Desperate Joy

  My family was almost fastidiously religious when I was growing up. Next to nothing was ever said about sex. At church, the preacher would condemn fornication, pornography, and the like, along with extolling the goodness of marriage, but little else was said about it. As I hit puberty and my friends started talking about masturbation, I was intrigued. It wasn’t too long before I figured that out and found a tremendous source of pleasure and release. Masturbation quickly became a compulsion, and was a daily, if not multiple times a day, ritual. I am sure many men have had similar experiences. I attended a Christian high school and then went to a Bible college, not much was said about masturbation at either institution, other than some jokes here and there. If I discussed it with my friends, it was never with any seriousness. But I had an understanding, and I think most of my friends did as well, that it was not a healthy, Christ-honoring practice. There are a number of differen...

  There is a great mystery that God is trying to reveal through marriage.  We find this in Ephesians 5:31-32, "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.  This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church."  What Paul is saying here is that there is a message that God wants to send out to the world through our bodies and sexuality, and that is the message of redemption and glorification found in Christ.  The love of husbands and wives for each other is meant to portray the love that Christ has for the church.  Over the last few posts, we have been investigating Christ's love and how this applies to our sexuality, and we have found that his love is always free, total, and faithful.  This week we will focus on the fact that Christ's love is fruitful. John 10:10 "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy; I am come that they mig...

  One of the most beautiful stories in all of literature is the parable Jesus told of the Prodigal Son.  As the story goes, a man had two sons and one day the younger decides that he has had enough of living under his dad's roof.  He demands his inheritance from his father, which he gladly gives him, and then he wanders the world, living a life of pleasure.  Before too long the money evaporates and with it his friends and the good times.  The young man ends up feeding swine, which you can imagine how a Jew might feel about that, and he was so hungry that he was considering eating the slop he was giving to the pigs.  At that rock bottom moment, he came to his senses and said to himself, "The slaves in my father's house wear nicer clothes and eat better food than I am right now.  I'm going to go back home and beg my father to make me a slave!" He returns home to find his father anxiously waiting for him, and as soon as he saw him in the distance, he ra...

  If you approached an older married couple who has had a long-lasting marriage and asked them what has been the key to their successful marriage, there is a good chance that they may say something like, "We do everything 50-50."  That is, the husband does 50% of the work and the wife picks up the other 50%.  There is probably some wisdom in this when it comes to household chores, but when it comes to the foundational love and commitment in a marriage, 50% is entirely inadequate. In the previous post we started developing this idea that the love expressed within marriage should reflect the love Christ has for the church (see Ephesians 5).   When we consider Christ's love we find that it is always free, total, faithful and fruitful.   We looked at how Christ gives his love freely last time, this time we will consider how Christ's love is total.   "...[W]hen Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having ...