If you experienced this past weekend, and you're married, you might have thought the service wasn't for you. After all the topic was lust. That's for all the single people or, I suppose, married people who are flirting with an affair. It might have been easy to check out (except for that stunning interview with Satan...watch it here).
Hold up. Let's consider this: Is it okay to lust for your spouse?
I admit it, I've told my wife that I'm filled with lust for her. What I'm saying is, "I think you're hot. You're making me hot. Let's get hot together I 'lust' you. (blush... this is getting way personal.)" I don't intend to be one-dimensional. I intend it in the context of celebrating our multi-dimensional relationship. But, in the heated moment, it's pretty focused. It's about sex. Pure and simple.
Is that okay?
Absolutely (especially when she says, "yes"). I want her to know that I treasure her...and her "Wonderland" body (thanks, John Mayer... I think he borrowed the eroticism from Solomon). I want her to know that after 27 years of marriage I still find her attractive and sexy. God designed sex between a married man and woman to be filled with pleasure. Highly erotic. Charged with sensual energy. Intimately romantic.
BUT. (one T)
But, if all I do is really lust for my wife, if all she hears from me is "I lust for you", then I'm only singing Cheap Trick: "I want you to want me, I need you to need me, I'm beggin' you to beg me." It's one-dimensional. "I want one thing from you - keep me happy sexually." That's lust - and even within marriage it's way short of God's ideal of Love.
This weekend Rob Wegner clearly defined Love that is God-honoring, other-treasuring (watch an excerpt here).
- Love is relational - interested in the family, friendships and human interactions of the other.
- Love is intellectual - interested in how the other thinks, reasons, and processes.
- Love is emotional - concerned with how the other feels.
- Love is spiritual - interested in who God made the other to be and their relationship with him.
- Love is physical - enjoyed by sexual chemistry and desire.
Men, you love your wife with that kind of love and "lust" will be a playful, mutual expression of appropriate physical desire. Women, you love your husband with that kind of love and desire, and his tendency to "lust" after other women will be minimized. But note the distinction between a playful "lust" in marriage and a selfish expression of lust.
Play the video above again. By definition lust is reductionary. It always wants more, never satisfied with the present pleasure and connection. It is self-absorbed. Lust will hurt - even destroy - your marriage. Love will ignite the spark and cause your marriage to burn hot.
- Read the 30-Day Sex Challenge ... and Sex God. Then talk about it. Not just the sex. But where your ideas of sex come from. What hurts, fears and misgivings you have about sex - from past or present.
- Read the Song of Solomon together (read it in the Message)... in bed.
- If you've given up on 30 days of sex, then plan an overnight. Send the kids to Grandmas and stay home if you can't get a hotel. But, think honeymoon. Plan. Be creative. Give yourselves to each other again: fully - relationally, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
Which will it be in your marriage? Love or Lust.
I choose Love.
