Marriage Bliss

An Exclusive Club

This article is for members only. To be a member of this club you must meet one of the following criteria:

You are currently a virgin and are planning on marrying a virgin or one who satisfies criteria # 3.
You are currently really married according to God’s Word. If you are unsure of what that means, then you need to read the article on what constitutes True Marriage.
You were legitimately married and your spouse passed away. Now you are only free to enter into another legitimate marriage.

If you don’t match up to the club’s criteria then this article does not apply to you. A consequence of not meeting the criteria is that it is impossible for you to have the depth of marriage bliss that only club members can have. So, reading on is pure foolishness and you are not invited to participate in this topic. An exception is if you agree to the Bible’s definition of True Marriage and even though you do not qualify, you would like this information for counseling purposes.

For club members only

Being a club member doesn’t guarantee you will have a blissful marriage. It means you have the potential if both you and your spouse follow the guidelines God has laid down in His Word. Non-members have absolutely no chance of achieving true marital bliss which is why a non-member reading this, thinking they can personally benefit, is about as dumb as a stump and as thick headed as a mule.

This article is not going to pussy foot around the topic of sex. Nevertheless, it should not be the focal point within marriage. We are in a Fallen and sinful world. In this Fallen world, God has provided a way for the ultimate of marital bliss for each and every legitimate marriage. This ultimate bliss applies to the ultimate configuration within the parameters of a Fallen World. The ultimate configuration gives us what applies in the general sense. The Fall means there are many exceptions, but that is a deviance that God can overcome by His power and by His grace. It bears repeating: by HIS power and by HIS grace. In dealing with sexuality there are many considerations but for this topic I will be speaking mainly in the area of generalities. Here are lists of gender generalizations that apply to this discussion.

Wife:

The wife desires to be loved in the sentimental, soft and tender sense, and always needs assurance of this love.
A wife naturally loves her husband in a sentimental soft and tender way.
The wife likes her husband to pay attention to her, to tell her how beautiful she is, how soft her skin is, how sexy she is, how nice she smells, and all sorts of other things that make her feel attractive and desirable. She expects her undesirable features to be overlooked and never mentioned.
A wife wants to be ravished by her husband, but in a very controlled and loving way.
It is natural for the woman to express her love to her husband, especially verbally.
The wife expects her husband to be completely, 100% faithful to her.

Husband:

A husband expects and desires to be respected by his wife.
A husband expects, assumes, or takes for granted that his wife loves him.
A husband finds it difficult to express his love to his wife, especially verbally.
A husband loves to ravish his wife.
A husband would love to have his wife ravish him (to the n^th degree, even to the extreme definition being rape).
The husband expects his wife to be completely, 100% faithful to him.

If any of the above dynamic elements are missing in the marriage, you cannot have the ultimate marital bliss. And I’m sorry to say that virtually all members of this club have not experienced the ultimate in marital bliss. The reason is because most members operate in the same selfish and un-Godly way as non-members. Here are some of the selfish un-Godly elements that make marital bliss an impossibility:

Destructive elements making Ultimate Marriage Bliss an impossibility

Unfulfilled natural desires trigger selfish reactions that Satan uses to put our focus on our spouses rather than on God. Whatever elements are missing in the marriage Satan will try to make even worse in an attempt to make us ineffective for God’s purpose on this earth. If you are a married member with one or more elements missing in your marriage, then you are definitely experiencing Satan’s attacks in each of those areas. It hurts. It distracts from a focus on God. It leads to many temptations. It just plain stinks.

At this point I hope it is clear that this discussion is not about the reality of not having marital bliss. Rather, it is about showing you how it can be achieved.

Unfortunately, very few members will be able to meet all the criteria for the ultimate marital bliss. You will see why when I give you the list of requirements. But as much as I would love for you to experience the ultimate marital bliss, it is the product of that bliss that is the most important and which can be achieved for all willing to do their part.

The ultimate product of marital bliss: the overriding focus within the marriage relationship must be upon God. And it is due to this focus why this article only applies to members.

#1 Requirement: You have to completely surrender your marriage to the Lord. It has to be to the extent that you are willing to live within that marriage as if you are not married at all but are completely and solely devoted to God. In that sense, the marriage is gone, abiding completely with the Lord and outside your realm of possession.

An interesting note concerns the early Christians around the time of Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430 A.D.). The Roman Empire was so pagan and licentious that many of the temples had prostitutes for the men and in some cases, wives were expected to prostitute themselves in the temple of Aphrodite at least once in their lifetime to complete a religious obligation. It was a vastly sexually dominated era as degenerate or more so than what Hollywood spits out and has infused in cultures around the world.

The interesting thing is that many of those early Christians were so concerned about focusing on the Lord that some Christian married couples would separate from each other and never have sex again (both becoming completely celibate) in order to completely apply themselves to the work of the Lord.

I am not advocating this action neither would I discourage any mutually concurring couple. What it does highlight is the need to totally surrender our marriage to the Lord, completely eliminating selfishness within the bond of holy matrimony.

Now if this seems virtually impossible, then praise the Lord. You are at the right place and that is you recognize that it can’t be done without the power of God. If you come before His throne of Grace and call upon Him to give you the ability to surrender your marriage to Him and genuinely mean it, then God will do it and succour you whenever the temptations come to do otherwise.

If you haven’t completely surrendered your current or future legitimate marriage to the Lord, then now is the time to do it. Go ahead right now and pray to God for His strength, work, and guidance. If you don’t take the time this very moment, then what comes next won’t make a whole lot of sense.

Here are some amazing things that apply to all who have truly surrendered their marriage to the Lord.

You no longer have any marriage problems! Why? Because it’s not your marriage anymore! If you can name one problem with your marriage, then it is still your marriage and not the Lord’s.
With a focus that can now be entirely on the Lord, it becomes much easier to follow his guidance for marriage without selfishness being the motivation.
You can now take the steps God has laid out that make it possible to achieve the ultimate marital bliss.

#2 Requirement: Both you and your spouse must have fulfilled Requirement #1. The ultimate marital bliss cannot be achieved solo. If both partners haven’t fulfilled Requirement # 1, you cannot achieve marital bliss. Nevertheless, as wonderful as marriage bliss can be it is ultimately not what is most important. By following what God tells you without your spouse following suite, you can still achieve complete peace and assurance from God that you are in His will and also achieve a great deal of satisfaction and fulfillment from your marriage, even though not achieving the ultimate bliss.

#3 Requirement: You must constantly work at fulfilling God’s commands and guidance in the marriage, seeing it as a long unfolding process, full of patience, observation, dialogue, anticipation, and adventure. The ultimate bliss is a journey of increasing excitement and joy that is magnified by God’s stamp of holiness. This stamp of holiness is instrumental to achieving the ultimate bliss. The inability to achieve God’s stamp of holiness is one of the elements that eliminates non-members from the Marriage Bliss Club. It is imperative to realize that this requirement of holiness is instrumental in fulfilling Requirement #1. Each partner doing their God-directed part brings the relationship to the ultimate bliss where everything is humming like a brand-new Lamborghini. That allows each partner to focus on the Lord rather than on dysfunctional elements within the marriage relationship.

If you don’t know it already, then you are probably wondering what things you are supposed to work on in the marriage. I could tell you to dig into your Bible and find it out for yourself and I’m tempted to do that because we have too many Christians who want everything spoon fed. But I won’t, at least not entirely. Primarily because too many Christians overlook what God is telling us to do within the marriage relationship. There are many many things in the Bible that can help guide a marriage. I am only going to concentrate on a few specific commands that have a major impact on achieving the ultimate bliss. Plus, at the end I will have a link you can follow that will cover a cultural scenario involving Bedouins that should help reveal some of Satan’s workings in making it extremely difficult to achieve marriage bliss today.

First of all, I want to go through a scenario that shows the typical Western marriage of today using a couple named John and Susan who are both valid club members.

Both Susan and John have picked up enough information through an awareness of their own feelings, observations of other couples, counseling, and the media to know a lot about the strong dynamics between a man and a woman. Unfortunately, most of it is pagan and they are ready to enter their marriage with these pagan tendencies. John wants to ravish Susan and is ready and raring to go. He knows that Susan wants to feel loved and all that mushy stuff, so he brings the flowers and other things he thinks will make her happy. Susan has learned enough to know that the key for her to get all that she wants is to learn how to regulate his natural desire to ravish her. That’s been the counsel she has gotten from most of her friends, from books, and TV shows. They told her all sorts of tricks of the trade to manipulate his ravishing tendencies, kind of like using the brake and accelerator when driving a car. Her friends told her that’s the best way to steer things in their marriage. John wants to control things too, so he figures he can do that with a combination of turning on the loving and using the religious submission card to try and get his way.

A marriage can be a bit of Heaven on earth or in the case of what John and Susan are facing: Hell on earth. If honest, I believe most people would admit that this is pretty much how their marriage operates.

I don’t believe the biggest draw of men to pornography is sex. Rather, it is the depiction of women ravishing men. In contrast, this has little appeal to women, which is why women are much less attracted to that kind of pornography. The biggest attraction for women is the mushy romance movies or novels. These have a much smaller appeal to the man unless it includes a woman who ravishes the man.

For example, observe what happens when your husband flips through the TV channels and there is a scene of a woman doing something that is ravishing the man in an extremely aggressive way. The wife looks at the husband with scorn while the husband’s hand is practically welded to the remote and unable to move to another channel. On the other hand, if the guy on TV is trying to get her favor and she plays hard to get, this appeals more to the woman while very few guys will stay long on that channel and quickly jump to another (which tends to drive most wives crazy).

The Fall and sin of mankind have messed up the ultimate bliss that was present in the Garden of Eden. The Fall damaged the natural and brought into play the broken or disjointed. God in his guidance and commands gives us the instructions necessary for bringing back a good portion of Eden into the marriage relationship. The clue to what is broken has to do with why the solutions are found within God’s commands. A command generally is for what someone resists. Mother’s do not have to command their children to eat hot fudge sundaes. Eating spinach, green beans, and brussels sprouts are what will usually require commands.

Much of the natural was broken or damaged at the Fall. God’s guidance counters that which is broken.

Husbands do not naturally love their wives.

God commands husbands to love their wives.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: ^{Ephesians 5:25-29}

So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. ^{Ephesians 5:28}

Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband. ^{Ephesians 5:33}

Husbands do not naturally appreciate, praise, and reward their wives

God tells husbands to show their appreciation.

Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates. ^{Proverbs 31:30-31}

Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered. ^{I Peter 3:7}

So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: ^{Ephesians 5:28-29}

Husbands do not naturally sacrifice for their wives.

Husbands are commanded to love their wives in a sacrificial way even as Christ sacrificed Himself for the church.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; ^{Ephesians 5:25}

Wives do not naturally ravish their husbands.

God commands wives to ravish their husbands.

Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love. And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger? ^{Proverbs 5:19-20}

Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. ^{Song of Solomon 4:9}

Wives do not naturally submit to their husbands.

God commands wives to submit to their husbands.

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. ^{Ephesians 5:22}

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord. ^{Colossians 3:18}

Wives do not naturally give their husbands the proper respect.

God commands wives to reverence their husbands.

… and the wife see that she reverence her husband. ^{Ephesians 5:33}

If both parties do not follow God’s commands in marriage, then the required corrections will not be made for countering the damaging effects of the Fall. Disobedience makes it impossible to achieve the original Edenic marriage bliss.

Not achieving Edenic bliss means the marriage is not operating smoothly. This means there are elements in motion that tend to drive the husband or wife to focus on the marriage and its problems and therefore the focus is taken away from God. This is the ultimate tragedy we see in most of the marriages today. Edenic bliss is not all about the wonderful pleasure God wants to bestow upon a marriage. It is about helping us achieve the most hedonistic prize of all; the pearl of great price; the treasure hidden in the field that we would give up everything for; the groom (who bestows perfect love) for whom all Christians, as part of the bride, are to focus ourselves upon Him with total ravishment.

Let’s look at a scenario where both John and Susan reject all the pagan ways and embrace God’s commands and guidance. Let’s take a look at how this might look in their newly married lives.

Susan rushed home from work because she wanted to greet John when he got back. She had a horrible day at work, felt exhausted, and had a splitting headache but had thought up a really seductive surprise for John. As she prepared herself for his arrival the headache just kept pounding even with a couple Tylenol. She knew she was too weak and out of it to make this work like she wanted. But that wasn’t about to stop things because she knew this wasn’t about her and her weaknesses but about God and his strength. She prayed to God for strength and then prayed for John and the stresses in his life and continued on with her prayers for friends and relatives. She heard John pull up into the driveway. She was surprised that she still felt so weak, and the pounding headache was still so bad. Usually, she would perk right up, and the headache would go away because it was being induced by Satan and her prayers in such a weak state were unleashing a lot of damage on Satan’s turf by the might and power of God. Usually, Satan would release her because he wanted her to stop breaking down the gates of Hell. Not today.

John came in and boy did he look energetic and ready and raring to go. His eyes lit up by her voluptuous presentation. Then he was pleasantly and overwhelmingly welcomed by being swept off his feet when she pushed him onto the couch. Looking deep into her eyes, John wrinkled his forehead as he could sense her tiredness and pain. Gently holding back her advances, he embraced her, and they cuddled up on the couch. She knew what he was doing without having to say a word and settled softly into his embrace. They both felt their eyelids grow heavy and just before dozing off Susan thought she heard him mention something about ordering in a pizza tonight. Thank you, Lord, Susan whispered to herself before falling into a wonderful deep sleep.

The two main elements at work here are obedience to God and reliance upon Him beyond our human capability. Susan was going to ravish John even though beyond her fleshly capacity. John was operating upon his obedience to God to love his wife. When God made him aware of her weakness and pain, he lovingly took control bringing this marriage event into a giant step toward the ultimate Edenic bliss. It is not all about sex. It is about a bliss that goes far beyond the sexual experience.

The Fall makes marriage a work in progress.

John could have come home without a loving attitude and with selfish ravishment on his mind. Susan, ravishing John through her pain and weakness would have added to the stability of the marriage, bringing at least physical satisfaction to John and spiritual satisfaction to Susan.

Susan could have come home selfish and full of excuses. John could have returned with Susan fending off his ravishment due to her headache and weakness. John could have held back his advances and attempted finding ways to alleviate her discomfort. John by his acts of love would have added stability to the marriage and at least helped to bring physical satisfaction to Susan.

One partner working in obedience can have a huge stabilizing influence in the marriage. But it takes two working harmoniously to achieve Edenic bliss.

Because marriage is a work in progress, there are no easy answers or generic solutions. Each person is unique and putting them together as one makes for unique couples. Each couple’s needs, wants, and desires are going to be unique in varying degrees. We all come with baggage and the marriage relationship has to deal with various hindrances to marital bliss.

Questions & Answers

Here are some questions and answers that might prove to be helpful advice for removing or dealing with some of the destructive baggage.

God says the marriage bed is undefiled. What specifically does that mean?

Being undefiled means it is Holy. It is a place where God can be present. If that bothers you, then you have the baggage of viewing sex as dirty. Sex outside of true marriage is sinful and dirty. Sex within marriage is pure and holy. It is a pleasure created by God and the sex act is nothing we should be embarrassed about with the thought of it taking place in the presence of God. It should actually add to the bliss knowing that God is in total approval and completely pleased over your enjoyment of each other.

I’m still confused about the undefiled part of the marriage bed. Isn’t there some restriction to sexual behavior between married couples?

The key is “between married couples”. That is the only boundary, that the marriage be Biblically legitimate. To add anything to that boundary is sin. You can’t add Fifi into the mix or another person. That would bring in bestiality or adultery. The marriage bed is for one woman and one man who are in a legitimate marriage. For the legitimate couple anything goes. As far as positions or what you do with each other’s bodies while on the marriage bed, that is totally up to each couple and is only to be guided by the bond of unselfish love and concern for one another. God speaks in various ways as to how a couple is to treat one another. The sexual activity should be a growing process that unfolds as we become more and more comfortable with one another and understand the personal or cultural boundaries that might cause someone emotional or physical pain.

The most common violation of the marriage bed comes from the thoughts. Here a person could be within the marriage bed but thinking of thoughts with another person that could bring adulterous thoughts into the marriage bed. This is a sin and makes the marriage bed unholy. This is where it is important to see sex with your spouse as holy and blessed by God. When the evil sinful thoughts begin to invade your mind, you can’t fool around with them but need to call on God to give you the strength to resist those thoughts. If you think sex is dirty, it will be real hard to pray while having sex with your partner with these sinful thoughts invading your mind. God is right there and prepared to succour you. He is your Captain, right on the battlefield with you. And that battlefield could be while having sex with your spouse. One call to your Captain and he will give you the victory over those thoughts. To dwell on the thoughts is sin that needs to be confessed. To defeat the thoughts is to call upon God and relying upon His strength.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. ^{II Corinthians 12:9}

We live in a culture so infused with pornography that few people have not been exposed to its pernicious and destructive effect. Those images can lie submerged for years and Satan can draw them out to try to bring you into sin and unholiness. The more images in your brain, the more frequent and powerful the temptations can become. This is why pornography should be avoided at all cost. If you think it is okay to tinker around with pornography, you need to think again. Here is a list of scriptures having to do with pornography that utterly reveals it to be condemned by God:

Genesis 6:5

Ezekiel 8:12; 20:8

Ephesians 2:3; 4:22-23; 5:11-13

I Chronicles 28:9

Matthew 6:22-23; 22:37

Colossians 1:21

Psalms 50:18; 94:19; 101:3; 119:58

Mark 7:21-23

Titus 1:15

Proverbs 6:25; 12:5

Luke 10:27; 11:34-36

Hebrews 1:9

Isaiah 26:3; 33:15; 55:7

Romans 1:32; 12:2; 16:19

I Peter 1:13

Jeremiah 4:14

II Corinthians 10:5

Jude 8

Still sounds to me like your taking the “bed undefiled” a bit too far. I think there are plenty of things that married couples might do that are definitely perverted.

Peter was certain there were some things that had to be unclean even when God said they were clean. A repeat of God telling him they were to be considered clean jogged his memory to his proper understanding of God’s sovereignty. Whatever two married couples mutually decide to do within the marriage bed that God has declared undefiled is a place I will not put one thing on a list to say this would be a defiling activity.

Couples will typically enter their union with their own list of improprieties. Through the years as the marriage unfolds many of those improprieties will likely peel away. How that occurs and which ones will fall to the wayside is part of the adventure that is unique to the Edenic journey each couple undertakes. One of the aspects of a marriage that both couples should share is charity. Charity, unlike today’s concept of love is not just an emotion but true unselfish love in action. Here is the kind of love that a married couple should evoke:

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: ^{I Corinthians 13:4-8}

Follow that kind of unselfish love in the undefiled marriage bed and one’s passions and desires will never become destructive to the relationship.

One of the commands in marriage is to “be fruitful and multiply”. It sounds like your focus is only on sex without considering conception as a part of the marriage union.

Your concern is completely valid! The bliss should include the joy of conception as one of its beautiful facets. Unfortunately, we live in a day and age where this is so broken that couples go so far as aborting what is an integral part of Edenic bliss. It is a large topic that is beyond the scope of this article, but which I treat in depth in the book, Birth Control and the Sovereignty of God.

God tells us to satisfy each other’s sexual needs. As the man, you are pressured into always achieving an orgasm during intercourse. Sometimes that is difficult to accomplish and your mind searches for erotic images to help stimulate oneself in this situation. What should you do?

First of all, one must acknowledge that any fantasy that is outside the marriage bed is sin. If the fantasy involves your wife, then I can’t think of a reason why that fantasy is wrong. But if it involves another woman, man, animal, or whatever, that is the sin of adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, etc. One’s thoughts should be according to God’s guidance and “Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God:” ^{I Thessalonians 4:5}

God is longsuffering, which means your sins cause Him to suffer. During this time of fantasy, the marriage bed becomes defiled and unholy. It has now reverted to pure hedonistic selfishness for which it becomes impossible to achieve Edenic bliss.

If you weren’t commanded by the Lord to satisfy your mate, then one option would be to just stop your sexual activity. Our culture makes this a very difficult option. The husband’s virility and manhood come into question. Many wives will feel they are no longer able to satisfy their husband. Nevertheless, the bottom line is that no matter what misunderstandings occur, the sin needs to come to a screeching halt. Whatever that entails needs to be done. Any resulting problems can be dealt with later. God will absolutely bless every attempt to flee from sin.

Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. ^{I Corinthians 7:1-5}

To best avoid having to deal with all these problems that might arise requires being proactive. Unless you don’t face this problem, I would include a silent prayer as a part of your sexual activity. Prior to intercourse is usually the most comfortable, but if you have forgotten and are currently sexually engaged, it is not out of place to pray to God during intercourse. Remember, sex between married couples should never be thought of as dirty. It is clean as a fresh snowfall; holy; undefiled. For example, here is a quick and simple prayer:

Dear Lord, please deliver me from sinful thoughts. Give me the strength to stay within the bounds of the marriage or help me to see and take the way out that you provide. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

With that prayer, what takes place? God will give you a way of escape or he will help to keep those sinful images out of your mind. If you have engaged in a lot of pornography, then Satan has a library of images to throw at you. That ends up making your marriage bed a significant battlefield. If you don’t fight that battle right there on the marriage bed, Satan will continue to plague you in an attempt to defile the marriage bed and make our Lord suffer.

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. ^{I Corinthians 10:13}

I would suggest using this weakness as a strength by prolonging your prayer to include other things like, asking God to help someone you know who is sick, or someone going through depression, or for someone suffering through a calamity. This may sound strange, but your delving into pornography has put you into a weak and vulnerable state.

Therefore, the opportunity is presented to pray during these weakened times for God’s strength to burst forth. I’m sure you’ve already figured out what that does to Satan’s plans of defilement. You have just turned things around, and his Satanic kingdom is being pounded. Common sense tells you that Satan will back off more and more until those sinful images significantly decrease or may no longer plague you.

The other option, that unfortunately holds the potential of causing harm to your spouse, is to abruptly stop the sexual activity. It can hurt her by frustrating her, not giving her sexual satisfaction, and possibly making her feel she is an inadequate sexual partner. You can handle this in a multitude of ways depending on the makeup of your relationship. Some might just sit down and discuss the dynamics of what is taking place and find out what would meet your partner’s approval. Others might opt to explain not achieving an orgasm as age, being tired, stress, etc. Of course, it is never right to lie, and these factors must truly be in play to legitimately use them.

Parents are supposed to teach these principals to their children. Older women, within the gathering of believers, are told to teach the younger women how to be good wives. Talking to virgin men and women in abstract terms seems to be a weak method of communication. Have we lost something in our culture that makes it difficult to pass on these concepts more naturally?

Most men naturally have a desire to ravish their wife. A counterbalance to this would be a cultural setting that would help them to have restraint; a cultural setting that would help men in controlling their natural ravishing behavior so that it does not go into the area of sexual misconduct or abuse.

For women, they should have a cultural setting that helps them understand how to conduct themselves within marriage so that they naturally ravish their husbands.

Satan does not want this healthy cultural environment to be in place and through the ages has pretty much destroyed any semblance of this culture within Christendom. It has been so thoroughly destroyed that to resurrect it within the current Christian culture seems an impossibility. Creative minds, founded upon God’s word and directed by the Holy Spirit, might find ways to bring these elements into the Church as natural cultural conduct.

There is a cultural setting that is close to what I believe may have been God’s plans for the believer. In 2010, my wife and I were living in Kuwait and were invited to a Bedouin wedding. It was here that we saw a shadow of what Christendom has lost regarding teaching within a proper marriage culture. Since that first wedding my wife has attended two other Bedouin ceremonies giving her even greater insight. Just a note of contemplation before looking at this Bedouin marriage: Abraham and his descendants until forced into slavery were predominantly Bedouins (see Bedouin Marriage Ceremony).

One Final Thought

Our efforts in marriage if not focused on God are completely wrong. God in his grace and desire to bring us as close to Eden as possible in this Fallen world has taught us in His word:

Therefore, O thou son of man, speak unto the house of Israel; Thus ye speak, saying, If our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live? ^{Ezekiel 33:10}

Marriage is a gift that can become damaging by moving our focus very far from God. Then it becomes a curse. Edenic bliss is not all about the wonderful bliss it brings to the married couple. It is about the freedom it brings to our focus which is away from the marriage to God. If your aim and focus is to achieve the physical bliss, you can never achieve the Edenic bliss, because a focus on the physical is self-serving and thus doomed to failure. The reliance upon God for the wife to ravish outside her normal inclinations and the reliance upon God for the man to love his wife outside his normal inclinations is the only path to Edenic bliss. The wonderful product of achieving such bliss is the magnificent freedom to focus upon the Creator of such bliss.

A message to the uninvited

If there are any hard-headed, mulish non-members still with me even though I told you to scoot, then I have a few more words for you. Sin has consequences and you blew it. I sincerely wish there was a way for you to have that ultimate bliss, but you can’t. Your sexual misconduct leaves you with only one option if you choose to obey God: celibacy. What I do want to reiterate is that ultimate bliss is not the important element. The important element has to do with our ultimate focus. And member or non-member needs to be focused on the Lord. Eternity, and all it holds for the believer, does not compare at all with this world. All the joys and pleasures here are inconsequential compared to what God is preparing for us.

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. ^{I Corinthians 2:9}

Worldly bliss is like bird droppings in your soup compared to what eternity holds, so don’t let it bother you concerning what you have lost. Rather, repent and then immediately move forward to the prize set before you. Focus on the Lord and His righteousness and holiness and yield to His guidance as you trust and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.

Ralph Wendt