This post is full of wisdom gathered from the Word, my own life, and people far wiser than I. 

Let's talk about SEX
How did you first learn about sex? From your parents? Your friends? Some form of media? How many of you feel that your first exposure to the topic of sexuality was helpful, healthy and should be replicated for your children someday? In the church, we just don’t talk about it enough.

Say a crocodile comes up, bites a man’s arm off, and then goes back in the water…but no one ever talked about it, because it was impolite to talk about crocodiles. All over the town, there were maimed people—but no one talked about it and they kept eating by the river, never worrying about losing parts of their body. It is the same with our sexuality.

Sex is presenting yourself as a gift

Most of us, through no intentional fault of our own, have not learned to think about sex through accurate biblical, theological, and moral perspectives. There is an undeniable and unpreventable connection between sexuality and spirituality. You can’t read the Bible without realizing almost instantly that God cares a great deal about our sexuality. As an observation, I have never known anyone who had an unhealthy or unsanctified sex life who also had a vibrant, complete spiritual life. As opposed to asserting that sex is primarily for procreation or pleasure, Christians believe that sex is ultimately about presenting yourself as a gift to another. It is about self-donation, about giving yourself away. It is covenant-cement; you become one with someone. If God didn’t exist, then you would be just an animal. Nothing more, nothing less. Implication: you should reproduce as much as possible and seek all the pleasure you can possibly find. However, because God has revealed his existence, what he says about sex is too important to ignore or neglect.. How you treat an object reveals how you feel about its creator and owner. “When I respect the image of God in others, I protect the image of God in myself.” Sexual sin is typically the first sign of a refusal to worship God.  

Historically:
In the ancient Near Eastern worldview, the sexual activity of human beings was simply an earthly reflection of what was believed to be taking place in the heavenly realm.  They understood sex as a reflection of life in the heavenly realms…where the deities they believed in had sex with each other. Many of the gods who were worshipped by ancient religions were fertility gods and were honored not simply through sacrifice, but through sex. The gods which the Israelites worshiped instead of God were Asherah and Baal—each of whom was worshipped through sex. Furthermore, no Jew could ever have sex without thinking about God! Sex is a sacrament.


Sex plays a significant part in everybody’s life from the age of 12 until they die.

Not only does are body produce hormones that cause us to think certain thoughts and act certain ways, but we cannot divorce ourselves from our sexual identity. I am a man, and I relate to other men man to man. When I relate to Sarah, I relate to her as a man to a woman. My sex is a root to who I am.


Your view of sexuality reveals your view of humanity.

Lower views of sex assume/assert that you can give your body to another person and not give yourself to that person. Christians reject that assumption. Likewise, lower views of sex assume/assert that you can have sex with someone and still maintain independence. Christians also reject that assumption. When you have sex with someone, you become one with them. God intended that you would only become one with one person.


The body for the Lord and the Lord for the body
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.  Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. Obedience isn't a feeling. If we comply with God's directions only when it fits in with our goals and interests, then we are trying to get God to orbit around us.

Discipleship involves your sex life.
Right relationships are central to righteousness. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ first three descriptions of life in the kingdom of heaven are all about relationships, and two are specifically about sexuality.  One of the churches most pressing tasks is to raise up a generation who cares more about God than they do about their next orgasm. With every sexual decision you make, you are bringing either heaven or hell to earth. We intrinsically know that our sexual decisions have spiritual ramifications. Though we will not have sex in heaven, our sex life must be submitted to principles that will be in heaven—namely sacrificial love.

Getting to the heart of sexual sin
The enemy loves to ask “Did God really say you can’t ___________?” Just look at the fall of man. The enemy suggests that God’s guidelines are overly-restrictive, unnecessary, and infringe on what is best for you as a person. Moreover, it seems we as humans have a propensity to desire  and take what God has put restrictions on. All sin is rooted in not trusting God. Sin is selfishness. At its core, sin is placing yourself above God and others.

Observation:  What does it reveal that in our culture, the most effective strategy to keep people from having sex is itself self-centered? “Don’t have sex because if you do, you’ll get an STD and your life won’t be as good!”

-Sexual sin is typically the first sign of a refusal to worship God.
-Sexual sin will derail you as no other sin has the capacity to. If every other area in your life is solid but you have unresolved sexual sin, your life will be in chaos. 
- Sexual sin’s capacity to give pleasure is surpassed only by its capacity to bring pain.
- Sexual sin ruins relationships.
- Sexual sin results in shame.
- Sexual sin will always hurt those you care about the most.
- The pain from sexual sins will heal, but the scars will likely remain.


Sexual sin is very rarely, if ever, the real issue that someone is dealing with.

“Every man who knocks at the door of a brothel is looking for God.” –G.K. Chesterton.

-If you cut off a branch it will grow back. If you have bad fruit, you need new roots.
-Sexual sin almost always begins with the rationale, “If I had ____________, than I would be more complete.”
- Sexual sin comes from a deep lack of satisfaction with life.
This world often uses sex as a means of momentarily anesthetizing or distracting people from the basic emptiness of their lives.-- Stanley Grenz
- When the only contemporary means of self-transcendence is sex, we Christians are going to have a tough time convincing people that it would be nicer if they were not promiscuous.

The real issue in our lives isn’t about sex, but love. 

Your struggle with sex isn’t about sex, it is about intimacy—

The type of intimacy that:
-Elevates you beyond yourself
-Enables you to truly encounter another
-Brings you lasting satisfaction
-Has the capacity to change you for the better.

Regardless of how sexually active or sexual chaste you are, you will never truly be sexually satisfied until you have found love and intimacy (transcendence) with God.

When a friend of mine who counsels people with sexual brokenness meets with people who are unhealthy sexually, his first questions are typically in this order:

-In what ways has this person yet to understand/experience/ realize the love of God?
-In what ways has this person yet to understand/experience/realize the love of community?

If people can’t experience transcendence in God, they will, if only out of necessity, resort to searching for it in sex. Sex will offer transcendence, but at most it will be pseudo-transcendence if God is not central to the equation.


The essence of sex

Sex is about connection; it’s about knowing another and being known by another as part of the mutual exchange of the gift of yourselves. When you have sex with someone you are saying to them, “You can know me in the most intimate, vulnerable way possible.”

Sex requires you to be naked with someone else, and the physical aspect is secondary.

“The red-light district of Amsterdam is so sexually repressed.” –Rob Bell

Rape is the ultimate devaluation of sex. It becomes about taking, not giving. It becomes about transaction, not knowledge. Therefore, in a sense, lust is rape. You are taking knowledge that has not been given to you. You making someone known to you without their consent. Continually, casual sex is consensual rape. It is the height of selfishness.

The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. While he looks at Christ, the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him. Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God's righteousness and less and less attention to our own; finding the meaning of our lives not by probing our moods and motives and morals but by believing in God's will and purposes; making a map of God's faithfulness, not charting the rise and fall of our enthusiasms.



1.    Avoid sexual gratification through masturbation.

-We need to talk about this because I’m guessing 95% of guys I know struggle with it and somewhere between 30-40% of girls (though they are less apt to discuss it)

-We almost never hear about this. I never heard about this in church!
-I never heard about it from a parent or a trusted authority

10 reasons I want to admonish you to avoid it!
-It is, in essence, selfish…the root of all sin
-Because it is selfish, it doesn’t prepare you for marital sex (either practically or mentally)
-It doesn’t represent God’s plan for orgasm or for sexuality in marriage.
-It produces guilt
-It leads to loneliness (after orgasm the body releases chemicals that result in intense bonding…in marriage, that is perfect. In masturbation, that is depressing.)
-It becomes habitual and addictive
-The bible says not to be mastered by anything. (1 Cor 6:12)
-It is the opposite of self control—the fruit of the Spirit
-Romans 14:22 Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves.
-I cannot think of a single way it will help you look, live or love more like Jesus.

2     Avoid sexual gratification through touching or being touched by another person

To be honest, when I was growing up, since no one ever talked about sex in my family or in church—it wasn’t until I was 16 and we took a survey in my youth group about what everyone thought was “too far” that I realized things could be way too far that weren’t sex. All I ever heard was “no sex until marriage.”

Avoid intentionally exciting yourself or another person in the sort of way that elicits sexual arousal in you or them.

In this I would include kissing to the point of arousal, necking, touching sexual parts of the body or caressing of any part of the body. Each of these actions naturally lead to sexual arousal, which means they are intended for marriage.

What good are you accomplishing through fondling another person?

3.      Avoid unnecessary sexual stimulation.

-With the movies you watch (elaborate)—You’d blush if Jesus were in the room
-With the conversations you have (some conversations with your friends are counter-productive)
-With the media you consume on the internet (facebook is huge!—I know so many guys who talk about giving into sexual sin after looking through facebook pictures of THEIR FRIENDS)
-I have made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a woman. (Job 31:1)
-This is honestly a really good test to see if you are a slave or free when it comes to sexual sin. When something like this comes your way, what does it result in you doing?

4.      When you are tempted sexually, turn your desire and attention towards God.

Once you recognize that there is a desire in your heart or mind, acknowledge it before God outloud, then confess that your greatest desire is for God-to know him, love him, obey him and seek his delight. Then say, because I want you more than anything else, I refuse to follow this desire, I commit to follow you.
(First Night… “How have I failed you”)

Pray for an ever-increasing love for God and for an ever-increasing delight in obeying his commands. “The expulsive power of a new affection.”
You know one of the most effective ways to get over a person you had a crush on? Fall in love with someone new…especially if they are someone better!!

5.  Submerge your mind in scripture every day.

-Simply praying and asking God to remove this sin isn’t going to practically do much (I’m speaking from talking with dozens and dozens and dozens of guys)
-Romans 12
-Matthew 4
-five out of seven days isn’t enough.
-Two out of seven days isn’t enough.
-Every day if you are in the process of breaking free from sexual addiction.

6.  Stay busy with things that matter.

I’m not talking about over committing yourself, (though college students are, by in large, some of the lazier people I know).
I am talking about keeping your mind busy (Philippians 4:8-9) Whatever is true, whatever is noble…etc.
If you go to bed and the first thing you do is read a chapter of the bible and then the second thing you to is thank God for 10 blessings he gave you that day and the third thing you do is pray for your family and friends…you’ll be asleep by the time you would otherwise have given into sexual sin.

Biblical example from Ephesians 4:28 “He who has been stealing but steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.”
 (1)Remove this (2) Replace it with this (3) Results in this…your reward (Greater than before)

7.  Stay connected to Christian community.

-Spend time with people who care about and are committed to your purity.

-They may be more committed to your purity than you are…that will be helpful (because it is a picture of God’s commitment to you)—fasting or sleeping outside because of people’s sin.

Stay connected to a wide range of people—not just friends your age…but in their thirties and fifties…etc. Get to know elders at your church, befriend people who are living the type of life you want to live 10-30 years down the road.

If you really care about community, you’ll stop sinning. (Do you know what one person’s sin does to a community?? Tell story of Achen—
Revival might have broken out in Lexington if it weren’t for the sexual sin of Christians
This campus might have become entirely Christian if it weren’t for sin of students

The prayer of a RIGHTEOUS man is powerful and effective.

8.   Strive to think of people as God does and to see them in light of eternity.

Ask for every person you see, who you might lust after or think about using, “God, what is your heart for this person?” You created them, you love them, what good are you trying to bring about in their life?

Its pretty hard to exploit someone sexually if you are thinking about either spending eternity with them in heaven as your brother or sister.
Or if you can picture them eternally suffering, separate from God.

9.  Resolve to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Maybe it will be a spouse, maybe it will be the grace and freedom to be single and satisfied, but all things will be added until you.


In Conclusion
Sex is a gift from God; it represents a spiritual reality and is intended to be about the giving of yourself away to another. Sex brings about a whole-person connection—making two one. In so doing, it allows participants to transcend themselves and experience something beyond themselves.  Whenever sex is used other than as a loving gift of yourself to another as an earthly reflection of a heavenly, eternal reality, it is devalued.  When sex becomes selfish, we become like animals. Our sex life and our spiritual life are one and the same.

You can take one of two courses when it comes to God’s wisdom on sex. You can reject it and learn it through tragedy or you can accept it and learn it through patience.  In the name of sexual freedom we have become sexual slaves.  Freedom isn’t having everything you crave, its going without whatever you crave and being fine with it.

Let’s move beyond saying, “I fell into sin.” We need to own our actions. Let’s instead honesty confess “I chose to sin in this specific way. Here is exactly what I did and how I did it.” I renounce this as a way of life inconsistent with Christ and his kingdom. These are the consequences of my actions. This is how I will seek repentance, restoration, and if necessary, restitution.


Let’s make peace. Let’s confess our sins. Let’s be holy as He is holy.





I have to credit most of this wisdom to Dan Hamel.