other crazy thought 11

A Glorious Story
by Glenn T. Stanton

Christians have a far more beautiful story to tell about the glorious nature of human sexuality than any other story occupying the cultural stage now or ever. None of the rivals are even close. The Christian story of sexuality is true to the fullness in which God made us as humans and true to the nature of what is ultimately behind everything in the universe: God, who is love and who dwells in loving intimacy. We shouldn’t be shy about telling it with the power and beauty of our lives.
We tell it to the world when we make deliberate decisions to protect our sexual health and wholeness from the ravaging wolves of premarital and extramarital sex.
We tell it to our spouses when we give our total selves exclusively to them, desiring to give and serve rather than to take. We tell it when we affirm, honor, and protect their femininity or masculinity, whether we’re alone or in front of others.
We tell it to our spouses and children when we honor our spouses with our fidelity. This isn’t just physical, but also mental and emotional. Husband, do your wife and children see you looking at other women or treating other women more kindly than you do your own wife? Wife, do you use sex as a bargaining chip with your husband, even playfully: “If you don’t play golf this Saturday, maybe we can see what happens after the kids go to bed?” Married couples should give of themselves freely and exclusively, without demanding from one another.
We tell the Christian story when we treat our spouses as reflections of God upon the earth, not as objects for our own pleasure or usefulness.
As your friends and children observe your life, what do they learn about sexuality? Do they get a distinctly Christian picture of sexuality? Do they see that you seek to please God and reflect His nature by honoring and serving your spouse? How we quietly care for and live out our sexual lives in front of others is a powerful lesson to them about how we view God, others, and ourselves. Remember, there’s much more to our sexual lives than the activity that takes place behind closed doors.
Loving Christ in your sex life means being pure. It means being chaste. Purity is so much more than what you don’t do. It’s who you are. Both purity and chastity are positive virtues and not merely an absence of wrong behavior. Pope John Paul II describes chastity very nicely in one of his pastoral letters:
The chaste person is not self-centered, not involved in selfish relationships with other people. Chastity makes the personality harmonious. It matures it and fills it with inner peace. This purity of mind and body helps develop true self-respect and at the same time makes one capable of respecting others, because it makes one see in them persons to reverence, insofar as they are created in the image of God and through grace are children of God, re-created by Christ who “called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).1
To love God in our sex lives means to be pure in the fullness of the person God created us to be—physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. To do so is to live in wholeness. Excerpted from My Crazy Imperfect Christian Family by Glenn T. Stanton. Copyright © 2004. Used by permission of NavPress. www.navpress.com. All rights reserved.