a glimpse of the sticker, he gets the promised sex thrill. If he doesn’t, he has to forfeit it and give you the thrill of your choice. Don’t feel sorry for him and give it to him anyhow. If he begins to realize you will always let him win, it will reduce some of his excitement. The more that’s at stake, the more exciting it will be. Even if he loses, he still wins because his sexual tension has built up. Keep him longing to see your special parts. You don’t want him getting bored with seeing you. Try to keep your naked body as something exciting for him. Don’t normally let him see you naked, for instance, when he’s not stirred up. Silent sex? When making love, don’t spoil the moment by talking about inappropriate things – he’s probably not in the mood for discussing the eating habits of the Namibian cockroach – but minimize deathly silence. Fill your lovemaking with sweet nothings. Giggles, sighs and groans of pleasure are the sweetest music to a man. Verbalize your appreciation of your husband’s qualities, and physical attributes. It’s often acknowledged how much women need to be told they look good, are loved, and the like. Men are usually too embarrassed to admit they need it too. Perhaps try some new pet names for your man – and not necessarily romantic names, they could be erotic names or ones like Tiger. Ensure they are names that appeal to him rather than you. The last thing you want is to consistently use a name that turns his stomach. Maybe even invent pet names for parts of his body. Games Aim to awaken the dormant erotic potential of every fraction of your husband’s body. It can take months for parts of a person’s body to come alive sexually, but each different part of the body provides new sensations when sexually awakened. Don’t give up after just a few tries. If something is pleasurable for other people there is a very strong probability that your husband is wired the same way and that it simply needs to be strengthened through practice. For instance, Jim felt an unpleasant tickling sensation in the roof of his mouth whenever his nipples were stroked. Nevertheless, he persevered for several sessions. He learned to focus on the pleasant sensation so completely that the feeling in the roof of the mouth totally disappeared, never to return again. Now, he reports, whenever his nipples are caressed, it is one of the most beautiful feelings he has ever known. The soles of the feet are another of many other possibilities. Invent love-making games. For instance, start making love with both of you fully clothed. Wearing nothing but tracksuits would work well. Each partner tries every conceivable way to stir up the other, but it’s a competition. The first one yielding to temptation by deliberately exposing skin or touching bare skin under clothing, ‘loses.’ With breaks, this can go on for hours (even days) if you can last. One aspect of good sex is to build sexual tensions higher and higher without relief, making you crave each other more and more. If one partner consistently ‘wins,’ alter the rules a little to balance things. There are many possible variations, such as making love when you are both undressed. This time decide together which favorite parts of the body must not be touched. Again, each of you arouses the other, trying to make it impossible for his/her partner to resist. The ‘loser’ is the one who can stand it no longer and touches an off-limits area or begs to be touched, or brings an off-limits area into contact with the other person. If you both love kissing, another time allow everything but kissing. See who is the first one to “forget.” Good sex often has a lot of tease elements, such as pretending to do something but not quite doing it. This builds the longing for it. Other ideas Experiment with various scented oils, powders, and so on, to help your hands and body slip over him. Use different materials to stroke his body such as feathers, satin, fur. Buy a red light bulb. Being a light that emphasizes red parts of the body, it a sexy color for light-skinned people. Try finding every conceivable position in which to hug each other and be close. Initially, don’t go primarily for sexual stimulation but just for fun and experimentation. Try head to toe, front to back, him on top, you on top. Try rubbing your buttocks on his. Try lying on each other on the floor and rolling over and over. On and on the possibilities go. Find all sorts of ways to get limbs twisted around each other. It’s up to you whether you actually proceed with them, but just for fun, try discovering every conceivable sex position. When you’ve got the house to yourselves, make the most of it. Don’t just lock yourself up in your bedroom. Use the whole house. Chase each other through it, use the sofa, and so on. Experiment. You might, for instance, find that the kitchen table has something to offer regarding a different sexual position. Maybe not, but it could be fun finding out! Find a secluded place to make love outdoors. In the middle of a golf course at night? Find a deserted children’s park with swings, slides and so on. It can be quite romantic because it’s like being able to share your childhood together. If you’re alone (and since you’re married) you can really play the little girl, wearing a dress and hanging upside down showing off your underwear. You might even find some creative things to do together on some of the equipment. Male sexual difficulties An impotent man can enjoy sexual pleasure, but not intercourse. It’s a commonly accepted fact that most men at some time in their lives experience temporary impotence, whether it be due to tiredness, stress, too much sex, or whatever. It takes a lot of pressure off a man if he has known, long before a problem occurs, that an erection does not assume prime importance in his wife’s attitude to lovemaking. If, when an erection fails to happen, it is brushed aside as no big deal and other forms of lovemaking are enjoyed, the problem will most likely vanish in a matter of days. But if impotence is seen as a great tragedy and fear and concern set in, the problem is likely to continue and become serious. One of the most frustrating things about male sexuality is that the harder a man tries, the less likely he is to succeed. Conscious thought about the mechanics of sex usually hinders performance. This is psychologically induced impotence, and is quite common. To a certain extent, your husband’s sexual prowess depends on you. Bill visited a prostitute. Seeing his male equipment primed for action she said, “Is this all you’ve got?” Immediately, it shrank. Realizing her error she used all her skill trying every conceivable way to regain his erection. Nothing worked. Thereafter, he was impotent. I don’t know if he ever recovered. Rarely can anyone be blamed for impotence and in this case Bill was sinning and so in my view he got what he deserved. Nevertheless, Bill’s experience demonstrates how delicate male sexuality is. It is clearly in a wife’s own interest to boost her husband’s confidence and do nothing to make him anxious about performance. Be totally honest, however. The heights of marital intimacy involve baring the soul, not just the body. In this and in every aspect of your relating, be brave and trust the God who loves you so deeply that he gave you your partner for you to express God’s love. See: The Hidden Enemy: Romantic Fiction How Holy Wives Express Marital Love Back to: Putting Holy Fire in your Marriage

If you have suffered sexual abuse, I suggest you start with The Abuse Survivor’s Ultimate Revenge: Reclaiming your Sexuality The more godly the wife, the more staggering the gulf between her moments of intimacy with her husband and her behavior in any other context. What she would gladly do when alone with her beloved would horrify her in the presence of any other person. Such an immense discrepancy can be unsettling. A wife can almost feel as if two different people dwell inside her. What it really means, however, is that she is a princess of God, captivated by the holiness of marriage. She is a devoted wife who delights in the divine blessing that rests on marriage. She honors the wonder, the uniqueness, and the exclusiveness of the marriage bond. For health reasons, children are usually lovingly trained to be revolted by the thought of drinking from someone else’s cup. Consider how far removed this is from enjoying tongue-kissing. This is but a minor demonstration of how, in our most impressionable years, we are usually taught that certain things are physically dirty or crude or sinful, only to grow up and suddenly find all the rules changed when alone with our marriage partner. It is inevitable that a normal person brings to the marriage bed deeply entrenched reservations. These reservations, although perfect for every other situation, are completely inappropriate when a godly wife is alone with her life-partner. Of course, a primary goal of a woman’s childhood training is to protect her physical and moral assets, enabling her to maximize the value of her special gift to the man of her dreams. What a tragedy if this got twisted and ended up causing her to rob the very man that the precious gift had been reserved for. What if her inhibitions actually caused her to be devalued as a wife, when in reality she has so much to offer? A Tender Conscience Inhibitions that are merely an inappropriate carry-over from one’s tender years are not from God and yet they will inevitably feel like one’s conscience speaking. Simon Peter would have felt similarly when challenged by God to eat food that he had been brought up to regard as unclean (Acts 10:10-16). Scripture says there are times when our hearts wrongly condemn us, but it adds that God is greater than our consciences (1 John 3:19-20). It is worth prayerful consideration whether behind a failure to fully enjoy marital lovemaking is the half-buried feeling that you should punish yourself for some past sin. The enemy of our souls will seize even half an opportunity to try to con us into imagining we should punish ourselves for real or imaginary sins. The Accuser delights in this evil trick because he knows how much it insults the Son of God, who suffered so horrifically on a cross for our every sin. An attempt on our part to punish ourselves could render Jesus’ suffering an utter waste as far as we are concerned. We instinctively know that sin must be punished. Yet no matter how much we punish ourselves, we will still be burdened with guilt. Only Jesus suffered so completely for our sins as to consume our every trace of guilt, enabling us to break through to innocence and purity. Once we realize the necessity and breadth of what Christ has done for us, it becomes clear how dishonoring to Christ it is to sub-consciously punish ourselves. In this context, to thoroughly enjoy marital sex is to celebrate God’s goodness and to honor the magnitude of what Christ achieved by bearing our punishment. A link at the end of this webpage will help you with this vital issue. To incite lust is a sin. To incite marital passion is a virtue. What makes conceiving a child godly or ungodly is simply whether it is done in love and within marriage. In this case, the sole determiner of morality is the context. It has nothing to do with the nature of the act. It is not unusual for a godly wife to feel she is acting like a harlot if she were to do certain things for her husband. In direct contrast to harlots, however, she would actually be acting like a devout wife, displaying a side of her that is reserved exclusively for the life-partner God has entrusted to her. She is bonding with her husband by sharing exciting secrets that only the two of them could ever guess. Of course what makes harlots grossly immoral is that they have what should be marital relations with almost any man. Driven by money, they take pains to find out what men like and then give it to them. They put aside their own pleasure and focus on pleasing a man. How tragic it would be if, for the love of money, godless harlots are willing to do more to please strangers (including your husband, if they could connive it) than you would do for the love of the man you are committed to for life. It is not easy to shake free from inhibitions created in one’s tender years, nor to span the gulf between what is perfect in marriage and what one should rigorously avoid in any other situation. I suspect for their entire married lives most wives lug into their bedroom emotional baggage that should have been left outside the door. It will take more than mere reading for you to be freed from these deep-seated feelings. It is a matter worthy of concerted prayer. Sexual Torment For a man to marry is for a strong, independent person to relinquish his ability to defend himself and hand someone the power to sexually torture him. If you fail to understand your husband’s sexual cravings, or refuse to love him enough to satisfy his gnawing sexual hunger, you might as well regularly chain him and sear his flesh with a branding iron. Tragically, some women so misunderstand the situation as to wrongly suppose they are assuming the higher moral ground by acting with such callous cruelty that they refuse to meet their husband’s sexual yearnings. My heart goes out to every woman who suffers sexual problems. These dear people are usually blameless and deserve boundless love, compassion, gentleness and patience. Such a wife, however, should at least convey to the man she is tormenting how deeply she regrets what her problems are doing to him. Introducing change If you decide to change an aspect of your lovemaking, both you and your husband are likely to feel more comfortable if you first carefully explain to your husband your intention and motives. You might not want to give so many details as to spoil your exciting surprise, but neither do you want your husband shocked or wrongly guessing the reasons for your new behavior. Explain to him that from now on you will be trying some new ways to express your devotion to him. Assure him you have not suddenly turned into another woman; it’s just that you are trying harder than ever to release the love locked inside of you. Tell him you assume that worldly women are skilled at pleasing men and that you greatly admire him for not yielding to them. Affirm that he deserves every bit of pleasure they could ever give, plus the unique joys of the exclusivity of marriage, so you are determined to do all you can to give him anything others could offer, plus God’s priceless blessing. Ask for his patience and understanding if your guesses as to what excites him are not always correct, and affirm to him that you long for his feedback to perfect your attempts. As carefully explained in Is it Perverted? it is essential that by talking together you fully explore your husband’s understanding of what, if any, type of marital lovemaking he feels God would disapprove of. If a person believes something is sin, then no matter how innocent it may be, it is sin for that person. The spiritual stakes are too high to rely on guesswork, such as merely assuming your husband’s views have not changed since he last mentioned the matter years ago. It’s easy to misunderstand a husband’s likes and dislikes. For instance, Mary noted her husband complaining about a woman for “dressing like a slut” by wearing black stockings. For years Mary avoided black stockings, not realizing that John loved black stockings so much that he was objecting to anyone wearing them outside the intimacy of marriage. John was thrilled when Mary finally understood. And Mary discovered that dressing sexily in private moments with John added to her own excitement by making her feel more desirable. Naked and not ashamed? Do you feel uncomfortable about your husband seeing you unclothed? To wish you could hide your body from the eyes of the person you are one flesh with is usually a needless tragedy. It is almost inevitable that in the course of a normal marriage a wife would at times think her husband is giving negative vibes about her appearance. These instances, however, need to be evaluated in the cool light of reason. It is human nature to take to heart one negative comment from a husband and ignore ten positive ones. It would be a great shame to let this natural tendency toward over-sensitivity lead you to misunderstand how your husband views your body. Don’t permit such a mistake to ruin what should be a beautiful aspect of the heart of your marriage. There are many surprising reasons for not taking too much notice of negatives. For instance, a husband could delight in one aspect of his wife’s figure, only to find unexpected delights as his wife’s appearance changes. If you have gained weight, know that not even the average man, much less your husband, has fallen for fashion’s current infatuation with anorexia. Maybe you’ve noticed your husband eyeing other women. Many women don’t realize that when a man does this he is yielding to his desire for variety. It is not the slightest reflection on his wife’s appearance. How long would flesh magazine stay in business if they used only one model? Believe me: if, like most men, he has this weakness he would do it if you were the most stunning woman alive. Moreover, a link on this webpage will introduce strategies for counteracting this male tendency. It’s hard for the average woman to imagine how beautiful and exciting she is in her husband’s eyes, especially when he is aroused. When locked up with your husband, throw out the window your own critical view of your body. Honor your husband and thrill yourself by focusing on his enjoyment of you. It wouldn’t matter how plain you might be in the eyes of most people, if your husband finds you sexy, that’s all that matters when you are together. At such times, there is every reason for you to consider yourself the sexiest woman alive, because, especially when your husband is aroused, that’s how he sees you. Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, so abandon yourself to sheer delight in the fact that when there is just you and your man, you are exquisitely beautiful. Once a woman learns to do this, it not only thrills her husband, it is one of the most deeply moving and beautifully healing experiences a woman can ever have. Let’s examine an extreme situation. Suppose you had a mastectomy. You would both have had enough trauma over this without adding to it by withdrawing from your husband. Don’t you think you shrinking from him would cause him to resent the mastectomy more than the mere loss of your breast? I realize it would be enormously difficult for you to keep your mind off it, but if you could manage not to let the operation affect your lovemaking too much, you would minimize the loss in your husband’s eyes. You’d soon have him so distracted that he’d barely be aware of your operation. This, in turn, would help make you feel better. Within the sanctity of marriage, you can return to the paradisaical innocence of Adam and Eve who were “naked ... and ... not ashamed (Genesis 2:25).” A highly conservative friend of mine saw in her mind’s eye an unclothed baby girl lying on her back. Next to her was a beautiful pink rosebud. God tenderly kissed the baby. My friend felt God was saying by this symbolism that a particular woman’s genitals were as beautiful and perfect as a rosebud. Remarkably, completely unknown to my friend, the Lord had already given the woman an identical vision. So when my friend mustered the courage to share this with the woman, it proved to be powerful confirmation. It is sadly common for women to feel uncomfortable about their genitals, especially because adult genitals are naturally not as tight and neat as a baby’s. In this woman’s case, the need for God to speak so dramatically about this matter was especially great because she has suffered sexual abuse from before the age of four, and the abuser’s excuse for his molestation was his claim that her genitals were imperfect and that she needed him to “fix” them. In contrast to what she had always believed, God saw this molested woman’s genitals as exquisitely beautiful and perfect. You are no exception. As the Lord told Peter not to treat as unclean what he has declared to be clean (Acts 10:13-15), please do not denigrate or feel ashamed of what God created and has pronounced “good” (Genesis 1:27,31). Negative feelings about yourself are not of God. Just as you would refuse to accept negative thoughts about God’s son (Jesus), refuse to accept negative thoughts about God’s daughter (you). Don’t try to wriggle out of this by imagining that you are second rate, relative to the Eternal Son of God. If you are in spiritual union with him, you are joint-heirs with the Eternal Son (Romans 8:17). He is manifest in your body (2 Corinthians 4:10-11). He calls you his sister (Hebrews 2:11). You are already seated with him in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6). The love that Father God has for his exalted Son is in you (John 17:26). In this world you are like him (1 John 4:17). In public, your body is meant to be covered up, not like a guilty secret or blemish, but like an exquisite, gift-wrapped present reserved for the exclusive admiration of the man of your dreams. Your most glamorous clothes are but rags concealing a priceless treasure. To remove your clothes in the presence of your husband is the unveiling of God’s breathtaking masterpiece. The fact that many women do not feel this way about their bodies is no more surprising than that vast numbers of Christians feel guilty and ashamed, even though through Christ they are pure, holy and perfect in God’s eyes (e.g. 1 Corinthians 1:30; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Philippians 3:9). In both cases, it is nothing but a cruel delusion, a trick of the devil, that we must not let dominate our thinking. We must do all we can to push through powerfully deceptive feelings to live in the truth that will set us free. I am convinced on the basis of Scripture, that God commands the man you marry to find your unveiled body – the real you – so attractive and desirable that the very sight of it makes him drunk with pleasure. . . . rejoice in the wife of your youth.. . . Let her breasts satisfy you at all times;be exhilarated always with her love. ( Proverbs 5:18-19 , NASB) The word here translated exhilarated means to be intoxicated or be driven by passion to the point of foolishness. The word satisfy refers to having taken one’s fill of pleasure, so that the man has not a hint of desire for anything else. This is God’s command to the man he gives you. I expound on the implications of this significant Scripture in a link below titled Putting Holy Fire In Your Marriage . If you have not already read it, start at the top of that page. For the moment, however, let’s note that the biblical onus is not on you to be pretty. The onus is completely on your husband to focus on you so exclusively through eyes of love that you are ravishingly, captivatingly beautiful to him. You have only two obligations: * To delight in the fact that the very sight of you thrills him * To train yourself to likewise find his body highly desirable. Yes, you may well have to train yourself. If it were always automatic, Scripture would not have to tell us to do this. Nevertheless, the fact that it tells us shows that God wants it. And anything the Almighty wants, he is more than capable of bringing about. All he yearns for is our cooperation, as he does when he asks us to take by faith the fact that Christ has cleansed us, no matter how dirty our spiritual enemy, the deceiver, tries to make us feel. So if, for example, you are tempted to regard your man as too hairy, resist that temptation – steadfastly reject the thought – and train yourself to love that hair, delighting in it as much as a starry-eyed mother has ever delighted in her new born babe that some coldly objective people might not regard as beautiful. God longs for you to cooperate with him in finding every part of your husband beautiful; doing it as an expression of your love for God and for the man he has gifted to you. A mother gave birth to a baby who was thinner than most babies. At first she was taken aback. She so loved the baby God had given her, however, that she soon found herself regarding her baby as perfect and other babies as unnaturally fat. Her next baby was quite plump. She then found herself thinking of other mother’s babies as too skinny to be beautiful. It was love that made all the difference. Love is blind to imperfections. Love intoxicates. It drives a person to find beauty in the object of one’s love. And God commands your husband to love you. Let him. A Christian woman shares a secret: I began to develop breasts long before other girls in my school class. And I hated it. As if growing up were my fault, my mother kept calling me a slut because of my developing figure. And I had so wanted to be a good girl. Over and over my mother kept angrily warning me that breasts make a person the object of unwanted male attention. I so hated my body that rather than dare look at it when undressing, I would close my eyes. When I was in my teens, God meant so much to me that it was usual for me to spend many hours a night in prayer. When I was fifteen, after one such session of several hours with God, I went to the bathroom and a voice within me that seemed to be God, told me to take off my clothes. I rebuked the voice and spent several minutes commanding demons to leave in Jesus’ name. But the presence remained. “Why are you still here?” I angrily demanded. “You rightly tell demons to leave, but I am no demon,” came the reply. “I am your God. Please take off your clothes.” I withdrew to a corner and with not just great reluctance but such fear that I was literally trembling, I slowly removed some of my clothes. “You are beautiful,” God said. It took something like three hours of coaxing and God pronouncing that I was beautiful before I was finally completely naked and looking in a mirror. I had been so effective in shunning my body for so many years that I was astounded to discover that I had pubic hair. The next time God asked me to take off my clothes, it was easier. I guess it only took me about two and a half hours that time! The Lord kept it up until now, even though in public I am extremely modest, I have such freedom that I frequently strip off and lie naked in the privacy of my bedroom. It isn’t sexual to me, nor to God, who assured me years ago that he, the creator of sex, was himself asexual. But it is very comfortable. In fact, I often pray naked. I can understand how some people might think that disrespectful to my Lord, but the God before whom all things are naked and exposed (Hebrews 4:13) has assured me that he is quite happy with it and loves me feeling comfortable about my naked body. It is only when I am not alone that I honor him by dressing modestly. I am not yet married but I know that God has taught me how natural and beautiful it is to share my God-given body with the man he gives me. I will delight in showing him everything. Negative attitudes toward yourself – especially anything about your body that makes you cringe or feel shame when alone with your husband – are devilish attacks not just on yourself but on your marriage. Yes, the battle can be intense at times, but the thrilling news is that you do not have to surrender to these unpleasant feelings, much less agree with them. Through his sacrifice, Christ has made you an overcomer. So whenever these attacks occur, join your Creator and Savoir in rebuking and resisting negative thoughts and feelings about yourself. Take God’s hand and honor him by resolving to enjoy the body and the husband he has graciously given you. Humiliating? For Simon the Pharisee, washing Jesus’ feet was a chore beneath his dignity. For the woman he despised, this same task was a wondrous privilege (Luke 7:36-47). For John the Baptist it was an honor so immense it seemed unattainable (Mark 1:7). What made the difference? Love. To get on my knees at the command of a gun-toting stranger would be humiliating. To get on my knees to pick up something that had rolled under the bed would just be practical. I’d do it almost without thinking. To get on my knees in the intimacy of marriage to joyously express my love by kissing my darling’s feet, however, would be a delight. What changes a humiliating act into a joyous expression of intimacy? Love. As darkness ceases to exist in the presence of light, so humiliation vanishes in the presence of love. Had, for example, I suffered a traumatic experience involving being forced to kiss something repulsive, the memory might diminish my delight in kissing the love of my life. The problem, however, would be my past, not the act, and part of the solution would be to stir up within me love for my partner and let that love propel me forward. It might be difficult at first. I might have to move toward it very gradually over several months, but if I knew it delighted my partner, I could eventually reach the point where I not only did it but delighted in giving my loved one pleasure this way. Of course, this principle applies to many aspects of expressing love. Wrap-up God is on the side of devout wives who long to be freed from childish inhibitions and released from a tendency to lug into the bedroom a concept of holiness that in perfect for every situation except the marriage bed. I have ended the webpage here because this might be all you can handle at present. Perhaps you find this so challenging or potentially scary that you need to stop here and prayerfully bring this webpage before God and perhaps wait for days or weeks until you feel comfortable about it. When you feel ready, there is another webpage I suggest you pray about whether the Lord would have you read. It is called How to Thrill Your Husband. It gives a few suggestions as to things your husband might like. There is no pressure, they are simply things you might consider thinking about it, if and when you feel up to it. Related Webpages The Abuse Survivor’s Ultimate Revenge: Reclaiming your Sexuality Handling Guilt Return to: Putting Holy Fire In Your Marriage