Basic HTML Version
Lo
ve,
•
arrtage
&
S
ex!
by
Ronald D. Kelly
It's important to get them in the right order.
T
HE THREE
most im–
portant ingredients
to s uccessful mar–
riage have been ter–
ribly abused .
Sorne fall in love and never
marry. Others marry but are not
in love. Millions of people
experiment with sex without
even being in love.
Still others are in !ove and are
married but fail to understand the
importance of a wholesome and
proper sexual relationship.
Not many seem to be putting all
three- Jove, marriage and sex–
together in the right order.
Love to Build a Relationship
Almost everyone has experienced
what he or she thought was love,
only to find out it really wasn' t.
Perhaps your case was typical. l t
probably first happened early in the
tet<n years when you were first
attracted toa member of the oppo–
site sex.
There was the strange, tingling,
excited feeling that would just not
go away. You thought you saw
shooting stars. Felt like you were
January
1984
walking on air. And you could have
danced all night.
Later, you probably carne to
realize that was not love at all.
Your parents tried to tell you it was
"puppy love."
lt
was just infatua–
tion.
Maybe you even experienced
these feelings of "!ove" three or
four or more times-each time
thinking this new feeling was the
really one true forever and ever
!ove.
Unfortunately thousands of
people make terrible mistakes
because of not knowing how to han–
die adolescent emotions. 1t often
leads to premarital sexual experi–
ence, which in turn often leads to
premarital pregnancy-and mil–
lions of babies boro out of wedlock
every single year.
Others, misinterpreting their
feelings of "!ove," leap into prema–
ture marriages. A large percentage
of those who marry and don 't
divorce are not really happy. They
stay married for the sake of the
children, or for religious or finan–
cia! reasons. They find they are not
really in !ove at all.
How sad .
And of course where and when
to fit the sexual relationship into
this picture is often confusing. The
signals of our liberated society tell
us to practice sex whenever, howev–
er, whyever and in whatever man–
ner we want to. "Consenting
adults" is the catch phrase.
The God-given formula fo r hap–
piness and success in marriage is
usual ly totally ignored. That
formula is the title of this article:
Be in love, marry and have a
healthy sexual relationship. You
can't build a marriage without
love. And sex should
NEVER
be
practiced outside the confines of
marriage.
But What ls Love?
I f you had to choose just one word
to describe God,
LOVE
would be the
best word. The apostle John simply
stated it: "God is !ove" (1 John
4:8).
From what God is and what God
does we can understand the deep
and significant emotion called
!ove.
God's love was most manifest by
the ultimate gift he gave mankind:
"For God so loved the world, that
he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him should
15