Intimacy

Intimacy

Dear Champions,

The short excerpt is by Andy Stanley, and the Scripture is 1 Corinthians 6:16 Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, "The two will become one flesh."

Intimacy is to know and to be fully known.  When God created sexuality it was not simply about creating more humans.  It was to be the ultimate expression of intimacy-full on, passionate, fearless, know me as I am, no fear of comparisons and no fear of criticism.  It is fragile and powerful, and God gave it to the human race as a gift. As powerful and as fragile as it is, it can be broken.

Single people, you know married people who broke and abused this. You know married women that are numb to the intimacy that was designed to go with sex.  You know married men who because of their habits, now that they are married they can't find intimacy in sex and wonder what's wrong with them and what's wrong with their partner.  They are both looking outside of their marriage wondering if they married the wrong person.  The real issue is that when they were single and were dating they thought that sex was just physical and they could do whatever they wanted to do with their body.  Someday they assumed that they could meet the person that they wanted to spend the rest of their life with and that magically everything was just going to be fine. They were wrong, and hurt themselves.

When you have sex with a person there is a sense of permanence, and you become one with that person.  God designed it for you to become one with one.  When you continue to become one with person after person you damage your intimacy factor and your ability to experience what God intended for you to experience.  You disconnected sex from what it was intended to be for.

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

P.S.  Remember that  Jesus dealt with sexual sin very compassionately, and the sin that He dealt with most harshly was the sin of self-righteousness and pride.  When we put our trust in Him, we are getting to heaven only on His perfect record of righteousness.  Jesus lived the life we should have lived and died the death we should have died.