The following is an excerpt from our book True Intimacy.
For the next month we will be posting a chapter a day for your reading (and marital) pleasure. However, if you would like to purchase an electronic or printed copy for yourself or someone else we would greatly appreciate your support! To go to the web page for more information click here.
O Magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt His name together. Psalm 34:3
Contrary to what Hollywood is telling us, the Best most intimate sex is not only about the physical connection between two people; it’s a spiritual and emotional connection as well. Sex connects your souls creating a bond that grows deeper and stronger and better the older that it gets. Once you have protected yourselves, by taking away the option of divorce, you are free to bare your souls more fully with one another. By sharing yourselves completely you are only then able to truly make the soul connection that we as human beings were created to have with our spouses.
Two heads are better than one. As a couple you can do more, be more, love more, and help more; you literally complete each other. You can lean on each other when you get tired, cheer each other up when you get sad, tend to each other when you get sick, warm each other when you get cold, defend each other when you get attacked, and love each other in spite of your differences. Alone you are left, tired with no one to lean on, sad with no one to cheer you up, sick with no one to nurse you, cold with no one to warm you, attacked with no one to defend you. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 says:
“Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up. Furthermore, if two lie down together they keep warm, but how can one be warm alone? And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart.”
I think the principles from this scripture are perfectly illustrated by the following story. There once was a father with two bickering sons. One day, tired of their constant fighting the father gave each of his sons 2 sticks and first instructed them to attempt to break one of them in half; which they each accomplished with ease. The father replied, “When you bicker and fight you stand alone and are easily broken.” He then told them to hand him their 2nd sticks and he bundled them together along with his own stick and tied them with a cord. He handed his oldest son the bundle and told him to try to break it. He couldn’t do it. Looking to his sons he said, “When you set aside your differences and work together you are like this bundle of sticks. When we are tied together as one united group it’s next to impossible to break.”
In these verses from Ecclesiastes it talks about all the ways that two are better than one, and then at the end the number changes from two, to a cord of three strands. This is a poetic device to draw attention to something. It makes the reader ask, what’s the third thing? A man and woman are better together than being alone. However, we are not yet made complete until the third element is added. God completes the cord of three strands.
Marriage was originally created to be threefold; God, a husband and a wife, 3 crucial parts to one cord. If you take any one of those elements out of the marriage you weaken the entire unit. Just like the sticks in the story, by themselves they are brittle and easily broken, but tied together with the bonds of love they become strong; an unstoppable force. When we as a society try to re-define God’s original definition of the threefold picture of marriage we not only weaken those marriages themselves but also the society in which they exist. Every society is built on the strength of the family unit. When those units begin to break apart the society breaks apart right along with them.
Now, I’m going to say something that may be slightly shocking to some people, so prepare yourselves. I am going to propose that you invite God, not just into your marriage, but into your bedroom as well. I know, the thought of it is a little strange, but when you stop to think about it, He invented sex, He’s seen you naked, so what’s so different about acknowledging the fact that He’s there with you and that He *gasp!* approves of what you’re doing. I could go more into detail on this, but I don’t want to get anyone too excited, we’ve still got 12 more days of fasting after all. So we’ll talk about this more later, at the end of the book.
Christian’s comments:
A triangle is the strongest shape. Husbands, if you are a gear-head like me, you probably watch auto racing. More specifically, stock car racing. If you have watched as much as I have, there’s no doubt that you have noticed the roll cages inside the racecars. They are made up of a whole bunch of triangles. They are built with the strength of triangles to withstand damage from huge crashes.
I’ve also watched a lot of off-road truck racing. The chassis of the trucks are basically a big triangle; strengthened with smaller triangles built into them. They are built this way to withstand the constant beatings the trucks take during races.
When I build a demolition derby car, I build as many triangles into the safety cage as possible. That way, my car can withstand the constant “attacks” from my “enemies” on the track. (For anyone that doesn’t know what a demolition derby is, imagine bumper cars with real vehicles.)
You build a triangle when you have God in your marriage. With the three (God, husband, and wife) working together, your marriage can stand up to any big crashes, beatings, and attacks that come along.
Tamar Knochel 