How to Have a Love Affair with Your Spouse - Part A

Sex in marriage is like a flowing stream. Sex outside of marriage, promiscuously given before or during a marriage, is like drinking polluted water from a sewer. One will delight, the other can destroy.

One is a stream, the other is a swamp. The delights of sexual intimacy in marriage and the disastrous effects that come when we go outside God's boundaries. Then stay tuned as Skip and Lenya share how sexual intimacy can strengthen your marriage in ways nothing else can. Let the fires burn hot between two people passionately in love with each other, expressing that love physically. It's a bond that is inextricable. It's also inextricably linked to relationship. For any special woman in your life, someone once estimated the cost of the services that mothers perform.

The amount was huge. We know moms don't do it for money. They do it out of love.

While we can't repay our mothers, we can honor them. Here's a great suggestion. It's a special bundle of resources we're calling the heart songs package. It features heart songs. There's a song for that a powerful five part series led by Lenya and Janae Heitzig designed to teach you to depend on God's love, power and comfort. In every season of life, you'll explore what the Psalms say about love, jealousy, fear, security and longing.

Maybe you can think of a time when you really, really wanted something. This Psalm is kind of about that. It's this longing, this desire, this hunger that the Psalmist is expressing.

And his longing is for home. In addition to this encouraging series, you'll also receive the theology quiet time journal perfect for daily Bible reading. To make notes as you follow the heart songs series or for your personal prayer time. Plus you'll get a bag of skips library roast coffee. The coffee pastor Skip chooses when he studies in his personal library. The heart songs packages are thanks for your gift to support the broadcast ministry of connect with Skip Heitzigs.

So request your heart songs package today when you give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. Visit proverbs five and listen to what Skip has for us today. There was a woman who was feeling lonely in her marriage. Her husband made an appointment at a counselor's office. The counselor was a trained psychiatrist trained to listen and to make an evaluation. And as he listened to the couple described their relationship. Eventually the counselor said to the couple, the treatment that I prescribed for you is quite simple. The doctor stood up, went over to the man's wife, picked her up, embraced her in his arms, and gave her a big kiss. Then he stepped back to see that woman blush, swoon, smile, took her completely off guard. And he said to the husband, you see that is all that it really takes to put zing back in your marriage.

The husband watching the whole time, absolutely expressionless, said great doc, I can bring her in on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Did that husband have a clue as to what was needed in that marriage? No, romance had left that relationship a long time ago. As it does, too many relationships that start out well but don't continue or end up that way. What begins with flowers and breakfast in bed and love notes and opening doors for the girl of one's dreams can end with couples sleeping back facing each other or in separate rooms, sweatpants and slamming doors on each other. In the next few weeks, starting today, we want to talk about the sensitive topic of sex in marriage. Its place, its priority. It cannot be discussed by itself because it is related to every other part of a couple's relationship. It never stands alone. It's more than just adding a little creative spice and sizzle.

You got to have the steak there first. You have to have something to build on. The fifth chapter of Proverbs, along with a few of the other of the Proverbs, are words from a father to a son. I like to see it as dad giving his son the talk that all dads need to give their sons. Where they came from, how things work, how relationships work healthy and in a non-healthy way. I heard about a little boy who asked his mother where he had come from. You know, all boys and girls say, well, how did I get here? Where did I come from?

What's the process? And so he said, where did I come from? Where did you come from? And mom gave some lame story about a white feathered bird who brought him to their doorstep. And that's how she got here as well, which was confusing to the little boy. So later on, the same little boy asked his grandmother the same question and got a variation of the bird story.

So later on that day, out on the playground, that little boy said to one of his friends, kind of looking around furtively, and he said, you know, there hasn't been a normal birth in my family for three generations. On the other hand, Solomon, who gives us the Proverbs by and large, gives us the straight scoop. And in chapter five, verses one through 14, he describes the disastrous effects of sexual promiscuity before and after marriage. But verses 15 through the end, verse 23, are the delightful results of marital intimacy. And that's what we want to focus in on this morning. Those last verses of this chapter beginning in verse 15. The theme is how to have a love affair with your spouse.

Let's look at verse 15. He writes, poetically, drink water from your own cistern and running water from your own well. Should your fountains be dispersed abroad?

Streams of water in the streets? Let them be your own. And not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blast and rejoice with the wife of your youth.

As a loving dear and a graceful doe, let her breath satisfy you at all times and always be enraptured with her love. For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman and be embraced in the arms of a seductress? For the ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord and he ponders all his paths. His own iniquities entrap the wicked man and he is caught in the cords of his sin. He shall die for lack of instruction.

And in the greatness of his folly, he shall go astray. Briefly put, sex in marriage is like a flowing stream. Sex outside of marriage promiscuous. Suitously given before or during a marriage is like drinking polluted water from a sewer. One will delight, the other can destroy. One is a stream, the other is a swamp.

Or look at it this way. Sex is much like that dark soil in your garden, if you have a garden. Rich, dark soil that looks so great in your garden. You put that on your white carpet, not so much.

Out of place, dirty. Or it's like a fire. Inside of a fireplace it gives warmth and satisfaction. It's delightful because it's contained within proper and safe parameters. Take the fire outside of the fireplace, it could destroy your house.

You ought to have a love affair with your spouse. And there are several principles that will emerge from the text. We always do that. This is exposition. What does the text reveal? Today I want to give you three. And they could be summed up by three words. Covenant, enjoyment, commitment. Covenant, enjoyment, and commitment.

I take you back to verse 18 for a moment to look at the first principle, which is magnify the mutual covenant. Notice in verse 18, let your fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of your youth. Now these are not words that are limited to the experience of youth or newlyweds. They are a phrase to the husband, the wife of your youth.

The wife that I have today, Lenya, is the wife of my youth. Now I am not a youth, but I was a youth when I married her. In those days, people were married around age 14, 15, or 16.

They didn't choose each other. Their parents made the choice long before they could even choose often. So they kind of came into this commitment, but the commitment was made in one's youth. So the term, the wife of your youth, implies a covenant.

That's the word I want to zero in on. It's not written in the text, but it's implied by the text in the phrase, the wife of your youth. The idea that he's speaking of here is a monogamous, lifelong relationship. I read a bizarre news story sometime ago about a man who married his TV.

I'm not joking. There was a 42-year-old man named Mitch Hallin. He was Australian, living in England, who had two divorces, and on Valentine's Day a few years back, he decided to marry Sony Widescreen. It was presided over by a priest. He had a dozen of his friends there. Rings were put on top of the television set, two gold rings, and he said, the article said, he took vows of high fidelity.

He kept in on fidelity, and this is what he said. After two divorces and failed romances, he had given up, saying, quote, my TV gives me countless hours of pleasure without fussing, fighting, or backchat, close quote. Well, sure, Mitch. Anybody can watch TV. It's a lot easier to watch TV than to work through the problems of a marriage, but Mitch, let me ask you a question. Who's going to love you when you're old and gray? Ain't gonna be Sony.

In fact, your model will be replaced, I doubt, no doubt, before too long. I was also looking at some interesting places that people were getting married. You know, it's sort of fashionable now to not get married in a church, but hey, let's like bungee jump, and in midair, we can say vows to each other, or in airplanes, or balloons, or a number of places that are creative, but I read about 12 couples who got married on a rollercoaster.

And I actually read, I thought, how appropriate. Right? Up and down, up and down, woo, woo. For a lot of people, that is marriage. It's a rollercoaster. It's not stable. It's not steady. So when I read that, I thought, how do you stabilize a marriage?

What is the secret to stability? It can be summed up in one word. Covenant. Covenant.

Have a covenant marriage. Now that word, covenant, is a Bible word. It's used over 300 times in the Old Testament. It's a word that means an agreement with binding force. An agreement, typically a formal agreement with binding force. That concept of a covenant runs through Genesis all the way to Revelation.

It's like a crimson thread. God is a covenant God. God's people are covenant people. The Bible is a covenant book. The marriage, according to the book, is to be a covenant, a formal agreement with binding force. For example, in Proverbs chapter two, we read, wisdom will save you from the adulterous, from the wayward wife with her seductive words, who has left the partner of her youth and ignored the covenant that she made before God. A couple makes vows to each other. They're in covenant with each other, but there's a third party that nobody seems to recognize often, and that is God enters into the marriage covenant.

It's an agreement. Somebody imagined a conversation that Adam might have had in the garden with God. All the animals were brought by God, and Adam checked them out, named them all. But the Bible says, among the animals, there was not found a helper that was suitable for him. So in this imaginary conversation, Adam said, God, it's not that I'm like ungrateful or anything. These animals are cool, and it's not like I don't like animals, but I'd really like someone more like me, only different, soft and tender and beautiful and sweet, to which God replied, well, something like that's going to cost you an arm and a leg.

And Adam replied, well, what could I get for a rib? Now, covenant marriage is not like that. You can't go in partly to this. You have to go all in. It's a total commitment of yourself. Marriage is a covenant. Covenant means a commitment, and it's a choice that you make not just on your wedding day, but it's a choice that you make every day. A covenant marriage is a marriage without an escape hatch, without a back door. You enter into the relationship, and all the doors and all the windows are shut and locked. That's why we ask couples to go through a series of counseling sessions before they get married so that on their wedding day, they are able honestly before God to say until death do us part. Not until debt do us part, not until feelings do us part, not what will stay together till you get old and ugly do us part, but until death do us part. That's a covenant marriage.

Don't misunderstand me, please. I am not saying that a lifelong monogamous relationship will solve all of your problems. In fact, many more problems begin right there, but I am saying this. Intimacy begins and safety begins when you enter into that permanence. You go into the situation knowing this is permanent. This is a covenant. That's where safety begins.

That's where intimacy begins. It was Ruth who said to her mother-in-law, Naomi, where you will go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your God will be my God. Your people will be my people. Those are covenant words. In Hebrews 13, God says to us, His people, I will never leave you.

I will never forsake you. Those are covenant promises. But we live in an era where people look at marriage and they want to test it first. They want to live together first. They want to test the waters first. They want to get intimate first. They want to see if it works first. We call these tire kickers.

These are test drivers. That is not a covenant relationship. And know this.

This is what you ought to know. All of the good research shows that the most successful marriages are those entered into with a sense of permanence. Two sociologists in a recent study say people living together first are more apt to fail in their marriage than couples who move in after they say their vows. Citing one article, studies show based on 50 years of data that couples who live together before marriage have a 50% greater chance of divorce than those who don't. Those who cohabit also have a less satisfying and more unstable marriage.

Why? Research has found that those who had lived together later regretted having violated their moral standards and felt a loss of personal freedom to exit out the back door. Furthermore, and in keeping with the theme of marital bonding, they have, listen to this phrase, stolen a level of intimacy that is not warranted at that point nor has been validated by the degree of commitment to one another.

When I read that little phrase, stolen a level of intimacy, it triggered something in my mind. I want you to see how closely related that is in research to what the Bible says. Turn with me to Proverbs 9.

Just go write a couple blocks. Proverbs 9. Interesting phrase appears in Proverbs 9 about this. Verse 13, a foolish woman is clamorous. She is simple. She knows nothing. She sits at the door of her house on a seat by the highest places of the city to call those who pass by who go straight on their way.

Whoever is simple, let him turn in here. And as for him who lacks understanding, she says to him, stolen water is sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant, but he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of hell. Interesting, isn't it? The author says after research, they feel like they've stolen a level of intimacy. The clamorous, foolish, promiscuous person says stolen water is sweet.

Yeah, it tastes good going down perhaps, but later on is bitterness. So that's the first covenant. That's the first word. Magnify the mutual covenant. The second word is enjoyment.

That's part of the text as well. Maintain your marital enjoyment. Now I'm going to take you back to verse 18 and we'll slow down a little bit and we'll look at all those verses that we just read that make some of us blush. Let your fountain be blessed. Rejoice with the wife of your youth.

As a loving dear, as a graceful doe, let her breast satisfy you at all times and always be enraptured with her love. For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman and be embraced in the arms of a seductress? Contrary to popular belief these days, Hollywood did not invent sex. God invented sex. Sex was God's idea. And can I just say it was a great idea. It was a great idea. Everything that God did, God looked at and said that is good and this is part of it.

C.S. Lewis said pleasure was God's idea, not the devil's. Now the devil likes to hijack what God does. But when the Lord created man and wife, he put them together and the Bible says he made them male and female and they were naked and they were not ashamed.

And you shouldn't be ashamed either. In that vulnerable exposed position in front of your spouse. The marriage bed, says the writer of Hebrews, is undefiled. That's Skip Heintzic with a message from the series Keep Calm and Marry On.

Find the full message as well as books, booklets and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Now let's go in the studio with Skip and Lenya as they share how sexual intimacy can strengthen your marriage. Skip, you said today that sex is like rich potting soil. I'm just in a garden that nourishes your plants. Can you talk a little more about the unique... You have to explain yourself.

A little more. I mean sex isn't dirty, you know, so it's not like dirt. No, it is not and I don't think I quite said it that way. Okay, well explain yourself. If you look in a garden and it's nicely cultivated and you have that dark soil that nourishes and embeds itself in the plant and foliage.

If you were to take that soil, take it out of its place, put it on the carpet or on the floor, not good. I think it would have been better if fire is good in a fireplace because that's like passion, intimacy, sex. That's also in this message. That's the second illustration. We should have gone with the fire.

They should have. I know. But anyway, how can people light the fire in their marriage? By keeping the potting soil in the garden, by keeping sex in a marriage between two people, by keeping the fire in the fireplace, not in the living room itself. Let the fires burn hot between two people passionately in love with each other, expressing that love physically. It's a bond that is inextricable. It's also inextricably linked to relationship. It nourishes relationship. You take it out of that or try to bond with somebody else in the midst of a covenant and you're taking fire out of the fireplace and burning the house down.

I was just thinking because I want to share my testimony soon and part of my testimony is sex, drugs, and rock and roll, right? We lived through a tumultuous era and maybe just wanting to say to the audience, sex is intimate and it's meant for a man and a wife in a lifetime, forever. When you do that with someone else before your marriage, you're bringing baggage into the marriage. So I would say sex out of marriage is like potting soil. You really are dirtying up the marriage bed with the things that you've dragged in from experiences and other things. So as much as it's wonderful in the context of marriage and it does make us join together and do beautiful things, just be really careful. Before you get married, I know we live in a world where that's promoted, but I would want to caution young women, don't. Don't do it if you're thinking about it.

You're going to drag something into that future relationship that you're going to have to work through later. Thanks, Skip and Lenya. We hope this helps you view your marriage through God's eyes and live in that purpose. And we want to invite you to help encourage others to do the same with a gift to keep these biblical teachings on the air. You can partner with this ministry today by calling now to give. Your support is vital to enable Connect with Skip Heitzig to expand into more major U.S. cities. Just call 800-922-1888 to give. That's 800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate.

Thank you. Come back next time for the conclusion of Skip's message, How to Have a Love Affair with Your Spots. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.