Can you imagine a world in which sexual desire simply didn’t exist? As often as sexual desire has resulted in destructive behavior, we must remember that it was created to draw our attention to the all-important truth that we were made for love.
In the midst of raising three boys, I’ve sometimes lamented that kids reach puberty at thirteen but are not mature enough to even consider marriage until almost a decade later. While I wish that this gap was far shorter, I thank God that He designed our hearts and bodies to be sexually awakened. Our sexual desire (including all the emotions and dreams it encompasses) can become so strong and persistent that a young man or woman can hardly concentrate. I believe this is God’s reminder that we were created for covenant. Because of sexual desire, a young man will suspend his pursuit of the perfect job to pursue a woman. The chemicals of falling in love may compel them both to put everything else aside as secondary. Their bodies invite them to love.
Can you imagine a world in which sexual desire simply didn’t exist? As often as sexual desire has resulted in destructive behavior, we must remember that it was created to draw our attention to the all-important truth that we were made for love.
In the midst of raising three boys, I’ve sometimes lamented that kids reach puberty at thirteen but are not mature enough to even consider marriage until almost a decade later. While I wish that this gap was far shorter, I thank God that He designed our hearts and bodies to be sexually awakened. Our sexual desire (including all the emotions and dreams it encompasses) can become so strong and persistent that a young man or woman can hardly concentrate. I believe this is God’s reminder that we were created for covenant. Because of sexual desire, a young man will suspend his pursuit of the perfect job to pursue a woman. The chemicals of falling in love may compel them both to put everything else aside as secondary. Their bodies invite them to love.
I was recently talking with a college student who shared with me some of the joys and frustrations of being a young single adult. He talked about all the organizations, social groups, and intramural sports teams he was involved in. His social life made me wonder whether the guy ever had time to sleep. Then this young man told me, “As busy as I am, when I go to bed at night and it’s quiet, I feel lonely. I have lots of friends but no one who really knows me. I want a best friend.” I knew from a previous conversation that he was thinking about someday finding a wife, a best friend who knows him, who shares his heart and his bed. This busy, active young man is not content with studies, career ambition, and a social life. He was made for love, for covenant. By God’s design, his body, his heart, and his mind remind him of this truth.
Matt Chandler wrote, “Sometimes I meet young men who despair of their sexual appetites and say things like, ‘I just want God to take this away from me!’ And I always say, ‘You really don’t.’ What they should want God to do is empower their discipline and strength to be obedient, because sexual desire is a gift. We shouldn’t ask God to take one of his gifts away from us. Rather, we should ask him to help us steward it well, and lead us into the covenant relationship where we can enjoy it according to his design.”
Unfortunately, the average young man and woman in today’s culture seek other outlets for their sexual and romantic desires. Rather than pursuing and committing to a woman, a young man will use pornography and masturbation to relieve sexual desire. Instead of entering a marriage covenant, men and women sleep together. This was never God’s intention. We are seeing the destructive consequences of these trends as men objectify women and women trade sex for attention. Sexual addiction, casual sex, and seeking a partner primarily for sexual compatibility are now the norm.
We have a society that may never experience the tangible beauty of a covenant promise. Our cultural acceptance of sex with no strings attached is reinforcing the conclusion that love is primarily about what we can get. Even when we marry, we typically do so in the pursuit of personal fulfillment rather than the noble desire to give ourselves in covenant to another.
While God created sexual desire to awaken our longing for love, even marriage is not the ultimate fulfillment of that desire. Marriage is the shadow, the foretaste, the metaphor of the true longing to be known, embraced, accepted, and celebrated by our Creator. This means our sexuality is infused with a significant spiritual purpose, regardless of our marital status.
This gives great spiritual significance not only to marriage but also to celibacy. “Celibacy for the kingdom is not a rejection of sexuality. It’s a call to embrace the ultimate meaning and purpose of sexuality. The ‘one flesh’ union is only a foreshadowing of something infinitely more grand and glorious.” Single Christians know the ache and longing for a covenant love that hasn’t come. Even those of us who are married feel this longing because the “shadow” will never fully satisfy our true longing for intimacy. A good marriage may give us a glimpse of oneness, love, and intimacy, but we still want more. Jesus alluded to this longing when He said that a time would come for mourning and fasting when the “bridegroom” was taken away. Spiritually, we are now in a season of longing, anticipation, searching, and seeking for our Bridegroom. He has promised to come for us. While we find hope in the promise, we live with the nagging (and sometimes overwhelming) tension that we can’t enter into the love our hearts were created for.
Isn’t this what the psalmist lamented?
My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God. (84:2)
Our sexual desires and unmet cravings can propel us toward marriage, but ultimately they should propel us to the greater truth that we were made for eternal covenant.
Reprinted from RETHINKING SEXUALITY Copyright © 2018 by Dr. Juli Slattery. Excerpted by permission of WaterBrook, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, on August 2.
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