All right. Good morning. Hey, my name is Pastor Bobby. We're going to be in the song of Solomon today. But hey, before we get there, I want to put this on your radar.
We have Vision Night coming up. Last year was the very first time that we did this, and it's a really important event in the life of our church.
So this year, with the theme being Fortify the Family, that was introduced last year at Vision Night, and so we have one coming up this year. We're going to be talking about the future vision for next year.
So I just really want to encourage you to come. It's a great way to hear about where the church is going in the upcoming year. Things we're hoping to do, things we're praying for.
So, just want to put that on your radar. All right, if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn to Song of Solomon. We're going to be in Chapter One, beginning of Chapter Two, and what we're going to be talking about today is desire. This theme is all over the Song of Solomon, and we're talking about desire. The Bible and the Song of Solomon use a bunch of different words.
Desire, longing, delight, love—talks about sexual desire this way. And as I'm going through the sermon, I'm actually going to use desire and sexual desire kind of interchangeably. It's funny. If you're newer to Mercy Hill, you may be like, "Wow, week one that I'm here, and we're literally talking about sex." Either this is church I really want to come back to, or this is very weird. I don't know if I'm going to come back to this church.
All right, so desire. We're thinking about desire. A good definition is this: it's the God-giving longing for physical, spiritual, and emotional intimacy with another person. This is all throughout the Song of Solomon.
So we're thinking about this topic.
Some ways that the Song of Solomon talks about it, just to kind of like get us introduced to this at the beginning of the sermon today.
So chapter one starts with her saying, "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth." Chapter two, with great delight, I sat in his shadow. Chapter three, on my bed by night, I sought him whom my soul loves. She says in chapter five, "His mouth is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable." Chapter Seven, she says, "I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me." I think it's really important as we get into this topic this morning to kind of talk about why is this so important? Why is it so prevalent in the Song of Solomon, and why is it so important for us to wrestle with this topic today? I would say this: sexual desire—it's unusually consequential in our lives.
It can lead to extreme. Outcomes where we are thriving, and we see this as a gift from God, or it can bring so much devastation and so much destruction to our lives. Ordered God's way, sexual desire it can build marriages, create families, bring children into the world, deepen intimacy, produce faithfulness, and fill our homes with love and joy. And it can be very enjoyable, okay. I can say that in church.
You guys need to lighten up a little bit as we're talking about sexual desire this morning, okay? It can also be something that's so destructive in our lives. I mean, you think about destroying marriages, fracturing families, fueling pornography, sex trafficking, abuse, ultimately destroying. Even the way that we view ourselves and affecting our soul. You know, there's not a lot of things that can actually affect your soul.
The Bible talks about sexual sin being one of those things that can actually have an impact on your very soul. And a good illustration as we think about this is we're thinking about the power of desire. You think about something in the world that's really powerful, like water. You know, water can bring life; it can be sustaining, and it can also bring just like utter devastation to the world. You think about a couple years ago, Hurricane Helene.
Some of you have seen just the devastating videos in Nepal of the flooding they've had over the last couple of months. You have this glacier that breaks away from a mountain; you know, it goes into this river and. These high alpine rivers—they go from sustaining life to thousands of people to bringing utter destruction and death and devastation when the water goes over the banks of the river. And I think that's a good way to intro this topic because sexual desire in our lives. Can be something that's a wonderful gift from God, or it can bring so much devastation and so much destruction.
Here's the big idea for today: desires God's gift to be enjoyed God's way. And if you're younger, think about middle school, high school, college, young professional, really anybody in the room. This text today could have a larger impact on your life than anything else. Seriously.
So many lives have been destroyed over disordered desire, and so today, at the end of chapter one, the beginning of chapter two, just to kind of orient us where we're at in the story, we're kind of in the courting, date ship, dating phase of this young couple's life, and so we're going to get a, we're going to get to see, you know, what it looks like in this phase and. You know their commitment to one another is beginning to build, desires beginning to build, and so let's go ahead and jump into verse fifteen.
So we're going to go from verse fifteen into chapter two, verse seven. He says, "This, behold, you are beautiful, my love. Behold, you are beautiful. Your eyes are doves." She says back to him, "Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved. You are truly delightful.
Our couch is green. The beams of our house are cedar. Our rafters are pine." She says, "I'm a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys." And he says back to her, "As a lily." Among brambles, so is my love among the young women. She says back to him, as an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men. With great delight, I sat in his shadow.
His fruit it was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house. His banner over me was love. She says, sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples. She says, I am sick with love.
His left hand is under my head; his right hand embraces me. And then she says, "I adjure you, or I warn you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the doves of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases." So here's where we're gonna go today. We're gonna basically pull four threads out of this text of how we direct, how we govern. How we manage desire in our life, and that's going to be the sermon for today. We're just going to pull out four truths that we see clearly in this text.
And the first one is this: golly, desire is a gift and should be celebrated. When you read this text, they are really into one another. That is so clear from this text. It doesn't say one negative thing in this entire text about desire. Science would call this the limerence stage of their relationship.
You can go look that up later. It's basically that stage when you meet somebody, you want to get married, and you're like, "Man, this is the greatest person on earth." You can't. You don't see anything wrong with them. It's like man, the dopamine, the hormones, whatever. This is the great God.
Literally has created seven billion people, and He's given me the greatest person on earth to be in a relationship with. That's the limerent stage. And here, when we read about God's gift that He gives us. And how we should celebrate it. There is no shame in this passage.
There is nothing negative that's said about desire in this passage. And if we're going to celebrate it as the gift that it is, we can't undervalue it, and we can't overvalue it. We have to value it exactly how God says that we should value it. You know, there's a lot of stories of people growing up in the church where. This idea of desire it was very much undervalued, and it honestly was taught in the wrong way.
You know, because a lot of times people may grow up in church and they associate sexual desire with shame. It's suspicious. It feels unspiritual. And we teach young people sometimes, hey, to be more holy means I have to have less desire. And honestly, that teaching is an affront to God, because that's not what the Bible teaches.
And if you're a young person and you're trying to figure out, okay, God has given me this strong desire inside of me. What do I do with that? And I just want to tell you. This capacity that God's given you for desire, it doesn't mean you are gross. It doesn't mean you are broken.
It doesn't mean there is something wrong with you. God has created all of us with desire.
Now, I need to be really clear, okay? That doesn't mean the way that you direct desire is always good. Because all of us have a sin nature, and that sin nature is going to want to direct desire where it shouldn't be directed.
So I don't want some young man leaving the sermon today and said, "Hey, Pastor Bobby told me just go run with my desire." It's like, no, I like my job here at Mercy Hill, and I want to stay here.
So don't just go run with your desire because desire in our sin nature can lead us to all sorts. Of places that we shouldn't go, you think about pornography, casual sex, same sex attraction. I mean, you can make a list of a hundred different ways where your desire is going to want to lead you to the wrong place. This is not godly desire. A good word for this is lust.
What lust is is taking that good gift of sexual desire that God has given every person, and it's Distorting it with sin, it's sending it into a direction that it shouldn't go. It's desiring another person in a way, context, or degree that God has never meant for us to desire another person.
So we can't undervalue the gift of desire. We also cannot overvalue the gift of desire because what the culture would teach. And many of us have gone down this road. We have the scars to prove it. What the culture would teach, it's not a gift, but it is God Himself.
And you see this when desire is God. We say, "I am going to follow it wherever it tells me to go." I'm going to follow my desire, no matter what, no matter when, no matter where, no matter how. I'm going to follow that desire, and that's going to lead to all sorts of pain and destruction. I mean, one of the number one causes of pain and destruction in this world is people following desire wherever it would lead them.
So we don't want to undervalue it. We also don't want to overvalue it. It is a good gift from God that should be celebrated. I think that's the first point that we see here, because to do desire, to govern desire, to direct desire God's way, we first have to understand that it is a good gift from God. The second thing we see in this text is desire is meant to be exclusive.
Look at verse two and three. Boy, they are in love. He says, "As a lily among brambles, so is my love among the young women." She says a very similar thing back to him, "As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men." What What are they getting at here?
So I grew up in Florida, kind of in a rural part outside of Tampa, Florida, and growing up. Everything surrounding my neighborhood was orange trees, just thousands and thousands of orange trees. And I remember we'd go out in my backyard, and there was probably ten thousand orange trees right, right behind our house. And my friends and I would always, always play out there and go out there. And it's like, in all of those trees, there was one tangerine tree among the ten thousand orange trees, and we knew exactly where it was at.
And we would go as soon as the tangerines would be there, and we'd pick all the tangerines. This is what she's saying. She's she's basically making the point. Hey, all the all the young men, she says. All the trees of the forest.
She said, my eyes are only going towards you, and she talks about him being an apple tree. And he basically says the same thing. I don't have eyes for any of these other women. In fact, if you are a lily, all the other women are thorns. They're just simply making the point, man.
I am for you. God's put a bunch of people on the face of the earth, and let's just be objective here. One of them may have looked like Shrek for all we know, but their commitment was exclusive. My desire is for you. You are the one that I have my eyes on, and man.
Thinking about how we get this wrong and how we can get this right, desire is cheapen when what God designed for one person is spread among many. Man, you want to destroy the gift of desire, man? You just kind of spread it all over the place. It will cheapen it. It will.
It will be so far from what God created it as. It will cheapen it, man. It will no longer be a gift from God, but. When we express desire in a covenant marriage relationship, man, this could put wind in somebody's sails. This is how God has designed marriage.
I mean, just look—they are building one another up. She's like, "You're awesome." He's like, "You're awesome." This builds so much trust and intimacy. When it's directed at a single person, but when desire wanders, it produces so much betrayal. It produces so much brokenness. You think about just all the things around us—kind of this hookup culture, sex before marriage, living together before marriage, pornography.
I mean, you could just make a long list of where desire wanders and all the different places it goes. And in the moment, it feels good. It feels right. It feels natural. But it leads to so much trauma.
It leads to so much brokenness, because this is not how God has created us to express our desire.
So we're living outside of the way that God has designed us, even if it feels right, even if it feels natural. And I just want to warn you: if you're single, if you're heading towards marriage one day, making the mistake to think. Hey, if I'm allowing desire to wander right now, and thinking that's not going to affect your future marriage and intimacy and sex within marriage, to think it's not going to affect that is so naive. Because if you let desire wander, it's going to be hard for that desire to be exclusive in the future, and it's actually going to be hard for you to be intimate with another person. Because you've messed up this gift that God has created to be expressed in an exclusive way, and if you're married, the challenge today for all of us—we all have this sin nature.
We all have this thing inside of us that is broken. Every single part of us, every desire we have, is broken. And so there will be times when something inside of you wants to express desire in a non-exclusive way. And it doesn't go away just because you check the box of marriage. It's a battle that every one of us is going to have to fight.
And I can just give you real day-to-day examples that men deal with, that women deal with. And a lot of times, it's not like the yeah. There's clearly examples of adultery and stuff like that. But a lot of times, it's the it's the smaller ways that we direct desire away from our spouse. You know, you could just imagine you're at the gym working out, or you can imagine, you know, I like to run.
You're on the Greenway Trail running, and there's a there's a lady running at me. I have an opportunity in that moment. You know, not adultery, not some huge sin, but I have an opportunity to direct one percent of my desire towards that person in that moment. No one will know. No one will see.
What will the effect be? But that's not how God has meant for us to express desire. And you could think of examples in your life. I know women love to read these romance books and stuff like that.
Okay, I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand. I've never read one, but if a book like that causes even one percent of your desire to go towards something or someone that's not your spouse, that is not how God has created. Us to live with desire, and that's not how God wants us to direct it. Desire must be exclusive if it's going to thrive, if it's going to be a gift in your life and not a curse in your life. The third thing that we see is that godly desire creates safety.
Look at what she says in verse three: "With great delight I sat in his shadow." This is an image that the Old Testament uses. Psalm seventeen eight says it like this: Keep me as the apple of your eye, talking about to God. Hide me in the shadow of your wings. This idea of being in somebody's shadow is a picture of feeling safe. He only has eyes for her.
It creates safety. And I would say, if you're in a marriage relationship or a dating relationship, Safety is probably the foundation for future intimacy, and it's probably the foundation for that type of relationship. She felt safe with him, and we think about the opposite of this. It's when sexual desire is left unchecked, when it's wandering all over the place. It doesn't create safety, right?
It doesn't give; it takes. It's not exclusive. It's out of control. It's the furthest thing from safe in this world. And so, if you're a young man, you know, and you're thinking about how to direct your desire, and maybe having a future wife one day, godly desire never makes a woman feel pressured, confused, or used.
It always makes her feel secure. It makes her feel honored, and it makes her feel safe. And these are the type of men that the Bible calls us to be. She feels safe when your words match your actions, right? When you do what you say you're going to do.
When she knows where she stands with you. When you honor her boundaries, she feels safe when she sees that you have no that you have control over your desires. If you're a young man and you're going into a dating relationship or a marriage, and the other person sees you don't have control over your desires, man, that is the opposite of safety. That is the opposite of the emotion that you want to create in her. She feels safe, even though it may be hard, when you're committed more to her good than your own personal gratification.
Because so many young men, and it's like all you're committed to is your gratification. It doesn't matter how that makes her feel. And if you're a young woman, okay, as a as kind of an older man that has you know been through this stage in life, let me tell you a trick that young men often play, and it's really, really, really good to know this. Because as a young woman, you want to be desired. This is how God has created you.
You want to be desired, and a lot of times we can confuse a young man's intensity, and that makes you feel wanted. You know, a young man has a lot of energy, testosterone, hormones, intensity, and that can make you feel. Want it that can make you feel loved, but the only thing that'll make you feel safe is his character. Don't be confused. Don't don't confuse hormones.
Don't confuse intensity for godly love because they're not the same thing. But it's easy to be tricked when somebody wants you, and it's like, man, okay, I'm gonna allow some boundaries to be crossed because I want to be wanted. And it's like, man, that's not how God has created us to live. And so, if His desire is constantly pressuring you, you're not gonna feel safe in that relationship. If His desire is mostly physical.
Married people will tell you this: long term, you're not going to feel like you're seen in that relationship. If his desire wanders easily to other women, you're not going to feel secured. And if his desire has no restraint, you will not be able to trust it. The relationship itself will not be built on trust.
So we got to think about these things the right way. In terms of the people that we're dating, future wife, future husband, and some of you today, just talking about this topic of safety and desire, I know can make you feel a certain way because there's a lot of people in here today that have a lot of brokenness and a lot of scars in your background around this topic. And some of you, it's not because of your own sin; it's because somebody has sinned against you. And there's trauma there, there's abuse there, and so your body and your mind and your soul has learned to not associate desire with safety. And it would be my prayer for you, even if you've experienced something really hard in your life, that God over time would help you to see, hey.
What you experienced is the furthest thing from what God created desire to be. You, you got the worst picture of it. You got the opposite of what godly desire actually is. And I hope over a period of time, through being a part of the church, being here, being in some relationships, that God could bring some healing in your life. Because I know there is a lot of pain, and there is a lot of scars sometimes associated with this topic.
All right. The fourth thing that we see here, in verse seven, godly desire waits for the right time. When you go back and you look at what precedes verse seven. Man, they're not married yet. They're in this courtship phase, but boy, do they!
Man, they are. They are all. Man, they love each other.
Okay, the emotions are flying. I mean, look what she says. We don't even know what all this means.
Okay, sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples. She says, "I'm sick with love." That feeling of like, man, I am just sick with love. And then I guess they're in like the makeout position here. I'm not totally sure. His left hand is under my head.
His right hand embraces me. I mean, they're into it here, okay? But because they're not married yet, verse seven, she draws a line, and this line's really important. She says, "I want to warn you: do not awaken love until the right time." And the point she is making is, man, you need to restrain desire. Until you're in that marriage relationship, like it's okay that it was beginning to be expressed, and there's this love there, there's this desire there, but you can't let it out of the box until the right time.
And if you're a young person, look, I've been there. I remember when I was 20. I was just learning to follow Jesus, and man, like any twenty-year-old, I had strong desires, and I—it was hard for me to understand, man. Why do I have these strong desires, and I can't express them? And looking back now, it's like, well, you were young, you were dumb, you were not ready to express those desires.
Because if I just went and tried to express those desires, it's like man, it's like that water running over the banks of the river. It was only going to lead to destruction. It was only going to lead to pain. And so there's a right time with the right person to fully express those desires. You see, the Song of Solomon.
That's what I love about this book. And this is where we missed it in the church many times. It can both celebrate. Sexual desire, and at the same time, say there's a right time for it to be expressed. Because what lust would say is, "I want it, therefore I should have it." End of story.
What it says here is like, "Man, we want it. There's desire, but I'm willing to wait for the right time." You know, I've been married for 20 years to my wife Allison. We have three kids, and I remember when we were first dating. Man, we had all sorts of baggage that we brought into that relationship. You know, we didn't grow up going to church, we didn't have this framework, and so, man, our relationship was not built on the right foundation.
And I remember when God started working in my life, I was like, man, I can't keep going down this road like this.
So I was immature. I didn't know what else to do. The Bible talks about fleeing from temptation. You know, so I was like, man, right before we went to a church camp, I just broke up with her. Not a great explanation, not.
But I was like, I didn't know what else to do. And God then used the next year after that to help us to both kind of orient this in our hearts the right way. And then a year goes by, and I want to get back together, and she was like, Hold on, buddy. I remember the pain of what you did to me, but. In that time period, God began to work in our lives, and we were able to create the right foundation for our marriage.
And I'm so thankful that we did. You know, we took those six months to say, "Hey, there needs to be boundaries. There needs to be a right way to express this. Man, it cannot be fully expressed until we're married." It taught us self control. There was a lot that happened where God redeemed in that time period, and so I would just say, like, man.
Whatever age you're at, if you are not ready for a lifelong, unwavering commitment to another person, then you are not ready for sexual desire. Full stop. End of the story. You see, God gives us this to protect us, not to punish us.
So, reviewing kind of everything we've gone through here. It's very clear, like man.
Some of these threads around the way that God wants us to express desire.
So four things. I'll just review them. Desire is a gift. It's exclusive. It's safe, and it waits for the right time.
So out of all the passages of the Bible, this is one of the least complex. Right? There's no confusion here. It's very clear. It doesn't mean it's easy to do this though.
So let's talk about application. Like what. What what can we take from this? I would say the application for today is to steward desire in a godly way. That word steward, it simply means direct to govern to manage, and God has given us this wonderful gift in our lives, and we've got to learn to manage it the way that God wants us to, because doing that is going to lead to so much wholeness in your life and so much joy.
And not doing that because God did not create you that way, man. It's going to lead to so much brokenness in your life.
So if you're married, steward desire God's way by directing it towards your spouse. We see so clearly in the language of this text. It's not just having the feeling of desire; it is expressing. Desire to your spouse. After the Thursday night service this week, I had an older couple come up to me, and she said, "Hey, thank you for that sermon.
I am going to really flirt with my husband this week." I was like, "That's a good application, man. They're into one another. They're expressing. It's not just having the feeling; it's expressing the desire. Man, you are who I desire.
You are who I want. You are who I love. You are the person I am choosing to spend my life with." And so, if you're a married couple, it's like, man, when is the last time you guys expressed your desires and your emotions in this way? Because it's like, man, that's the foundation for a healthy relationship. And if you're single, you got to steward desire God's way by protecting it for the right person and the right time.
And I know it could be hard at times. I know it's a tough world to live in. I know it seems like, man, it's hard to find the right person. But one of the truths that's really going to help you, and this, this man, when I made this commitment, you know, twenty something years ago, really helped me a lot because I was really struggling in this area. It's really, it's really a belief thing.
It's really, it's really a faith, faith thing. It's man, what God wants for you. You've got to keep something in mind. God isn't keeping some good thing from you. God is protecting a good thing for you, and that that is the best thing that's going to help you to set up your relationship the right way, moving into the future.
Because if you are struggling, man, with desires, wondering, and man having a spouse and all that, it can be easy to eventually convince yourself, man, God is keeping something from me. And because God is keeping something from me, I am just going to go out and get it. But we have to remember, man, God is protecting something really good for you, for your future. And a lot of times, it just comes down to like, man, do we believe that or not? Do we believe God has created me a certain way, and there's a certain way to express these desires?
So we move to the conclusion today. I want to be really clear. This passage is so simple; it's so straightforward. But I'm not saying this is easy to do. For every single person that's in this room, every one of us has not conquered this.
All of us have a sin nature, and I have seen more relationships, more marriages, more men throwing their lives away around this topic than anything else in twenty-something years doing ministry. And so, we got to keep that in mind, man. I, I, I've not like solved this. We're all going to battle this. And so I just want to conclude with this: the gospel, what Jesus has done for us—death, burial, resurrection—it does not just show us how to live; it actually gives us the power to be able to live this way.
And we have got to grab hold of that today, because it's easy talking about a topic like this to be like, "Man, there's not there's not any hope with this." Right there's too much sin in the past. Man, there's so many scars from this. There's so much trauma. There's so many stories you hear about people throwing their lives away. There's no hope with this.
Yeah, I see that it should be done this way, but I can never actually do this.
So I want to close with three different words that are going to really help us with this, and they're this: forgiveness, healing, and freedom. These are three words we really need to grab hold of today, because only the gospel can enable us to steward desire in a godly way through forgiveness, healing, and freedom.
Some of you today, if you have not before, you need to experience forgiveness because you are carrying a weight of shame. And you're carrying a weight of guilt, and you can look back, and you know what I'm saying is true, and you say, "I wish I would have done it differently," but now I carry the scars from the shame and the guilt. We were using sexual intimacy to try to fill a void that only God could fill. But here's the thing about what Jesus has done for us. No matter how much we've screwed up, the darkest parts of our soul, the worst things we've ever done, Jesus is willing to 100 because He died for you.
Completely forgive you of those things, if you're willing to follow Him and repent of your old life, and say, Jesus, I want to follow you. And when that happens. God looks at us. He should look at us and see all the sin and all the brokenness and all the times where we screwed up. But instead, he looks at us and he sees the perfect righteousness of Jesus.
And so, some of us today, before we can go any further with this topic, you've got to experience that forgiveness for this area of your life to ever be redeemed. But some of us today also need healing. We need healing around this area. There are real wounds that we have that need to be healed, and the gospel doesn't only just forgive us from what we've done. It also begins to heal what sin has done to us, because sin has a real effect on our lives.
There are real scars and real brokenness that even if you've been forgiven, you still feel those scars in your life. And the gospel can bring healing over time. See, forgiveness is God sees me the right way. Healing is, man, I am not broken in the same way that I once was. Because God doesn't, He doesn't only see me the right way, but He's begun to kind of heal my past and my brokenness doesn't have the final word in my life.
Psalm one forty seven says He heals the brokenhearted and He binds up their wounds. And some of you need that today. You've been carrying the weight and the scars and the baggage of maybe being abused or a victim or some trauma in your life. And that's hard, but over time, the gospel can bring healing to those things, so that those things are not the final say over who you are and the future of your life and the story that God is writing in your life. And then, lastly, all of us need freedom, because look, the gospel deals with our bondage.
If you sit here today and you are like, "Man, I can never fall in this area. I can never struggle in this area." Man, you are so naive to the sin nature that you have inside of you. Because I have seen so many what seem like awesome marriages and awesome lives get totally destroyed around this topic. Because all of us, at times, like Paul, will say. Hey, there are times when something inside of me wants to do what I know that I shouldn't do, and there's a pull inside of me going on.
And so we can't leave here today and be like, "Man, I can just do this on my own. Believe the right things, do the right things. I can do it on." You cannot do it on your own. There has to be a power inside of you that is helping you with this. That's helping you to overcome that sin nature.
And we we think about the spirit of God. The Bible talks about the spirit of God creating fruits of the spirit, meaning it grows inside of us certain things. And one of those things is self control. And to see victory over this, and to practice desire, and to direct it the way that God wants you to, we're going to need the spirit of God living inside of us. Because that's the only way that you are going to have long-term victory and healing, and that's the only way you are going to be able to walk in freedom around this topic.
Let me pray for us, Lord. God, we thank you for the way that you've created us. We thank you for the desire for love, for intimacy. That you've given us, it does point to a bigger need for being close to you, God. You're the only thing that really, deep down, can fill the void in our heart for intimacy and to be accepted and to be loved.
We thank you for the gift of desire. Thank you for the gift of marriage. God, there are so many stories in this place today. I would imagine there's people that are hurting. I would imagine there's people that have real scars around this issue.
God, I would imagine there are so many amazing marriages, people that you have blessed in this area. And God, no matter where we're at, I pray today that we would see that it is a great gift. You do want us to direct it in the right way, but God, give us the power to do that. And as we close our service today, God, if there's something that we need to do, God, if we need forgiveness or we need healing or we need freedom from the bondage, God, I pray that you would do that today. Lord, I pray that you would use this prayer time, God, to heal some people, to bring forgiveness to some people.
God, we can't do it. Only, only you can do it inside of us, and so we pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.
