05 Sep Redeeming Wasted Years

I’ve been married for 26 years now.  I used to think that our sex life would be forever broken; broken because of misconceptions we both had from our childhood and broken because of sexual mistakes we each made, separately and together.  Sex was our biggest area of failure so it became the greatest source of contention between us…until the day I started listening to God and what He had to say.

Bill and I were actually away celebrating our 20^th wedding anniversary.  As I sat on the balcony of our hotel and looked out over the blue waters of the gulf coast, I stumbled on this passage in Isaiah 43:18-20, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland…”

God had started the redemption of my sexuality a few years earlier when Grace taught the “Theology of Sex” series.  Even though I had learned so much about sex the way God intended for it to be, I could not seem to move forward.  That was when God pointed out that the reason I was stuck was because I was hanging on to the baggage of my past!  It was too big for me to keep dragging around.  He wanted me to stop dwelling on it, leave it with Him and move on.

On that anniversary trip, I realized God was doing a new thing in my marriage and our sex life.  It wasn’t just knowledge I had gained anymore, but knowledge put into action.  We had started shutting out the world’s view of sex and moving towards a godly perspective together as one.  God was making a way through the wilderness of our broken sex life.  He was pouring out streams of living water in our wasteland.  We could see His grace and mercy showing up each time we were together intimately.

It’s still hard sometimes not to look back and lament over those wasted years, but seeing God take a small stream of faith and turn it into an ocean of blessings erases those thoughts.  God is always faithful if I will trust Him.  I am forever grateful for God’s work in redeeming my sexuality.

Join us for Redeeming Sexuality, a new 8-week study where we will learn about sexuality and sex as the God-given gift that it is.  The study starts soon; find out more and register today by clicking here.