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Restoring One’s Sexuality Locked within every woman is the potential to thoroughly enjoy lovemaking This continues a web series that begins at When a Woman Doesn’t Want Sex A Head Start We use a heart shape to symbolize romance. It would be more accurate, of course, to use a brain shape, because it is within this amazing organ that everything happens. I wish describing the brain could evoke the same warm feelings as the sight of those adorable fawns mentioned in a previous webpage. Nevertheless, while we live in this body, the brain is the seat of every warm fuzzy we will ever enjoy. And it is in understanding what has rightly been called the largest sex organ – the brain – that we find a key to healing. Think of part of your brain as being a little like a living, highly sophisticated pinball machine. Every sight and sound and smell and feeling and taste and thought fires impulses like pinballs. There are many different routes these pinballs can take. Some routes are blocked; some are hard to access and hard to traverse; some are wide and well-travelled. Each leads to a different destination, ranging from wonderfully pleasurable feelings to horrifically unpleasant ones. Because our brain is living, it is continually changing. For the pinball analogy to have any semblance to reality, pathways in this amazing machine must narrow and grow bumpy, becoming less and less passable, when not used. Each time one is used, however, it widens and smooths, making it increasingly likely that impulses will take the same route next time. And each time a repeat occurs, the route becomes even more accessible and fast. But diversions can be erected, setting up new routes and soon making the old one so disused that it seems like a goat track, relative to the new one which begins to look more and more like a highway, drawing in impulses from many different sources. Within your intricate brain is a means whereby certain sexually-related stimuli – various sights, touches, thoughts, and so on – fire impulses along on a divinely fashioned path that leads to beautiful sensations. Sometimes impulses slow or get diverted, but when they travel this path with perfection they cause you to erupt in waves of exquisite excitement melting into cozy feelings of warm contentment and fulfilling intimacy with the one you love. Tragically, your abuser acted so contrary to God’s kind, unselfish ways that sexual stimuli set off impulses that could not take God’s path to feelings of love and elation and pleasure. Instead, they bypassed the divine route, forcing a new path through your brain that your loving Lord never intended to exist. The new route joins sexual stimuli to such horrid feelings as fear and pain and shame. That hellish route – the diversion away from the pure delight that sexual signals were intended to lead to – has now become the easy, well-travelled route, while God’s path to pleasure has narrowed, becoming hard to access, and even when found, hard to traverse. Let’s consider a happily married woman who has been raped by a stranger. Even though the crime was a single event, it was so traumatic that it plowed a wide, totally new path in her brain, linking to horrific feelings certain smells, sights and touches that until then had been linked to pleasurable feelings. The tragedy might have been a one-off rape, but it becomes a much-traveled route due to memories and flashbacks causing the person to keep taking that route in her thoughts. The old routes are still there, but because of the diversion they are now seldom, if ever, taken. And every time the new diversion is taken, the old route grows even less accessible. Through no fault of hers, nor of her husband, when the couple resume marital relations many of their early attempts will inevitably end up taking the new, wide route to the hellish zone. Not only will this be unpleasant, it will further smooth and widen the hellish highway, making it still more likely that subsequent attempts will take that route. So the couple need to avoid slip-ups as much as possible. When accidents happen, however, they need not become discouraged. Despite such accidents, with patient persistence, a couple will become increasingly skilled at firing impulses in the right direction. For instance, they will get better at identifying which smells, sights, and touches should be avoided and the couple will become more skilled at inventing ingenious ways of avoiding those triggers. Even if signals start off well, early attempts along the pleasure route are likely to quickly slow and stop long before reaching the pleasure zone. But each attempt along this path smoothes and widens the way, allowing subsequent attempts to push further and further toward the pleasure zone. Especially if memories of your abuse are fuzzy, lovemaking is likely to take some mysterious twists. An impulse can seem perfectly directed when it hits an apparently insignificant bumper and suddenly it is sent hurtling away to the hellish route. Wow! Where did that come from? you wonder in stunned disbelief. You might discover, for instance, that passionate kissing is pleasurable, whereas having your cheek gently stroked fills you with horror. Behind a mysterious reaction is the fact that your abuser, like everyone, produced a vast array of stimuli – sights, sounds, smells, touches and so on. And because of the way he hurt you, there are now what might be thought of as wide channels plowed through your brain linking many of these stimuli to awful sensations. In the example just given, the stimulus strongly linked to bad feelings was having your cheeks stroked. Another time it might be a different type of touch, or an odor, or the way your husband positions his body relative to yours, or something else seemingly inconsequential. You might have forgotten some of the stimuli associated with your abuse but because the paths still exist in your brain, the “pinballs” inevitably find these hellish routes when you experience something similar to what your abuser did or looked like, and so on, when he hurt you. This does not mean you will have to spend the rest of your life avoiding that trigger. It simply means you will need to try to skirt around the trigger until the pleasure route becomes even more deeply entrenched in your brain and the hellish one becomes much less traveled. Then, in a manner described later, you can ever so gradually begin to incorporate into your lovemaking that former trigger without experiencing anything unpleasant. Given the intense trauma they have experienced, it is hardly surprising that even decades afterward abuse survivors often suffer clinical depression. This medical condition must not be confused with common depression that positive thinking might cure. Clinical depression is believed to be caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain and requires medical treatment. It usually dulls one’s physical senses, diminishing one’s ability to enjoy life, food, sport, sex – all sorts of things. My heart breaks that so many suffer this double whammy – not only the danger of sexual signals being diverted along the hellish route, but lessened enjoyment of even those signals that are perfectly directed only the good route. This is another reason for prayerfully considering medical solutions to clinical depression. Since our brains play a key role in all that we do, the principles we have been describing apply to very many aspects of life. Breaking a habit is an example. Let’s consider a sexual example not associated with abuse. A man felt a most unpleasant tickling sensation in the roof of his mouth whenever his nipples were stroked. At the same time he was also vaguely aware of mild sexual feelings. He remembered, however, that years ago it used to produce exquisite feelings. Rather than avoid the unpleasant feelings by asking his wife never to touch him there, he adopted a plan. Whenever his nipples were touched he ensured he simultaneously received other types of sexual stimulation that were highly pleasurable. Although the unwanted feelings were still present, the mildly pleasurable feelings were now magnified by input from other parts of his body and were stronger than the unpleasant tickle. Over time, this process began to widen the route connecting nipple stimulation to pleasure. He persevered with combining nipple stimulation with things that gave him great sexual pleasure, while focusing mentally on the pleasure and trying to ignore the tickle. After a few sessions, the route linking nipple stimulation to pleasure began to take precedence over the unpleasant route until the unpleasant route was so rarely used that it become almost impassable. The tickle in his mouth totally disappeared, never to return again. Now, whenever his nipples are caressed, he acclaims it is as one of the most beautiful feelings he has ever known. He is amazed at how close he got to declaring his nipples a no-go zone and so spending the rest of his life never knowing what exquisite feelings he was missing out on. Mind Games Let’s bring together what we have so far discovered and see what surprises it can unlock. We know that each time sexual signals take a path in one’s brain, that path becomes a little more entrenched as the route sexual signals will follow, and alternative routes become a little less accessible. We also know that to increase sexual enjoyment, we should avoid stimuli that are strongly linked in the brain to unpleasant reactions. This avoidance should continue until through lack of use the undesirable routes become less accessible. Now add a fact we earlier glossed over: sexual stimuli can come not only from any of the five senses, but also from thoughts. This opens exciting possibilities for healing Merely by thinking about it, you can begin re-opening God’s route to beautiful feelings and gradually close off the undesirable route. What makes this so powerful is that when limiting oneself to thoughts it is easier to eliminate other stimuli that at this early stage would best be avoided. Additionally, thoughts can be repeated more easily than most other sexual stimuli. This web series contains the occasional reference to scientific research. By the time we have finished, however, we will see that such research is merely like discovering gravity. It just confirms the existence of principles God has put in place from the beginning of human history. And attempts to apply those principles without the supernatural power and guidance of God is like denying yourself the security of being shielded by armed bodyguards when walking down a dark alley crammed with hate-filled thugs. And it’s like having a twelve-year-old operating on your brain when you could have the greatest brain surgeon in existence. We earlier drew inspiration from David being so determined not to suffer permanent loss that he risked his life to retrieve what had been stolen from him. That was not the first time, nor the last, that David faced his fears in order to prevent himself from being ripped off. At the end of this webpage is a link entitled Inspiration from the Giant Killer . It reveals how David’s life exemplifies the healing principles that I am about to describe. The earthly teaching of the eternal Son of God was so far ahead of his time that two thousand years later humanity still has not caught up to even some of his basic revelations. Jesus placed great emphasis upon thoughts. For example, he revealed that lustful or hateful thoughts are as morally corrupt as actually doing those things. Modern science is confirming that thoughts powerfully affect us, often as much as actions. Let’s see how we can use this for the glory of God. When you are feeling relaxed and close to God, imagine yourself in a warm, loving, slightly sexual situation with your husband. It might be cuddling fully clothed, or whatever you find comforting and enjoyable. While imagining this, focus on the fact that God’s approving smile is upon you when are making love. The King of the universe is delighted when you physically enjoy and bond closer to the life-partner he has entrusted to you. The only thing that would sadden your loving Lord is any pain and anxiety the experience might bring you. It hurts him to see you distressed, but your Lord would love for you and your husband to find unique pleasures in each other. It’s not merely that he wants you to please your husband; he wants you to find in your husband more personal pleasure than you could even imagine. If, as you continue imagining yourself relating to your husband in a mildly sexual way, the thought ever begins to become unpleasant, immediately drop the thought and re-focus on God alone. (Otherwise you would be widening the hellish highway described above.) Try this for weeks, not allowing yourself to continue a thought if you feel yourself becoming tense, but very gradually build your trust in God by letting yourself imagine sexually relating with your husband in ways that previously you would have found disturbing. Remain blissfully relaxed and focus on sensing God’s blessing and approving smile upon you. Each time you do this, you are sending impulses down the path to pleasure, thereby further clearing and widening it so that when you finally get to do in real life what you imagined, the impulses will take this same path that you have widened. When we tense up emotionally, our muscles usually also tense up. Total muscular relaxation is fairly well incompatible with fear and anxiety. Researchers have found there is great healing power in associating total muscle relaxation with what they call successive approximations. By this they mean gradually getting closer and closer to thinking of what you most fear, but doing so only at a pace that enables you over weeks to reach the point where you can think of it while remaining totally relaxed. For this to be effective, you must not attempt anything in real life until you have become very comfortable with doing it in your imagination. Add to this the power of joyful, faith-filled prayer (not anxious prayer) and of sensing God’s presence and approval. If practiced diligently for several weeks, I believe you’ll find this combination effective in speeding your healing. If he is willing, your husband can assist you. At this stage, however, both of you will need to restrain yourselves from acting out what you are imagining. I suggest you delay trying anything slightly adventurous with your husband until you can calmly do it in your mind, having on several consecutive occasions imagined yourself enjoying it. Fast-Tracking Recovery It is best to create beforehand a list of sexual activities ranked in order of the ease at which you think you could engage in each activity without feeling stressed. Your list will be unique to you because your past is unique. The list might perhaps start with cuddling fully clothed. toward the end might be intercourse in the dark with the wife on top. A few steps closer to the most disturbing might be intercourse in bright light when fully uncovered and husband on top. Try to include as many graduated steps as you can between what you would currently enjoy, down to the most disturbing thing that your husband would like you to enjoy. The idea is that upon completing the list, you gradually progress down it, by imagining each activity one at a time. Move to the next slightly scarier item on the list only when you can be totally relaxed about imagining the current one. It will probably take several sessions before you can imagine the next on the list without feeling the slightest tension. So go no further down the list until you feel completely comfortable with the current one. Reaching the end of the list could be months away. Persevere, nonetheless, always interrupting the process and reverting to full relaxation whenever you feel the slightest tension. It would be a little easier and more effective if your husband would like to assist, but you can do the following by yourself. Your husband could first guide you in relaxing every muscle in your body; asking you to tense a muscle group, then relax it. (This will help you become more skilled at discerning tension of your body.) Using a calm, reassuring voice, he can talk you through this process, perhaps starting with your forehead, then your jaw, hands, stomach, buttocks, and so on. Each time you exhale, sink deeper into relaxation. Then, when you are fully relaxed, and your heavy eyelids have closed, your husband can talk you through imagining various sexual things on your list, starting with the very mild and proceeding slowly toward things you find a little more challenging. He must instantly stop his description when you use a prearranged signal to indicate that the thought is making you just a little tense. At such times, revert to full relaxation, picturing yourself doing something you find soothing, like imagining yourself curled up in front of an open fire or soaking up the sun on a deserted beach on a glorious day. When, over several sessions, you consistently feel relaxed about thinking of something sexual that would previously have disturbed you, try making your thoughts more vivid by imagining every detail. When you feel relaxed about this, try recalling the most beautiful sexual feelings you have known – even if at this stage such feelings are very weak – and then imagine yourself feeling even more pleasure than that, as you daydream about doing that new thing with your husband. Ensure, of course. that you continue to feel beautifully relaxed. A variation on this therapy is to sometimes let your mind slowly drift to a new or slightly scary thing while you are thoroughly enjoying making love, such as kissing. It would be wise only to let your mind drift when you are blissfully relaxed and making love in a manner that is already firmly established in your repertoire of things that make you feel nice. If ever the thought begins to get scary or spoil your lovemaking, immediately pull your mind back and re-focus on enjoying what you are doing. Keep practicing mentally. Over weeks slowly progress to imagining slightly more challenging sexual activities, but on each occasion continue only for as long as you enjoy pleasant, relaxed feelings while having these thoughts. And throughout this, maintain an awareness that God warmly approves. Feeling Used A woman I’ll call Felicity was traumatized by the thought of intercourse. I asked if she was able to fondle her husband. She replied that it made her feel used. This must have been an awful experience and I deeply feel for her. We should note, however, that this is her past talking. For people who truly love and have an abuse-free past the thought of being used in the sense that Felicity meant would almost be a foreign concept. They would normally beg for the opportunity to be used for their partner’s pleasure. Lovers count it their greatest joy and privilege to delight their beloved, just as Christians who truly love their Lord long so much to be used of him that some even rejoice in the honor of suffering hardship and pain for him (Acts 5:41). I presume Felicity reels under this awful feeling of being used because it reminds her of when she was forced to relate sexually with someone who had no right to the pleasure he wanted. Back then she was used. Relating to her husband triggers that memory. That old reaction will not suddenly disappear. Nevertheless, Felicity can begin the process of re-routing sexual feelings along the path they were originally designed to travel, instead of the path to yucky feelings. Using the imagination in the manner described above is a big part of this. In addition she can work toward gaining a new appreciation of marital relations. She should try to develop a mindset in which she finds herself yearning to give herself to her darling; longing to pleasure him and delight in his joy. “ Please use me for your pleasure,” lovers beg. Or, in the words of Scripture, “Let my lover come into his garden and eat of its choices fruits,” (Song of Solomon 4:16). To think of oneself as being used is to take on a victim mentality. Your days of being a victim are gone forever. You are no longer a victim; you’re a wife. That means you’re a lover. Lovers give not out of compulsion, but out of joy. They receive their greatest delight when they know they have succeeded in thrilling their beloved. Everyone who truly loves revels in the joy of giving. They need no one to tell them it is more blessed to give than to receive. For them it is an obvious truth they experience over and over. Take, for instance, the joy parents feel when they see their children’s eyes light up because of a gift from their parents. To move from seeing yourself as a victim to seeing yourself as a lover is to move from a dingy, stinking dungeon to a palace. In Jesus’ time and country, the Romans were the foreign oppressors who had used their military might to defeat Israel. By Roman law, a soldier of the occupying forces had the right to compel a citizen of the occupied country to carry the soldier’s pack a maximum of one Roman mile. Anyone unfortunate enough to be picked on for this task would usually count each pace. The instant he had paced off a mile, he would dump the pack and get on with life. When Jesus spoke of going the extra mile, he was not adding his own law to the Roman law, saying his followers are forced to pace off another mile. That would be meaningless. Jesus was talking not about yet another law, but a radically new attitude – love. He was talking about no longer acting out of compulsion, but acting out of love. People forced to do things against their wills do the bare minimum. In contrast, people who love, genuinely want to help. They find themselves eagerly – almost effortlessly – going far beyond what is asked of them. It is this new, liberating attitude that I am inviting you to discover. By all means, stir up love within you and let it drive you to find ways of delighting your husband, but never be driven by guilt about what you can’t do for your husband, nor by fear. Even viewing it as a duty is to turn it into a drudgery. Being motivated by love is like coaxing yourself to eat by setting mouth-watering food in font of you. In contrast, letting guilt or fear drive you is like punishing yourself until you at last give in and eat tasteless food. Punishing yourself might initially bring results but it will ultimately turn you off food more than ever. Likewise, in motivating a woman to relate sexually with her husband, guilt and fear are counter-productive. Any positive results they seem to produce are not only short-lived, they end up making a person more and more reluctant to please her partner. Like borrowing from the cruelest loan shark, you’ll end up paying dearly for your short term gain. In their own interests, both husband and wife should avoid anything that contributes to the wife suffering feelings of shame, failure, inadequacy or insecurity. Fostering the opposite feelings does much to release a person into his/her full sexual potential. It seems that almost anything enjoyable could be turned into abuse by a cruel person. We earlier mentioned how awful it would be to have one’s favorite food down one’s throat hour after hour. Perhaps a person loves sunshine. Someone abusive could force her into the blazing sun until her entire body is covered with third degree burns. Maybe she likes the snow. That again could be turned into torment. A person could be tortured with her favorite music turned up so excessively loud for so long that it prevents her from sleeping, ruins her hearing, and so on. In the hands of an abuser, almost any good thing becomes repulsive. You can learn to hate anything. Likewise, you can learn – or re-learn – to enjoy what God lovingly created for your pleasure. By faith in the Creator, you can gradually begin to look beyond the hideous abuse of God’s gift to believe what might initially seem unbelievable – that when used as its Creator intended, sex is a most desirable gift. If sex has so far brought you little else but pain and guilt, it is probably beyond your powers of imagination to conceive how wonderful you make your husband feel when you relate to him sexually. It is close to being the greatest happiness one human can give another human. It is not the perverted pleasure your abuser felt, but a holy expression of loving commitment that heightens your husband’s appreciation of you and intensifies his feeling of oneness with you. When your man is sexually aroused, he feels drawn to you in very special ways. For instance, you become more physically beautiful in his eyes than any beauty treatment could ever achieve for you. Work toward viewing marital relations as being granted the priceless privilege of thrilling your darling in a way that only you can. Gaining that attitude is no easy feat. No matter how far fetched it seems, set the long-term goal of reaching the point where you can blissfully lose yourself in your darling’s pleasure and in the security of God’s protective love. You and your husband are one. His pleasure is your pleasure; his agony is your agony (and, of course, your agony is his). Provided it does not become too unpleasant, when you do the little you can to meet your husband’s needs, try to forget yourself and focus on his pleasure. That’s a key ingredient of true love. More Healing Tips If a woman is tense, she is unlikely to produce sufficient natural lubrication. This is likely to result in painful intercourse for her. Try to avoid becoming deadly serious about lovemaking. That’s just one step away from being tense, which is a step from anxiety, which is but a step away from yucky feelings. Be as light-hearted as you can. Sex is meant to be fun – adult play. So have lots of fun. Laugh a lot. Joke together. Be playful. Lovingly tease each other, if you can achieve it without the slightest hurt. Major on things you like and that make you feel good. Think of re-opening God’s path to pleasure as commencing an exciting adventure with the man you love. View it as a fun-filled, highly challenging game, with hosts of wonderful prizes waiting for you each time you win. And delight in the knowledge that your enjoyment of God’s gift has your Lord’s full approval. Especially at first, it might be helpful try to make relating with your husband as different from your abusive experiences as possible. I can’t deal with specifics because people’s abusive experiences differ widely, but be alert to the fact that some settings and activities are more likely to bring bad memories than others. If, for instance, your abuser was always on top, assume the dominant position, while resisting the urge to expel on your husband any pent up anger you feel for your abuser. If, in your past, the bedroom was not a place of security for you, you might need to make the bedroom a no-sex zone and find another location for love-making, or if this is not practical, try relating long before bedtime and keep the later hours as a no-sex time. Only you can know in what settings you would feel most secure, but creatively and prayerfully seek them out. An obvious reason for forgetting is that the mind considers an event to be too trivial to warrant the effort of keeping the memory vivid. The other main possibility is that the memory was so awful that the mind deliberately suppressed the memory because it cannot cope with it. If the latter applies, you might have some tough times ahead, should these memories begin to surface. If, however, the re-surfacing is left entirely to God, then although it might be initially unpleasant, it will bring healing. Climax The wife’s goal is to restore to perfection God’s wedding present of sexual pleasure. For the glory of God, she longs to delight in the gift and in the Giver. In loving yieldedness to her Lord, she should determine to keep bravely pushing through the barriers, longing to achieve her long-term aim of pampering her man with every sexual treat he could ever wish for, losing herself totally in his pleasure. The couple should keep seeking the Lord for creative solutions, and particularly be on the look out for tiny steps forward that the wife can comfortably take. Don’t force the pace. Be patient with yourself, each other, and the Lord. Delight in every tiny progress. Realize that there will be occasional setbacks and times when it seems you will never make it. Know, however, that God is on your side and that faith challenges merely make you spiritually strongly. You’ll reach your goal! The husband’s goal is to so love his Lord and his wife that he counts it an honor to suffer for the one Christ suffered for. He should seek God until he longs to bear her pain by moving toward her goal so slowly that it is virtually stress-free for her, even though the self-denial may be agonizing for him. His desire is to always delight in what his wife gives him, rather than let himself feel miserable about what she does not presently give him. To achieve these goals both of you will must draw deeply upon God for an abundance of those spiritual qualities that bring not just earthly reward but eternity glory. As you yield to God in loving trust, you are headed for exciting breakthroughs. Nevertheless, you will praise God for all eternity for not instantly removing the challenge you presently face. The Lord is preparing you to rule on his throne forever and your present trial will prove a valuable training ground for things greater than you dare dream. Glorious things are ahead. Continued . . . Inspiration from the Giant Killer The healing principles explained above exemplified in the life of David Related Pages The Abuse Survivor’s Ultimate Revenge: Reclaiming your Sexuality When Marital Relations are a Short-Cut to Hell Recovery from Sexual Abuse – and all the links on that page Ensuring You are Truly Head of Your Wife 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.

Helping a Wife Understand Her Man’s Agony People suffering long term distress often feel a strong need to assign blame. Except for blaming evil spiritual powers, however, assigning blame almost inevitably ends up hindering our healing. It is neither helpful, nor realistic to blame either yourself or your husband for the sexual tension between you. For a woman who finds sex unpleasant, sexual desire could be such a foreign experience that she has little conception of her husband’s torment. I am about to share my best attempt to help such a woman understand her man and so be less hurt when his strong yearnings sometimes override his ability to sacrifice. I would be bitterly disappointed if my attempt were to cause you the slightest twinge of guilt about you being presently unable to fully meet your husband’s sexual desires. Such guilt is false guilt. Already in the mind of nearly every abuse survivor is a false link between lovemaking and guilt feelings. You deserve to be freed from these false feelings, not have me or anyone else say something that you interpret in a way that even slightly adds to your burden. If ever I do this, please forgive me and e-mail me so that I might consider rewording what I write. Without adequate motivation, any of us would miss God’s best. I urge you not to let the following stir up negative feelings but to let it motivate you further in your quest to enjoy God’s best. Suppose you had drunk huge quantities of fluid and were almost bursting with the need to relieve yourself, but you were expected to restrain yourself for hour after agonizing hour. The urge would become so demanding you could hardly think of anything else. Although the overall trend would be for the discomfort to keep increasing, the intensity would fluctuate somewhat, with the urge fading at times, only to return later with greater than ever urgency, until restraining yourself seems beyond your control. When aroused, your husband’s sexual urge becomes extremely demanding and will peak at the intensity just described. Other times his nagging discomfort will be more controllable. It will fluctuate throughout the day, depending on what thoughts and sights hit him. At times the tension will fade into the background but there will be times each day when the dull ache will sharpen, even if no woman is present and he seems engrossed in non-sexual activities. In addition to the physical, there is an inevitable emotional dimension to a man’s sexual deprivation. Intellectually, he may know he is loved and accepted and yet lurking deep within him are shadowy hints of a sad emptiness – vague feelings of being rejected, unloved and cut-off from his darling. Even in a wonderful marriage he will be haunted by a sense of incompleteness, somewhat like that of a happily married woman pining over her childlessness. Your man no doubt expected marriage would relieve his frustration. Instead, marrying you inflamed his yearnings to nearly intolerable levels. This is not in any way to trivialize your own pain – which is probably even greater than his – but the better each of you can understand the other’s very different type of torment, the deeper you will bond. Someone wisely observed that people who feel sorry for themselves usually do so because they have no one to feel sorry for them. In most marriages, the more the husband feels his wife sympathizes with his anguish and is convinced that she longs to meet his needs, the more tolerable his predicament will seem to him. Most abused women marry with little comprehension of the sexual torture they will put their husbands through. Had they not been so utterly unaware – and especially if there were no cure – their marrying might possibly be viewed as an act of cruelty. Nevertheless, their husband’s pain inevitably boomerangs back onto the wives and they suffer just as much – usually more – than their husbands. Marriage is for life, but this distressing situation need only be temporary. It can be turned around. So banish guilt. Don’t tolerate that destructive feeling. If there is any genuine basis feeling guilty, come to Jesus, let him wash you spotlessly pure, and let the past pass. No longer blame yourself for things that not even God remembers. You might think that at times your husband has been gravely lacking in self-control, gentleness, and understanding, but because you cannot feel what he feels, you have no idea of what he has endured to control himself as much as he has. You might imagine that with all my understanding and ability to sound godly that I would be patient and gentle. If, however, I were subjected to the pressures your husband is under, both you and I might be appalled at how poorly I would cope. I expect there are men whose sacrificial love and efforts to control their explosive feelings are of heroic proportions and yet their wives, having no conception of their husband’s torment, mistakenly conclude that their men are selfish, cold-hearted, sex-crazed beasts. If your husband were always able with clinical precision to restrict himself to what is best for your healing, you might be delighted now, but most likely such a man would have a libido so low that it would frustrate and deeply disappoint most wives. After you are healed, you would regret not having a more passionate husband. You can’t have it both ways: what disappoints you about your husband this side of healing, might thrill you the other side. Suppose you are working with machinery and your hand gets caught in its vise-like jaws. It’s not life-threatening – it’s not even bleeding – but your body is screaming out for release from the painful pressure on your hand. You are trapped, unable to reach the switch to turn off the machine. Then enters your marriage partner, the one who claims to love you so deeply. “Quick!” you shout, “flick the switch!” “I can’t,” comes the reply, “I’m afraid of electricity.” “That’s ridiculous! It won’t hurt you!” Every second feels like an hour. “Flick the switch!” “No, I can’t.” To you, what your husband is asking of you sexually is enormous, but to him and to most other people, it seems as small as flicking a switch and his need for it seems enormous. The more you understand each other’s pressures, the more loved and less hurt you will feel. To move to a new analogy: your man is starving. Your long term goal is to affirm how special he is to you by feeding him gourmet delights, pampering him like no other woman on earth would. Achieving that goal, however, might be years away. Your immediate goal is to somehow fill his aching stomach with enough bread and water to satisfy his basic need. He might be missing lots of delicious courses that other women would be pleased to give him, but at least he will not be so out of his mind with hunger as to be quite incapable of giving your sensitivities the patient attention you deserve. Satisfying a man’s most basic sexual need is important. A wife must consider, however, how miserable and even sorry for herself she might sometimes feel if she were on a diet of nothing but bread and water for weeks. That would be hard enough in a prison, but so much harder if constantly surrounded by the smells and sights of delicious food and drink. It would be harder still if all the mouth-watering food and chocolates and candy and delicious drinks were yours for the taking, with nothing but sheer will-power to restrain yourself. A woman on such a diet might at least enjoy the benefits of a trim figure, but for a man missing out on sexual treats there are no personal benefits. In fact he is likely to feel less desirable and less masculine. Your negative reaction to expressing love to your husband in the manner that he aches for is perfectly understandable. No matter how much he rationalizes, however, he will still feel hurt. He might try to tough it out, but inside he is almost certainly hurting emotionally; perhaps, for example, battling feelings of rejection. Do everything you can to assure him regularly that it is your past, not him, nor your feelings toward him, that is the problem. You may feel you want to shower your husband with other acts of kindness to compensate him for the sexual fulfillment he is missing out on. Before blindly proceeding, however, carefully talk it over with him. Let’s return to the analogy of having your hand painfully caught in that machine. What if someone said, “No, I don’t feel able to flick the switch and end your pain, but I’ll bake a cake for you.” You might find that your efforts to compensate your husband are simply not worth what it costs you. It might be like giving him something that costs you $500 in effort and to him it’s worth only $2. The value he puts on things could be startlingly different to what you expect. It might be, for example, that a man denied the opportunity to drink in his wife’s beauty, would prefer a two second glimpse at his wife’s breasts than a luxurious all-expense paid vacation. Sex is far more important to a man than many women could ever imagine. By the act of marriage a woman cuts a man off from every other woman in the world, many of whom would willingly do incredible things for him sexually. By marrying, a woman takes upon herself the grave responsibility of being solely responsible for his sexual welfare. Had you realized the enormity of what you had taken on, you might not have married. Nevertheless, you have done it, and instead of it being a negative thing, sealing your husband’s fate, it can seal your healing, provided you let him motivate you, without you letting yourself do too much too soon. How Your Man’s Sex Drive Can Bring you Healing The famine was so horrific that people were dying all over the Middle East. A lone woman and her son living in a pagan, apparently God-forsaken place, were going to be the next statistics. In another place a man of God was contentedly enjoying God’s miraculous provision of food, but the Lord was not content. The Almighty was not going to let this apparently forgotten woman suffer. So the Lord dried up Elijah’s supply, driving him to seek out this woman. There was much this special man might possibly give her. She would gladly welcome him into her home for his wisdom or protection, or in hope of words of comfort or companionship in her darkest days. And yet none of these were to be his greatest blessing to her. There was just one thing she did not want him to do, and that was exactly what he asked. He hungered for the very thing she was convinced she could not give. In her case it was food, in your case it is sex. “I have nothing to spare,” she protested, “I don’t even have enough for myself.” And yet, despite her initial reluctance, in an astounding display of love she gave what she had feared to give. And in so doing, she received from God himself. And she received and received and received, day after day after day. In her desperate need, God had remembered her and sent her a man with ravenous hunger for that which was hers – that which it seemed she could not give. It was bad enough that God had let her grow so needy. Now it seemed God had gone insane. And yet out of all the needy people, the woman who thought she was most despised and rejected was the very one God singled out for a miracle. She could so easily have missed it. Her needs were so great she could have refused to meet this man’s needs. And yet it is God’s mysterious law that it is in giving that we receive. Likewise, you can miss it. You can fail to see God’s miraculous provision in your husband’s hunger for sex. As unlikely as it seems, your husband’s hunger for what you feel you cannot give is the key to your healing, opening to you a whole new world of wonder and delight and fulfillment, almost as precious as a person born blind receiving the gift of sight. One of the greatest advances of the healing profession has been the use of vaccines. To be inoculated is virtually to willingly let your body be invaded by the very disease that you fear might invade your body. People are apprehensive about injections as it is, and yet when thought of in these terms it is quite a leap of faith to allow it. There are immense similarities between the vaccination and the dreaded disease. These similarities are not to be despised. It is the similarities that make it work. But there are subtle differences that make it safe and make it right for the healing profession to use it. Likewise, there are alarming similarities between your husband’s longings for you and those of a feared sex offender, but in those very similarities are the power to heal. And the subtle differences – such as his desire to control himself for your sake and the fact that you are united to him in marriage – make it safe. The woman to whom God sent Elijah got her miracle because she changed her thinking from I can’t to I can ; from thinking of Elijah as a self-centered man who cared only about his stomach, to seeing him as her opportunity to display enormous love. She chose to put her own need to one side and focus on the need of the man who had come to into her home, even though she suspected his need was much less than her own. She received her miracle and so can you. It was little by little, day by day, but the Lord brought her through. Likewise, with you – as by faith you see the loving hand of God behind a man whose legitimate hunger seems to threaten your well-being. Step out in faith and you will slip into the arms of God. In him you are secure. In him you have healing and delights beyond your wildest hopes. How Can A Man Cope With The Sexual Pressure? Since there is almost nothing about marital relations that Scripture specifically rules in, nor rules out, there is enormous scope for Bible-lovers to fight each other. I’d dearly love to duck for cover and stay in everyone’s favor by avoiding this whole issue. And there are hundreds of topics I’d personally find more edifying to write about. But can I close my ears to the cry of hurting couples? God’s heart breaks for them. Dare I act like the priest and Levite in Jesus’ parable of the Samaritan – too holy to help someone reeling in pain? May our Lord flood our hearts with his compassion and wisdom. May he save us from the enticing trap that snared those accused by our Lord of laying down heavy laws and doing nothing to help those buckling under the weight. If your heart is more Christlike than mine, I honor you. And since you are Christlike would you permit me the grace to make mistakes as I fumble in my search for godly solutions to people’s pain? Let’s not be like those who used the plight of the man born blind merely as an opportunity for theological debate and finger pointing (John 9:2). Rather, let’s try to follow the lead of our Lord who looked to God and healed that man. Let’s not be like those driven by what they thought was righteous rage over the fact that compassion moved Jesus to break man-made Sabbath laws. Of course, I’m not our mighty, perfect Lord. I have no hotline to heaven that is denied other Christians. By all means ditch any of my thoughts you do not like. This is a sacred matter between you and your Holy Lord. In my longing to ease your pain, all I can hope for is to offer support by suggesting a range of options for you to consult the Lord and each other about. My nightmare is that some people might take upon themselves a man-made rule of lofty intentions, and instead of it increasing their holiness, in a moment of weakness their self-denial explodes into blatant sin. Let me give a non-sexual example. Suppose someone decides to fast from food. God doesn’t demand it, but he chooses to deny himself as a highly commendable expression of devotion to Christ. To ensure he succeeds, he takes no money with him as he goes about his business. As he walks past a bakery he finds himself drooling over cream cakes. Suddenly he must have one of those cakes. But he has no money. So he steals it. His admirable decision to go beyond God’s law ended with him breaking God’s law. We need to be very prayerful about laying laws upon ourselves and others that are not spelled out in Scripture. Speaking specifically about marriage, 1 Corinthians 7:5 affirms that there is a degree of sexual self-denial that is spiritually dangerous. The restraint we imagine leads to holiness can lead to a moral fall. On the other extreme, many a man tells himself he is getting sexual release by using porn or fantasy when he is merely inflaming cravings for things that, in the short term at least, only adultery would provide. What he imagines is helping him cope is actually intensifying his temptation to find another woman. Under no circumstances are porn or sexual fantasies about someone other than one’s wife acceptable. I used to object to applying the term rape to sexual horrors within marriage. However, I know of no other term to adequately describe the abomination of a man physically forcing or emotionally blackmailing his wife into submitting to an act that terrorizes her. “Incest” is the only other word that comes to mind, since it is a crime against a loved one who has every right to expect that man’s protection. Marriage is a holy commitment before God to unconditional, selfless, lifelong love. How dare anyone violate that vow, perverting it into a license for cruelty; using as a gun to the head the threat of withdrawal of love or the exploitation of false guilt or a shameful abuse of authority! I imagine some men act like rapists toward their wives while self-righteously priding themselves in being so “holy” as to never climax outside of intercourse. No matter how lofty the intentions, self-made laws – such as deciding it is wrong to ever climax outside of intercourse – must not be allowed to take precedence over a wife’s emotional well-being and security. We should we allow standards of “purity” that end up weakening the marriage bond. Genuine love must come before pharisee-like attempts to keep extra-biblical laws. Only the divine Judge’s view matters, but anyone who, under the pretext of exalted sexual standards, ends up forcing intercourse upon a wife who finds the experience traumatic, seems to me frighteningly like the respected Jewish leaders taking pains to retain their ceremonial purity as they arranged Jesus’ murder (John 18:28). This comparison seems harsh, but the tragic reality is that some abuse victims would actually prefer to be murdered than suffer more sexual horrors from their callous, self-righteous husbands. I think we all agree that intercourse is the ideal. In this webpage, however, we are seeking to compassionately help couples for whom that ideal is currently impossible. And for such couples the ideal is unlikely ever to become possible except by a gradual process of getting closer and closer to full intercourse over an extended period. Is the ideal truly exalted by an all-or-none philosophy – in which the couple must either have full intercourse or are not permitted any sexual release – when that approach will probably prevent the couple from ever reaching the ideal? Or is the ideal most cherished and preserved by developing practical steps whereby a couple can work toward achieving the ideal? With God not detailing in his Word exactly how a husband and wife should relate sexually, we Christians can arrive at very different presumptions as to what carries God’s blessing. (For a sensitive exploration of this matter, a link at the end of this web series entitled Is it perverted?) Despite differing opinions, however, most Christians acknowledge that humans – especially women – were divinely created with a need for sexual stimulation prior to intercourse in order to fully appreciate God’s gift to us. What we are about to discuss is, in a sense, genuine foreplay – preparing a partner for full marital relations. For unavoidable reasons, however, the time span between foreplay and intercourse has had to be extended to weeks or months instead of minutes. The long term goal is full marital relations, but to attempt it too soon with a sensitive woman would be to pervert God’s love-gift into the sexual abuse of that woman. Not having infinite knowledge is a distinct hindrance to my plans to enthrone myself as the Judge of all humanity. My personal opinion is that unmarried people should avoid masturbation. Certainly in my own life I believe that the Lord would have me avoid it like a rattlesnake, and that’s how I treat it, even at times when it can seem an enticingly convenient option. And yet the Bible is strangely silent, saying nothing specific about this issue that has challenged every generation. God choosing not to put a prohibition in writing in no way implies his approval, nor does it give us license to condemn others. If the very Creator of sex has elected not to put in writing his moral pronouncement on this matter, I hope I am smart enough not to dare attempt it. The Bible’s omission compels each of us to get off our soapboxes and on to our knees; moving closer than ever to the heart of God, lest we miss his whispers and fall into error. Although I enjoy the benefits of total abstinence from solitary sex or – any deliberate climax outside of intercourse – I confess to an advantage over most male readers of this webpage: I am single. As painful as being single often seems, and as much as I have difficulty conceiving of anyone suffering more sexual frustration than I have known, surely my situation at its worse must be less sexually agonizing than that of a young man who continually lives with a desirable woman who is unable to meet the desires she inflames. It seems critical for a wife’s healing that her husband have the self-control to not pressure her sexually, much less physically force himself upon her. He must forgo intercourse for as many months as necessary, while gradually getting closer and closer to having intercourse. A loving husband must be able to stop the instant she needs him to, even in the middle of the act. That is a form of torture that not even singles are subjected to. Being single, I can avoid most sources of sexual stimulation, and so reduce my torment. This is not an option, however, for a man who for weeks is slowly preparing his wife for intercourse. I am not implying that even in the worst situation it is impossible for a man to draw upon the supernatural power of Almighty God and control himself. It is nevertheless true that very many Christians will feel it is impossible. It is not impossible for your loved one to use a rusty handsaw to cut off his own foot, but would you want him to? Just how much agony do you want him to suffer? In Christ, nothing is impossible, but if there is a red-blooded man on the planet who can achieve that degree of control without ever climaxing outside of intercourse, I would like to meet him. In most cases, however, sexual relief is possible without resorting to solitary sex. Whatever her man’s decision in this regard, a wife should try to be highly supportive, provided it does not involve porn or fantasizing about other women,. It seems a tragic perversion of the Maker’s intentions for a couple to allow sex – the very thing God created to make a man and wife one – to become a divisive issue for them. Throughout this web series I’ve cited numerous situations where a husband should yield to his wife’s weaknesses. In this matter, however, it is the wife’s turn. I would urge her to work hard in bringing her emotions and prejudices into subjection, with a view to reaching the point where she is thrilled with her husband’s decision as to how he will cope with the enormous pressure without dishonoring her. They must close ranks on this matter. If a wife feels incapable of even being in the same room as her husband when he climaxes and he has talked himself into believing he has only three options – marital unfaithfulness, sexual abuse of his wife, or solitary sex – all I can say is that the first two are so incompatible with love and his marriage covenant made before God that they cannot for a moment be considered. I am not giving my approval to anyone opting for solitary sex, but my approval is worth nothing anyhow. The Lord is the One you must convince. Regardless of your decision, however, I beg you to focus on the fact that the biblical goal of sex is to make a husband and wife one. So I plead with anyone resorting to solitary sex, to ensure it is used to get as close as possible to the goal of binding a man closer to his wife. Fantasies must focus solely on the wife. All pictures or thoughts of any other (real or imaginary) person must be avoided. Sex was divinely designed to give a man special feelings for his lifelong partner. To use God’s gift to deliberately incite feelings for another woman – or an imaginary being with characteristics different to one’s wife – is to spit in God’s face. It would also be wise to restrict fantasies, as much as possible, to little more than what the wife is currently capable of. For example, if she is unable to be undressed in her husband’s presence, it would be better for him to imagine her in her sexiest clothes, rather than undressed. Otherwise, desires will be further inflamed for things he cannot presently have. This would fuel his frustration – and subsequent agony – and thus indirectly put more pressure on his wife and his marriage. If the husband decides to relieve himself of sexual tension, his wife should lovingly share the experience as much as she can comfortably do so. By so doing she is moving it away from solitary sex to genuine lovemaking. Maybe the most she can do while he is pleasuring himself is close her eyes – and block her nose and use plenty of air freshener if unavoidable odors conjure bad memories – while telling her husband how much she loves him; tenderly expressing her desire for him to feel pleasure, and doing what she can to delight in his pleasure. If she is not ready to be in the same room when this is happening, she could try whatever she can to make it a shared expression of love. For instance, she could make an audio or video recording for her husband to play at such a time, in which she verbally expresses love to him. It might be only a tiny step but at least through such efforts, sex is to some extent being used to express marital love, and drawing the couple a little closer rather than tearing them apart. The positive thing is that it creates a base from which the couple can gradually progress, over subsequent weeks and months, moving closer and closer to full marital relations. The main things that would make it traumatic for a woman to be present when a husband finds sexual relief is what she sees, smells, feels, or fears it will lead to. Be prayerfully creative in seeking solutions to this and every aspect of lovemaking. Seek divine wisdom, and fully discuss with each other every option that comes to mind. It is important for the husband not to try anything on the spur of the moment. He needs to have earlier talked it through with his wife because what to him might seem minor could terrorize his wife and be a huge setback in her ability to trust him. Of course, everything depends on what the wife is comfortably able to do, but once the wife can be present and slightly share in the experience it is no longer solitary sex. The wife should try hard not to resent helping her darling to orgasm, nor see it as a duty, but regard it as a unique privilege to give special feelings that no one else in heaven or earth can legitimately give the man she loves. Consider the possible advantages of condoms at this stage of a wife’s recovery. Condoms have the potential to seal up the smell and the feel and the stain of semen. This could be an enormous help, if any of these have the potential to evoke horrific memories for the wife. Since nakedness could be a problem with the wife, a condom also means the husband can climax while they are clothed with less inconvenience. Some men might think it feels marginally better without a condom, but that is irrelevant if it permits a degree of intimacy that would otherwise be impossible without further damaging the wife’s ability to relate to her husband. To avoid undoing the benefits of a condom, the husband would need to remove himself as soon as practical, and wash. However, the wife might find her husband’s quick exit emotionally difficult. Like so many other things raised in this webpage, in joyful submission to their Lord, each couple needs to find a compromise that best suits them. God has a unique solution to for each couple’s unique mix of sensitivities, and the Lord will share his special solution with couples who seek him. He will usually do this by causing both partners to feel that a particular approach is the right compromise for that particular time in the healing process. Any example I choose might be something you cannot stomach. I beg your forgiveness for anything that is unacceptable. Just dismiss the details of the example and pray together for something that you can feel comfortable about before God. Whatever you decide upon, throughout your lovemaking times try to focus on yielding to the Spirit of God, and letting great love for each other well up within you. So let’s progress to a specific example, keeping in mind it might not be suitable for you. The wife might feel uncomfortable about nudity but might decide to make the most of what she feels she can reveal to her husband by wearing something a little daring. It might be that at this stage, touching her husband below the waist would be a little too distressing to consider, so this will further reduce what would otherwise be obvious options. They might begin with lots of kisses and cuddles and verbal expressions of love. After quite a while the husband might begin to rub himself on part of his wife’s body, as carefully discussed with each other ahead of time. She might, for instance, feel claustrophobic about him being on top, but she might feel comfortable about laying on her side with her back to her husband, allowing him to rub himself on her back, while they both remain partially clothed. This might seem quite inadequate, but if it is the maximum that a wife can comfortably do at present, and if her man believes he must have a sexual release lest he become vulnerable to temptation, options are limited. As we progress through these pages we will see with increasing clarity that it typically proves counterproductive for a woman to force herself beyond what she feels comfortable with. It usually delays the time when she can find the fulfillment in marital relations that God intended. What is critical is not how far from the ideal you presently are; what matters is that you are honoring God and loving your partner by continuing on a journey that will take you to the ideal. Moreover, if the husband is sacrificing his own pleasure in order to spare his wife unpleasantness, and if the wife is seeking to keep moving toward areas she finds emotionally challenging, then both are doing more to honor God and express genuine love to each other, than most couples having full intercourse. Even if they cannot have intercourse, climaxing as a result of a married couple relating sexually is a world away from what I regard as masturbation. I remind you, however, that my opinion counts for nothing. The universe has room for just one Moral Authority, and it’s not me. Any pleasurable sensation is like a drug – although it brings temporary relief, the more you indulge, the more you will want more. A climax provides a release of the sexual pressure. Like eating, however, the loss of appetite lasts only for a while and then the craving slowly returns. The exact timing depends on the individual, but at a certain time after experiencing sexual relief, it is much more within a man’s natural capacity to sexually relate to his sensitive wife with the patience, gentleness and self-control that she needs and deserves. It will still demand much love and self-sacrifice but for a man to control his sex drive during this period will be less like wrestling a man-eating crocodile and, most importantly, his wife will be in much less danger of him losing control. Toward Healing If you were trying to walk a wounded friend to safety, you need to let your friend set the pace. A husband should realize that if his wife is emotionally wounded he must display controlled strength by letting her set the pace. Probably for several months or more he must exercise patient gentleness and strong self-control. It will be highly demanding, but the spiritual and material rewards of this achievement will make the highest price seem as nothing. It might seem selfish for a wife to avoid anything that makes her feel very uncomfortable but because it will speed her healing, this approach will ultimately produce the greatest pleasure and satisfaction for the husband. As explained more fully in the next webpage, every time a woman feels something unpleasant during lovemaking, it delays recovery. Every time lovemaking is sufficiently restrained that it produces only pleasure, the experience hastens the time when a wife can joyously engage in things that she presently finds unpleasant. Whether the wife forces herself or the pressure comes from hubby, makes little difference: trying to force the pace is like someone dangerously aggravating a sport’s injury by trying to get back on the field before being properly healed. Only after several sessions of being totally at ease with one aspect of lovemaking, should you slowly proceed to something slightly more daring. Then proceed no further until you become entirely at ease with that step. Anything the wife finds very unpleasant should be completely avoided until she eventually reaches the stage where the thought of it no longer seems unpleasant. The man will find this frustrating, but it is in his interests not to worsen the problem. Both partners should focus on finding little things the wife enjoys, and majoring on them. Maybe it’s having her or her forearm caressed, or her feet massaged, or a certain type of kissing or her buttocks lightly stroked. With her husband’s help, the wife should keep slowly searching for additional things that feel nice. Whenever she finds something that is at least mildly pleasant, she should encourage her husband to keep doing it. Prolong the feeling. Savor it. These times of pleasure must be free from the fear that her husband will get carried away and move on to things the wife presently finds unpleasant. Her man must exercise such self-control that she can trust him to stop the moment she asks him to. For the husband to be able to cope with this, the couple will probably decide it is safest that the husband climax before becoming too amorous, lest in the heat of passion he go dangerously beyond the pre-set boundaries. With his libido suitably subdued, he can continue to relate to his wife with the required level of control. This may still be difficult for the man, but in time his reward will be great! It is important that as much as possible the bedroom always be preserved as a place of security for the wife. If you have a suitable room it might be best to let that, rather than the bedroom, be the place for sexual experimentation. We cannot hope to get sufficient sleep if we feel frightened in our own bed. The time we are most vulnerable – and so the time we most desperately need to feel secure – is when we sleep. A man should never attempt anything with a sensitive wife when she is half asleep. If he did something – no matter how harmless it seemed to him – that makes her frightened to sleep, they may both have reason to regret it for a very long. Here’s a suggested prayer for husbands: Precious Lord, Your Word affirms that your heart is particularly close to those who are hurting and vulnerable. You are their fearsome Avenger, and your protective eye is upon them in a special way. So I am awed that you have honored me so greatly as to entrust me with a wife whose emotional well-being means so very much to you. May I prove worthy of your trust. Thank you that in giving me sex you have lovingly placed a fire within me to bring light and warmth and comfort and romance to my darling. By entrusting me with sex you have blessed me with a gift that empowers me to appreciate, in unique ways, the precious woman you have made my life partner. You gave me something so special that it enables me to feel ever so close to her and to cherish her. And yet, out of control, the fire that warms can destroy. Instead of always taking the manly and noble option of using iron will to control the fire within, I have sometimes let it flare out of control. I have let it drive me to pressure my darling into things she is not yet ready for, causing her to feel guilt and inadequacy if she refused to yield to my selfishness. Instead of it bringing comfort to my wife as you intended, I have let that fire burn her, paining and wounding her, as I abandoned sacrificial love and surrendered to selfishness. I beg your forgiveness and I determine to use every bit of my God-given strength to ensure it never happens again. But beyond my own efforts, I seek your enabling. And as I stand in need of forgiveness for allowing my passions to get out of control – and so, hurting you and my wife – may I not grieve you by hypocritically refusing to forgive my wife’s abuser. Forgive me for feeling superior to him when I myself have sometimes let you down and seen my wife as an opportunity to indulge myself regardless of her sensitivities. Forgive me for perverting an opportunity to become more Christlike into an opportunity for selfishness. Supernaturally empower me to be the husband you want me to be. Cause me to honor you by exercising self-control beyond what I have ever before attained. May I be intimately led of the Spirit whenever I make love to the woman who means so much to you. In the following webpage we will extend still further our understanding of the wife’s trauma and discover some powerful healing techniques. Learning to Enjoy Marital Relations Marital Secrets: How to increase your wife's sexual responsiveness 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.

Stirring Up Marital Passion Surprising Biblical Insights This is the Wife’s Version *** Click here for the Husband’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) Hidden in those few words is a divine secret to marital fulfilment that applies to both genders. It assumes female readers have the intellectual flexibility to make the necessary mental adjustment to apply the principle to their own gender, just like when reading the commandment not to covet a neighbor’s wife, they realize that for them it means do not covet someone else’s husband. Similarly, when men read about coveting a neighbor’s ox, they have no difficulty in applying the principle to their neighbor’s sports car. Let me insert a paragraph to anyone fearing that the need for this adjustment might imply a bias against women. Several times the Bible tells us that we should meditate upon Scripture. In other words, God expects us not merely to read the Bible, but to engage in prayerful and deep thinking about it, looking to God to see how it applies to our personal situation. It is God’s plan that only those who truly want the truth will find it. So Scripture is divinely designed to unlock its riches only to those so keen to learn from God that they dedicate much spiritual and mental effort into the task of understanding God’s Word and discerning how it applies to one’s own unique mix of culture, abilities and circumstances. Just one small facet of this is the need to make the minor adjustments necessary to apply it to our gender. This takes almost no effort relative to what is required to apply Scripture to one’s own era and culture. Since we will be unlocking the secrets of a Scripture that requires a gender adjustment, I have created two versions of this webpage. You are currently reading the version for women. Men should click here for their version. Among other things, the above Scripture says this to women: Everything about a man that makes your heart skip a beat, you must find continually and exclusively in your husband. Do whatever it takes to thoroughly and exclusively enjoy the man you are married to, because this is your holy duty before God. Before further exploring how this Scripture applies to women, let’s see what it is saying at its most literal level. 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. Marrieds are instructed to bring themselves to the point where they are driven by desire for their partners; to so incite their passions that they are continually mesmerized by their partners’ sensual and romantic 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 the person you married. 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 inte nsified the thought of delirium. (Reference: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament with an appendix containing the biblical Aramaic, based on the Lexicon of William Gesenius, as translated by Edward Robinson, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1951. ). 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. To husbands I wrote: 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. I have two comments for wives: 1. It is of equal importance that you nourish your husband’s self-image and that you regard every part of his body as knock-dead gorgeous. 2. I can think of nothing more romantic that your husband seeing you as more attractive than you believe you are. Nevertheless, you will ruin the romance and trash his love unless you fully cooperate with him by pushing through any reservations you might have about your own body and compel yourself to delight in him loving the sight of your body. Even if at first the best you can do is to try to pretend you become breathtakingly beautiful when alone with him, do it. I have always felt ugly and I shrink even from showing my face in public but I trust my wife. She says she finds me the best looking guy in the world. That staggers me, but I choose to believe that she is not a liar. When I am alone with her, all that matters to me is her opinion, so I choose to see myself through her eyes and bask in the wonder of it. At such times I force myself to shove aside my view of myself and how I think others see me and I choose to regard myself as stunningly attractive. It not only makes me feel good, it is honoring to her, since she is adamant that that is how she sees me. In contrast to the world’s delusions, the Inventor of sex reveals that the extent to which a woman is attracted to men other than her husband is a measure of how sexually dysfunctional she is. A woman’s femininity and sexual wholeness should be measured by how much more her husband excites her than any other man. If she thinks she needs a wealthier, sexier, or more articulate partner, it’s because she is sexually inadequate. She is like someone pathetically drawn to loud, gaudy objects because her foolishly abused senses have grown too dim to appreciate real beauty. Chances are she is prematurely becoming a spent force (sexually and romantically) because she has squandered her sexuality on immorality. Her decadent stupidity need not be blatant, physical unfaithfulness. Mental sex outside marriage – stealing pleasure from thoughts and sights one has no right to indulge – is enough to ruin one’s sexuality. The devastation of this sinful folly could well be irreversible. This woman’s only hope is that God is merciful to the repentant and that God loves the slighted husband. 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. For women, having children often hits their libidos hard until their babies become less demanding. 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, not by waiting for him to change, but 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 mindless, predicable bread and water event, and of course you’ll get bored; but blame your laziness, not your partner. If you’re bored, it’s your problem, not your partner’s. You’re the one with the low boredom threshold so it is it your responsibility to use it to motivate you to take the initiative to do whatever it takes to add spice to your lovemaking. 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 think that after your honeymoon you could get away with less. Or, even back then, you might have slothfully and selfishly let your husband do most of the work in stirring your passion, perhaps by him doing things that you find romantic but he finds demeaning and emasculating. It’s now time to grow up and assume responsibility for stirring up your feelings toward him. The more effort you put into firing up your passion, the more rewarding the relationship will be to you. 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 killjoy 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 herself strongly drawn to someone other than her husband. 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 vice like 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 husband 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 his passion. Jane, a middle-aged woman was going through a rough patch in her marriage. She slipped on some stunning lingerie she had just purchased and appeared in front of her husband while he was absorbed in a television program. He looked up, said, “Nice!” and continued watching television. Jane was furious and deeply hurt. The truth is, despite her years of marriage, Jane was revealing not just a bit of her body but her ignorance about Stan’s sexuality. I’m staggered that she had imagined a bit of cloth would have the magical power to instantaneously wrench a middle-aged man away from an engrossing television program. Her plan had potential, but she had put no thought into timing. Moreover, since husbands are not mind-readers, Stan probably had no idea Jane was feeling romantic. He most likely thought she was merely showing off her latest purchase. Almost certainly in their long marriage he had many a time been drawn to his wife like a starving man to a banquet, only to be rebuffed. A few experiences like that and a person quickly learns to keep his feelings under tight control. Like Jane, none of us get it right every time. We need to push through the failures, learn from them, and find answers. Show genuine interest in your partner’s entire person. Learn how to romance, seduce and entice your husband. Spend some time and prayer dreaming up romantic things such as thinking of things you admire about him and telling him in love notes. Constantly think of ways to build your partner’s self-esteem, while ensuring that all you say is very sincere. Every man is different, so some attempts will not appeal to your man. That’s fine. Just keep looking for new ways until you find ones that work. For some ideas, see How holy wives express marital love: Smashing inhibitions and misconceptions. (Husbands should read: How to increase your wife’s sexual responsiveness.) In many ways, the best resource you will ever find on the subject is your husband. Seek to know his 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 husband to share his wildest romantic dreams, fantasies, longings. Allow him several days for half-forgotten longings to surface. He might have been pre-occupied with other pressures for so long that he might genuinely not be able to think of any. Suggest he start daydreaming over the next few weeks about what things would be a real turn on. Encourage him to keep within the bounds of what he thinks is moral, but not within the bounds of what he imagines to be the limits of what you would be willing to do. Then 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 husband stressed, tired, or depressed? Could he have an undiagnosed medical problem? Is he is too embarrassed to admit to a problem or too unaware of medical options to seek help? 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 husband is, and how worthy he 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 Marital Secrets: How to increase your wife's sexual responsiveness

Just as it is morally wrong for a man to develop an appetite for women other than his wife by exposing himself to porn, so it is morally dangerous for a wife to expose herself to romantic fiction, because it could stimulate dissatisfaction with her husband. There are amazing similarities between women viewing or reading romantic fiction (soap operas, movies and romance novels, etc) and men viewing soft porn. Few of those engaged in either activity see any harm in it. They think they can have a little fantasy and a little pleasure without it weakening their real life relationships. It’s so easy to excuse enjoying romantic fiction, just as it’s easy for men to excuse appreciating female flesh. Women long for romance as a prelude to sexual relations just like men would like an erotic display as a prelude to the physical side of sex. And men typically feel uncomfortable about romance, like many women feel uncomfortable about such things giving their partner a private strip show. Both visual porn and romantic fiction create images of, and create a longing for, things that no normal partner could ever match, with the result that both sexes end up wishing their partners were more like those portrayed on the screen. With porn, lighting, making up, poses, photo touch-ups (even plastic surgery) and so on mean that even beautiful women cannot compete. In addition, men become addicted to variety. Romantic novels, films etc. are equally artificial and impossible for any normal man to get anywhere near equaling. Novelists and script writers devote enormous effort to getting the man saying the perfect thing in just the right romantic setting. They are experts in knowing what appeals to women, like those involved in the porn industry are experts in knowing what appeals to men. In real life situations not even the writers themselves could equal the charm of their fictional characters. Normal conversation, for instance, would not allow them enough time to get their lines right. In real life, the initial euphoria of romance wears off. The really heady stuff is more likely with a new partner. Similarly, men get less and less excited about seeing their wives nude. If you sense something wrong with men going to strip joints but nothing wrong with romantic fiction, it might do well to remember how Jesus warned against our tendency to have 20/20 vision when it comes to seeing the faults of others, but being decidedly short-sighted about our own weaknesses. Each of us must decide before God where to draw the line, and we will come to different conclusions, but it is before God that we will one day stand. Comments by women From the co-author of a Christian book for woman: I agree with your questioning of romance books. I quit reading all Christian romances when I noticed my discontent with my husband was increasing. He was nothing like the men in romance novels, and the harder I tried to make him ‘perfect’ the more miserable we both became. Dianne Christner, published author of romantic fiction, wrote to me about this webpage saying: We agree on this subject. Yes, I’ve written inspirational romantic fiction but this gives me the credentials to expose the dangers of romantic fiction. I’ve become convicted of these dangers and am presently writing a nonfiction book about what God has been showing me. The first chapter will be regarding the harm that romantic notions can bring into a relationship. I’m not ready to say that I’ll never again write fiction, but I will pledge to my readers that in the future I will seek to portray realistic relationships in my writing, and that my characters will display an agape type of love. Unfortunately, authors have no control over whether publishers decide to market a book as being “romantic fiction”. I’m hoping to get out of the romance genre, so pray for me and authors like myself that we can find the niche that is pleasing to our Lord and that our books will witness the truth of God’s love and how relationships can reflect his agape-type love. My greatest desire is to write for his glory. Another woman writes: Women get caught up in story fantasy where men get caught in visual fantasy. Women become dissatisfied with their lives because their husbands don’t measure up to the hero, and the romance isn’t there as it is in the story. If women would put in more effort into their real life relationships instead of living through fantasy, there would be less family difficulties. Women are so easily led by their emotions, and feelings. They are very ‘I’ centered also. Through these fantasies they focus on how everyone should be treating them but never see how they are treating others. Yet another woman writes: I agree with you about romantic fiction. I’d long felt uneasy about it (and especially about so-called Christian romantic fiction), but so many women I know live off it that I wondered if it was just a matter of taste (or like one friend said to me, “Not everyone can read that high-brow stuff you read”). I think you hit the nail on the head. What you say about women becoming dissatisfied with their husbands as a result of reading (or watching, in the case of TV or films) romantic fiction is something I’ve witnessed several times among my friends and acquaintances. Mind you, this has also happened to some of them as a result of reading books about Christian marriage (they must have skipped the chapters about Christian wives). It is primarily women who like romance, giving gifts, remembering birthdays, verbalizing emotions, and so on. The more these longings are fanned by romantic fiction, the more women end up virtually craving women in men’s bodies. This has disturbing implications for lesbianism. Perhaps it is also another reason why single women who don’t limit themselves to Christian men find that the men they are most attracted to are often gay. Homosexuals tend to display more typically feminine traits. There are things women would like their partner to do for them because it makes women feel feminine. What women need to realize, however, is that often these very things makes their partner’s feel effeminate. Except in romantic fiction, what lights your fire, probably puts his fire out. Like the performance women put on in sex shows, the men in romantic fiction seem to enjoy these things, but it’s all part of the act. Related Webpages True Love

Marital Love at its Best Love for Life In a survey of young people, the majority agreed that “Love is an addiction, like any other drug.” They were describing a powerful, universal phenomenon that is commonly called love, but is actually the exciting, roller-coaster ride to heartache that results when we let our lusts go unchecked. It is only an elusive shadow of the real thing. I’m not being cynical. Like a two stage rocket, many wonderful relationships were launched this way, before being fired to true love. Much pain, however, has tragically resulted from a failure to distinguish between these two distinct phenomena. True love is not an addiction; it’s a virtue. It brings with it not just temporary pleasure but eternal reward. When lovers utter the magic words, “I love you,” rarely do they mean, “I am committed to doing all I can to please you, no matter what it costs me.” The words usually mean, “I am infatuated with you. I long to use you to maximize my pleasure. I am so drunk on chemicals released into my brain that I lust for more.” It is not impossible that in time the relationship might transform into true love, but at that heady moment, the couple are far from it. My friend, Helen, a widow, says about romantic daydreams: The person we are relating to in our fantasies, whether a person known to us, or an entertainer, or someone we have made up, is never ordinary. He doesn’t pick his nose, he doesn’t chew with his mouth open, he never spills gravy on his shirt. And the more we fantasize about this totally unreal person, the harder it will be for us to relate to a real man with as many foibles as ourselves. If God did give me the opportunity to remarry, and I were still fantasizing, my poor husband would have to compete with an imaginary lover. Hardly a fair contest! Marriages crash because love soon loses power if allowed to coast along. Like a supersonic jet, true love requires constant course correction and energy input to keep it from crashing. If love were genuine, it would be effortless, whispers the Deceiver. On the contrary, it’s by the expenditure of effort that love is proved. The constant effort can seem irksome but it is the effort that turns love into something exquisitely meaningful, rather than a mere robotic response. It is the effort that produces the virtue, the honor and the eternal reward. (The amount of time and effort God expects to be expended in a marriage is alluded to in 1 Corinthians 7:33-34.) A husband’s eyes will regularly be drawn to other women. The world and the enemy of our souls will see to that. But true love rises up in the power of Christ and moves a husband to laboriously reprogram his mind as to what genuine beauty really is. It would seem that as a woman ages, her husband will have an increasingly difficult task to only have eyes for her. As every middle-aged man is painfully aware, gaining wrinkles himself does not suddenly cause a man to find wrinkles attractive. However, if a devoted husband has been faithfully using the passing years in daily discipline and deliberate growing in love, shouldn’t his affection be able to keep pace with his partner’s age? Beauty indeed is in the eye of the beholder. It is the duty of every married person to find beauty in their partner and to delight in that beauty. In previous webpages I have explained our spiritual and marital obligation to minimize our own and our partner’s temptation. Once hit by temptation, however, we must fight it with the determination of a hero; if necessary enduring indescribable torment year after year, not merely as if our life depended upon it, but as if all eternity depended upon it. Should, for whatever reason, your partner not be giving you what you want, you are hardly in an unusual situation. Many people cannot even get a hug. Many don’t even have a partner. There are sure to be times when one partner is unable to be intimate with the other. This is just another opportunity to grow in that virtue that will outlast the planet. Mary had a breakdown. Having no interest in sex was just one of the trials hitting her and impacting her husband Rex. He confided to me: Upon rededicating my life to Christ I experienced a new infusion of Christ’s love. No longer did I focus on Mary’s weaknesses (caused by her sickness); they merely highlighted her strengths. She may have been backed into a corner but by God’s grace she was fighting for all her worth for the glory of God. Mary even admits to doubts and fears, but in the warfare of the mind she continues to trust God. True love is never lazy. It is forever seeking new things to admire in the beloved. The Great Delusion Is it true that parents are usually far better at loving their children than they are at loving each other? Children are seldom well behaved for long. They so often disappoint. They cause an enormous amount of work and pain. Yet people come to parenthood with a mindset that empowers them to persist. After a few rude shocks, their expectations of children tend to be much closer to reality than their continued expectations of a marriage partner. And where their initial hopes prove wrong, parents seldom see the answer to be in swapping children. Western expectations of marriage partners are so far from reality that the arranged marriages of pagans are often more successful than the marriages of Western born again Christians. Put another way, we place unrealistically high demands on our partners, the most ridiculous of which is that we think it’s their duty to keep us on a perpetual emotional high. Most of us expect to be on the receiving end far more often than on the giving end. We think it’s more blessed to receive than to give. And unless we earnestly seek Christ for the renewal of our minds, Christians can be amongst the world’s worst for expecting perfection in their partners. We expect so much more from a Christian than from a non-Christian. And we naively expect Christians, especially if they belong to our own church, to think exactly as we do about a myriad of matters. The great Western delusion is marrying for “love,” by which is meant something vastly different to what the Bible means by the term. If we marry for the glory of God, it’s logical to stick at marriage for the glory of God if the sweetness turns sour. Marry for “love,” however, (ie because we imagine we’ve found someone who can keep us on a perpetual emotional high) and the moment we fall out of “love” (when the fairy tale hits reality) we’ve lost our primary reason for marriage, so why continue? The euphoria of being “in love” results from entering a world of make-believe, which our imagination gives the powerful illusion of being real. We are swept off our feet, not by a real person, but by a imaginary being who has some features identical to the person we think we love, but has other features superior to the real person. Whenever we are getting to know someone, there are gaping holes in our knowledge. If we like the person we invariably smooth over the current gaps in our knowledge with assumptions that we don’t realize are significantly better than reality. We end up creating in our minds a part-real, part-fantasy hybrid and it is this, not the real person, that we fall “in love” with. What starry-eyed lover fantasizes about the man of her dreams burping, snoring and leaving his smelly socks in the bathroom? Who daydreams about that sexy voice being used to hurl abuse in a temper tantrum? Who guesses that the person who heartily agreed on every matter so far discussed would dogmatically disagree on matters not yet explored? Who focuses on the time when that gorgeous figure sags and that impressive body is smashed by crippling disease? Reality gradually closes in. The fairy tale fizzles. Our dilemma, however, is that once we’ve had a whiff of that euphoric high mistakenly called “love,” we usually keep hankering for it. The temporary delusion that we have found Mr/Miss Perfect is perhaps the most addictive thing on earth. Merely imagining what it would be like to find this mythical being can create such ecstasy that we are in danger of panting after that elusive feeling for the rest of our lives; vainly imagining that the person who can permanently give us the unsustainable high actually exists somewhere in the real world. Once married, we continue our quest for the perfect partner by trying to manipulate our partner into this fanciful creature, and when we finally lose hope of this working, we consider looking further afield. This delusion, fed by fantasy and inflamed by romantic fiction, particularly torments women. Men are more likely to be entranced by the sex goddess, the nymph who is not only eternally young and stunningly beautiful but has a body that regularly transmutes from one gorgeous form to another, feeding the man’s lust for endless variety. Of course, what romantic fiction is to a woman’s fantasy, pornography is to a man’s. I can fully understand you thinking I’m being unduly negative about the possibility of a romantic high lasting for years. It flies in the face of a lot of wishful thinking current in our society. Nevertheless, after writing this webpage I discovered some fascinating scientific research indicating that we are biologically and mentally predisposed to be “in love” with a person for only 18 to 30 months. Medical tests and cross-cultural research indicate that the feeling then wears off and the chemical concentrations creating the “in love” feeling are unlikely to ever return with the same partner. For more information: The Chemical Cocktail of Love Professor Cindy Hazan of Cornell University, New York, believes that falling “in love” involves the release of three chemicals in the brain: dopamine, phenylethylamine, and oxytocin. Even if the concentration of these chemicals were to remain at their peak for the rest of one’s life, the body would develop a tolerance to it, and so the effect would diminish. In reality, research indicates that levels decline over 18 to 30 months and rarely return in a relationship. “By that time,” she says, “couples have either parted or decided they are easy enough with each other to stay together. Love becomes a habit . . .” Professor Hazan’s conclusions are based on 5000 interviews across 37 cultures and medical tests on couples. Source: The Australian, 27:7:99, page 1, based on an article by John Harlow (London, The Sunday Times). In our desperation to have that aching hole in our hearts filled, we rarely stop to consider how unrealistic our expectations of a lover really are. We pine for a lover who not only longs to meet our deepest needs, but is always able to. We yearn for someone who is constantly in a good mood, has no annoying habits, and isn’t argumentative. We want a lover whose beauty and powers will not wilt with the passing years; someone always able to be there when needed; someone who will never let us down or abandon us to icy loneliness by dying. We crave a partner who utterly understands us; someone who can slip inside our mind, making communication effortless. We long for someone who unfailingly brings the best out in us, inspiring us to reach our full potential, without being pushy. The person we ache for must be changeless, yet exciting; someone who fits our needs so exactly it feels we were made for each other; someone we will be forever proud of; someone whose love for us is so vast that it continually satisfies; someone so resistant to the ravages of aging, sickness and tragedy as to seem immortal. Of course, we’ll never find a human remotely like this and the times we caught a tantalizing sniff of it we were in a dream world. But unless we truly come to terms with the nature of reality, our marriages are in grave danger. Living, as we do, in a world in which fantasy is regularly portrayed as reality (television, movies, novels, and so on) makes discovering reality harder for us than perhaps for any other people group who have ever existed. It seems no coincidence that in old-fashioned romance, young lovers, leaving reality behind and letting their emotions and dreams run wild, repeatedly used religious expressions like “she adores/idolizes him”, “you’re divine/heavenly”, “he worships the ground she walks on”, “a marriage made in heaven”. From another source comes the term “sex goddess”. Even Christians have a huge tendency to expect a marriage partner to successfully fill a superhuman role that only God was ever intended fill. In the Ten Commandments, coveting someone’s material goods is treated as essentially the same sin as coveting someone’s spouse (Exodus 20:17). I therefore feel comfortable about seeing the attitude of contentment Scripture says we should have to material things as being very similar to the attitude we should have toward our marriage partner. 1 Timothy 6:6 But godliness with contentment is great gain. Philippians 4:12 I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation . . . (13) I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Psalms 37:16 Better the little that the righteous have than the wealth of many wicked. This inspires me to believe that we should learn to value and enjoy and delight in the partner God has blessed us with, instead of falling for the grass-is-greener-in-the-other-field deception. Get excited – not just sexually, but emotionally – about your marriage partner. Be proud of him/her. Be amazed at your partner’s love for you. Regard him/her as the world’s best partner for you. Be overwhelmed with thankfulness to God for your marriage. Sooner place your hand in an open fire and see your flesh go up in smoke than daydream about how their partner could be “better.” Our original ancestors, Adam and Eve, blamed each other, God, Satan – anyone they possibly could but themselves. Ever since, their descendants have had a strong tendency to push the blame on to others, rather than take responsibility for problems. I’m in constant danger of continuing this tradition. If, for instance, I don’t love my wife it’s not because she is not sufficiently lovable, it’s because I don’t have sufficient love. It’s not because of the way God made me; it’s because of my laziness. It’s not because of Satan; it’s because I haven’t sufficiently sought the One who defeated Satan. The problem is not the inadequacies I see in my partner, the problem is my inadequacy – my shameful deficiency in Christlike love. As we saw near the beginning of this webpage series, if I’m hankering after other women, it’s not because my wife isn’t sexy enough, it’s because I’m sexually dysfunctional. I need to do all I can through effort and divine miracle to get myself back on track before I ruin my life. We so much need the attitude of Christ, who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life; loving his own until the end – including Judas the betraying thief, and Peter, the loudmouth denier (Mark 10:45; John 12:4-6; 13:1). And through Christ we can make it. We can be freed from an addiction to unreality. We can be empowered to take responsibility for our marriage and our feelings. We can indeed begin to love as Christ loves and begin to partake of the rewards of living the way God made us to live. 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

You can Transform your Marriage Turning Marital Hell into Heaven I guess you’ve heard of the needless deaths of young men in fast cars driving at speed straight at each other, trying not to be the one who chickens out by changing course. When they both ‘win,’ they both lose – with horrific consequences. That’s the deadly game we play with marriage when, instead of taking the responsibility upon ourselves, we wait for our partner to change. Leaving it to our partner to change ensures we end up losers, no matter how self-righteously we hold our ground. The only person we have rightful power to change is ourselves. To keep blaming the other person for all our difficulties is to take upon ourselves the victim mentality, with the result that we will have little opportunity to benefit from the situation, such as learning how to react differently. We all like to think we are pretty close to perfection and that it is our partner who most needs to lift his/her game. This attitude inevitably produces a stalemate that at best leads to a stale marriage and at worst . . . well, you don’t even want to think about that. The instant you change, however, the stalemate is broken. By changing yourself, you change the entire dynamics of your marriage, which, incidentally, will change your partner as well. For a real-life example of the need to focus on changing ourselves, I’ll adapt an e-mail exchange I had. To fully conceal her identity, I will call her ‘Betty,’ and not even reveal what country she lives in. Nor do I wish to imply that my guesses about her marriage are accurate. What matters is that it illustrates the dynamics typically found within marriages. We usually see our own rights as being paramount and anyone who see things differently from us is clearly wrong. And if we seek counselling, it is often to seek additional support in vindicating ourselves and enforcing our desires upon our partner. I care too much for people to go down that path. Anyone coming to me with such motives is likely to be painfully disappointed. Since the key is to change oneself, not one’s partner, the last thing we need is to be reminded of our partner’s failings. With this in mind, I try always to take the side of the partner I am not counselling, even if the one I am counselling is an angel relative to the other. So don’t imagine I am biased toward husbands. Had the roles been reversed and Betty’s husband, ‘Rick,’ privately approached me, blaming his wife, I would have strongly taken Betty’s side, emphasizing his need to change. Betty writes : My husband is extremely self-centered. If he wants something, he gets it. He has managed to go on a vacation every year, without me or the children. He, I know, is like most men, but I am so tired of trying to feel special. My reply : You hurt deeply, precious sister. Every human has a seemingly insatiable need to feel special. Women typically see a manifestation of this need in men and with disdain label it “male ego.” Men see it in women and often dismiss it as childish emotionalism. But each of us has it, and it is neither childish, nor egotistical. Instead, it is a manifestation of the most noble thing about being human. What makes us humans so astounding is that we are divinely crafted with the amazing capacity to contain the Infinite and to relate to Perfection. And nothing less will satisfy. We were made to derive our sense of worth from the only Person in the universe big enough to do so – Almighty God himself. You have this basic need to feel special because in your Maker’s eyes you are special, and he longs to satisfy that craving by being to you everything you need. Like me, you are anxious to get to the nitty-gritty of your complaints against your husband. I will get there as soon as I can, but to truly help you I must first strengthen the foundation upon which all thriving Christian marriages are built. A friend of mine suffered great emotional deprivation, the memory of which haunted her adult years. It all stemmed from her earthly father wanting a boy, not a girl. The earthly father to whom God entrusted her was horribly mistaken. Her real Father – our Creator – wanted a girl, and that’s exactly what he made. There are a thousand variations to this theme. Maybe the earthly parents God lent you to wanted an athlete or an academic, or something else you are not, but the wisest, most exalted, most important Person in the Universe – your Father in the fullest and ultimate sense – thinks very differently. To your Maker, you are no accident or disappointment. You are exactly what he chose to make. It is true that we can bear the marks of Adam’s sin – such as genetic deformities – which will be swept away in the life to come. But if such challenges did not fit perfectly into the Almighty’s earthly plans for you, he would change you in an instant. And not only is the Perfect One your Maker, he is your Savior, who suffered agonizing death for you. Talk about vested interests! Can you conceive how much the King of kings has invested in you? For you, he poured out not only his creative genius, but his last drop of blood. Since, in order to gain your friendship, God withheld not even what was dearest to his heart – the life of his infinitely precious only Son – Scripture insists that there is nothing in the entire universe he would withhold from you (Romans 8:32). It is no exaggeration to say you are of infinite importance to the loftiest and most important Person in the universe. When we look to humans – the finite and imperfect – to satisfy our desperate need for the Infinite and Perfect, is it any wonder that we end up so emotionally starved that we almost suck the life out of our partner and are still left utterly frustrated and unfulfilled? God offers each of us a banquet of love so vast that we could feast on it for a million years and still have as many untasted delights ahead of us as when we began. Our tragedy is that God seems to us so distant and unreal that, instead of feasting on the Infinite, we become hooked on trying to force out of human relationships satisfaction that no one less than God can give. The ecstasy of romantic love might, for a while, drug an awareness of our craving for divine love, but as a pet dog cannot fill our need for perfect love, neither can a marriage partner. There isn’t space here to expound on this vast and vital subject. You might think I’ve already spent too much time on it here, but it is actually the foundation of marital happiness. It is so important that I have dealt with in links provided below. It is only when the bottomless pit within us is filled by the Infinite – when our ravenous emotional hunger begins to be satisfied by the Lover of our souls – that our incessant craving to feel special will calm enough for us to end our frantic, fruitless attempts to squeeze out of a human what only God can give. Let’s get real: our yearning to feel special is not met by the miracle of salvation, although that is the essential starting point. We need supernatural insight into how special we are to God. And we need nothing less than ever-deepening, never-ending intimacy with the Infinite Lord. I desperately need more than I presently experience. Neither you nor I are living in the fullness of all that is available to us. There is always more in God than we currently have. I presume that if we instantly received all we crave, we would end up losers because we’d be less motivated to keep seeking more of God. There is far more that we need than we are even aware of. So we must keep looking to the Lord for more, resisting the temptation to act like the godless who put their hope in a mere human. In biblical times, God’s people were constantly tempted to mix worshipping the true God with worshipping a god they could see and touch. The Lord repeatedly referred to idol worship as going after lovers. In our secular society we are even less sophisticated. Our preference for worshipping what we can see and touch, drives us to literally go after lovers, rather than the true God. No matter how moral we are, when we look to humans, we are truly looking for love in all the wrong places. At least other cultures are smart enough to recognize that their needs are beyond what any human can offer. Not surprisingly, they typically end up less disillusioned with their marriage partners and have far lower divorce rates than our society. And if you think we don’t worship humans, think again. The most important commandment, emphasized Jesus, is to love God with all our heart, soul and mind. The one we are most in love with is the one we worship. We literally adore that person. I have a chronic need for a deeper consciousness of God’s personal love for me, and I suspect even the most spiritual of us have this need for more, whether we realize it or not. For some vital help on this matter, see: The Ultimate Love Affair You are Loved The Most Tortured Conscience Can Find Peace God's Will For You God as Mother and the Dadda You Always Wanted Lord make him regret what he did! To God You Are Special When God Seems Far Away The words “to know him is to love him,” apply to God like no one else. Our dilemma is that personal hang-ups and misconceptions drive even devout Christians to keep a little distance between us and God, thus hindering us from knowing God so intimately that we are head over heels in love with him. The average Christian couple are so starved of God’s love that they are nearly like two hungry cannibals constantly tempted to eat each other to satisfy the gnawing emptiness within them. In fact, both partners think God gave them the other to eat. Little wonder there is conflict! How could dedicated Christians end up starved of God’s love? It sounds impossible, but it happens all the time. We often miss the joys of intimacy with God because although we try to force ourselves to reach out to God, deep down is a fear or doubt about God that makes us want to shrink from him. We might suspect that God is selfish, or fear he is not good and kind, or doubt that he is trustworthy. We wonder whether God might let us down, or hurt us. You might think he favors others over yourself, or feel that he frowns on you. You might think he wants your happiness less than you want it. Such concerns usually have little to do with God but are carry-overs from us being poorly treated by people. We unconsciously make the irrational assumption that the Almighty must be rather like other people. Even if we rationally make the distinction, the scars of past hurts often remain, like a rape survivor having difficulty relating to her husband, whose love and gentleness she knows is so very different to the rapist. Another huge problem is us resenting God for not preventing our past hurts. There are answers to all our concerns, and until we begin to find those answers, we are not emotionally ready to tackle the rest of this webpage. For help with this, see: Why Does God Allow Suffering? Life's Mysteries Explained Turning Hate Into Healing If anyone has reason to hate God, it's Sue What about those who have never heard the Gospel? You will find the following hurtful, rather than helpful, while emotional hunger pains still tear at your insides, screaming out for satisfaction that God alone can give. To read what follows while your heart is still broken would be like trying to learn to ski with a broken leg. The healing we need can only be found by plunging into the bottomless, healing pools of divine love. It is more blessed to give than to receive, but we have little chance of entering into the blessing of giving love until we discover how loved of God we are. Until then, we have little capacity to give selfless love. We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19). We were created not to be leeches, but lovers. We are divinely ordained to be like God, who gives and gives and gives. But we can only fulfil our destiny after tapping in to an infinite source of love. So keep looking to your relationship with the Lord for the emotional fulfilment your need, resisting our natural tendency of expecting our partner to be God for us. I suggest you begin by bookmarking this page and reading all of the above links. One final word before plunging in: when we continually turn the other cheek, we are sorely tempted to think we have lost our dignity. We feel like dirt. In reality, we are acting like divine royalty; like the King of kings who for your sake became a suffering servant. Let that sink in: when we deliberately lower ourselves, we are acting like the exalted Lord; we are beginning to fill the shoes of the mighty Son of God, our Leader and Example, who yielded to torturous humiliation, knowing he was headed for eternal glory. When we do good to those who wrongfully treat us, we are proving ourselves to be true sons and daughters of Almighty God. Acting like a slave, insisted Jesus, is the path to greatness (Mark 10:43-44). We can only do that by drawing upon the vast resources of a rich, fulfilling relationship with the Lord of lords. Let’s remind ourselves of Betty’s e-mail: My husband is extremely self-centered. If he wants something, he gets it. He has managed to go on a vacation every year, without me or the children. He, I know, is like most men, but I am so tired of trying to feel special. My reply: You know in every fiber of your being just how important it is to feel special in the eyes of one’s partner. And you know, not just in theory but by bitter experience, how much marital pain self-centeredness causes. So, in the light of all your understanding, why is it that your efforts to make someone feel special center upon yourself? How special do you make Rick feel? My guess is that, like many of us, your inner pain has been so horrific that you have been unable to consider such a question. Suppose a bomb exploded in your house. In an instant your arm is blown off. Rick has lost his leg. You are both bleeding to death. As you reel in agony you would hardly be able even to think of Rick’s wounds, most less attend to them. I believe this is where you and Rick have been emotionally. I pray that by prayerfully reading the above links you are now beginning to find in God the healing that is essential for you to brave the rest of this webpage. This is no quick fix, however. We need daily intimacy with the Lord. It’s my guess that for years you valiantly attempted to meet Rick’s needs to feel special, but the most loving of us have only a finite store of love. We can persevere only for so long before our reserves of love begin to run dry. If you have truly been born again, you have tapped into divine love. But we all have blockages in our channel to God’s love, preventing all but a trickle of the Infinite love available to us to eke through to us. Even as I write, I am seeking the Lord to open my eyes to the things in my own life that are greatly restricting the flow. Without supernatural love we cannot possibly act like Christ. You were born to be like God, and born again for this purpose. Christ came not only to make this possible but to show us what it means to be like God. Though he knew that what was about to happen was so horrific that he had been sweating blood over it, Jesus still focused on the needs of others, even healing the ear of one of those arresting him. Right was on his side, yet he submitted to injustice. Later, despite having the power to strike his captors dead in an instant, he obeyed the soldiers and carried the cross he would die on. As heartless soldiers were hammering cruel nails through his flesh, our Savior pushed through searing pain to pray compassionately for his torturers, seeking their forgiveness. As his life continued to ebb away, he ministered to the spiritual needs of a thief. Newly risen from the grave, he gave priority to comforting the disciples who had denied and deserted him in his time of need. That’s how God loves. He has loved us not because we deserve it, nor in response to our love, nor because it is painless, but solely because he has committed himself to loving us. For us to begin to love as God loves us involves loving not because someone loves us or treats us as we should be treated, but simply because we have committed ourselves to love. If Rick were the worst man on earth, or the very best, it would not change your thrilling challenge of rising to your destiny and loving as God has loved you. No doubt, both Rick and you could list like a martyr so many loving things you have done for each other. I commend you, Betty, and I add Scripture’s encouragement to continue and “not become weary in doing good” (Galatians 6:9). I know this is painfully difficult, but it is not merely investing in a marriage. The pain you suffer in continuing to love, is actually spiritual growing pains, the benefits of which will resound to your glory for all eternity. In addition to divine love and persistence, however, we need divine wisdom. Are your attempts really what make Rick feel special or merely what you have wrongly guessed have that effect on him? Especially because men and women are so different, there is usually a vast gulf between a person’s guesses and his/her partner’s reality. Even if you have often guessed correctly, how, in Rick’s mind, do all your positive efforts stack up against the negative vibes he picks up from you? We humans are so sensitive that one negative seems to knock out ten positives. The rest of your e-mail confirms that you are very upset with Rick’s behavior. This is most understandable. Let’s, however, consider Rick’s reaction. I don’t know how openly you have expressed to him your displeasure, but I doubt you could keep your annoyance so locked within you that he does not sense your bitterness. Almost certainly, he secretly reels in pain because of your low view of him. Does he think you want to go on vacation because you love him so much that you long to be with him every chance you get? I doubt it. The fact that you are upset with Rick, almost certainly makes him feel a failure as a husband, no matter how much he tries to conceal it. Normal people long to flee situations in which they feel failures. Instead of inspiring him to delight you, your attitude – no matter how “justified” relative to his treatment of you – intensifies his desire to find relationships and situations which make him feel better about himself. His need to feel special in someone’s eyes is as strong as yours, but when he is with you he feels silent – or maybe not so silent – hostility. No wonder when he thinks about a vacation – a time when he wants to feel good – he automatically thinks in terms of being removed from this depressive situation. Am I right in assuming that you feeling special in Rick’s eyes would involve him spending considerable time with you? And yet your resentment will make spending time with you the very thing he dreads. The Bible addresses the marital dilemma where one partner has become a Christian and the other remains non-Christian. They are literally a spiritual world apart. The greatest need for change clearly lies with the non-Christian, and yet, astoundingly, even in this situation the Good Book specifically says Christians should not try to change their non-Christian partners. Instead, it says Christians should try even harder to become more Christlike – and thus become even better marriage partners (1 Peter 3:1-4). Pouring all our effort into changing ourselves, God promises, is the effective way to change one’s partner. This annoys us. “It’s my partner who most needs to change!” we protest. Maybe. But not only will a self-righteous attitude destroy a marriage, if we stubbornly refuse to find ways to change, we will even lose the solace of God seeing us as the innocent party as our marriage disintegrates around us. Despite the provocation, Scripture urges us to overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21). Changing ourselves is our responsibility. To try to change our partner is to abdicate our responsibility. You are hurting deeply, and there is no way I wish to downplay the extent of your pain. I remind you that if I were communicating with Rick, I’d take your side and do all I could to encourage him to change. But I’m not communicating with him, so I can’t help him find ways to improve. I am communicating solely with you, and since no earthly person has reached the point where improvement is impossible, I can only suggest ways in which you could further improve, and help you feel less hurt by giving you a deeper insight into what might be driving Rick to act like he does. If this does not interest you, I sadly confess to having nothing else to offer. You might as well end this webpage here. My husband truly treats other women a lot better than he treats me. It hurts. As I type this I am fighting back my tears. There have been countless times in our marriage where he will go and help another lady move, work, etc. But he doesn’t do that at home. I really feel betrayed in my marriage. I honestly feel that my husband has managed to put everyone else ahead of his family. I understand your pain. Understanding men might help you take normal male behavior less personally. There are several factors behind this common male trait. The problem is - Equality in the home has proved much harder to achieve than equality in the workplace. Surveys confirm that men are still not assuming their rightful share of domestic responsibilities. Threats, tears, arguments, nagging - nothing seems to work. Why do men seem allergic to cooking, cleaning, dusting, washing, ironing, doing dishes, making beds, taking out rubbish? Why do men think they are doing you an amazing favor if they help with the smallest household chore? Why do they expect to be waited on hand and foot? Are men just plain selfish, lazy, stubborn and arrogant, or is there a deeper problem lurking within the male psyche? Above all, however, what typically motivates men to act like your husband is that if they do the odd job for other women they are treated as heroes, whereas their own wives make them feel villains. If they do something for their wives, it is usually out of guilt, which is a poor, stifling motivator relative to the buzz a person gets out of being appreciated. Even when they do things for their wives they might even be told, “About time!” or given more chores to do. Like you, he longs to feel special and other women succeed where you fail. Their task, of course, is much easier. They find it easy to appreciate the little your husband does because they know they have no right to take him for granted. Sarah called Abraham her master. The New Testament urges wives to follow Sarah’s lead, implying that exalting one’s husband – making him feel special – is the path not just to a good marriage but to spiritual honor (1 Peter 3:1-6). A man e-mailed me, bubbling with excitement about how his wife fully submitted to his desires. Not only did her actions make him feel special, it made him yearn to please her and to honor her. He was so over the moon about how she treated him that he couldn’t stop singing her praises, repeatedly telling not just her, but everyone else about how very special she was. In fact, I had to urge him to tone it down in the presence of other husbands lest they get jealous! The surest way for you to feel you are special in your husband’s eyes is to stop seeking that feeling. Instead, focus on making your husband feel special. All the effort that you pour into making your husband feel good about himself will boomerang back to you – probably in this life, but certainly in the next. If I speak of counselling he speaks of divorce. How discouraging for you. It’s not quite as black as it seems, however. May I explain what is probably going on inside Rick’s head? Counselling is not a masculine way of coping with problems. Men find it very demeaning. Some feel their whole masculinity is threatened by it. So although counselling can be very helpful, his reluctance is understandable. Moreover, he most likely feels that you want counselling not because you are open to change but because you want to shame and pressure him into doing what you want. I suspect he doesn’t think you are seeking help in becoming a better wife; he thinks you are seeking someone else to gang up on him in your battle to get your own way. No wonder he feels offended. I am tired of hurting. He says he loves me, but I don’t feel loved. Very many men who love their wives are too verbally inhibited to tell their wives they love them. Their wives would be over the moon to hear those words. You are right that believing you are loved is important, but let’s see this from another angle. How loved does he feel? Have you even bothered to seriously find out? You no doubt think he should feel loved – and he probably thinks you should feel loved – but how successful have you really been? There is a vast difference between making a person feel loved and merely assuming the person feels loved. When my husband is away on business or pleasure, my life is SOOO much easier. I tend to get more done and enjoy my life more. There doesn’t seem to be any stress or battles. And you are not the only one who feels this way. Are you sure you can’t understand why he prefers to go on vacation without you? That’s no reason for giving up. It is reason for a change in tactics, however. Continue as you are and you will continue dangerously drifting apart. Doing nothing but wait for one’s partner to change is like waiting for the wind to blow money into your face. He doesn’t tell me anymore when he will be coming home, because he says I get mad when he doesn’t make that time frame. But it hurts when you hold off feeding your family for two hours because he hasn’t managed to come home. That must be painfully frustrating. It seems your reaction has unintentionally contributed to the problem. Your husband wants peace, not conflict. You are making him reluctant to come home. No doubt there were times when he tried so very hard to be on time, frantically rushing home as fast as he could and all he got for his mad rush was a tongue lashing. Instead of Rick feeling that you are glad to see him and thankful for the way he stressed himself to get home quicker, he gets a blast. It seems that over time this so crushed him that he has now lost all hope of consistently pleasing you. When all hope is gone, we see no point in continuing to try. I suggest reversing your tactics. Instead of criticizing your husband when he does something you dislike, wait until he does something you like and show genuine appreciation. Both of you are in a rut so deep that to take an excitingly different direction and not slide back into old ways will take considerable time and effort, but you can do it. I have taken a job to help get us out of debt. However, he is telling people that he has received this great sum of money from his grandmother who has just passed away. Granted she did leave him some money, but we don’t know the amount. I am tired of working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. My job is based out of my home. So I have to keep up all ends. Cooking, cleaning, children, activities, etc plus work 14 hour days. He doesn’t take my job seriously. The job is simple, but it still takes time, so we can work our way to being debt free. I pray, I think, I cry - - - I am tired!!! How exhausting and depressing for you. Has Rick somehow mistakenly gained the impression that you are working primarily for your own benefit? Would he prefer less money in the household if that meant a happier and less complaining wife? Maybe he even sees you working as an insult to his earning capacity. Talk it over with him – not in a complaining way, nor as an implied threat, but gently ask if he would prefer you to give up your job, since it is so draining for you and putting stress on the marriage. If he really wants you to work, this discussion – if free from manipulation and whining – should help him be more appreciative. It would also thrill him to think that his wishes mean so much to you. Or the discussion might reveal that you have been enduring all this stress, thinking you were doing it for Rick when you were really only doing it for yourself or out of a mistaken idea as to what he wanted. A part of me, just for one selfish moment, wanted to think I was the most important person on earth to another person. Somehow I think that will never happen. You have fallen into a vicious circle in which you think Rick doesn’t regard you as special, so you don’t treat him as special, so he doesn’t regard you as special . . . around and round the spiral goes, like a whirlpool hurling you closer and closer to disaster. Reversing one’s attitude, however, will reverse the cycle. Slowly the negative spin will halt and gradually pick up momentum in the opposite direction. You treating Rick as special will touch him deeply when he realizes you are genuine and not trying to manipulate him. A longing will slowly form within him to be with you more and treat you with greater tenderness and consideration. His response will make you warm to him. He will react to the new feelings awakening within you and so treat you even better. You’ll keep inspiring each other to deeper and deeper love and with each cycle you’ll be more drawn to each other. As you persist, things will get better and better instead of worse and worse. Comments This transformation of a marriage involves the implementation of ancient secrets. These powerful secrets work because, as astounding as it sounds, they were revealed to humanity by the very Originator of love and the Creator of marital relations. We have seen that the most powerful way to increase marital bliss is not to change one’s partner but to change oneself. This is both the easiest and hardest thing to do. It is easiest because out of everyone in the universe, you are the person you have the greatest control over and the greatest right to dictate to. What makes it the hardest thing is that our imagination deceptively magnifies the pain of change and fails to perceive the rich rewards that change brings. It might also be very hard to convince our partner that our changes are genuine and so we might have to persist for a long time without any noticeable response from our partner. If each partner is trying to change the other each instead of himself/herself, there is little hope. When just one person begins to accept responsibility and change himself/herself, however, a world of exciting possibilities opens. That is why when counselling Betty I threw responsibility on to her, but had I been counselling Rick, I would have utterly reversed my approach, exclusively emphasizing his need to change. In present-day society, we have become experts at blaming everyone except ourselves. Statistics are proving that lifelong marriage simply does not work for people with this attitude. This currently fashionable flirtation with self-centeredness is so unworkable that it will not last too many decades. Nevertheless, millions of lives will be ruined before society eventually realizes how foolish we have been. Our personal dilemma is that we are so influenced by this enticingly popular philosophy that we live in constant danger of being swept along by the very forces that turn lifelong marriage into an impossible dream. Jesus’ teaching was the exact opposite of what we are bombarded with everyday – turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, bless those who curse you, love your enemies . . . So we have a choice: go the way of the world and destroy our marriage, or go against the tide of popular opinion and enjoy lifelong marriage. Try Jesus’ way and the world will look down on you, saying you are stupidly acting like a doormat, but it will envy your marriage. “Do to others as you would have them do to you,” (Luke 6:31) is at the heart of most of my suggestions to Betty. This is a directive Jesus intended to be rigorously applied, but in broad detail, not to the minutest aspect. For example, you want to feel special in the eyes of your partner, so make your partner feel special, but do not imagine that the exact things that give you this feeling will necessarily have that effect on your partner. In fact, among the things most important to your partner are probably things that are quite meaningless to you and often things that bore you or embarrass you. It is common among both sexes for their partners’ needs to be so foreign to their own needs that they regard their partners’ needs as childish, such as Mary, who frequently needs to be told she is loved, or David, who always seems to need to have his ego stroked. After being married for a while, people often feel relief that at last their partner has “grown up” and no longer needs these things. Usually, what has happened, however, is that the partners’ needs are as strong as ever but they have simply resigned themselves to feeling unloved. (Intellectually, they might believe they are loved, but that still does not prevent them from feeling unloved.) Understanding each other’s needs and feelings is perhaps the greatest of all marital challenges, and the effort devoted to gaining this understanding is one of the most meaningful and essential displays of marital love. It is vital to continually communicate to your partner your desires in a gentle, uncomplaining manner, and seek to draw that type of information from your partner. Unless we effectively and lovingly do this, it is almost inevitable that we will feel let down by our partners. We need to realize that in most cases our disappointment is not because our partner is inadequate but simply because our communication is inadequate. Here again, a biblical principle is invaluable. Part of “the love chapter,” could be paraphrased, “love is ever ready to believe the best of every person,” (1 Corinthians 13:7, Amplified Bible). Applied to this situation, it involves believing that your partner really wants to please you and that the main problem is that you are so different to each other that you have not yet succeeded in communicating the exact nature of your desires and how important they are to you. We find this hard to believe because we inevitably underestimate the difficulty of communication. Nagging, tantrums and a raised voice do not add emphasis to communication, they greatly hinder it. A wise woman writes: Women should not think all they need do is become submissive and everything is solved. There is much more to being a good wife than that. My husband does not respond to textbook suggestions. He is unique. In order to get inside his head I have had to pray for understanding and really listen to him in a way that, until recently, I never knew how. Devote yourself to understanding what delights your partner and then work hard at doing it. This should revolutionize your marriage and prove the truth of Jesus’ declaration: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Luke 6:38). Or, to put it another way, you will reap what you sow (Galatians 6:7). Sow love, kindness, patience and unselfishness and that’s what you will harvest. Sadly, things usually have to get pretty desperate before we even see the need to change ourselves. By then, both partners have been hurt so much and for so long that the patience of both will have been stretched and frayed to dangerous levels. Even the one trying to change could have such a build-up of hurt within him/her that he/she might not have the patience to keep trying unless there is soon a noticeable change within the partner. However, a quick fix is most unlikely. Even if we have the necessary resolve not to slip back into old ways, our hurting partner will be highly sceptical and will normally take a long while to be convinced that our change is genuine and will last. The time taken to convince our partner is especially likely to be prolonged if we simply try to change without any explanation to our partner. Unless you are in the habit of making empty promises, the best way to start is to verbalize your deep regret and express your determination to change, then solidly back it up with action, even when your partner refuses to change. We are scared to love unconditionally because we fear our kindness will be exploited. Nevertheless, although in rare occasions what you heap upon your partner might not be returned to you by your partner, the all-seeing Lord will ensure that by some means or another, in this life or the next, you will most certainly reap what you have sown. Again this woman wisely writes: Ask that God show you that it is right and not weak to keep giving without any positive response from your partner. It often makes a woman feel cheap and as if she has low self-esteem. This feeling often remains, even though selflessness actually makes one highly honored in God’s eyes. Get your mind off what you’re missing, end self-pity, and get on with life. An hour listening to God each day can be the greatest changer of all. If you haven’t been spending that kind of time, at first it will seem terribly long and dreary. But after a while it becomes something you look forward to and then something you miss if you skip even a day. This will strengthen you, and you need extra strength in order to make a significant change in your life. Long-term habits are hard to break. For a better marriage, we need to become more Christlike, and the only way to achieve that is to let Christ have more control of our lives. Christ himself did nothing in his own strength, but relied completely upon his Father. “By myself I can do nothing,” he declared (John 5:30). Marriage was divinely instituted and it can only reach its divine potential by fully involving God in the task of making you the husband or wife he wants you to be. There is no way around it: it hurts to act Christlike. Christ’s behavior led to scorn, abuse, the agony of crucifixion and then eternal honor. The easy way leads to disaster (Matthew 7:13). I could feel great sympathy for a person I am counselling but I must be wary of acting like Peter, who let his deep feelings for Christ lure him into being used of Satan to tempt Jesus not to pay the price (Matthew 16:21-23). Christ’s promise is not that it will be easy but that it will be so worth the cost that if you pay it, you will rejoice for all eternity over having made the right decision. To turn marital hell into heaven, turn the other cheek; bless those who curse you; rejoice when you are ill-treated; be quick to see your own faults – the plank in your own eye, not the speck in your partner’s – forgive when you are offended. In short, to make marriage heaven, act like someone worthy of heaven. And regardless of how the earthly benefits pan out, your highest reward will be eternal.

Overcoming fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of obeying God, fear of pain For maximum help, Fear: Help & Cure should be read first. Let’s start with the fear of failure. Edison invented the light bulb not by trial and triumph, but by trial and error (over 1600 errors, I’m told). During his life, he didn’t stop at mere failures. He made some spectacular blunders – like when he was meant to be selling newspapers and ended up setting a train on fire. (I must look into this: Edison and I might be related.) Mistakes are rarely the black ogre they seem. Failure can be a valuable asset, cleansing us of ugly pride; correcting and directing us; barricading enticing avenues that meander away from heaven’s best, or purging us of reckless independence and pushing us deeper into the heart of God. Out of control, however, the fire that warms can destroy. When failure piles on top of failure, the hideous shadow of a psychological barrier slithers across our mind. As failures mount ever higher, we all begin to quake. Yet Edison refused to be intimidated, though the dark mountain grew every day. With a mere three months of formal schooling and considered to have had a learning disability, Edison eventually became one of the most prolific inventors of all time. In his struggle to invent a method of storing electricity he is said to have had tens of thousands of failures. Attempt 50,000 – or thereabouts – worked. We can cower in defeat like the mass of humanity, afraid of shadows, or we can become Edisons. It’s been said that a certain preacher has been used of God in the miraculous healing of more people than anyone else in human history. Just one humiliating complication – it is also estimated he has prayed for more people who haven’t been healed than anyone else ever has. Many people call C. H. Gabriel the king of hymn writers. His most famous work, ‘The Glory Song,’ translated into almost every major language, is estimated to have been printed over one hundred million times. He earned a reputation of being better than anyone in the world at putting the finishing touches on a hymn. Yet he claimed he experienced more failure than success. ‘The way to succeed,’ said Thomas J. Watson, ‘is to double your failure rate.’ Watson isn’t your average crack-pot. He founded IBM. What often distinguishes successful people is the uncommon number of failures they suffer. The rest of us give up before experiencing our full quota. If failures are rungs on the ladder to success, we reach the top not merely by seeing failures, but by mounting them. REJECTION One rejection from a publisher would send me reeling. How many blows could you sustain before forever abandoning the idea of becoming a writer? Ten? Fifteen? Fifty? Would-be novelist John Creasey received an unbroken succession of 743 rejections. I’d be throwing in the towel, the soap, the bath water, my rubber duck, my little red tugboat, everything I could lay my hands on. Few people would ever expose themselves to such devastating failure. That’s why so few enjoy the renown he finally achieved. While unsuccessful, he was forced to write deep into the night. He came late to his paid employment so often that he was fired from twenty-seven different jobs. Undaunted, he continued to perfect his writing, striving to be so good that his skill could no longer be ignored. Shy success crept near, then swept him to fame. Over sixty million of his books have been published. The chilly winds of rejection can ruffle our feathers or carry us to new heights. Sag in doubt or stretch wings heavenward and soar: the choice is ours. It is not arid persistence that success finds irresistible, but a dogged resolve to improve. Don’t huddle in self-pity. Harness rejection’s power. Let it spur you to a greater commitment, inspiring you to new levels of excellence. We often let God down. It is even worse if Satan persuades us that the resulting failure is God’s fault, rather than our own (Proverbs 19:3). But we must not let past fizzlers paralyze us. Acting outside of God’s time will hurt. It is ludicrous, however, to let such traumas darken our expectations of future service. Moving in God’s time and manner will be markedly different. ESCAPE Experimental psychologists designed a dog enclosure, divided by a low barrier and wired to deliver electrical shocks to half the cage. Dogs quickly learned to cross the barrier and avoid the unpleasant shocks. New dogs, however, were given the shocks no matter what they did. The ‘mad scientists’ then changed the conditions so that these dogs, like the first ones, could easily avoid the shocks. Yet they never learned. Being subjected to a no-win situation had rendered the second group of dogs incapable of succeeding. Even in their home cages they seemed lethargic and dejected. Psychologists call this phenomenon learned helplessness. The only way they could get the dogs to avoid the shocks was to physically drag them over the barrier. Can I ever identify with those pathetic creatures! It’s as if for my whole life I’ve been victim of a sadistic conspiracy to crush me into a whimpering defeatist. Yet even if your experience has been more harrowing, there is one thing distinguishing us from those dogs. Though racked by failed ministry attempts, we can know when conditions for ministry have changed, because we’re in union with the God who knows. The sovereign Lord enjoys certain advantages in being omnipotent, one of which is the ability to communicate with even the deafest, densest (why are you looking at me?) of his children (compare John 10:4, Romans 8:14). We may still question whether it was God, but after entreating him we will receive enough confirmation to warrant giving it a go. All we then need is faith to mount the barrier. Use steps. Start with a minor challenge. Slowly, methodically, climb higher. Even if your situation seems a case of all or nothing, prayer, creativity and persistence will usually carve a series of steps into a towering barrier. Try spending fifteen or more minutes a day simply imagining yourself totally at ease, doing something you presently find just a little daunting. Over days or weeks, slowly advance – moving in your mind to the next stage only when you can picture the scene in detail without experiencing the slightest tension in your body. Research has convincingly demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach in breaking fear’s fangs. Add to this the prayer of faith and the power of knowing that Jesus is with you, and in a few weeks you will mount that barrier. You’ll find this method far more dignified than having to be dragged over. I am not too keen about the whole of heaven looking on while I’m madly yelping, claws dug in, being yanked by the scruff of my neck to a place of joy and fulfillment that my foolishness imagines to be a den of terror. There’s an alternative to volunteering or being forced. And it’s even worse. Geriatric specialist Dr. Peter Rowe reported in a British medical journal the case of a thirty-four-year-old lady who caught influenza. She was examined by a doctor who told her to stay in bed until he saw her again. He never returned. She never got up. Forty years later a doctor examined a plump, seventy-four-year-old, bed-ridden spinster. He found her in perfect health, still refusing to get up. It took seven more months of coaxing before she left the comfort and security of her quilt-covered prison. Then followed three ‘fairly active’ years until she met her Maker. You may be a pew-warmer for a while, but don’t get too comfortable! I’d prefer the torment of endless striving. Better to chase a God-given dream through a minefield, than be as snug as a slug in the mud. THE COST Though underemployment can be agonizing, the greatest horror is when the pain subsides. We begin to feel safe in our hole and imagine all sorts of horrors are poised to savage us should we step into the security of God’s will. Such fears are largely Satanic bluff, (take comfort from Philippians 4:6-7 and 2 Timothy 1:7) doomed never to materialize. Nonetheless, heaven’s assignments aren’t always a piece of angel cake. There are times when the only thing more frightening than doing the will of God is not doing his will. We have as Leader and Supreme Example, One who suffered immensely (John 15:20-21; Hebrews 12:2-4; 1 Peter 2:19-21). When people came to Jesus desiring to serve him, you’d think he would have smothered them with praise. But he knew the human heart. His blunt response shocked would-be followers into a painful realization of the great cost involved (Luke 14:25-33; Matthew 10:21-22). ‘Sell all you have and give it to the poor’ (Luke 18:22). ‘Wild animals will have better shelter than you’ll have if you follow me’ (Luke 9:57-8, loose paraphrase). ‘To serve me,’ he declared, ‘you must take up a cross’ (Luke 9:23). Two thousand years later, it is easy to romanticize that brutal statement. Carrying one’s cross involves nothing less than anguish and devastating humiliation. It is suffering inflicted as a direct result of serving God; torment you could avoid by compromise. Jesus wasn’t looking for adherents; he was looking for martyrs. He wanted not admirers but imitators – volunteers who could shoulder a gibbet of pain (Matthew 20:22-3). The person more concerned about his neck than the exaltation of God, is unworthy of ministry (Luke 9:23-6). Many are called, but few rise to the challenge. ‘Let me first establish my business.’ ‘Let me first raise my family.’ ‘Let me first . . . ’ Not surprisingly, few are chosen (Matthew 22:14; Luke 9:59-62). Those who shrink from hardship or danger shrivel up inside; dead, long before their hearts stop. Don’t throw your life away, enslaved by the allure of opulence; lazing while suffering humanity floods past your door. The easy path leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13). How would you like the incomparable thrill of being greeted by the strains of native voices singing ‘All hail the power of Jesus’ name’ on the very spot where twenty years before you had been driven off by a frenzy of spears aimed at your heart? Imagine savoring the ecstasy, the satisfaction, the triumph. That was George Grenfell’s reward for putting his life on the line; for boldly defying a hostile government; for suffering bereavement after bereavement until finally his young wife and four of his children were buried; for serving in a place so dangerous that three out of every four missionaries died before completing their first term. ‘Count the cost,’ ordered Jesus, using parable after parable to hammer the point (Luke 14:28-33; Matthew 13:45-6). Will you pay the price and take the risks, or become a laughing stock, melting away when the heat is on? The cost is exceeded only by the glory. So immense is the glory, in fact, that the cost fades, totally eclipsed by the reward (2 Corinthians 4:17; Revelation 7:16,17). Why should serving God involve humiliation, hardship, and toil? ‘Writing is the work of a slave!’ lamented C. H. Spurgeon – the man who wrote 135 books, edited 28 others and whose 3,500 sermons were published as 75 additional books. Why must missionaries waste years wrestling with a language that God could miraculously impart to them? Why does uplifting music demand hours of irksome practice? Why do church floors get dirty? Why . . . ? Because it frees us to express the depth of our devotion. Moreover, it’s the cost that produces the exhilaration, the fulfillment, the honor. Look at any field of endeavor: we admire heroic achievements; people who overcome the odds, who endure hardship and succeed where others would have slunk away. That’s the glory of Christ-likeness. There’s no honor in being swept along by a godless throng; no satisfaction in fleeing at the sight of a challenge; no glory in being dominated by fear or frozen by doubt. Limp-willed, lily-livered pretenders turn God’s stomach (Revelation 3:16). We either walk through the curtain of fear or end up a broken shell of the person we could have been. To choose the soft life is to turn our back on our bleeding Savior and lose ourselves in Satanic deception. It’s those who sow in tears who reap in joy; (Psalm 126:6) those who endure who win the crown (1 Corinthians 9:24-27; James 1:12; Revelation 2:10; 3:11). Insipid, half-hearted ‘Christianity’ is sickening to God, the world and the devil. That’s not for you. You belong in heaven’s hall of fame. You were born with the desire for it; born-again with the power for it. You were made for daring persistence, stunning triumphs, awe-inspiring excellence. While others wallow in the mud of mediocrity, sentenced to eternal obscurity by their half-heartedness, you’re changing the face of the planet, bringing honor to the One who redeemed you. If you’re crazy, they say you ought to be committed. I reckon if you’re not committed, you’re crazy. Fired by the love of God, live life to the full. CHRIST’S CHAMPIONS In a heart-stopping display of skill, Blondin pushed a wheel-barrow along a tight-rope over Niagara Falls. ‘Who believes I could carry someone across the falls?’ he asked. The crowd went wild. Of course he could. So he asked for a volunteer. Shocked silence. Ministry is like that. Anyone can slip into Christ’s embrace and be carried to startling conquests, but when the call comes, knees begin to quake. The weakest saint who dares follow Christ will excel; the strongest who stays behind will be crushed. There are many different callings, but no one is called to be a spectator. There is a cost and a degree of involvement in being a spectator, but higher things are expected of you. Spectators pay at the gate. They have read their subject until they’re self-declared experts. They clap and cheer. They view the victory celebrations. But there’s seldom sweat on their brow. They know nothing about bruises and aching muscles. They are foreigners to the thrill of personal achievement, the exhilaration of record-breaking performances, the satisfaction of a job well done. Their greatest accomplishment is to guzzle a drink in the midst of a jostling crowd without spilling it. They are potential champions pouring their lives away; non-achievers who love their bed more than success. There’s a world of difference between these couch pretenders and players on the bench. Players kept in reserve are red hot in a tepid world. They don’t flinch at pain. They have toughened their minds and hardened their bodies; drilled to spring into action the instant they are needed. They are champions in the making. CONQUEST The last time I flirted with danger was when I decided against a double knot to tie my shoelace. I have a heart of gold – yellow to the core. Yet Christ died that I might rule. Yield to my old nature and I cower; yield to my Christ-bought nature and I conquer. Fear will come. I can’t avoid it, but through Christ I need not bow to it. Victor or victim: it’s my decision. The tragedy is that we are often enslaved by forces that are meant to be our slaves. Rather than being tyrannized by fear, we should rise up and let it serve us. Fear’s duty is to impel us to prayer. Deprived of this faithful servant we might foolishly expose ourselves to danger without activating God’s wall of safety. Ensure your plans are in the will of God. Then list every fearful possibility. Pray through each point for as long as it takes to muster the faith that God has taken control. Now you have divine protection, the highest conceivable security. Fear has done its work. Bid it farewell. Like a naughty puppy, fear may still tag along, but ignore it. Reciting the fear-crushing promises of Scripture, fix your eyes on the goal and stride toward it. Waiting for fear to fade before advancing is like Peter waiting for the lake to evaporate before stepping out of the boat. Faith is the defeat of fear – not usually by fear’s removal, but by moving us to proceed despite fear’s yelps. Where acceptable, take small steps. If the torment is intense, the support of experienced counselors can be valuable. Be prayerful about your choice of help, however. Unwise counselors can wound. When the pressure is on, there are just two types of people: those who cling to Christ and those who run away. Heaven’s heroes are natural weaklings who are willing to let Christ make them supernaturally strong. All of heaven is on red alert when you follow Father’s orders. Help is a prayer away. Heaven’s resources – infinitely more than you will ever require – are available the instant you need them (Matthew 21:12-19; Luke 10:19; 21:12-19). As you march forward in obedience success is certain. To snuggle into the will of God is to be enveloped in the fiercely protective love and infallible wisdom of the Omnipotent One. Outside that warm cocoon lurk genuine reasons for fear, but inside the Almighty’s perfect will, fear – no matter how intense – is ultimately an illusion. The pain is transitory; the fulfillment, eternal. The crucified Lord has made your fears groundless. Push on and watch mountains crumble. OUT ON A LIMB FOR GOD For much of my life I have tended to be an underachiever; held back by a fear of failure and a fear of rejection, which in turn darkened my life with defeatism and depression. Late is unquestionably better than never but it was regrettably late in life that a parable I have often pondered suddenly hit me in a new way. It came as a liberating revelation that life – and even death – is all about risk taking. It is pointless trying to avoid risk because whatever anyone does involves risk and what seems like risk avoidance is often the riskiest of all. In Jesus powerful parable, a servant entrusted with a huge sum of money decided to play super-safe. Determined not to lose a cent to thieves or bad investments, he hid the money. Being so cautious, however, made it certain he could never make any money for his master and this was sure to incur the master’s hot displeasure. By taking what I perceive as a risk I am at least giving myself a chance and even if I were to fail, I might be praised for trying. I feel empowered by the realization that if everything – even doing nothing – involves risk, then by taking what feels like a risk I have less to lose (and so less to fear) than I had thought. Writes Christine, a dear friend I will refer to later: God is my passion. Passion is risk; even risking life and everything one has. Passion is consuming. Passion is pain. But that pain is gain, and gain is life. We should not demand iron-clad guarantees of success before attempting something big for the Almighty. What value can we place on one human soul (Psalm 49:7-8; 1 Peter 1:18-19)? The slightest possibility of winning someone for Christ should be enough to set us ablaze. Whereas we deserve nothing from God, he deserves everything from us. If Jesus suffered for us when we didn’t deserve it, how can we refuse to suffer for him when he deserves the highest sacrifice? We must resist the urge to play safe and bury our talent (Matthew 25:25). Why let fear of failure immobilize us? Look not at the impossibility of the situation; look at the impossibility of God ever failing. Like Peter walking the waves, if we begin to sink, Jesus is there, ready to grasp our hand. Work hard. Like an athlete training for Olympic gold, make financial, social and recreational sacrifices. Invest time and effort. That’s faith in action. That’s following the path of the good and faithful servant. In submission to God, ears tuned to heaven’s frequency, such risks are honoring to God. You’re investing in eternal glory. Grub, stretch your wings; Worm, you’re gonna fly. Dunce, astound the school. Slave, prepare to rule. Cleaner, address the throng. Welder, inspire with song. Plumber, rebuke that cancer. Mother, kings you’ll counsel. Stone, you’re gonna sparkle; Rock, you’re solid opal. SWAP INDIGNITY FOR INDIGNATION Let’s rise to the challenge first mentioned in Fear: Help & Cure : Fear is an opponent; an enemy wanting to stop us from enjoying what is rightfully ours. Fear is a thief; a disgusting con man cheating us out of our rights and duping us into letting him steal from us. Fear is a weakling acting like a bully, humiliating us. It is low life asking us to strip ourselves of our Christ-bought freedom and dignity. It holds a toy gun to our head and for no rational reason we let it order us around. Fear is a malicious prankster hoping we will be terrorized by a cardboard cutout. Fear is a dirty, pesky fly getting in our face, annoying us. It is a filthy liar falsely accusing us, and we not only meekly sit there listening to the slanderous putdowns, we stupidly accept the garbage as truth. The appropriate response is to rise up in anger and refuse to let fear rob, cheat and bluff us any longer. Having known what it is to cower in fear and savored the liberating exhilaration of rising up and defeating fear, Christine has found the taste of victory so sweet and fulfilling that she is now unstoppable in her quest to win. As she was growing up, her father used to so emphasize the dangers of driving – calling cars deadly weapons and so on – that she ended up terrified of driving. On top of that, she was so shattered by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other pressures that she would suffer memory lapses and often end up lost. So how did she respond? She took up truck driving as a living. Christine was scared of swimming, so she took swimming lessons and became a competent swimmer. She was extremely shy and hated speaking to strangers, so she went out of her way to speak to strangers. She was highly nervous about reading in public, so she volunteered as a public reader of Scripture in her church and has kept it up for years. She was scared of public speaking and so has volunteered to give countless speeches without notes to many different audiences, including radio and television. She was petrified of spiders, so she kept studying spiders until she liked them so much that she kept pet spiders. She beat her fear despite sleeping in a basement where highly poisonous spiders would enter; on several occasions biting her in bed and coming close to killing her. Christine is a winner, and you can be too. INSPIRATION I heard a Christian song. The words were fine except for part of one line that said something like, take away my fears. I don’t recall anything like that in the Bible. Instead of God repeatedly promising to stop us from feeling afraid, I read over and over and over of God promising to remove all reason for us being afraid. Then he puts the onus on us by telling us not to cave in to fear. I read such things as: Isaiah 35:4 say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.” Isaiah 41:13 For I am the LORD, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you. Isaiah 51:7 Hear me, you who know what is right, you people who have my law in your hearts: Do not fear the reproach of men or be terrified by their insults. Jeremiah 42:11 Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, whom you now fear. Do not be afraid of him, declares the LORD, for I am with you and will save you and deliver you from his hands. 1 Peter 3:6 like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear. 1 Peter 3:14 But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened.” Genesis 15:1 After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” Exodus 14:13 Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again.” Deuteronomy 20:3 He shall say: “Hear, O Israel, today you are going into battle against your enemies. Do not be fainthearted or afraid; do not be terrified or give way to panic before them.” Ezekiel 2:6 And you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words. Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions. Do not be afraid of what they say or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious house. Luke 12:4 I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. John 14:27 . . . Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. Revelation 2:10 Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life. If I were willing to risk boring you by getting excessive, I could cite over seventy more such Scriptures. There is no point trying to pass the buck, saying, “Lord, do it – you take my fear away. He simply replies, “No, you do it – refuse to let fear hold you back.” The God of truth declares you have no reason for being afraid. So don’t be bullied by irrational feelings. Your feelings are not your God, so refuse to act as if they were. Don’t let them dictate your beliefs or actions. My wife used to be dominated by fear, and if you knew a fraction of what life has thrown at her, you might expect this domination to continue. But she refuses to let it. Whenever fear knocks, she asks it, “Are you bigger than God?” Then, while it is still helplessly hemming and hawing, wondering how it could ever respond, she shuts the door in its face and walks away. “I made a deal with my Lord,” she says. “I hand all fears over to him, and he’s agreed that if any of them frighten him, he’ll let me know. If demons try telling me anything, I inform them of my policy: all messages to me go through God. They must leave a message with him and if he considers it worth me worrying about it, he’ll pass it on. So far, nothing seems to have been that important.” Related Pages God’s Wonderful Will For You Why obeying God is not scary To God You Are Special There is nothing you cannot achieve When Fearing Jesus or Fear of God Hinders Your Relationship with God Comfort & Help for those Devastating Times When you Feel Like an Idiot Coping with One’s Own Foolishness Why Bad Things Keep Happening To Some People Learned helplessness There’s Hope! A Sane Guide to Finding Hope When There is No Hope

If you find some aspect of sex distasteful, I suggest you start with The Abuse Survivor’s Ultimate Revenge: Reclaiming your Sexuality Single women need to read this if they find the thought of marital relations so distressing that they intend never to marry. The webpage is primarily for marrieds and their partners who suffer some degree of fear, inhibition or revulsion about some aspect of marital relations. The most common reason for this problem – a woman’s past sexual trauma – is featured and it is written as if the woman were already married. Other readers will be able to adapt the information to their particular situation. Abuse survivors seriously contemplating marriage should read this, as well as men engaged to such women. Other singles, however, suffer enough temptation without reading this webpage. The following is best read after reading: “I Hate Sex!” When Wives Want a Sexless Marriage Only God himself knows better than the sufferer exactly what darkened her past and what will brighten her present. So you, as a couple, are in the driver’s seat. My role is merely to provide general thoughts and healing strategies for you to consider. Susie loves kissing her fiancé. Darren is a committed Christian she can trust never to go too far. Kissing makes her feel warm and secure and treasured. It wells within her special feelings toward Darren and even arouses slight longings for things she knows must wait until marriage, such as having her breasts fondled. Finally, the long-awaited wedding night arrives and they are alone together. Darren’s kisses are sweeter than ever. Before long, she can hold off no longer and exposes her chest to the most exquisite caresses she has ever known. Susie has barely begun to savor the experience, when Darren slips off his remaining clothes. Susie freezes in wide-eyed horror . Never has she seen up close an unclothed grown man other than when her uncle sexually abused her. Susie had always tried to put out of her mind the memory of that horrid sight that had assaulted her childhood innocence. She had hardly even considered what Darren might look like. This is not the Darren she had known. Never before having seen Darren undressed, she has never had the opportunity to associate what she is now seeing with dear, sweet Darren. She is looking at a normal man, but in the sum of Susie’s entire life experiences there is just one person who looks like that. She could hardly have been more shocked had Darren’s entire body transmuted to that of the beast who had mauled her childhood. Revulsion mixed with icy fear sweeps through her. Until Darren finally satisfies himself, the rest of what she had hoped would be her happiest night, is a nightmare for Susie. Next night, Darren starts kissing Susie, but it’s unlike anything she experienced before her wedding. She’s tense, afraid of what the kissing might lead to. She goes through the motions but it is only mildly pleasurable as she worries about what might be on tonight’s program. By the time Darren touches her breasts she’s petrified. Her mind races. Will this be a repeat of last night’s horror? She no longer wants him touching her. That portion for their lovemaking felt nice last night but her mind is too filled with what is next on the agenda for her to feel anything but revulsion. Over subsequent days there are repeat performances. Noticing that Darren’s kisses inevitably lead to sex, she can no longer be kissed without thinking of what will follow. So now kissing disgusts her. And it always happens in the bedroom. She’s beginning to feel uneasy about going to bed at night . . . Note how the cancer is spreading, killing off more and more of Susie’s love-life. What began as an upsetting reaction to a tiny aspect of marital relations is infecting more and more of the marriage. But if the chill of death can gradually spread through a marriage, so can the warm of love and life and pleasure. Just as feelings that make Susie recoil can escalate, so can feelings that make her long to be intimate with Darren. But it will take a new approach. First, let’s prepare ourselves. Destined for Pleasure Suppose a sadist forces down your throat cream cakes, chocolates, ice-cream and delicacies until you vomit. He keeps this up hour after hour, day after day until, when at last the ordeal is over, you cannot so much as look at delicious food without feeling repulsed. From then on you can eat nothing that tastes nice and you find even blandest the food almost intolerable. You would still have the physical capacity to greatly enjoy delicious food, but smothering this would be a nearly impenetrable psychological barrier preventing you from enjoying this pleasure. Had you suffered this trauma, I would want you never again to be forced, nor even to force yourself, to eat something delicious that you now find distasteful. What I would long for you, however, is for this ugly psychological scar to be painlessly removed so that you can again enjoy the delights of food, totally free from any unpleasantness. It is very similar when a woman has suffered sexual abuse. Something that should have been an exquisitely beautiful, precious, uniquely delightful experience – far more significant than enjoying mouth-watering food – is kept from her because of a formidable psychological barrier. This barrier – a scar from a horrific past ordeal – is like a cold slab of concrete sealing off access to a warm, cozy bed. The corridor to one’s fulfillment might as well be crammed with vipers, scorpions and crocodiles. The goal of this web series is that for such a woman to have all unpleasantness associated with sex disappear so utterly that she finds herself free to delight in what she was created to enjoy. I would like every couple reading this web series to have four goals. It might be too early for some readers to set these goals right now, but I would like them to gain these goals by the time they finish this web series. The first goal is that from now on the wife never again endures any unpleasantness associated with sex. Without ever going back on the commitment never to experience unpleasantness, I would like your second goal – a long term one – to be that the wife eventually reaches the point where she thoroughly enjoys everything that her husband would like her to enjoy. Putting these two goals together: we want the wife always free from the slightest unpleasantness associated with marital relations and for her to enjoy every bit of the pleasure that God longs for her to enjoy. The third goal is that the husband suffer a minimum of sexual frustration from now until the wife enjoys a total and permanent breakthrough. The final goal is that God’s approving smile be upon the entire healing process. Helping Husbands Understand It is exceptionally difficult for the average person to understand what awful and powerful fears, inhibitions and devastating feelings harass a woman who has suffered sexual trauma. And yet so much teeters on the husband gaining that understanding. All of this web series should be read by both partners but some parts are directed more toward wives, and certain other parts are more for husbands. This section, for example, is obviously particularly for husbands, but wives will also benefit. The typical reaction of a sexual abuse survivor is almost incomprehensible to people who have been spared such horror. This makes it very painful for her husband, who is likely to feel hurt, rejected and/or offended by his wife acting in a way that could easily, but very wrongly, be mistaken for selfish, irrational or spiteful behavior. Anyone with a severe phobia has a big advantage in grasping why a woman can deeply love her husband and long to delight him and yet find sexually relating to him a horrifying experience. If Romeo were terrified of heights, and Juliet were atop a high tower, love would not remove his terror as he contemplates climbing the shaky ladder. Fear could even make him tremble so much that he falls and seriously injures himself, thereafter further intensifying his fear of heights. His fear has nothing to do with his feelings for Juliet. In fact, the more he loves her, the greater his trauma, because part of him feels forced to do something that everything else within him recoils from doing. If Juliet were to make an issue out of this, feeling offended by his reluctance, she would be displaying her ignorance and inflaming what is already a dangerous situation. Or suppose you were terrified of snakes or spiders. An expert has a huge, fearsome specimen. He completely convinces you that it is harmless. He then asks you to hold it. If your phobia is full-blown, you would still be petrified, even though you trust the expert and are certain that handling it is safe. Similarly, a woman can totally trust her husband and be madly in love with him, but love and trust will not of themselves turn terror into enjoyment. Of themselves, love, trust and will-power will no more bring inner healing than they would instantly heal broken bones. Suppose a brute slashed your wife’s breasts. You can see deep, still-bleeding wounds. You would not take offense should she flinch if you attempt a mere hug. Only she can feel the pain, but the cause of the pain is easily verifiable. But what if her wounds were internal – broken ribs and punctured lung – with nothing external to betray the extent of her injuries? You would have to trust her assessment of pain. Emotional wounds are just as real and just as painful as gaping physical wounds but because they are internal, the cause cannot be observed. Only she can feel the pain, so you will need to trust her assessment. Such trust can sometimes be hard for partners who have little understanding of the devastating long term consequences of sexual abuse. Nevertheless, as Scripture’s Love Chapter affirms, love does its utmost to believe the beloved (1 Corinthians 13:7). Ignoring physical wounds or treating them unwisely could lead to dangerous infection or excessive scaring or needless deformity. Similarly, much depends upon how emotional wounds are treated, and one of the most critical factors in that treatment is the actions of those emotionally closest to the wounded person, particularly the husband. People often wonder why abuse survivors cannot simply put past sexual horrors out of their minds and enjoy lovemaking. That’s like wondering why someone whose broken leg has not healed cannot enjoy jogging. The trauma might have occurred forty years ago, but time alone does not heal. Healing is thrillingly possible, but it requires the right treatment and even then it is usually a lengthy process, and, as we have suggested, it will take more than love or will-power to bring about full healing. A woman facing this challenge wrote: My husband would never consider therapy. He doesn’t believe that anyone can help you except yourself. In his mind, you just don’t think about things that bother you. This is a common male reaction to problems. In fact, vast numbers of men have been pressured almost from birth to take on this attitude. Whether it be the tragic consequence of childhood brainwashing or simply a mixture of stubborn pride and ignorance, out of control, this attitude can be deadly. It is on par with a man pressuring his wife to ignore a cancerous lump, and before he knows it he is a widower. The leftover trauma from sexual abuse will no more go away by pretending it does not exist, than ignoring a malignant lump will make cancer go away. In fact, the abused woman’s husband ended up ruining his sex life because of the way he tormented his wife with his heartless and shallow approach to a deep, complex problem. To confirm that we are talking about something real and very serious, look at this brief article: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder One cannot set a timetable as to how long an abuse survivor’s healing will take. If she doesn’t heal within your time fame, the fault is not with her. The fault would lie only in your presumption to be able to forecast. To feel offended because your wife has not yet healed psychologically, is as irrational as taking it personally if she has not healed physically. Her feeblest attempt to yield to you is probably a greater demonstration of love, trust and devotion than anyone else on earth would dare attempt for you. Building Trust “Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle,” croons the lover in the Song of Solomon. Suppose you live on the edge of wild country in ancient Israel and you go for a hike. Suddenly, you hear a rustle. You look up and in the far distance two blurs bolt off, literally like startled gazelles. Before they disappear you glimpse just enough to be awed by the fawns’ grace and beauty, and yet one is wounded. Your heart melts. Welling within you is an almost irresistible urge to nurture and love and protect, and snuggle into those gorgeous creatures. But the twins have fled in terror. When some men look upon these delightful creatures they see nothing but game food. The fawns had been too young and innocent to sense danger when a man stalked them. They had never known what it was like to be preyed upon, as he drew his bow and took aim. In an instant, one was wounded. They barely escaped with their lives. Now, confused and vulnerable, the mere sight of a human terrifies them. How could you ever get these timid creatures to have such confidence in you that they would let you pat them? To entrap these wild creatures or imprison them would be to exploit them and act as cruelly as the one who wanted to cook them. You would need to be ever so gentle and patient. You could never use force or put demands on them. You would have to commit yourself, week after week after week, for as long as it takes to gain their trust. It would be painstakingly slow. You could make no sudden moves. When you are near them you would have to wait until you they are totally relaxed before you take the smallest step toward them. Then you would need to wait again and ensure they are completely at ease before taking another tiny step. When you finally get close enough, you would have to restrain any urge to lunge at them and grab them. Yes, if you were swift enough you might get to hold one that time, but thereafter your task would be so much harder. You would need to put emphasis on patiently trying to entice them, and as much as possible wait for them to come to you. It is with similar patience and tenderness, that a man must woo his wife after she has been preyed upon. The Lord must always be the wife’s ultimate security, and no one should dare take God’s place. But as God’s children, we are all in training to be like Father. Husband, in humble, sensitive dependence upon God, you must always seek to be her protector, her security, her warmth in the cold, the one she runs to when she wants to feel safe. Achieving this is a triumph that will demand enormous effort, given that it was a male who caused her the greatest trauma of her life. Moreover, it was a male who, like you, wanted sex with her. It is up to you – not her – whether you achieve the honor of being the one who makes her feel safe. It won’t happen if you are given to anger. She is very sensitive. Slamming the door or banging your fist on the table can terrify her. She can feel you are imagining it is her body you are being violent with. One such outburst could ruin weeks of building her confidence in you. The memory could stay with her for life. Showing displeasure, annoyance or whining about her inhibitions will make her feel a failure and inflame the false feeling of guilt that already makes sex difficult for her. Instead of putting her under the slightest emotional pressure, you should always be the one who inspires and builds her up. She needs you to be sympathetic, gentle, soothing, encouraging; the one who always assures her it is alright when she feels defeated over not being able to meet your desires. Building your wife’s trust in you is critically important. With it, your very presence gives her security and comfort, letting her confidence soar like a helium balloon set free. It makes you her solid friend and ally, as unitedly you fight the common enemy of horrific memories that continue to assault her. Without it, you are her potential enemy, in danger of worsening the situation whenever you are near. An essential ingredient in building trust is that you never, ever, continue with anything sexual for a moment after she indicates she wants you to stop. Yes, this will demand self-mastery of heroic proportions, but with Almighty God dwelling within, you can tap into superhuman power to do what other men would find impossible. We will later discuss practical helps in achieving this. Building the Wife’s Motivation If you have yet to discover the unique fulfillment that Jesus offers, the following section may seem over-endowed with religious terminology. You can skip it if you wish, but most abuse survivors have fallen prey to a psychologically crippling condition known to behavioral scientists as learned helplessness, and this serious need is addressed here. It will particularly help Christians gain needed motivation, but other readers will benefit as well. Maybe you have sung in church about going to the enemy’s camp and taking back what he stole from you. That’s what this webpage is about – for the glory of the One who originally gave it to you, reclaiming what was stolen from you. I’m referring to your purity, your carefree innocence, your ability to find uninhibited delight in the man God has given you, and experiencing oceans of exquisite and wholesome pleasure that thrill you, your husband, and the God who loves you. The Old Testament reveals God’s heart in declaring that when a thief is caught, he must restore to his victim everything he has stolen. In fact, God’s law required the thief to give his victim many times more than he had stolen. This divine justice reflects God’s longing for you. You have the right to expect not only the restoration of everything you have lost, but to end up with even more than you would have enjoyed had you never been abused. This is the fulfillment of God’s promise that all things will work together for good for anyone who truly loves God and yields to him. Picture yourself living in ancient Israel. Your entire livelihood depends on your flock of one hundred sheep. One night someone steals the lot. In horror, you realize that without those sheep you could end up so indebted that in time you and all your family could be sold into slavery. As the shock hits home, you wish you were dead. But you must stir yourself and not surrender to defeatist’s thoughts. Everything depends upon getting those sheep back. You look for tracks, you question people, you travel everywhere examining sheep to determine whether they are yours. Days turn into weeks. It’s hopeless. You want to give up, but week after week you keep forcing yourself on. Finally you locate the thief. You notify the authorities. They enforce the law. The thief is compelled to return not only as many sheep as you lost but a total of four hundred sheep! (Exodus 22:1; 2 Samuel 12:6) What you suffered when you thought you had lost everything would have been so awful that you would not want a repeat, no matter how well it turned out, but nonetheless, you would be partying all the way to the bank. To deny yourself fulfillment that is rightfully yours is to let your abuser win. But you can pursue that pleasure, doggedly resisting thoughts of surrender until you track it down and end up more blessed than ever. The first two steps toward receiving your healing involve recognizing the value of what has been stolen from you, and becoming determined to get it back. Just before he became king, raiders attacked David’s village while he away, plundering his private things and kidnapping his loved ones. Upon discovering the tragedy, David was numb with shock. Then he wept, he wailed, he mourned, he lamented. He probably crashed through almost every negative emotion known to humanity, having waves of anger, remorse, blaming God, blaming others, and blaming himself. These feelings have a legitimate place. As Ecclesiastes says, there is a time to mourn. David held nothing back in his emotional outburst, continuing until his strength drained from him. Then he began to encourage himself in God. He started preaching to himself; forcefully reminding himself that God is his hope, God is his joy, God is his provider. He shut off the questions and accusations against God; closing his mind to what he did not understand, and focusing on what he knew – that no matter how high the mountain of supposed evidence to the contrary, God is good, God will strengthen him, God will bless him. After building himself up in this fashion, David took the next critical step. He determined not to let the enemy get away with it. He decided that everything taken from him was his by right and that if he fought to get it back, Almighty God would be on his side, empowering him. He was convinced that what had been stolen from him – his God-given loved ones, prized possessions and personal treasures – were so precious that they were worth risking everything – even his very life – to get them back. This should mirror your attitude. Yes, you’ve had a right to grief and anger and blaming and feeling sorry for yourself and every negative emotion ever experienced. You’ve had it tough. But you have a powerful God who backs you one hundred percent and wants the very best for you. Don’t pretend that what you have lost is of little value. It is priceless – worth so much more than every bit of effort it takes to reclaim it. Even though you might never as yet have experienced the beauty of God’s gift, by faith grow in the conviction that because God is the Creator, marital relations are a priceless gift, worth whatever it takes to get it back. Rise up with a dogged determination not to let the enemy rip you off any longer. Just as a fear of flying could keep you from all sorts of exotic adventures in faraway places that nothing else could equal, so sexual fears could keep you from unique joys. I’m not suggesting for of moment that you suffer the trauma of enduring fear, all I’m asking is that you begin to long for the removal of the fear so that you might luxuriate in pleasures what you were created to enjoy. There are times when it is not only right to get angry but wrong not to get angry. Remember Jesus’ display of anger at the money changers in the temple. That was no moral slip. In fact, his anger added to his disciples’ conviction that Jesus was of God (John 2:13-17). Misdirected, self-righteous anger is wrong, but there is a holy anger that is glorifying to God. If you have ever felt angered by an injustice, you should feel angry at what has happened to you. Anger should not be directed toward humans, because ultimately our fight is not with flesh and blood but with evil spiritual powers who delight in using humans as pawns in their deadly games. The goal of your anger should be the restoration of God’s glory in your life. It is recognizing that sexuality is a precious expression of God’s love to you and a manifestation of God’s glory and that for a married person to abandon his/her sexual potential would be to let evil triumph. Sexual abuse must surely be high on the list of the greatest evils earth has known. This evil is not defeated until the beauty of God’s gift is restored in the lives of those who have suffered this offense. Don’t let the devil cheat you out of the joy that is rightfully yours. Had you been blinded by your abuser, you would not only long for your eyes to stop hurting; you would want to regain your eyesight. Had he disfigured your face, you would want your looks restored. Similarly, your ultimate healing from the sexual trauma you suffered is not just an end to your inner pain, but for you to regularly enjoy great sexual pleasure in the way that puts a smile of your Maker’s face. To a man’s despair, his wife became a “born again religious fanatic.” Because she is dear to him, he let her drag him to church. The dreary saga continued for years. Then, in one of those church services, he yielded to God. Suddenly his life transformed. For the rest of his life he was so thankful that his wife had the spiritual drive that he once despised. He was delighted that her longings combined with his love for her had moved him to do what at the time he had no desire for. Similarly, do not despise your husband’s sex drive. Like that wife’s spiritual drive, it is God’s blessing to you. It is your link to full healing. Now that we have gained a deeper insight into the cause and nature of sexual inhibitions, and explored some reasons for girding ourselves with the stubborn determination needed to beat this insidious enemy, we are ready to return to Susie and Darren and discover how they can tap into bottomless wells of pleasure in each other. Continued: Spreading the Warmth 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.

Damned by God?     Could You Have Exhausted God’s Grace and Patience and be Condemned to Eternal Damnation?     There is Still Hope     The Mysterious Nature of Prophecy     In the previous webpage ( Feeling Rejected by God ) it was becoming evident that behind even dramatic displays of divine rejection is a surprise hidden motive. It is typical of the God of the Bible that the driving force behind divine declarations of doom is God’s longing to inspire the apparently damned people to receive great blessing.   We’ll continue to explore this astounding discovery; examining Scriptural instances of people seemingly rejected or even damned by God. In the process, we will gain fascinating, little-known insights into the nature of Old Testament prophecy. Our aim, however, is not mere head knowledge, but the heart-warming discovery of how loving and forgiving God really is, and the immense comfort this brings us when we feel condemned or rejected by God.   Hidden Love   Jonah was not an evangelist. As clearly stated in Scripture, this man was a prophet (2 Kings 14:25). His prophecy from God to the Ninevites was that in just forty more days, they would be destroyed (Jonah 3:4). That was his entire message. The prophecy held not a shadow of hope. God’s chosen instrument to pronounce this death sentence was a man who hated these people with a passion. He wanted them annihilated. You can be sure there was nothing about the body language or tone of voice of this messenger from God to hint to these pagans that the God of this foreigner might be loving or merciful. Everything hitting their senses told them they were doomed. They were wicked. They deserved destruction. Their time was up. And yet, desperately longing to find hope where there was no hope, the Ninevites repented and earnestly sought God, just like Jonah had dreaded and the Lord had secretly yearned for.   The prophet had tried to flee from his mission because he knew the tender heart that beat beneath the stony exterior God typically presents to the world. He knew God would delight in turning the Almighty’s prophecy into a false prophecy. He knew the Lord’s apparent harshness and rejection was only to inspire God’s enemies to change into people he could pour out his love and mercy upon.   I doubt very much that you have had a personal word from God pronouncing your doom. If you were convinced you had received such a word it would almost certainly be a trick from the Enemy of our souls, whom Scripture calls the Deceiver, the Accuser and the one who masquerades as an angel of light. He lusts after your relationship with God; yearning to rob you by sabotaging your faith in God’s eagerness to bless you. He would get his fill of sadistic pleasure out of you believing him when he slanders the Faithful One. How dare he suggest that God – who commands everyone to forgive seventy times seven – would himself have a limit on how many times he will forgive you, who long for forgiveness! That is accusing the Holy One of hypocrisy! The Deceiver’s hope is that, weighed down by gloom and doubts about God’s faithfulness, you might give up on the One who would never give up on you.   Nevertheless, let’s just suppose you were genuinely told by God that you are doomed. Even then, that pronouncement would not be the final word. If the reversal of Jonah’s prophecy does not convince you, let’s examine yet another biblical example of God’s eagerness to trash his own prophecy of doom.   Isaiah 38:1  In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, “This is what the LORD says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.”  (2)  Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD,  (3)  . . . And Hezekiah wept bitterly.  (4)  Then the word of the LORD came to Isaiah:  (5)  “Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life.  (6)  And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. . . .   What makes our relationship with God so perplexing is that he has intelligence that is infinitely beyond our own. Only a genius could have guessed the effect of the Lord’s negative prophecy through Isaiah. Because of the Almighty’s pronouncement, “Hezekiah wept bitterly.” Suddenly in Hezekiah’s eyes it was no longer a matter of sickness or health, but life or death. The message of doom intensified his prayers, powering him to a life-changing miracle. Hezekiah’s breakthrough hinged on two things: God implying his fate was sealed, and Hezekiah refusing to accept it as final.   Rare Exceptions to the Rule?   I’ve gone way outside mainstream Old Testament prophecy to find a couple of highly exceptional examples, right? Wrong. Many Christians are like me in having wrongly supposed that if God prophesies something, it is final. The startling truth is that Scripture emphatically and repeatedly declares that whether God’s prophecies come true depends on the response of the people the prophecy is aimed at. We’ve looked at famous minor prophet Jonah and major prophet Isaiah. Let’s now seal it with the pronouncement of yet another renowned prophet: Jeremiah. This time, the Lord, through the prophet, clearly states the very principle we have discovered:   Jeremiah 18:7  If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed,  (8)  and if that nation  . . . repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned.   We are plunging into some of the blackest parts of Scripture and yet even here we keep finding enormous hope for any condemned person or nation that repents. The Bible was written not as an historical curiosity; it was written by God for  you  (Romans 15:4; 1 Corinthians 9:10; 10:6,11). So if ever you feel damned and utterly rejected by God, take seriously Scripture’s words of hope to people who likewise seemed doomed.   Later in the same book the Lord again reveals the intent of his prophecies of disaster:   Jeremiah 26:3  Perhaps they will listen and each will turn from his evil way. Then I will relent and not bring on them the disaster I was planning because of the evil they have done.   Jeremiah 26:13  Now reform your ways and your actions and obey the LORD your God. Then the LORD will relent and not bring the disaster he has pronounced against you.   Jeremiah 36:3  Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about every disaster I plan to inflict on them, each of them will turn from his wicked way; then I will forgive their wickedness and their sin.   These verses in Jeremiah are like islands of hope in a terrifying sea of fire. Prophecies of judgment are often worded as if God hates the people and that their fate is sealed. Our Lord goes to such lengths in firing words of doom at people not because there is no hope of them escaping the prophesied disasters, but precisely because there is hope. Prophecies are worded to seem final, not because everything is set in concrete, but to arm the prophecies with sufficient power to blast people back to reality. Our loving Lord goes to the extreme of what seem angry, hate-filled words as a last-ditch effort to snap his loved ones out of the complacency that is threatening their eternity. In his grace, he is giving them a foretaste of what it would be like unless they get serious with God, the only one who can save them. So most prophecies are not declaring the inevitable future but are detailing what the target audience can expect if they do not change their hearts.   Again in Amos 7:1-3 the prophet is shown in a vision a swarm of locusts that devastates the entire land. Amos intercedes, asking the Lord’s forgiveness, and the Lord relents, promising it will not happen. Then in the next verses we read:   Amos 7:4  This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: The Sovereign LORD was calling for judgment by fire; it dried up the great deep and devoured the land.  (5)  Then I cried out, “Sovereign LORD, I beg you, stop! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!”  (6)  So the LORD relented. “This will not happen either,” the Sovereign LORD said.   It is not our purpose here to explore prophecies of blessings, but Scripture is clear that the same principle applies: a change of heart – this time a change for the worse – can also nullify prophecies of blessings (1 Samuel 2:30; Jeremiah 18:7; Ezekiel 33:13).   If your mind is reeling as your entire view of prophecy comes crashing down, I can well understand your reaction. We’ve now looked at four prophets. Scripture says that the truth of a matter shall be established out of the mouth of two or three witnesses. To God, for a prophecy of doom to “fail” is the ultimate success. Nevertheless, the notion that divine prophecies can fail to materialize is so shattering to common opinion, that perhaps you are demanding a fifth Scriptural witness. No problem. This time we will go to yet another major prophet: Ezekiel.   Ezekiel 33:14  And if I say to the wicked man, “You will surely die,” but he then turns away from his sin and does what is just and right . . .  (16)  None of the sins he has committed will be remembered against him. He has done what is just and right; he will surely live.   The yearning of God’s heart is not to waste people’s time by giving them information they can’t do anything with; much less to torment them by letting them know there is no hope. What drives our Lord to talk about future disasters is a longing to avert tragedy. As God, through Ezekiel, said just moments earlier:   Ezekiel 33:11  Say to them, “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. . . .”   God’s purpose in telling people they are facing destruction is to motivate them to call upon him, because “Everyone [no exceptions] who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Joel 2:32; Romans 10:13). If God truly wanted people damned, he would keep them blissfully ignorant of their fate because once they realized their fearful predicament, they might call out to God for help. Then the Lord would be compelled to keep his word and save them!   Now that I have cited two minor and three major prophets, for any reader to have the tiniest doubt would be ridiculous. If, after all of this, someone wanted still more confirmation, I would be astounded, but I would be quite unfazed. You see, Scripture heaps up even more proof. Let’s look at yet another minor prophet. Micah’s ministry is summarized in one of Scripture’s historical comments.   Jeremiah 26:18  “Micah of Moresheth prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah. He told all the people of Judah, ‘This is what the LORD Almighty says: “‘Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets.’   Here, yet again, we have a prophecy of doom, offering no hope. Let’s read the next verse:   Jeremiah 26:19  “ . . . Did not Hezekiah fear the LORD and seek his favor? And did not the LORD relent, so that he did not bring the disaster he pronounced against them? . . .”   Let’s examine Micah’s prophecy to see if it really was as damning as the above quote suggests:   Micah 1:1  The word of the LORD that came to Micah of Moresheth during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah – the vision he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. . . .  3:9  Hear this, you leaders of the house of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel, who despise justice and distort all that is right; . . .  (12)  . . .  because of you, Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets.   Perhaps you are sometimes tempted to feel as doomed to destruction as Jerusalem was in this prophecy. If so, remember that Hezekiah repented and the Lord relented.   We’ve noted that even prophecies of blessing can be nullified. That means we can’t be complacent. If you are fearing that you have gone beyond God’s grace, however, that very fear means that, regardless of how you felt other times, you are anything but complacent right now. It would be a mistake to take Scriptures intended for the complacent or rebellious, and apply them to yourself if, as of this moment, you are no longer complacent or rebellious. You might have appallingly abused God’s grace right up until ten seconds ago, but because of the power of Jesus’ blood to wipe out the past, all that matters is your present attitude.   There’s More: Don’t miss this next page Punished by God   Warning:   These Pages Won’t Help Everyone   Some people terrified about being unforgivable just need Bible-based reassurance or an explanation of a disturbing Scripture. If vast amounts of rational support and biblical exposition are the answer, keep following the links. Many Christians, however, presume this is what they need but it turns out that no amount of biblical proof or sound, theological argument or even spectacular spiritual experience can put their minds to rest. If you have already sought much help but worries keep resurfacing, you most likely need a totally different approach. You should skip these pages (you can return later if you wish) and go straight to  Scrupulosity .

Recovery From Sexual Trauma This continues a web series that begins at When a Woman Doesn’t Want Sex Back to Susie and Darren We left with newly weds, Susie and Darren, suffering a disturbing escalation of sexual problems. Susie froze upon seeing her husband naked on her wedding night. Now this chilling reminder of Susie’s childhood abuse is spreading, icing up more and more of her relationship with Darren. But there is hope. Patiently apply a heat source to a corner of a block of ice and the warmth will slowly spread, eventually melting the entire block. I am acutely conscious that as any normal man reads the following he will squirm, agonizing over how he could ever attain the degree of self-control required to honor his wife and his God. Be assured that further on in this web series this vital matter is fully and sensitively explored, with some very practical solutions canvassed. I would plead for Susie and Darren to carefully, lovingly discuss ahead of time what might best comfort Susie should, in the midst of lovemaking, she suddenly have a severe emotional reaction, like when she first saw Darren naked. If ever Susie were to suffer such distress it would be critical to calm her as soon and as effectively as possible, and so minimize the damage caused by the reaction. To grasp the importance of this, consider what a setback it would be if a person fell off a cliff in the midst of trying to overcome a fear of heights. Just how major this setback is would depend on how painful and traumatic the fall was. Likewise, it would be a blow to the quick resolution of Susie’s and Darren’s sexual difficulties if Susie suffered a horrific flashback when making love. Nevertheless, the more the trauma can be minimized, the less it will damage their future lovemaking. Even if this were not so, we would still want Susie quickly comforted but in this case it is doubly important. Susie and Darren would need to discuss such things as: How would Susie feel if Darren held her tight while she was still shaken by the experience? Would this be reassuring or might it make her feel her as if she were being forcibly restrained and so increase her panic? Would a hot drink help, or would Darren’s absence while he prepares it be disconcerting? Would it be worthwhile placing a hot drink nearby in a flask? It would be helpful for them to talk through all the options they can think of that might comfort and soothe Susie. Throughout these discussions, Darren should patiently realize that Susie will have only a vague idea of how she would really respond should that crisis hit. Nevertheless, this in-depth sharing will give Darren valuable clues as to what might best work in that crisis and what should be avoided. I also suggest they discuss with Susie’s doctor the possibility of having a medical option in place for such an emergency. Medicine is way outside my expertise, so Susie and Darren would need to be guided by their doctor, but what I have in mind is medication, such as valium, that can be taken immediately after the event to quickly calm a distressed person. I’m not thinking of regularly taking something “just in case,” (unless the doctor were to prescribe this because Susie’s anxiety levels are constantly high). What I have in mind is simply having prescribed medication readily available that would calm Susie quickly, should lovemaking trigger a flashback of past horror. Addiction to medication and side effects are a concern, but if restricted to emergencies – and if emergencies themselves are avoided as much as possible – this should not be a problem. They should also discuss everything about the physical and emotional setting that might help Susie feel warm, relaxed, content, secure, special, loved, cherished, happy, attractive and romantic. Should it be preceded by a romantic meal? Should Darren shower and use an after-shave Susie has selected? How should he dress? Things to consider about the physical setting include lighting, room temperature, flowers, cushions and whatever else Susie feels makes it cozy and cheery and romantic. What mood would she find most helpful – joyful, relaxed, sensual, worshipful? They could select music to help set the preferred mood. Maybe Susie will surprise Darren by saying she would feel more secure if someone else were present in another room. All such things should be chosen according to Susie’s taste, not Darren’s, since her sensitivities are currently the biggest concern. If this seems one-sided, it is for this time necessary. However, Susie should be longing for the time when she is healed enough to balance the score. Of course, every person is unique, so throughout this web series I can only cite possibilities that you as a couple need to drastically modify for your situation. With you, for example, it might be that the wife finds it intolerable to have her breasts seen or touched, in which case what I’m about to mention would be most inappropriate for you. I’ll continue with Susie and Darren, trusting your intelligence to adapt it to your unique situation. The Healing Begins On his wedding night, Darren had no way of knowing what would trigger a negative reaction within Susie. Ideally, however, he should have proceeded very slowly. Susie should have alerted him the moment she felt the slightest discomfort and Darren should have immediately backed off and done everything in his power to comfort and reassure her. (Sloppy typing and my spell checker conspired in an earlier draft to make the last sentence read, Susie should have altered him the moment . . . “Oh if it were only that easy!” laughed the first woman to spot the error.) To improve their sexual relationship, Darren and Susie must first undo the damage caused by them not stopping when Susie had been traumatized by seeing Darren unclothed. They need to discuss in detail what things make Susie feel uncomfortable, and set rigidly-adhered to rules that will give Susie the security she desperately needs. Probably they will start by ensuring that for the next several lovemaking sessions they will not allow themselves to proceed beyond what they had felt comfortable about before they were married; restricting themselves to kissing fully clothed. They will probably also decide to keep the bedroom off-limits to any form of lovemaking, since at present Susie associates the bedroom with past traumas she has experienced with Darren. They need to keep to this restriction for as long as it takes for Susie to learn to trust Darren fully and to feel as secure and positive toward him as she had prior to marriage. Darren must be very patient at this time. Trust cannot be forced. Darren must prove himself to her by never overstepping the agreed-to boundaries. If Darren were to shatter that trust even once, it will be a big setback for them. When at last Susie has returned to the confidence she had just before the wedding night, they need to discuss the next step. This will probably be for Susie, during a time of passionate kissing, to signal when she is ready to have her neck caressed. This will be done with the understanding that Susie will always remain in control because Darren will stop the instant she tells him to. Over the next sessions, Darren’s stroking, which will always begin with her neck after a long time of kissing, can slowly move toward her breasts, directed entirely by Susie’s desires. Darren should try never again to move ahead of what Susie longs for at any given moment. He should, for instance, kiss her until she is begging for him to touch her breasts and even then perhaps hold back just a little. Let her longing build up. After several such sessions, if Susie is feeling confident they can slowly proceed further. Once Darren discovers something new that she likes he should stay there for many minutes, allowing her to acclimatize to the new experience and learn to enjoy it. While introducing the new – it might be stroking her thighs, for instance – he should, as much as possible, simultaneously keep doing whatever Susie is already comfortable with and enjoys. While stroking her thighs, he might keep kissing her lips, interspersed with verbally reassuring her of this love. Or, if she is totally relaxed about having her breasts caressed and thoroughly enjoys it, he might caress her with one hand on her thigh and the other on her breast. By so doing, he is building a link in her mind between the new, which she finds mildly pleasant, and the established, which she finds highly enjoyable. In time – several sessions later, perhaps – the build up of arousal could awaken a new desire within Susie, such as the caressing of her buttocks. If so, she should convey this to Darren. If not, he might help her discover new pleasures by Darren gradually exploring different parts of her body in a way and at a pace that Susie feels perfectly comfortable with. Once the new is firmly established in Susie’s repertoire of nice feelings, the couple can slowly begin to move to another new thing. Susie might sometimes wonder why she should bother to progress, when she feels happy to remain where she is, enjoying what she already feels comfortable with. But new sensations offer unique delights. I love apples, but there is so much more to food than that. I would not want to spend the rest of my life restricted to only eating apples. And not only does further sexual exploration offer new delights, some of them will be even more wonderful than anything Susie has so far enjoyed. Each small progression will probably take many sessions, but the exciting thing for Darren is that the warmth is spreading. The icy coldness is retreating. When Things Go Wrong When making love, Susie should try to give her husband constant feedback of her every little feeling and not wait until something dramatic happens before telling him. If she begins to feel uneasy she should also immediately mention it, trusting Darren’s love and understanding to be such that he would not be offended. He must stop as if his life depended upon it, cover up if needed, and reassure her. He should gently, soothingly consult with Susie as to what would make her feel more at ease. The whole incident should be bathed in calm, faith-filled prayer. Darren will be guided by what Susie had earlier told him would most likely comfort her, but because it is hard for anyone to predict ahead of time what would work best, Darren must remain flexible; alert that Susie might feel the need to change from the pre-arranged plan. He should seek to do whatever she feels it takes to calm and comfort her – even if she tells him to leave the room. She needs whatever will most quickly restore her feeling of security and makes her feel in control of the situation. After Susie has calmed, and if she feels up to it, they should try to focus on the enjoyment they experienced prior to the trauma; going over the good parts in their minds and telling each other about how much it meant to them. They should realize that not only can they find ways around the negative, they can learn to prolong the positive. They have learned something valuable this time. Next time will be better because they will know what to avoid. If Susie is up to it – she probably will not be – they could end the session with a repeat of the earlier fun, ensuring they stay well within the realms of safe and familiar territory. After Susie has totally calmed – perhaps a day later, but before another time of making love – Darren should seek clarification from Susie as to what she thought triggered the adverse reaction. It is possible that it was so subconscious that she does not even know. Don’t dig up the distant past, but in prayerful, confident dependence upon God, try to work out together exactly what would be best to avoid. For the next couple of passionate times, renewed caution is called for. Susie needs to regain her confidence. So for those times, leave a wide safety margin. If all goes well, after a few sessions they can prayerfully discuss where it would be safe to shift the boundaries. As the couple inch forward, fears will gradually dissolve. To illustrate, let’s deal with Susie’s shock at seeing Darren’s body. Both Darren and Susie need reassurance that Susie’s reaction is not the slightest reflection on her love, nor the slightest indication of any inadequacy in Darren. The problem is simply the emergence of a ‘ghost’ from Susie’s past. In consultation with Susie, Darren will need to work out ways of being as intimate with Susie as she wants, while concealing whatever needs to be concealed. They should creatively consider together various options in clothing, lighting, whether Susie, upon a signal from Darren, should close her eyes, or focus solely on his face, and so on. They should carefully put in place precautions that will reduce the possibility of Susie accidentally seeing anything that might slightly disturb her. When, after several days or weeks, Susie is feeling ready, they should discuss how Susie can begin to associate with the Darren she loves, those parts of his body which prior to marriage he had rightly kept covered. It might be best to find a warm but non-sexual situation in which to begin. That might make it less emotionally charged for Susie. Also, the sight of Darren aroused might at this early stage be more disturbing for her. Even the sight of Darren’s bare chest might take some getting used to. If this is even slightly so, Susie and Darren might sometimes agree to do something like watching television together, with Darren having his shirt off. Or, it might feel more normal to Susie if, dressed in swimming wear they go for a swim together several times. They could also discuss whether there might be ways of making Darren’s body look less like what Susie remembers of her abuser’s body. Possibilities include using preparations that make the skin look more suntanned, and bleaching or shaving body hair. All such things must be prayerfully worked out as a couple. It must not be something Darren decides on his own initiative and then thrusts upon Susie. No matter how good his intentions, this is too risky. One possibility might be for Darren to work out some rather comical strip routines in which they both know that fully revealing himself is several routines away and he’ll give her adequate warning. Humor is a good way to reduce tension. Another possibility is that one day, when Susie is feeling relaxed and happy, she might warn Darren what is about to happen (I’d advise a warning at this early stage) and playfully enter the bathroom when Darren is about to have a shower. For as long as it’s fun, she can stay, but if she begins to tense up, it’s time to leave. Susie should also mentally prepare herself, telling herself as she imagines seeing him unclothed: This is my darling. This is the body God lovingly fashioned for him. He is beautiful. He is perfect for me. Seeing him will further my healing. It’s my reaction, not his body, that is less than perfect. I am honored to be able to see him. Darren grants no other woman this privilege. If her own nudity makes her feel uneasy, Susie should try to become more comfortable about her body. For instance, after taking a shower, if she is securely alone she might sometimes decide to go about her household chores without bothering to dress. If Susie finds that too big a step, by now I think you are beginning to understand what she should do. Susie should simply find smaller steps and take longer to reach her goal. For the first few times she might remain partially clothed, or remain locked in the bathroom and simply change her routine such as cleaning her teeth before dressing. Susie should only move to the next little step after feeling comfortable with the one she has already taken. The critical thing is not how many weeks or months it takes but that she is gradually moving forward. When, after as many weeks as it takes, Susie feels ready for intercourse, they should take the precaution of using plenty of lubricant, such as K-Y Jelly, to minimize any physical discomfort. Until Susie is sufficiently experienced to find intercourse so enjoyable that she wants to prolong it, they should ensure Darren is near climax before entry. Every couple need to realize that there is sure to be some degree of unevenness in anyone’s recovery. A recovering wife will have times when she feels more confident and adventurous than others. In fact, such swings can be quite marked. This can be frustrating, but accepting such times as a minor hiccup and not letting them upset you, will aid recovery. Here’s a suggested prayer for wives: Precious Lord, Like the phantom pain from an amputated limb, false guilt feelings sometimes harass me, and yet the truth is that because of you, my past sins have vanished. Through the miracle of Jesus trading places with me you have bestowed on me the moral perfection of my Savior. So it seems pointless me trying to analyze my past degree of innocence, or otherwise, in the events that emotionally wounded me. Regardless of sex, before your astounding forgiveness, I stood utterly condemned, having willfully done things that broke your heart. I keep hiding from the fact but the reality is that like the rest of humanity I deserved no less than an eternity in hell. And yet you offer me heaven, having made me sparklingly pure in your holy eyes. Cause me to delight in the purity and freedom from guilt that is now mine through Christ. My experiences with sex have been so awful that I tend to hate not just the abuse of the gift – which I have every right to despise – but the gift itself. Nevertheless, by sheer faith in your goodness I affirm that what was so horribly wrong was not your perfect gift but the way it was abused for evil purposes, totally contrary to your loving ways. By faith in you, the Creator of sex and the Source of love and purity and holy perfection, I declare that marital relations are good and pure and holy. It is an exquisite gift from the God who delights in blessing me beyond all I could ask or think. Sex is your beautiful wedding gift lovingly given to me just because you want to thrill me. Because you always knew I would marry, you placed your present within me from before I was born and caused it to grow. Tragically, your delicate gift was opened ahead of time and savagely vandalized beyond recognition. What was originally holy and beautiful, now seems an ugly, filthy, guilty mess. What was intended as a delight and a blessing now feels like a curse. But you love me, and I refuse to leave your precious wedding present mangled and discarded in a dark corner of my life. I want to honor you as the giver of this love-gift by seeing it restored to its intended beauty and by thoroughly delighting in your generosity to me. Cause me to turn that gift, once so abused and despised, into a thing of beauty that floods me with joy, enhances my marriage, and glorifies you. Your Husband’s Sex Drive: Your Link to God’s Healing You have only to glance at women’s magazines to know that women find sex a most exciting adventure and a uniquely exquisite source of pleasure and fulfillment. Christians tend to cherish the wonder and intimacy of the experience by being more private about the subject but some research suggests that women who are committed Christians typically find sex even more exciting and delightfully fulfilling than worldly women. Until you find healing, however, you are a sexual cripple who is missing out on so much and your handicap makes you a burden to the man you mean so much to. I speak this way not to distress you but to inspire you to press through to the healing that is rightfully yours. You are like a wheel-chair-bound person who, despite the potential to be healed, will never in her life walk unless she has someone devoted to her whose longing to see her become normal is so incredibly intense that long after everyone else has written her off as hopelessly incurable he will keep trying to motivate her and relentlessly help her breakthrough. In fact, sexually you are doomed unless you are blessed with someone so driven that he persistently refuses to let you lay down and die. If you are married, most likely you are blessed with such a man, even though before your healing is complete it might feel like a curse. In the next webpage we will discuss your husband's sex drive. His sexual passions might at present be like a wild fire but, as impossible as it seems, they can be tamed and become a beautiful source of warmth and security to you. So, despite your reservations, I encourage to boldly read this next webpage, which will include a deeper explanation of how your husband’s sex drive is your link to God’s healing. Husbands will be wondering how any red-blooded man could possibly cope with the sexual pressure of a go-slow approach. This matter is vital to both partners and it is squarely addressed in the next webpage. Prayerfully, what I have just shared has empowered wives to embrace with positive anticipation the challenge of understanding their husbands’ yearnings and discovering how it can become an enormous source of blessing to women for whom sex has until now brought nothing but pain. Continued . . . Help for the Husband (Most important for wives as well) 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.

From Grantley Morris 26/02/2026 Our original net-burst.net was hacked and lost. Since then, Coral has been working hard, laboriously transferring WITHOUT CHARGE large numbers of pages from our lost site to the new site (no easy task and she also has arthritis). She is also upgrading it to make it more user-friendly for modern devices and making it easier to translate into a wide number of languages. Coral needs our support. She is living in an African nation where her race is highly discriminated against by the corrupt government. She used to be able to pick up a tiny bit of casual work to barely support herself but try as she might there has been absolutely no paid work since the beginning of November last year. She writes: Please pray that I can find some work. So far, I have been unable to find anything. Thank you in advance for your prayers and bless you. ------ This is a new situation for me, Grantley, as I have always been self-supporting; working in a secular job part time and doing everything related to the site for free. For years I have been too ill to work and despite Australia's declining economy and our huge, unexpected family expenses, my wife, Vicki, has been seriously risking her health doing her utmost to support our family and Coral's family. But nothing is too hard for God. Let's see what he does.

Helping Victims Understand Incest When Being an Incest Victim Does Not Feel Real or Bad Incest victims for whom the offence hardly seems real, or it feels like a minor matter, need the special help below. If, however, you are acutely aware of the gravity of the crime committed against you, go immediately to Healing from Sex Abuse . Children can be molested by someone that they end up deeply loving and perhaps feeling fiercely loyal to, and this unusually strong attachment can continue long into adulthood, with them excusing what was done to them or even refusing to believe it ever happened. One such woman bared her heart to me. Her mother had always been cold toward her, even when she was very little; seldom hugging her and refusing to comfort her even though she suffered greatly through such things as being scared of the dark and finding it very hard to sleep. Her father was often away, thus increasing her insecurity, but when he was home he would often come to her in the night and give her the tenderness and comfort she needed and desperately craved. During such times, however, he sexually fondled her, giving her warm sexual comfort. Sometimes what he did caused her intense physical pain but even then he showed he cared by speaking soothingly to her, indicating that he did not want it to hurt, that it would hurt less if she relaxed, and so on. This woman was about fifty when she wrote to me, saying she had difficulty believing her father’s molestation ever happened and asking if the healing she knew she desperately needed would require her to believe it actually happened. She had a boatload of unpleasant symptoms and flashbacks, some of which, even to her, were obviously due to child sex abuse but she found it almost impossible to believe that the offender was her father and she kept reverting to thinking/hoping the offender must have been some unknown person. Even though her father’s two brothers were convicted child sex molesters, she believed he was just too nice a person ever to have done such a thing. He strongly denied it, and even if he had done it, he meant the world to her and she desperately wanted to protect his reputation. As a child, lumbered with the appalling quandary of the father she desperately needed and loved having repeatedly hurt her physically and who insisted she keep secret the “special” things he did to her, she learned to cope in a way that is fairly common in such tragedies: parts of her carried all the disturbing memories so that other parts were completely unaware of them and so were enabled to maintain the delusion that she had a good, safe father who truly cared for her and delighted in her. This compartmentalizing of her memories is called Dissociative Identity Disorder, or more popularly known as multiple personalities. Through me talking with her parts, it was clear that her father had indeed regularly raped her but her adult parts were either adamant that it could not possibly have happened or kept reverting to trying to convince themselves it never happened. Some parts were actually aware of the facts of the offenses but other parts bore all the emotions associated with the offenses. This loss of emotional response made it all feel unreal, even to those parts who knew the facts, and that’s the way she preferred it, since her father meant so much to her and she wanted to hold him in the highest esteem and to protect him. She desperately wanted to believe that even if it had happened, it was no big deal. She forgave him and believed that God had forgiven him because he was a godly man – even though Scripture insists that forgiveness hinges on us confessing our sin and her father refused to admit he had ever done it. Proverbs 28:13 He who conceals his sins doesn’t prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy. (Emphasis mine.) Jeremiah 2:35 Yet you said, ‘I am innocent. Surely his anger has turned away from me.’ Behold, I will judge you, because you say, ‘I have not sinned.’ 1 John 1:8-10 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we haven’t sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. For more on this matter, see the link at the end of this webpage: The Critical Importance of Repentance . This dear woman was in great torment and it all centered on her living in denial (the problems with this attitude are explained in the link Positive Confession, or Living in Denial? at the end of this page) and with minimizing the gravity of the offense. She believed she forgave her father but, in reality, it is logically impossible to forgive an innocent person. So real forgiveness begins with acknowledging the gravity of the offence (this is explained in the Why to Truly Forgive Hinges on Getting in Touch with Your Anger link at the end of this webpage). In what I believe had the power to revolutionize her life, I wrote out a prayer that I suggested she pray, study and return to every now and then. If you are in a similar situation to her, it should help you, too. Here it is: Lord, you said that the truth sets us free (John 8:32) and that you desire truth in our inner parts (Psalm 51:6). Cause me to honor you by embracing the truth, whatever it is and however hard it is to face. In the name of Jesus, I come against everything blinding me to your truth, whether it be anything deceiving me or something I am willfully doing. Give me the courage to share with my innermost parts what I feel and what I know, and the courage to receive with an open, encouraging heart what other parts share. Lord, sin makes you angry. You hate it: Psalm 5:5 The arrogant shall not stand in your sight. You hate all workers of iniquity. Psalm 11:5 The Lord examines the righteous, but the wicked and him who loves violence his soul hates. Isaiah 61:8 For I, the Lord, love justice. I hate robbery and iniquity. . . . Zechariah 8:17 “. . . and let none of you devise evil in your hearts against his neighbor, and love no false oath: for all these are things that I hate,” says the Lord. Psalm 45:7 You love righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy. (Repeated in Hebrews 1:9) How could a loving, holy God be unmoved to see someone he loves with all his heart (and that’s all of us) violated and potentially scarred for life? Help me to be angry at sin like you are. You have said, “Hate evil, love good,” (Amos 5:15), “Abhor that which is evil,” (Romans 12:9) “You who love the Lord, hate evil,” (Psalm 97:10), “The fear of the Lord [the critical first step (Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 9:10) in the wisdom that Scripture says is so important] is to hate evil,” (Proverbs 8:13). You have said that sex – even casual sex with a prostitute – makes two people one. 1 Corinthians 6:16 . . . don’t you know that he who is joined to a prostitute is one body? For, “The two,” he says, “will become one flesh.” It is not right that I be one flesh with my father. I want any perverse oneness broken. Only you can achieve that but you require me to want it and to seek the truth about it. I ask that you break any fear, any bondage, any dependency, any oneness or soul-tie that is not of you and shames you or does not honor you, that exist between my father and any part of me. Over and over in your Word, you moved godly people to confess the sins of their fathers. Nehemiah 9:2 . . . stood and confessed their sins, and the iniquities of their fathers. Jeremiah 3:25 . . . we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our fathers , from our youth even to this day. Ezra 9:6-7 . . . My God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to you, my God; for our iniquities have increased over our head, and our guiltiness has grown up to the heavens. Since the days of our fathers we have been exceeding guilty to this day; and for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests, have been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plunder, and to confusion of face, as it is this day. Psalm 106:6 We have sinned with our fathers . We have committed iniquity. We have done wickedly. Jeremiah 14:20 We acknowledge, Lord, our wickedness, and the iniquity of our fathers ; for we have sinned against you. Jeremiah 32:16,18 . . . I prayed to the LORD: . . . [You] show loving kindness to thousands, and recompense the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them  . . . Lamentations 5:7 Our fathers sinned, and are no more; We have borne their iniquities. Daniel 9:8,16 Lord, to us belongs confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers , because we have sinned against you. . . . please let your wrath be turned away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain; because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers , Jerusalem and your people have become a reproach to all who are around us. Psalm 79:8 Don’t hold the iniquities of our forefathers against us. Let your tender mercies speedily meet us, for we are in desperate need. Leviticus 26:40 If they confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers  . . . (Emphasis mine.) May I please and glorify you by doing likewise. You also declare that a key aspect of your character – your love and righteousness – is that you visit the sins of the fathers upon their children to the third and fourth generation. I recall what happened when Moses begged to see your glory: Exodus 34:6-7 The Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, “The Lord! The Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth, keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the children’s children, on the third and on the fourth generation .” This is so fundamental that it appears even in the ten commandments: Exodus 20:5 . . . I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation  . . . And this truth is taught elsewhere, such as: Isaiah 14:21 Prepare for slaughter of his children because of the iniquity of their fathers . . . Isaiah 65:6-7 . . . I will repay into their bosom your own iniquities, and the iniquities of your fathers together. . . . Jeremiah 32:18 who show loving kindness to thousands, and recompense the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them; the great, the mighty God . . . And it is confirmed by Jesus: Luke 11:50-51 that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zachariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.’ Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation. I don't want my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren to have this sin visited upon them, so help me confess this sin to you so that it can be broken, and show me if there is anything beyond this that I need to do to protect my descendants and also any other children my father might access. Lord Jesus, I can call you neither my Lord, nor my God, unless I make you the one I love and obey above anyone or anything else. You insist that your greatest commandment is that I must commit myself to above everything else, love God with everything within me – with all of my heart, all of my soul, all of my mind and all of my strength (Mark 12:30). What most rivals my love for you is my greatest spiritual danger. You even specifically applied this to family relationships; saying whoever loves father or mother more than you is not worthy of you (Matthew 10:37). Lord, I want to be worthy of you. I need you more than anyone else in the universe. You alone are the Almighty. On you alone rests my eternal destiny. Only you are totally dependable. You are the one who promised, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yes, these may forget, yet I will not forget you!” (Isaiah 49:15). In the words of the psalmist “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up” (Psalm 27:10). In fact, my commitment to you and your righteous ways must soar so far beyond my love for anyone else that you word it this way in Luke 14:26: “If anyone comes to me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (almost all Bible versions, emphasis mine). So, no matter how much choosing to honor and obey you hurts someone close to me, I choose you. I put you above everyone else in my life and above every other allegiance or sense of obligation. You even said, “Don’t think that I came to send peace on the earth. I didn’t come to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at odds against his father, and a daughter against her mother . . .” (Matthew 10:34). This, you declared is why you came. Your divine mission in coming to earth was to release us from the degradation and damnation of being enslaved by sin. This necessitated you wielding a sword that breaks up close family relationships that are not of you. I accept your sword, no matter what the cost, and I willingly let it sever any family ties that dishonor you. Like a child’s Lego set that has been wrongly put together to form a hideous mess, I yield to you to pull apart every relationship of mine that is not as you want it. I seek your loving wisdom to rebuild my life and affections and attachments so that in them your will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Another issue this woman faced was that her father had made her promise never to tell anyone, and she felt obligated to keep that promise, even though keeping the secret was tormenting her and literally endangering her children and grandchildren, because unless she told them they would trust him and be vulnerable to his seduction. Here’s my response: Numbers 30:3-8,12-13 when a woman vows a vow to the Lord, and binds herself by a bond, being in her father’s house, in her youth, and her father hears her vow, and her bond with which she has bound her soul . . . if her father forbids her in the day that he hears, none of her vows, or of her bonds with which she has bound her soul, shall stand. The Lord will forgive her, because her father has forbidden her. If she has a husband, while her vows are on her, or the rash utterance of her lips, with which she has bound her soul, and her husband hears it . . . and her husband forbids her in the day that he hears it, then he shall make void her vow which is on her, and the rash utterance of her lips, with which she has bound her soul. The Lord will forgive her. . . . if her husband made them null and void in the day that he heard them, then whatever proceeded out of her lips concerning her vows, or concerning the bond of her soul, shall not stand. Her husband has made them void. The Lord will forgive her. Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void. If someone can make a full-on, utterly binding vow and another human close to her can override her commitment and release her from the vow, how much more can God, who is a far greater authority than any human, cancel an utterly binding vow that is contrary to his will. If a human father has that authority, how much more does our divine Father, “the father of all those who believe” (Romans 4:11). And if a husband – the man who is one flesh with the person – has that authority, how much more does the God who has even greater intimacy and oneness with us (1 Corinthians 6:16-17 “. . .   For, ‘The two,’ he says, ‘will become one flesh.’ But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.). Comments from the woman all of the above was originally written for I was extremely close to my father. I loved him and looked up to him. He was my hero. Even remotely attempting to see him as anything but good and loving would send me into utter despair. I would immediately default to self-harm – cutting myself and dangerously taking far too many pills. Feeling extreme guilt for having any negative thoughts about my father, and overwhelming shame for responding to the thoughts so poorly made life unbearable. I was in a vicious downward spiral. I found myself completely unable to fathom that my dad could be an abuser. The very thought made me suicidal. It was obviously a monumental battle, but I was unaware of how spiritual the battle was. Because of my soul-tie with my father I was never able to see him as the perpetrator. Led by the Holy Spirit, Grantley helped me understand the need to break this bond between my father and myself. Even though I was acutely aware of spiritual warfare and had an awareness of breaking soul-ties, it had never occurred to me that I had such a bond with my father. I now realize this denial was a result of the very nature of this unholy bond. Armed with this new information, I grappled my way through the Scriptures and prayer written above; going through it over and over. For years I had searched long and hard for healing, greatly desiring wholeness, but unable to even come close. Following the revelation of this soul-tie, I had to pray and trust God to do what only he could. He has never failed me. In the very first week after praying for God to break the bond with my father, I experienced a healing of monumental proportions. Daily I am growing. Where there was once division within myself, there is now unity. Where there was once labor and strife, there is now peace and assurance. Once I was helpless but now I am hopeful! If God can do it in me, there is hope for everyone. I am still in a battle over this, but now I am fighting from the side of victory. I am looking forward to the day I will be made complete in God. When a child is forced to be highly dependent upon an abuser for love and security, the mental conflict can be so horrific that the child’s mind splits, with some parts recalling only those times when the abuser was good, kind and safe, and other parts recalling the abuse. Anna (not her real name), adored her dad and, as an adult, desperately wanted to visit and honor him, whereas other parts of her were adamant that he was guilty of horrific crimes against them, inflicted from babyhood onward. Having known Anna for quite some time I knew that she was one of those people who have split over trying to survive living with an abuser. I wrote the following to Anna and her parts: I want to affirm that I fully believe each of you. All of your memories are real. The things you recall actually happened. Memories of your dad doing atrocious things, for example, are real and Anna’s memories of her dad being sweet and kind and loving are just as real. Understandably, the result is highly confusing for you. People are so complex that if you examined the life of a mass murderer or sadistic serial rapist and edited out all the atrocities and retained only the good things they had done, the compilation would be impressive. This is what happened to dear Anna’s experience of her dad. Every time he began to engage in vile acts of perversion or cruelty, Anna instantly blacked out and another alter took over so that every experience she ever had with her dad was positive, and each bad time was experienced by another alter who was forced to endure it. I feel deeply for those alters who endured these things. Your collective mind did this because it is impossible for children to get their head around the complexity of a father who at times would be exceptionally good and kind and Christian and at other, rarer, times was the exact opposite. As is typical of DID, these mental gymnastics enabled Anna to enjoy islands of peace when she was able to feel both loved (which she desperately craved because of her cold mother) and secure, rather than endure the horror of continual awareness that she was living with someone who, before long, would do appalling things to her. All of you benefited from these islands of peace because they enabled Anna to function at school etc. If it were not for them, you would probably all have ended up in a mental institution. Anna’s experiences were real but were founded on the belief that your dad was always safe and good. It came from her being unaware of all the times he treated you atrociously – times when, at huge cost to themselves, others bravely took over so that she could maintain that illusion. Because of this, Anna is deeply indebted to all the others who suffered so much. Anna is no longer a child and with this maturity and security comes the mental capacity to cope with the reality of there being two diametrically opposed sides to her father. However, accepting this truth involves the breaking of a lifelong habit that has been entrenched by all her first-hand experiences with her dad being positive because whenever the unpleasant was about to occur she lost consciousness and another part took over. Each alter has part of the jigsaw of what your dad was really like, and the full picture emerges only by piecing together every parts’ memories. The full picture is complex and hard to get one’s head around because your dad was nice some times, and cruel and perverse at other times. Whereas the truth liberates and heals, running from the full truth keeps on fueling the insidious lie that you must cower for the rest of your life, terrorized by false guilt and groundless fear, and never enjoy the healing and fulfillment that flows from inner wholeness. The choice is entirely yours: with God on your side you can muster the courage and strength to embrace the full truth, or you can spend the rest of your life running from it. Stare down those mockers that flood you with doubt and fear, and they will flee. Running from them, however, emboldens them to keep on haunting you. More than that: it perpetuates the fracturedness within; robbing you of the healing and empowering you were born to enjoy. For more about the fracturing that incest can cause, see Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personalities). Important Links The Critical Importance of Repentance Positive Confession, or Living in Denial? Why to Truly Forgive Hinges on Getting in Touch with Your Anger The Dilemma of Feeling Pleasure When Abused