Desperate Joy

  I grew up in a home where my parents modeled more traditional gender roles for the most part.  My dad was the dominant figure, though my mom had her moments as well.  She was more the spiritual anchor of the family, but my dad made sure we were at church three times a week.  Until I was in school around five, my mom stayed home to care for my sister and myself and my dad worked full time.  Once my sister and I were at school full-time, my mom began to teach full-time at the same Christian school my sister and I attended.  This arrangement worked well for our family. Gender roles have certainly fallen on hard times.   There is some good that has come from this, and there is some bad.   I have been encouraged to see many fathers step into more nurturing roles, and certainly many areas of the economy have benefitted from women becoming more active participants.   What we can't escape, though, is that God has a specific design for marriage,...

  This might surprise you, but Jesus talked about sex. Last night on the radio I heard a preacher say that there are two things that everybody loves and wants more of but hates it when it is talked about in church: sex and money.   This is certainly true. As Christians, we tend to get nervous when that topic of sex comes up.   But more and more we need to get comfortable with it.   The culture at large is more than happy to promote their vision of sexuality, built off lies from Satan and their own lust-filled desires.   We need to grasp the glorious truth about sex that Jesus taught and spread that truth to those around us. Jesus did not talk a great deal about sex, but He did not shy away from it either. In Matthew 19 we find this scene: "3. The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? 4. And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them ...

God's design and plan is always good.  Our bodies are inherently good and valuable because we are created in the image of God, and we are the Temples of the Holy Spirit.  Our bodies are sacred objects worthy of dignity and respect.  We have been developing these ideas over the last couple of weeks, but there is more to the story. Adam, Eve, and all of creation was called "very good" (Genesis 1:32) but then Adam and Eve sinned and all of that was shattered, destroyed their selfish choices.   As much as we need to realize that our bodies are created in the image of God and are meant to be the temple of the Holy Ghost, these images are marred, and these temples are damaged.   No one is the perfect image of God, or the ideal temple. The sad reality is that we live in a post-Genesis 3 world - a world broken by sin.   Our bodies, brains, minds, and spirits have all been stained by its ugly curse.   The Chemistry in our brains is out of balance, our neuro...

  God has a gloriously good plan for our sexuality.  Over the last few posts, we have been looking into this idea.  Central to our understanding of God's plan is the idea that we are created in the image of God.  This truth is found in the first chapters of Genesis and is the cornerstone for developing our understanding of a Christ-centered view on sex and gender. Through the days of creation, God created all the myriad animals found on planet earth.   He created the flocks of birds that soar through the air, the schools of fish that swim so through the seas, and the herds of cattle that graze upon the prairies.   But on the sixth day of creation, He took a step back and made something special, something distinct and unique from all other creatures.   He created man and made him especially in His image, and then breathed life into him and made him a living soul. After God created Adam, He recognized that Adam was alone in the world, and this was no...

  In the last post I kicked off this idea of developing a comprehensive view of sexuality based on the Bible and Christian principles.  Voices in the church have largely been silent on the issues of sexuality, outside of "fornication is bad and abstinence is good!"  My goal is to speak into this area and help restore a Christ-centered, God-glorifying view of sexuality.  The Bible paints a glorious and beautiful vision of sexuality that transcends time and space, and is cosmic in its scope, but it does take some mining to dig those truths out of Scripture. At the foundation of our understanding of sexuality is what we believe about our bodies themselves.   Before we can talk about sexuality as an activity, we need a firm knowledge of our sex as defined in our bodies.   Every body has a given sex, male or female, as defined by their genitals, hormones, bone structure and DNA among other differences.   This is all by design. As we have seen often enou...

  In the last two posts we saw how marriage and birth both reiterate and recapitulate the Gospel.  Every time a child is born and a couple is wed, the Gospel is preached. The reason we feel such gladness around these events is because they are images of deep spiritual truths that God wants us to know and understand.  These events give us a glimpse of our eternal home.  We are wired to feel joy at a wedding and when a baby is delivered because we have been wired for eternity. Our sexuality is an essential aspect of marriage and child bearing, and our sexuality is by definition rooted in our bodies as male and female.  This means that the wondrous story of everlasting life and redemption is told in part through our bodies, both as males and females, through our masculinity and our femininity.  The male body has its part to play in telling God's eternal story, and the female body has its part to play as well.  Both are essential.  Both are good and b...