Concern over Marriage Intimacy Substitutes

I was recently eating a meal at a Burger King and could not help but notice the onslaught of advertisements for the latest Twilight movie. These movies are based on a series of books depicting youth who are vampires. Yet, this is not your typical run-of-the-mill Bela Lugosi type creep shows. These are healthy, young, good looking people whose relationships are intertwined. Youth are devouring these books and eagerly await the movies. They are not alone. Many adult women are also devotees.

What's the draw for the interest? Simply this: relationships and the emotions that accompany them. What's wrong with that? Nothing, except that too often my wife and I find that couples use such things as these as substitutes for marital intimacy. We are not talking about an occasional "chick night" at the movies or a group of guys going to a Canes game. We are talking about unfulfilled men and women looking elsewhere to fulfill their emotional or physical needs outside of what God has designed for the marriage.

Let's be blunt here. I am discovering more and more women pouring over romance novels or religiously watching certain soap opera oriented television shows to fulfill a relational emotional need they feel they cannot gain from their husbands. Men likewise have their own substitutes for intimacy. They pursue pornographic images on the internet and elsewhere.

While not seeking to over stereo type the genders, women typically long for intimate relationships, especially seeking a husband they can feel close to who will understand them, be sensitive to them, encourage them, help them, and protect them. Intimacy for them may or may not include sexual contact.

For men, sexual contact with their wives is a major way in which they feel intimate with her. They want to be respected and admired and verbally supported. Yet, they will have a drive for a physical relationship with them.

These differences are God-designed and not an indication of either weirdness or perversion. Yet, meeting these needs for intimacy requires selflessness and a servant mentality. Unfortunately, too many couples drift apart in intimacy with each other and court other relationships to fulfill that need. These are usually fantasy relationships. They are not real. Worse, many marriages tolerate these fantasies and allow them room so that the marriage will stay together.

Women may read novels or watch shows that portray some perfect specimen of a man who is valiant and handsome as well as sensitive and tender and a spiritual leader. By constantly filling their minds with such fantasy portraits and powerful relationships, she will inevitably be filled with dissatisfaction with her real husband who cannot match up to what has become a new unbiblical standard in her mind and heart.

Men may likewise lust after women whose bodies are digitally enhanced to perfection and who speak the kinds of words that make them feel wanted and respected. Constant exposure to such images and relationships will create disdain for the real body of their wives. The heightened excitement of these encounters over time leads men to become enslaved to their sinful fleshly impulses and directs them down darker paths of perversion and addiction.

I have seen this happen over and over again. I have seen it lead to attempts to realize fantasies through affairs with other people. The woman may believe that another man who has entered her life will fulfill those needs and then justify in her mind how God approves of her emotional affair leading to a physical liaison. I have seen men abandon their wives and children so that they could have another intimate relationship with a female who is physically more alluring or who speaks words of respect to them. It started in their fantasies fed by marital substitutes and ultimately led them down the path of marital destruction.

What shall we say to such habits? Book burnings? Petitions to Hollywood? Of course not. There needs to be something more substantial than dramatic stunts.

Five Actions that Help Strengthen Marital Intimacy

Talk to God about your marriage

The first place to start is before the throne of God on your face. God may need to do a work on your own heart before that of your spouse. Confess your sin of being a lover of pleasure rather than a lover of God or in finding other things more satisfying than Him. Substitutes for spousal intimacy often begin with substitutes for God.

Confess your substitutes to each other

Stop tolerating a sub par marriage and start working at making it what God designed it to be. This may be more of a matter of trusting in God and His faithfulness to you than anything else. Talk to your spouse about how you have begun to create substitutes in your heart for intimacy. Challenge each other to consider the needs of the other as more important than themselves (Phil. 2:3).

Work at developing habits to fulfill each others needs

Examine lifestyle and habits that do not contribute to intimacy and consider how to make necessary changes. This begins with an inventory and honest evaluation. It may take some work and call for difficult change of habits, but good marriages do not just happen. People work at them. Intimacy is not always automatic. It must be cultivated.

Accept disappointment in areas that will not be fulfilled to the level you may want

Realize that your spouse will never be able to fulfill all that is held high in your mind. Love them for who they are and recognize that God gave them to you, warts and all. They must likewise find joy in you even if you are not all they fantasize about.

Stop feeding your substitute fantasies

There needs to be a work of the Holy Spirit on your heart to see where idols have been set up in your heart. Lust is sin. There is no other way to put it. Call it by its name, repent of it, and work at eliminating its expression. It is an idol that needs to be torn down. For some, there needs to be some drastic action. For women, fantasies about ideal men that don't exist may become idols in their hearts. They must repent of these and get rid of that which feeds the flesh and creates less than God honoring marriages.

Facts and stories on missions

Steve Enns, a New Tribes Missionary in Indonesia, was at a public market when a woman asked him if he was shopping (belanja). He thought she asked him if he was Dutch (belanda). Their conversation went as follows:

"Are you shopping?"

"No, I am from Canada."

In developing countries like Liberia and Ethiopia, millions of women have developed fistulas, scarred bladder or rectal tissue damaged during obstructed labor. This happens to young teenage girls who are married in tribal situations and become pregnant before their pelvis is fully developed. If the girl survives her labor, she often is physically impaired for life, including permanent incontinence due to the fistula. Her husband often divorces her in disgust and her family soon abandons her. There are millions of young uneducated teenage girls ostracized for life and branded as being under a curse without knowing what has happened to them or unaware that it can be easily cured.

Enter Australian Christian medical missionaries Reginald and Catherine Hamlin. In the 1970's they opened a hospital in the Ethiopian capital city of Addis Ababa devoted to remedying this situation. The fistula surgery is inexpensive (a few hundred dollars) and this condition used to afflict American and European women in the 1800's. It is a non existent problem for women today except in such developing nations. Steve Arrowsmith is one of a handful of surgeons who travels to these countries via a large medical ship, Africa Mercy. Through more publicity and funding, thousands of African women have their lives back due to the compassion of Christ manifested through the hearts and hands of his disciples.

Nathan Ingvoldstad is a missionary to the Tagbanwa tribe in the Philippines. A work team from America traveled to his area to help construct a home for him. One of the tribal men observed this and inquired about it. He noticed how large the American men were, but he also saw that some were Filipino sized as well. He was amazed that these people actually paid for the privilege of doing work.

"They must really want you to have a house," he remarked.

"Well, yes, but they really want us to be able to start learning your language sooner."

"Oh right, so you can tell us your important message sooner. Wow - this must be a really important message."

"Prayer is the greatest power God has put into our hands for service - praying is harder than doing, at least I find it so, but the dynamic lays that way to advance the Kingdom."

Mary Slessor, Missionary in West Africa, circa 1900

Taken from NTM@ work, a quarterly periodical from New Tribes Mission, and from Christianity Today (January 2010).

Every parent leaves a legacy for their children.  The natural question to ask is what kind of legacy are we leaving?  Jen and I have thought about this over the past few years with our own children.  Through our experiences in Seminary it became quickly evident to us that we lacked Bible knowledge.  As we thought through leaving a legacy to our own children, it was clear what we wanted that legacy to be.  We wanted our kids to know the Bible better that we did. 

In the same way, every church leaves a legacy.  As the Pastor of Discipleship at Southside I began thinking through this with regards to our church.  What is it that we as a church want the next generation of Southside to know?  As I meditated on this a few passages quickly came to mind Deuteronomy 6:7, Psalms 78:5-7 , and Ephesians 6:4.  These passages make it clear to parents that they must teach the Bible to their children.  What a better legacy for Southside Church to leave than assisting parents in being obedient to these commands of Scripture. 

Therefore, I am excited to announce that we are going to be introducing some new curriculum to Southside Children's Ministry.  The new curriculum for Sunday School is called Generations of Grace.  With this new curriculum, the children at Southside will be taught the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelations.  Generations of Grace will take our children through the historical books of the Old Testament, the Life of Christ, Acts, and Revelation a full three times before they are in Jr. High!  Not only will this curriculum teach the children the whole Bible, but it will do so in a chronological manner.  This is vital to their understanding of Scripture. 

Generations of Grace will also help us as parents shepherd our children.  How will the curriculum do this?  First of all, each of our kids from 3years old to Jr. High will be learning the same lessons every Sunday so you will not have a myriad of lessons to contend with.  This will better open the door for family discussions in the home.  Secondly, there will be a parent resource section inserted into the Sunday bulletin.  In the bulletin will be 5 "P's" of help:  passage, principal, praise, prompt, and practice.  As a parent we will be able to see the passages covered, the main principal that was learned from the lesson, a suggested praise song to sing with your kids, lesson prompts to open  discussions with your children, and suggestions as to how to help your children practice or apply the truths that they learned. 

With all of this said.....teachers and parents mark your calendars.  We will be implementing Generations of Grace on April 4^th.  I will be holding a teacher training day (to be announced) to help with this transition and walk you through teaching the new curriculum.  Parents are more than welcome to attend this training day as well. 

I pray that God is glorified through the legacy that we will leave the children at Southside.

Pastor Ben