We have abused our sexuality as a people, and allowed modern society and culture to pervert it. God gave us the desire for intimacy and our sexuality was to be an outward expression of this inner intimacy from the heart, for the other person. Sex was never meant for self indulgence or to gratify self, but as our gift to another within the union of marriage. This is in the Bible.
God knows all about our struggles but many forget this life is a test of our submission to His will, which is made up mostly of obedience to His word. Including the sex drive He gave us to be governed by that same Word, made alive in our born again spirits. Grace was not given so we could keep sinning, but to become like Jesus. For the believer there has always been only two options; total abstinence or marriage.
God made sex, it was His idea, no use trying to be more holy than God. But it was created to be used only in a specific context, between husband and wife. Where it was to be used in acts of giving to each other, and only this mutual giving to the other would bring the spiritual fulfillment for which purpose it was made. Intimacy is not just physical.
Conception occurs after and during longing. If you yield to the longing by thinking about it – you will conceive. Conception occurs when you actually become intimate with what you are desiring inside your mind. And sin when it is conceived brings forth Death, but it doesn’t mean dropping dead right away. It means loss of life, and it happens every time we sin.
We were living outside Boston in a big house where my father was finishing his twenty years in the army, in what they call your twilight tour. After serving in the Korean War and 2 tours in Vietnam he was a mustang who had made Major, and was now in charge of all army recruiting in New England. The first time I saw him strike my mother in a single blow knocking her to the floor, something broke inside me.
Within what seemed like a whirlwind of no time at all I woke up by myself in the Noah’s Ark section of the state children’s home in Nashville, and realized at 10 years old that nothing at all around me belonged to me. My mother and her people were from Tennessee, and having had what they called back then a nervous breakdown, we became wards of that state.
It was this separation of my parents and later divorce that began the breakdown of our happy family, and opening the door to all 5 of the children involved in sexual molestation on some level, by different people at different times at various places in our childhood. As fallen men in a fallen world living under a curse, we all have things to overcome. When Jesus promises the rewards to the overcomers, he’s referring to whatever came up in your path to interfere with your obedience to the will of God for your life.
We are not supposed to see the nakedness of other people or want to uncover their nakedness, we are not supposed to do that. That’s not a question, it is a commandment. God himself covered the nakedness of the first man and woman after they sinned in the garden, before that they had been clothed in the glory of God.
This is not about whether you go around personally seeking the nakedness of others, it’s all around us. This is about your response, because your response determines your future. In so many things. God says one thing while men say another. Whose words do you value. As sure as the stain of a dye soaks through cloth, our decisions will be seen on us like that.
Don’t look at magazines or sites that have that stuff, if you see just a little in a movie turn away. If they have a lot of it in a movie or show, you shouldn’t be watching it. Not taking these things seriously is the same as not taking God seriously, exactly the same. God takes His Word seriously, you take it seriously too. Our positions in Heaven are being determined right now.
Back when living for myself while in part time ministry decades ago, I learned to be a taker. Not with money or in any material sense like that, both giving and sharing with others then and now were essentials. No this taking occurred in physical intimacy outside of marriage, which is still a sin.
Intercourse used to satisfy one’s self is nothing more than taking, and God is not a taker. The system of commerce and trade running the whole world began in Babylon, and is based on taking not giving. God is a giver and the chief expression of love is giving, not taking. If you were a worshipper of beauty joined to an aggressive nature like my own, then you wanted to take as much as you could get.
But you can look at beauty without desiring it, or see something of value without wanting it intensely or having to have it. For that greedy desire to get is what it means to Covet, Thou Shalt Not Covet is one of the ten commandments. It doesn’t matter what it is, we were not made to covet and God forbids it. He will help us out of sin but we must come to Him.
This grasping and grabbing inside ourselves to get what we want lives inside our fallen nature and must be crucified every day. There were times in my life when I coveted great wealth, fame or some sort of power – but I don’t now. Such things war against your soul and fill your inner man with strife and contention. It’s ungodly, and like all sin it has a twisting effect.
Where we’re going you can travel at the speed of thought, and the gold valued so greatly by men here – is paving material up there. The streets are made of it. God wants you to remember that. Your faith is more precious to Him than gold, and those who live by faith here will walk on gold there.
Staying close to God and far from sin will require us being brutally honest within ourselves, especially as the days grow darker. Never rely on your thoughts and feelings to bring you into God’s presence, they are connected to this world which is earthly sensual and devilish, and are part of our fallen nature. We enter into the presence of God by faith, not by our feelings.
Once you’ve decided to believe the Word is true, you’re gonna have to keep believing it’s true no matter what things look like around you, no matter what kind of sin pulls on you inside. Faith is all about what we cannot see, remember. Only carnal fleshy christians are led around by how they feel and what they think – about what they can see. The lust of the eyes and the pride of life.
If you believe that your being here is the result of a moment of pleasure between a man and a woman, then you will look to man and moments of pleasure for your purpose. Believers in God are led by the Spirit and the Word as they walk in all the Light they have, all of which is Spiritual not carnal. Staying in the Spirit every day will separate those who fail from those who succeed. God is already showing the difference right now between those who are His and those who are not.
You did not create your body and you did not give you your body, God did that. We are not our own, we were bought with a price. If you were still your own then God could not raise you from the dead or in the rapture. It is for that very reason that you are now His – that He can raise you up, just like He raised Jesus from the dead. Those who don’t get raised will be staying, and learn to live a holy life while in the tribulation.
Brother Greg
Growing up in Christ
Much Grace 
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