Sexual Fasting

# 303 - 1Co 7:1 Now concerning the matters about which you wrote. It is well for a man not to touch a woman.  2 But because of the temptation to immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.  3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.  4 For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does.  5 Do not refuse one another except perhaps by agreement for a season, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, lest Satan tempt you through lack of self-control. Today, we'll begin looking at the topic of sexual fasting. Remember the definition of fasting is “the deliberate abstaining from physical gratification in order to obtain a spiritual reward from the Father. It is a denial of the flesh in order to gain a response from the Spirit. In our text today, the Holy Spirit speaking through the Apostle Paul is not talking about abstaining from food, He’s talking about a sexual fast. Husbands and wives agreeing to abstain from intimate physical activity for a season (a prescribed time) in order to devote time to mutual prayer. Intimacy involves ALL aspects of the relationship in a marriage, including love, respect, commitment, communication, kindness, and unselfishness.  It is experienced in  emotional, spiritual, and physical closeness, which includes but is not limited to sex. I can feel some of the guys squirming already. Typically we men, are terrible at intimacy. Our idea of intimacy and warming up to someone is some sort of a grunt or maybe a handshake. But our wives deserve more than that, indeed they need more than that. It’s the way God has wired them. Women are wired for relational intimacy and men are wired for physical intimacy. Both husbands and wives need to grasp this and sexual fasting is a tool God has given us to help us in this arena. Unfortunately, it is seldom talked about in church. The purpose of sexual fasting is to deprive yourself of physical intimacy in order to gain spiritual intimacy with God and consequently, each other. How does that work? Well have you forgotten? It’s not just a husband and wife in a marriage, there’s a third party involved. Mal 2:15, “Did HE not make them one with a portion of the Spirit in their union” And so this mutual agreement for deprivation for a short time, in order to devote time to mutual prayer, is a way of praying to the third person in your marriage with your bodies, which have become one in marriage, telling God that intimacy with Him is more important than physical intimacy with each other. And don’t you know that marital intimacy, and all its different aspects will increase as your intimacy with God increases because marriage is God’s idea and has been since day one!  The purpose of sexual fasting then is to seek to regain and enhance all the aspects of intimacy that God intended to be present between a man and a woman, because marriage is to be a showcase of those same aspects of intimacy between believers and Christ. “Father help us to desire more intimacy with You.