Stop Misusing Sex and Enjoy It

I had an 84-year-old seminary professor that I asked, “When does a man stop enjoying sex?”

He said, “Well, Kenny, I don’t know, but it’s sometime after 84.”

I thought, Dude, you are my hero!

If you have been married a long time and have settled into an emotional existence with your spouse, or if you have settled with your sexual life, don’t write yourself a hall pass out of this. God has created us as sexual beings. It’s a powerful tool for us, and no matter how old we are, it can be a force for good.

Let me tell you about our direction in this series. Guys like to know which way they’re headed. Here’s what we are going to talk about: sex, men, trends, culture and dynamics. Then we will wade into this topic of sex and men—and talk about God’s mind on this issue.

As we take the journey into the series, the filter in this discussion is sex as God designed it for us—understanding that sex is God’s gift to us. My goal in the next several articles and videos is to help you realize the value of your sexuality.

A lot of times we are not told about the value of sexuality. We are often ashamed about it. We were told not to explore it. We were told we had to stay away from it. We follow the outside rules about it but then end up living totally secret lives engaging it.

This is all about God’s design and His gift. If it’s God’s design and gift, then it intrinsically has God’s value attached to it. When you assign value to anything, you stop misusing it and start enjoying it. The rub in this for us is that we’ve been fed a failed sexual brand. That sex is how you see it in the media, but it isn’t that way. When we misuse sex, we damage ourselves and others.

But here’s the big thing. What you will never see in a movie is exactly how sex, when it is misused or abused by individuals, damages them and damages their relationship with God.

Understand this. The Dark One—do you want to know what he knows? He knows that if you misunderstand God’s gift of sex, you will absolutely misuse it. In doing so, this will create lasting consequences for generations, particularly with your sons and your daughters. He knows how to get to men. He knows how powerful sex is in our lives.

That is why we are going to bust out of the silence and take this topic head-on—to supply you with God’s truth. That’s the direction of where we are headed. We are going to tee it up and talk about sex and the body, sex and the mind, and sex and the soul and spirit.

What’s going on out there? I looked at Esquire magazine’s sex survey. I looked at Health Magazine and Men’s Health. Here are some of the trends that are going on with men ages 20 to 70.

Forty-one percent of men say they are satisfied with their sex life. Twenty-two percent say they have no sex life. Married men are 25 percent more likely to say that they are very satisfied than their single buddies. You wouldn’t think that, watching Road Trip or some of these movies that portray the married guy as the guy stuck, morally constipated. Totally not true.

What about women? Surveys actually show that the most sexually satisfied women are married, religious women. You will never hear that portrayed in movies or in the media. There is something to this monogamy thing!

He created them. Man and woman. The two will become one flesh. The science of sex satisfaction all points to married men as the most satisfied. Seventy-five percent of men believe strongly in the institution of marriage.

There is a down side: 34 percent of men in committed relationships have cheated on their current partner or spouse.

Here‘s the irony: A third of us are cheating on our spouses while we are in a committed relationship, but 75 percent of us believe that marriage is a good thing. Men were asked the following question: If there were no chance of you getting caught by your wife for having an affair, how likely would you be to cheat? The answers came back as follows: 37 percent said not very likely, 36 percent said not at all likely, 18 percent said somewhat likely and 4 percent said very likely.

Isn’t it interesting how belief and behavior are at odds with each other? It shows us there is a huge battle in the souls, spirits and minds of men because of the way God designed us sexually.

Let’s talk about number of partners: 13 percent of men have had one sexual partner, 23 percent have had two to five partners, and then there are the wild rabbits, with 22 percent of men who have had 20 or more partners.

Here’s more research: 33 percent of Christian men have looked at porn in the last week, and 33 percent of men who classify themselves as born-again believers in their 20s believe that cohabitation is acceptable.

Men were asked, Do you keep photographs of your old girlfriends? Seventy-five percent said no, but with the advent of Facebook, the same 75 percent of men have searched for their past girlfriends or made connection with them.

Click here to read Part 1 of this series.

Note: This is the second in a four-part series Every Man Ministries is calling “The Sex Series,” where God’s men receive the best from God’s gift of sexual intimacy. Sex is physical, mental and spiritual, and God wants us to use this gift in the way He intended it to be enjoyed. This series will help you understand sex through the lens of Scripture. It will teach you to understand what God expects from His sons when it comes to sex and sexual intimacy.

Kenny Luck is the founder of Every Man Ministries and the men’s pastor at Saddleback Church. His 20th book, Sleeping Giant: No Movement of God Without Men of God, is the proven blueprint for men’s ministries and was recently released through B&H Publishing. Watch and read more of Kenny’s teaching at EveryManMinistries.com. Follow Every Man Ministries now on Facebook, Twitter (@everymm) and YouTube.

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