Many failing, struggling, unfulfilling or dead marriages are usually the lack of sexual relations. For women, it is usually a low priority on their minds and it isn't that they care nothing about that part of their lives. It's that there are so many other things screaming for her attention, such as raising the children, work, finances, managing the home, emotional stress, exhaustion, sickness and marital strife. In the wife's juggling of priorities, sex can end up bottom of her list. Some women allow week after week, month after month, six months, a year, or even more to go by without having sexual relations with their husbands for one reason or another.
When disaster hits, they are surprised. Even though the wife may have felt fine about this arrangement, her husband was being neglected in an important part of his being. For a wife, sex comes out of affection but for a husband, sex is pure need. His eyes, ears, brain and emotions get clouded if he doesn't have the release. That is why it is important to make sex a matter of priority in a marriage. There is a far greater chance of settling issues if sex comes first. Whether all conditions are perfect or you feel like it or not isn't the point.....The point is meeting the needs of the husband and keeping communication lines open. A man can easily be made to feel insignificant, beaten down, discouraged, destroyed or tempted in this area of his being. There is probably no more important means of fulfillment for a man, and no area where he is more vulnerable.
Sex between a husband and wife is God's idea. Sexual problems are quiet common because many women don't have a clear gasp of what God's view is on the subject. But the bible is clear on it...... "The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control." (1 Corinthians 7:4,5).
Bad things develop when the sexual part of a marriage is neglected. Don't let that happen to you. Keep an eye on the calendar and refuse to allow much time to go by without coming together physically. If it has been too long, ask God to show you why and help you remedy the situation. And remember, it's never too late to pray for sexual purity, no matter what has occurred in either of your pasts. Sometimes sexual problems in a marriage happen as a result of sexual experiences before marriage. Pray to be set free and be healed of those memories. Purity happens the moment it takes root in the heart. Prayer is where it starts. Don't jeopardize or forfeit what God has for your marriage by neglecting to pray for this vital area of you life.
PRAYER
Lord, bless my husbands sexuality and make it an area of great fulfillment for him. Restore what needs to be restore, balance what needs to be balanced. Protect us from apathy, disappointment, criticism, busyness, unforgiveness, deadness, or disinterest. I pray that we make time for one another, communicate our true feelings openly, and remain sensitive to what each other needs.
Keep us sexually pure in mind and body, and close the door to anything lustful or illicit that seeks to encroach upon us. Deliver us from the bondage of past mistakes. Remove from our midst the effects of any sexual experience -in thought or deed -that happened outside of our relationship. Take away anyone anything from our lives that would inspire temptation to infidelity. Help us to "abstain from sexual immorality so that each of us will know "how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honour" (! Thessalonisns 4:3-5). I pray that we will desire each other and no one else. Show me how to make myself attractive and desirable to him and be the kid of partner he needs. I pray that neither of us will ever be tempted to think about seeking fulfillment elsewhere.
I realise that an important part of my ministry to my husband is sexual. Help me to never use it as a weapon or a means of manipulation by giving and withholding it for selfish reasons. I commit this are of our lives to You, Lord. May it be continually new and alive. Make it all that You created it to be.
Amen.
SCRIPTURES FOR MEDITATION
1 Corinthians 6:18-20
Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body[c]and in your spirit, which are God’s.
1 Corinthians 6:13
Foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
Proverbs 5:15-19
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 only your own,
And not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed, And rejoice with the wife of your youth. As a loving deer and a graceful doe, Let her breasts satisfy you at all times; And always be enraptured with her love.
#inspired...ann #WiseQuotes
*Stomie Omartian, The Power of a Praying Wife(2006)
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