We are pressing pause on our series during the holidays. We know we will all be busy with family and friends, and therefore will pick up with more articles in January. The emails we have received are an indication to us that this topic deserves great attention and prayer. We have been moved to tears as we’ve read. Though we are unable to give specific advice or counsel, we are thankful for God’s Word that helps guide this discussion and we look forward to diving in once again at the beginning of the year. If you do have questions or suggestions please feel free to email us at [email protected].
We also want to give you time to grab Denny Burk’s new book What’s the Meaning of Sex. Here is an interview with Denny Burk by Christianity Today: “Hot and Holy”. (He didn’t choose the title.)
Until then, here are a few recent articles about the topic:
“When the Sex Should Stop” by Jonathan Parnell, Desiring God
Sometimes sex should stop in marriage.
The sometimes is really important. Not all the time. It’s not what is normative or typical. It’s sometimes. And, at the same time, be sure that sometimes really means sometimes. Real times. These are actual moments, or seasons, that never present themselves as the anomaly they should prove to be in the long run. We’re talking about a tangible pause from sex, however brief and limited the stopping may be.
The biblical text on this topic is 1 Corinthians 7:1–5, and though the meaning is pretty straightforward, the way this text plays itself out in the life of the church can run askew in two different directions. One error is to use this passage to support a pattern of self-fulfilling sexual demands; the other is to use this passage to fuel a culture of fear in the marriage relationship — and both combine to produce damaging implications.
Let’s expose these misuses and then chart a course for the gospel-empowered sometimes of sexual abstinence in marriage.
Continue reading here:
“ Gospel-Centered Sex?” by Marci Preheim
I hear the veiled frustrations of men. Why doesn’t my wife want to have sex more often? Women, in their counsel to one another, unapologetically deem sex as a necessary evil, but their duty nonetheless. Both genders seem to believe the cure for low-sex marriages is for women to get over themselves and give more sex. After all, it is a job only she can fulfill, right? But an unhealthy sex-life is only a barometer of a deeper problem. Sex is not the priority of marriage. It is an expression of the health of it. I think I would reverse the comments above to read like this: If a couple consistently applies the implications of the gospel to the marriage, they will inevitably have a healthier marriage bed.
It has been said that a married man and woman, naked together and unashamed, are as close to a pre-fall relationship as anyone will experience this side of eternity. But how many of us can view it that way? We can scarcely mention Song of Solomon without blushing or cringing. It brings us face to face with our sexual baggage. What do we do with this book? There it is in the middle of the Bible, in all of its “rated R” beauty. We all want what that couple has. We’re afraid to cry out: we don’t have it!
Continue reading here:
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