LOVE AND SEX

Love and sex are two sides of the same coin.

We live in a time when almost every popular magazine on the newsstands has some headline dealing with sex.

The most popular magazines seem to be about nothing but sex: how to get it, how to give it, where to have it, how to be better at it, how to know if your partner is having it with someone else, and so on.

Human beings love sex. We think about it, talk about it, read about it, watch it on the Internet, and spend a great deal of our time, energy, and money trying to get it. Because of this, sex makes us do some truly stupid things.

 Ironically, as much as we like to wag our fingers at one another

About the potential harm our hypersexual culture can cause, talking about not having sex is what raises people’s ire.

However, despite what Scripture says, people (Christian or not) are going to have sex. We have our reasons and justifications. The faith-minded might rationalize that waiting doesn’t apply if you’re dating the one you believe you’re going to marry.

Physically, we need and want sex, and it’s just hard to resist those hormones. Socially, even the mention of going without sex is met with snickers and stares.

Sex is probably the most compelling aspect of human gratification. It’s such a powerful desire that outside of a proper healthy context it can cloud our judgment and cause us to make decisions that work against our own best self-interest.

Sex is an act of trust. It’s about way more than physical attraction—yet when you think of it only as physical attraction you will see (or have already seen) that attraction lies and spellbinds.

 How many times have you become caught up with someone based mostly on sexual attraction? How have those relationships ended?

 We don’t even have to ask if they’ve ended, because they don’t last. They can’t.

 Before too long, the hormonal haze clears and all that matters is character, integrity, intelligence, values, spirituality, and self-esteem.

 A person who doesn’t have enough of those to suit you is a person you can’t tolerate for long.

In the business of making movies and television, actors are often cast as much for their good looks as for their acting talents.

You don’t really think that all private detectives look like Denzel Washington, do you?

We’re obsessed with sex, and at the same time we disapprove of

Our obsession. It’s no wonder that sex ties us in knots.

An old saying goes, “Success makes us forgetful and stupid.”

 Sex does the same thing.

It makes us forget who we are and what we want. It makes us do things that we look at later and say, “What was I thinking?

Are you staying in a relationship for the sex and telling yourself that the other person will change one of these days?

Well, has he or she changed yet? Maybe you’ve wrecked relationships and friendships by sleeping with multiple partners, even after swearing that you wouldn’t.

Maybe you’re tired of the empty feeling you get when you wake up next to someone you slept with because you were lonely or had too much to drink. Perhaps it feels like you’re on a treadmill of discouraging, drama-filled relationships based on physical attraction and not much else.

Many of us don’t even consider that the sexual aspect of a relationship could be optional. It doesn’t occur to us. But what if it did?

What if we made the conscious choice to make clarity and communication and closeness more important than sexual gratification?

Millions of us are in pain. God designed sex and love to be a power combination in marriage. However, when sex and love don’t end in marriage—which describes the outcome of most sexual flings and love affairs—the result is oftentimes painful. When you’re with someone God doesn’t intend for you, pain of some sort is usually inevitable.

Many of us still bear the wounds and the sorrow from those lost loves or flings. But do we give ourselves time to heal? No, not typically. : We bury the feelings that we aren’t ready to deal with, go into denial mode, and look for escape in other sexual relationships.

But we need time to really process the pain we’ve gone through and properly heal so that we don’t make the same mistakes again.

Sometimes the harm is temporary, as in a bad breakup that’s painful for a few weeks but survivable.

 Other times the damage is permanent, such as when quick decisions results in disease, depression, or an unplanned pregnancy and changes the course of our lives forever.

 We ache to find our life partners, to find that person who can fall in love with us and be loved by us. So we push the issue.

 We date everyone attractive who crosses our path without employing some critical thinking or prayer to help us determine if this is someone worthy of our time.

 We stay in relationships that are way past their sell-by date.

We say yes to quick marriages and then end up saying yes to quick divorces. It’s not making us any happier. It’s not making us any wealthier. In fact, it’s making us more cynical, and sometimes loading us up with heavy emotional baggage that we’ll need to unpack years down the road.

In the midst of all this pain and frustration, we can begin to think that finding real love isn’t possible.

Sometimes, you can’t find what you desire most. Sometimes, it has to find YOU.