We live in a world that is preoccupied with sex. The media links sex with happiness, success, and fulfillment. Perhaps the first step in dealing with sexual temptations is to put them in perspective. A sexual relationship is a beautiful gift from God to married couples. It binds them to one another and is the means whereby they may participate with Him in the creation of another human being.
But sexuality is a big word. It includes feeling good about yourself as God’s creation, male or female. It includes understanding more about what it means to be made in the image of God (because both genders reflect who He is and what He is like). It includes celebrating diversity in the world and the experience of sharing life with people who are different than you are and whose perspectives and gifts enrich your own.
While singles may be denied a sexual relationship if they never marry, they are included in everything else God intended when He created human beings in two genders.
According to one Seventh-day Adventist therapist with expertise in this area, it can be helpful also to remember that “Sex is never an emergency. No one has ever died for lack of it.” This is not to minimize the strength of sexual temptation. Again it is a matter of perspective. When a sexual relationship is not possible at the moment, it is most productive to think in terms of all the other ways life can be filled with meaning.
It goes without saying that a person who is seeking to avoid sexual temptation would also avoid sexually stimulating reading and television viewing. When as a married person you are experiencing such temptation, there is no substitute for renewing your decision to pour all of your sexual energies into enhancing your marriage relationship and building up your marriage partner with whom your have made a covenant before God.
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