Hot, Holy & Humorous

Why Sex Should Be Hot, Holy, and Humorous

Today I’m having a bit of a celebration.

My new book Hot, Holy, and Humorous: Sex in Marriage by God’s Design is now available! You can find it at Amazon, ChristianBook.com, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, and maybe somewhere else I haven’t seen.

For my release, I thought I’d revisit the question of why Hot, Holy, and Humorous.

Why Sex Should Be Hot, Holy, and Humorous

Hot. Maybe I should have started with holy, since that’s really what matters to me most. However, I had a feeling hot was a huge missing piece for many Christians. I was rightly raised to believe that sex in marriage was the way to go and that it was a special experience to make love with your covenant partner. But to me, it sounded like all those people preaching this path had no idea just how steamy and sexy and satisfying sex really was. Too many of them kept the conversations so highbrow or low-volume that we might as well be discussing doilies at a tea party.

Let’s understand this: Sex is supposed to feel really good. Look at the difference between how God created the sex act for most animals and then how He gifted us — the ones made in His image — to experience sex. For animals, it’s primarily an urge, a release, a reproductive necessity. I’m not saying they don’t enjoy the moment, but I’ve never seen a bull grazing on grass and suspected that he was thinking, “Getting lucky tonight…oh yeahhhh.”

Meanwhile, we have the beauty of anticipation, desire, affection, foreplay, lovemaking, afterglow. And we can make love on whatever schedule we want — no mating season required. Plus, we ladies have a clitoris, which has absolutely no reproductive purpose whatsoever. It’s simply there for our stimulation and satisfaction.

God intended sex between husband and wife to be hot. Rev-your-engines hot. Steam-rising hot. Hunka-hunka-burning-love hot. And it’s entirely Christian to experience that gift from God.

Holy. Sex can feel physically good in many different contexts, but the full blessings of sex don’t come outside of the context God designed. God created sex to happen between a covenant husband and wife with all of His commands about love infusing the experience.

Although physically satisfying, sex has a higher purpose. It bonds husband and wife together (Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:6), and it represents the relationship between our Lord and His people (Ephesians 5:31-32, Isaiah 54:5). Within marriage, sex should be a holy act of love.

Within marriage, sex should be a holy act of love. Click To Tweet

The biggest change in my own perspective of sex happened when I stopped compartmentalizing sexual intimacy and allowed every Scriptural command and principle to shed light on my marriage bed. Thus, every Bible verse about how to be holy . . . applies to my marital intimacy. If it doesn’t honor God to lie outside the bedroom, it doesn’t honor Him to lie inside the bedroom. If it doesn’t honor God to neglect my husband outside the bedroom, it doesn’t honor Him to neglect my husband inside the bedroom. If it doesn’t honor God to be demanding outside the bedroom, it doesn’t honor Him to be demanding inside the bedroom.

But it’s not just about all the things we shouldn’t do. Rather, we have the promise of something far more beautiful and meaningful and satisfying when we take all of the positive instructions from God into our marriage beds. Sex is holy, but also exciting and intimate, when we are patient, kind, protective, trusting, hopeful, persevering (1 Corinthians 13:4-7); when we’re filled with love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23); when we feel that depth of belonging and desire for one another (Song of Songs 7:10).

I genuinely believe God wants to bless our marriage beds! He has some parameters He asks us to follow, and He has wisdom on how to nurture our marriages by following His commands and His example of love. We should embrace the holiness of sexual intimacy in marriage, by God’s design.

Humorous. God is hilarious. I say this with absolutely certainty. If we’re all made in His image, consider how important our sense of humor is to us individually, in our society, and for our happiness. We didn’t get our wit or silliness from nowhere; it came from God. And, if you ask me, He told some humdingers.

Did you hear the one about a camel going through the eye of a needle? (Matthew 19:24). How about this instruction found in Exodus 20:26? “And do not approach my altar by going up steps. If you do, someone might look up under your clothing and see your nakedness” (NLT). Good point, God. Then there’s one of my favorite Bible stories when the judge Ehud gets an evil, and terribly fat, king alone and stabs him in the belly so far that the hilt of the knife disappears into the fat. After Ehud leaves and the king doesn’t let them back in, his servants don’t enter because they think the king is busy using the toilet. (Judges 3 – Thanks, God. Our Bible class full of elementary boys were truly engaged by this story!)

What does any of this have to do with sex? Well, you have to get naked, get in weird positions, communicate about things that used to crack us all up in junior high, and you have the ongoing possibility of getting interrupting by children or pets, accidentally pulling hair or pinching skin or even falling, and all the strange things that can happen with your body like a poorly timed fart. In the course of your long marriage, you may experience all kinds of sexual situations that are, objectively speaking, funny.

So learn to laugh in the moment. In fact, invite playfulness into your bedroom. Let your marriage bed be a place that is hot and holy, but also humorous. Lighten up and enjoy! Flirt and have fun. Use word play to discuss your lovemaking or one another’s body parts or to recall a private memory.

I don’t know if you currently have all three of these operating in your marriage, none of the three, or maybe just one or two. But I encourage you to think about what’s missing or what you can nurture more. God gifted us to have all three in our marital bedrooms — the hot, the holy, and the humorous.

And that’s why I wrote my book. It contains biblical and practical tips for helping you develop whichever one of these you need. Pick it up and let it bless your marriage!

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9 thoughts on “Why Sex Should Be Hot, Holy, and Humorous”

  1. Love this post!! I really needed a good laugh today and I definitely got one, along with some good advice as always. My sweet surprise boy was born in February and lived for 2 short hours. Not much makes me truly giggle these days but this did!

    1. Oh my goodness! You have my heartfelt sympathy. May God hold you close and help you to smile again.

  2. Hi J,

    “HOT, HOLY & HUMOROUS” is a message needed by many many Christian couples. I was just this PM listening to some radio comments by Family Life Today, and found it interesting that this radio and conference ministry was first begun as a service to Christian married couples working with Campus Crusade, but who had discovered that “just being a Christian” was not enough to make marriage work. Instruction was also needed.

    HOLY–I’ve addressed this in previous comments, but simply put, for about 1,500 years many church leaders taught that sex is by nature unholy, ungodly, unclean and animalistic. Only in the past half century has the message changed dramatically to the truth: That God smiles on naked married sex for intimate relationship development (not just to make babies).

    Hot–Women have clitorises–that’s hot. The experience of the female animal is basically to end her estrus with a pregnancy– iow, to do it and get it over with. Some women can have repeated orgasms over several hours, and it may get so rapturous for her that she passes out. Too, the human male has the largest penis for his body weight of any mammal. His size is not needed for procreation, but for pleasure for both him and his wife. Further, since animals, being creatures of instinct, are not capable of abstract thought, they can’t plan ahead for a night of romantic romping in the hay. They don’t buy their mates roses or chocolates. Nor are they interested in sex more than about twice a year. Humans of both sexes, in God’s image, may desire sex 24/7, from age 17 (or younger) to 97.

    HUMOROUS–How about the wife who caught poison ivy on her backside while “doing it” in the dark outdoors with her husband when the kids were asleep? Or the squeaky motel room bed that motivated the folks in the next room to pound on the wall, since they couldn’t sleep?

    MESSY–You haven’t included this adjective, J, but it’s often that, too. And not just a bloody sheet on the wedding night. There’s the wife who has to deal with UTIs. Older husbands who depend on a blue pill to get them hard; and who may sometimes have to deal with a wife who feels hurt because she thinks he’d get an erection by contemplating her body if he truly still loved her. Sometimes there are embarrassing after-sex messes to clean up. Hardly the stuff you’d find in a Hollywood movie!

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