First of all, I just want to share the truth that I am a single virgin woman, who loves Jesus and thinks sex is awesome. I can't say this from personal experience--I just believe and know it to be true. God has wired men and women so perfectly to come together.
So why am I saying this to you? Listen closely.
I believe something is seriously broken in our Western culture, specifically when it comes to sex. God created sex, fully intending for two to become one. It's a mystery, like the union of Christ and the church. In sex, a man and woman give themselves to one another in vulnerability and honesty. The act is purposed to bring pleasure, more so because it's given as well as received (just as love is) and mimic God's act of creation by producing a child. This is what God created sex to be--an act of love, unity, and creation. So beautiful!
So what has gone wrong?
Sadly, men and women are no longer coming together. Sexuality has been taken out of fine china and put into a trash can. The sexual drive that was intended as a gift has become a curse, because we are misusing it. We are running to other things to satisfy us sexually--for some it's pornography, fantasy, masturbation; for some it's seeking comfort in materialism and food, anything to distract them from their sexuality; for others it's playing with pleasure in empty relationships outside of marriage; still others practice prudishness, denial, and asceticism (which is not the same thing as having the gift of celibacy, mind you.) Let us not be like the Gnostics, who consider the body evil and the spirit good, because God has made the body good, and He is pleased with sex. However, let us neither be like the Antinomians, who would take advantage of grace and practice licentiousness, because self-control is a fruit of the Spirit and prevents God's gift from being mishandled and broken.
What needs to change? Instead of allowing our differences to alienate us from one another and turning to other avenues to satisfy us sexually, we have to do a reversal. We have to enter in. We have to reach out to one another in relationships (leading to marriage) and take the chance that we might be hurt if it does not work out. Only by faith in God and the allegiance to a greater love in Jesus is this possible. Everything within us SCREAMS for self-protection, for caution, for fear. And while there is a place for wisdom, discernment, patience, care, and self-control in interactions with the opposite sex, may we never confuse them with self-protection, which is the enemy of love. We only need protecting if what we are at risk of losing is supremely valuable to us. What we fear losing reveals the idols in our heart that must be crushed in order for us to experience freedom. Only freedom will allow us to come together and give of ourselves in love and humility. And out of that love proceeds even more love through having children. And out of all of these things, joy!
Here's my humble prayer and vision. Dallas has an unreal amount of single people, who want to be married. My prayer is that God would humble us all to lay down our idols, our temptations, our fears and take risks. I pray that more people would get married and have children, so that God's people would multiply, fill the earth, and share the good news. While I know that marriage and sex are never going to function as fully as God intended them because we inhabit a fallen world, I am praying that God would redeem them for His glory, that His people would walk a different way and cause the world to take notice.
So that leaves us with one more question. How am I personally planning to respond to what I have just shared with you?
Press into Jesus more. Ask Him to fill me and satisfy me and not awaken love until it so desires. Allow the ache, the loneliness, the longing, and the hope to be married to give me a stake in the suffering and brokenness in the world and move me to reach out in love to all around me--my brothers and sisters, the least of these, my neighbor, and my enemy. I plan on still praying for my husband--that God would give Him courage, boldness, and passion for Jesus, that God would put me on His heart, and that He would pursue me. Also, I plan to stay out in the open and not cloister myself away--even if I never marry, I know that it will not be because I shied away from being a Ruth or an Esther. I will accept the risk. No matter what happens, I pray that God turns the tide of what I see in this culture. And even if I never marry, I trust Him and put my hope in Him. He is worth it all and more. What a small sacrifice for an infinitely generous King.
I hope that God heals your heart in this area, as He is healing mine. I'm feeling more and more freedom to love, take risks, and allow a man to know me without playing games of self-protection and pride. I pray it for all my brothers and sisters who have a heart to be married. May God be glorified in this.
Feel free to share your thoughts with me. I would love to hear them.
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