Guest Post: Sex and the Act of Worship by Nicole Cottrell

Click to visit Nicole's blog!I met the Nicole, also known as the Modern Reject at Catalyst a couple of years ago, just as she was launching. I’ve been amazed at how quickly MR has become a community of people who love to ask tough questions. Nicole is provocative, thoughtful and sharp. Join the conversation at ModernReject.com and follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

I didn’t come to Jesus a virgin. Instead, I came to Jesus with far more sexual experience a girl of 16 should have. I also came to Jesus, however, somehow knowing that He didn’t care about any of that. He saw me as a virgin. It was a new day.

I couldn't resist.
I couldn’t resist.

So, I suppose on some level, I expected the church to talk about this fact, too. I expected to hear rousing sermons on the gift of sex, ordained by God, pleasing to Him when experienced between man and wife. I expected to hear exactly what it was I was now waiting for, having once had sex, only to give it up in pursuit of Christ.

But, those messages from the church never came. Different ones did, however.

I think a youth pastor once talked about what not to do–how to not let things go too far with your boyfriend–so as to remain a virgin. You know, since virginity was the prize and all.

Virginity, it seemed, was what all young Christian people were to aspire to.

Need bad theology? Just find a Christian t-shirt!
Need bad theology?
Just find a Christian t-shirt!

It wasn’t the powerful, supernatural, superglue-like bond that formed between two people who had only had intercouse with one another. It wasn’t the protection from emotional damage and even physical ramifications that comes from waiting. It wasn’t the lifelong guarantee of a healthier and more satisfying sex life with your spouse, if both were each other’s only sexual partner. It wasn’t the holiness and clarity that comes from a life surrendered to purity–purity of mind, spirit, and body.

No, those were not the messages I heard. Those rewards and blessings from the Lord were not discussed. It was simply stated within the church that sex was not good. Virginity was good. Sex could wait…you just never knew exactly why.

The world sells the lie that sex is love. Yet, on the flip side, the church sells the lie that sex isn’t love.

Rabbits... teens... there's a joke here...
Rabbits. Teens.
There’s a joke here…

Young Christians swallow this up believing that marriage and sex are somehow not related, somehow not wholly and spiritually intertwined.

Sex, it seems, is simply a byproduct of marriage instead of an integral and intimate part. So, it becomes easy for us to dabble in sex outside of marriage. It becomes easy for us to view sex as just an action or an activity, and not the spiritual, emotional, and physical oneness described in Genesis.

And the two shall become one flesh, is quite literal. Sex is two becoming one and is nothing short of glorifying God.

Of course, when I finally got married at the tender age of 25, I had to unlearn all that I had been taught…and subsequently hadn’t been taught about sex between a husband and wife. No longer was I able to compartmentalize sex or view it as separate from love.

You see, both the world and the church have it wrong. Sex is love but…in marriage.

Song of Solomon. Read it. It's sexy.
Song of Solomon. Read it. It’s sexy.

In the context of a marriage covenant between a man and a woman, sex and love are forever and inextricably linked. You cannot love your spouse without enjoying the gift of sex God has given you both to enjoy. Nor can you love sex, apart from your spouse, whom God gave you to enjoy it with.

God receives glory when we enjoy the gifts He has given us, whether it be good food, a child, a home, a loving spouse, or…sex. To put it plainly, when we enjoy sex within marriage we are worshipping the Lord. Strange to think, perhaps. It was for me, until the Spirit revealed this truth. Now, on Sundays, my husband and I sometimes skip church and choose instead to stay in bed and “worship the Lord.”

YOUR TURN: What were you falsely taught…or not taught about sex? What is the one thing you know now, that you wish you had known then? What would you tell young people today about sex and marriage?

bio-picNicole Cottrell is…a hopeful romantic, baby wrangler, blogger on a mission, wife to her hero. Most importantly, follower of the One. She’s the Modern Reject. Stalk her on Twitter @modernreject or on Facebook at Modern Reject. She’ll be your BFF. 

My Wife Married the Wrong Person

Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become “whole” and happy. The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough we will find the right person. This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person. We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being [the enormous thing it is] means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary problem is . . . learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.
— Stanley Hauerwas, quoted in The Meaning of Marriage (emphasis mine)

The day we both married the wrong person. Good Decision!
The day we both married the wrong person.
Good Decision!

Yesterday, we talked about what it means to marry the stranger, how marriage sanctifies us, and what it means that we always marry the wrong person. So I had to write about my own marriage, and the glorious truth that my wife married the wrong person.

For everything my wife Amanda and I have in common, we are pretty different people. I’m an attention hog who loves the spotlight and has a tendency to run over people. She’s a behind-the-scenes servant who puts herself last no matter what. I always have to have a plan; she’s go-with-the-flow. I squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom, she squeezes from the middle.

But what we fight about most, ironically, is fighting. Amanda and I have very different conflict-resolution strategies.Continue reading

Week 2 – The Seven Churches of Revelation

JR. Forasteros - September 12, 2012

Week 2 - The Seven Churches

Week 2 - The Seven Churches

We explore Jesus' messages to the Seven Churches in Asia. This lesson covers Revelation chapters 2-3.

Related Topics: Priorities, Love, Eschatology, Revelation , Community, Church, Holiness | More Messages from JR. Forasteros | Download Audio

From Series: "Revelation to John"

Week 2 Notesheet     Week 2 PowerPoint

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This week we explore the seven letters to the Seven Churches of Revelation. We’ll see that each Church faced the pressure from the dominant Roman culture differently, and Jesus’ message speaks directly to each church.

Jesus’ message to the Seven Churches of Revelation is just as urgent for the Church today.

You can subscribe the the podcast right here: SUBSCRIBE IN ITUNES (and rate it if you like it!)

YOUR TURN: Which of the Churches do you most connect to? How did chapters 2-3 treat you overall?

Guest Post: INCOMPREHENSIBLE by Lindsey Nobles

Lindsey Nobles
You need to read Lindsey’s blog.
It’ll make your life more excellent.

Lindsey is one of my all-time favorite bloggers. Her life, the choices she makes, challenge me to follow Jesus more courageously. Deservedly so, Lindsey was recently listed as one of the 25 Christian Leaders to follow on Twitter. Read her awesome blog here, and follow her on Twitter here.

When I was younger, my friends and I loved to play this game “MASH.” I know, it sounds like a war game, but it was far from that. MASH was a game where your future was randomly laid out for you: what kind of home you’d have (Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House), who you were going to marry, how many kids you would have, what kind of car you’d drive, what kind of job you’d hold. Worst-case scenario you’d drive a mini-van and live in a shack with Arnold, the dorky guy from algebra class, raising eight kids and struggling to make ends meet as a librarian.

Looking back, the peculiar thing about MASH is that being a single child-less with a great job and incredible community was never an option. Because being single at 35 was just plain incomprehensible.

Continue reading

Brave Sacrifices Accuracy for Romance

The movie Brave sacrifices accuracy for the sake of Romance
The movie Brave sacrifices accuracy for the sake of Romance

Though today we marry for “True Love”, that’s a relatively new concept. Throughout most of human history, people married to ensure a stable society. Pixar’s latest film, Brave, is a contemporary fairy tale.

Though Brave is set in pre-modern Scotland, its take on the purpose of marriage is thoroughly modern. Brave demonstrates how our attitude towards marriage has shifted.

In the pre-modern world, more than 90% of humans on the planet lived in small agrarian communities of fewer than 200 total persons. With child survival rates as low as 50% and life expectancy around 40, the very survival of the community depended on individuals marrying and procreating as quickly and often as possible. With such a small community, a person’s marital options were limited.Continue reading

The Aurora Killings: One Way to Help

I’m not going to say much about the Aurora killings, due in large part to this excellent article. But like everyone else, I wish I could do something to help out.

If you want to do something to help one family of a victim of the Aurora killings, here’s how you can get involved:

A guy named Matt McQuinn was one of the 12 victims. I didn’t know Matt, but he grew up in Springfield, OH and two of my good friends, Anthony and Abby, were in youth group with him.

Matt’s mom doesn’t have the money to get him home and bury him, so some of her friends have banded together to raise the $10,000 she needs to make this happen. As of writing, they’re only about $2,000 short.

UPDATE: The fundraisers easily met the original goal, so increased to $15,000. One week after this initial posting, they’ve raised a little over $12,000 to help cover all Matt’s parents’ costs. Thank you for all your help!

So if you want to help in one small way to bring some healing to those affected by the Aurora killings, you can give.

Click here to donate.

Here’s more on Matt’s story.

I’m a (Canadian) Radio Star!

On June 9, I had the privilege of appearing on Drew Marshall’s very excellent radio talk show.

Drew’s a former pastor who’s taken to the airwaves to talk about… all kinds of stuff Christians don’t usually like to talk about. You can listen to Drew every Saturday at www.drewmarshall.ca

He decided my blog would be a good fit, so he called me up and we chatted live on the air! I had a blast – the interview was fun and funny. Check it out, or listen to it here, on Drew’s page.

Here are the posts we discussed in the interview:
  1. Review of Real Marriage by Mark Driscoll
  2. My series on Dexter Season 6
  3. My response to John Piper, “Jesus Got a Sex Change (Sort Of)“
  4. My series on The Hunger Games
YOUR TURN: What did you think of the interview?