You say, “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.” (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. And God will raise us from the dead by his power, just as he raised our Lord from the dead. Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.” But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

1 Corinthians 6:13-20

Dear God, our sex drive is a fascinating thing. From the outside looking in, it makes no sense. Logically, the way it can control us (especially men) is bizarre. Why is it this way?

I’m going to take same sex issues off of the table right now and talk completely about promiscuity, whether it is heterosexual or homosexual because I’ve started to come to the conclusion (and maybe I’m wrong) that the real problem isn’t as much about same sex sexual relations as it is promiscuous sexual relations.

There is something with sex that is fascinating. I’ve gone to a Catholic Church as a Protestant for nearly (maybe almost exactly) 10 years at this point, and I’ve seen where the church actually has some contradictions when it comes to sex. On the one hand marriage is a sacrament and sex between man and wife is an important part of marriage. However, as part of the holiness of Mary, they teach that Mary was sinless before and after Jesus’s birth, and she remained a virgin her whole life. My wife is the one who brought this question up to me so I won’t take credit for it, but if sex between man and wife is part of the sacrament of marriage, why did Mary have to remain a virgin her whole life? I don’t know the answer to this, but my suspicion is that somewhere along the way the writers of the catechism allowed their own emotions about sex filter into the writing of history and didn’t really believe that sex between a husband and wife can be pure and holy. And I can get where they are coming from. Even in a physically monogomous relationship, impure thoughts can creep in. Certainly over the course of a lifetime, it’s just about impossible to keep your thoughts 100% pure when it comes to sex. So I can see where they felt the need to keep Mary sexless if they were going to maintain that she was sinless.

As for me, there are times when I have hated my sex drive. Especially earlier in marriage, it caused a lot of conflict with my wife. Before I met her, well, you know everything about me so I don’t need to write it here, but I’ll just say that I did not enter our marriage pure of heart–and she knows this. You designed something so incredible and beautiful. Something so unique and powerful. Perhaps that is why Satan goes after it so hard. He can use it as part of his plan to cause division between couples and damage to relationships. Then things like pornography can be the gateway drug into other lecherous, debaucherous, and even illegal activities.

Father, help me to be exactly who you designed me to be, and that includes sexually. Help me to be exactly who my wife needs me to be–better said, help me to be who you need me to be for my wife. Love her purely through me. Use sex in our marriage to be the uniting process you intended it to be. We are united in heart, mind, body and soul. Help the uniting of our bodies to be how you designed it, and please forgive me for my sexual sin.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen