Monday, January 30, 2006
An Important Lesson From Long Ago.
A Mind Awake wrote a post last week that reminded me of a lesson I heard long, long ago.
Pretty much everybody I know, in and out of the church is tainted with sexual impurity of some kind, from divorce to hidden homosexuality to everything in between, it has touched us all.
I have never given up the ideal of sexual purity, and certainly have maintained it in my marriage. But I had come to veiw sexual impurity as a sort of inevitability. Anymore when I would hear about yet another sexual sin, I woud sort of shrug my shoulders in a kind of resigned recognition of our fallen nature.
Chris ended his post this way
More importantly, if you you think about it, that's true with all of God's prohibitions. He doesn't stop us from going some place just to say "no," He does it because He has something so much better for us.
My prayer this week is going to be to worry less about where God does not want me to go, and more about finding the wonderful place He has in mind for me.
Related Tags: sex, marriage, convenant, covenant sign, Christianity
Gordon Hugenberger (Gordon Conwell) wrote a book with an interesting view of marriage. The book is titled "Marriage as Covenant: Biblical Law and Ethics as Developed from Malachi".Though not from Hugenbergers' book, I was taught that particular lesson way back in high school, when dinosaurs roamed the planet and dragonflies where the size of airplanes. It's one of those lessons that had become kind of a part of the fabric of my being, but it was also a stark reminder of the effect of culture.
He presents a Biblical case for "Sex" as the oath sign of the covenant of marriage.
Pretty much everybody I know, in and out of the church is tainted with sexual impurity of some kind, from divorce to hidden homosexuality to everything in between, it has touched us all.
I have never given up the ideal of sexual purity, and certainly have maintained it in my marriage. But I had come to veiw sexual impurity as a sort of inevitability. Anymore when I would hear about yet another sexual sin, I woud sort of shrug my shoulders in a kind of resigned recognition of our fallen nature.
Chris ended his post this way
One of the largest attended Sunday School classes that I was a partner in teaching was dedicated to singleness, dating, and sex. The sex lectures were well attended and the major questions on many New York single Christians minds were "just tell me how far I can go" and "how far down the continuum of sensual activity can I draw the line (where on the scale from no sensual activity to full intercourse can the line be drawn)." Hugenberger's argument gave them something serious to consider (not withstanding the clear mandate of scripture concerning pre-marital sex).The thing that is so wonderful about this idea is that it removes to "rules about sex" from the realm of the forbidden and places them sqaurely into the realm of the beautiful.
More importantly, if you you think about it, that's true with all of God's prohibitions. He doesn't stop us from going some place just to say "no," He does it because He has something so much better for us.
My prayer this week is going to be to worry less about where God does not want me to go, and more about finding the wonderful place He has in mind for me.
Related Tags: sex, marriage, convenant, covenant sign, Christianity
