A man in one of our discipleship classes asked me, “Is there sex in Heaven?” He continued, “Because if there isn’t, I don’t know that I want to go.” You know, I appreciated his honesty. I understood where he was coming from because—whether it’s sex or any other earthly pleasure we have experienced—we don’t want to imagine eternity without these things, do we? Eternity seems dim without the love of family, delicious Christmas dinners, the snuggles of little children, or a hike in the Rockies.
As a child born during the height of the sexual revolution and growing up in the hippie culture, I observed that the greatest pleasure and transcendence seemed centered around sex as well as some altered state of consciousness. Today, sex is sold on the street corner of every public institution, public school, advertising agency, media platform, and even very subtly in many churches as—a cheap commodity promising to bring the greatest pleasure life has to offer.
Only, it hasn’t.
What used to be sacred and mysterious has been exposed as a cheap, quick thrill to satisfy a physical and emotional need and we are left to ask—is this it? Is this all we were made for? Deep down, we know we were made for more. It’s no wonder suicide is on the rise and people are asking:
What’s the point in all the pain of living?
Consider for a moment that maybe this great, unquenched desire we think will be satisfied by sex is actually a legitimate desire—created to be fulfilled on a supernatural level. If your desire IS legitimate, and you’ve been feeding it empty calories, don’t you want to know how to satisfy it?
My friend, God has a plan for you to be completely satisfied in EVERY way!
“The Lord will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.”
Isaiah 58:11
Our desire for sex is an indicator of a greater longing in our soul. It is a desire that only God can fulfill when we are born again and seek to grow a strong sense of His presence. [Discovering God’s presence is what so many of these devotionals are about!] In answer to this man’s question—which I think is totally legitimate—I would like to take the remainder of this devotional and share an excerpt from “The Journey Of Desire,” by John Etheridge. He eloquently describes “desire” and how God is wooing each of us to experience the deepest satisfaction within a relationship with Him.
“For us creatures of the flesh, sexual intimacy is the closest parallel we have to real worship. Even the world knows this. Why else would sexual ecstasy become the number one rival to communion with God? The best impostors succeed because they are nearly indistinguishable from what they are trying to imitate.
We worship sex because we don’t know how to worship God.
For many people, certainly, sex is the most powerful and moving experience that life has to offer, and more overwhelmingly holy than anything that happens in church. For great masses of people, sex is the one force which can actually tip men and women completely off their accustomed centers of gravity and lift them, however briefly, right out of themselves. Allender said, our hearts live for ‘an experience of worship that fills our beings with a joy that is so deeply in awe of the other that we are barely aware of ourselves.’ Many people have a hard time conceiving of this kind of intimacy with God. For their entire lives they have related to him in a distant, though reverent way. Our worship services don’t get anywhere near something like our wedding nights. Men in particular have a hard time relating to the bridal imagery used in Scripture. Do we take on femininity to relate to God? What does it mean to know God as our Lover?
What, indeed. God is the source of all masculine power; God is also the fountain of all feminine allure. Come to think of it, he is the wellspring of everything that has ever romanced your heart. The thundering strength of a waterfall, the delicacy of a flower, the stirring capacity of music, the richness of wine. The masculine and the feminine that fill all creation come from the same heart. What we have sought, what we have tasted in part with our earthly lovers, we will come face-to-face with in our True Love.
For the incompleteness that we seek to relieve in the deep embrace of our earthly love is never fully healed.
The union does not last, whatever the poets and pop artists may say. Morning comes and we’ve got to get out of bed and off to our day, incomplete once more. But oh, to have it healed forever; to drink deeply from that fount of which we’ve had only a sip; to dive into that sea in which we have only waded. And so a man like Charles Wesley can pen these words: “Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to Thy bosom fly,” while Catherine of Siena can pray, “O fire surpassing every fire because you alone are the fire that burns without consuming! Yet your consuming does not distress the soul but fattens her with insatiable love.” The French mystic Madame Guyon can write, “I slept not all night, because Thy love, O my God, flowed in me like delicious oil, and burned as a fire . . . I love God far more than the most affectionate lover among men loves his earthly attachment.”
Is there SEX in heaven? It would be better to ask, is there WORSHIP in heaven?”
The point John Etheridge makes is that we were created for an ecstasy that far supersedes the moments of transcendence we experience in sex. God gives us pleasure on earth—not to become addicts of that pleasure—rather, to enjoy it in His presence. It is a preview of heaven. But we don’t have to wait. We can experience supernatural pleasure in His presence—even now. The more we live with God as our center, the more we experience sustaining and complete satisfaction. Anyone who has had sex knows the pleasure is temporary. It is limited. It does not produce sustained pleasure because it is a physical experience. It’s like eating a great meal—the pleasure is over as soon as the meal is over. But God has given us the great opportunity to “taste and see” that He is good. (Psalms 34:8)
When we learn to make God the center of our life—we have made Him our greatest object of worship and thus—our greatest source of pleasure. We begin to experience sustained pleasure in the presence of the Creator of ALL pleasure! Is there sex in Heaven? The Bible does not say—but sex enjoyed in God’s way—is simply another reminder that the pleasures that are yet to come are FAR “greater than we can imagine.” (Ephesians 3:20)
The passionate pursuit of God produces sustaining pleasure on earth and a preview of the transcendent experience Jesus is preparing for those who love Him!
We would love to hear your thoughts about this devotional. Did God speak to you or challenge your daily walk with him? Or is there a topic that you would like Kimberly to cover or expound on? Please share with us in the comments below.
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