My family loves to bake cookies. One of our favorite chocolate chip recipes is fairly simple, but delicious. We’ve made them so many times that we have the recipe pretty well memorized. It includes the basic ingredients like flour, eggs and sugar plus a few “special” ingredients to make them REALLY good. Add the ingredients in the right amounts and right order, bake them at the right temperature for the right amount of time and voila, you have GOOD cookies!
Chocolate Chip Cookies Cooling © by ilovemypit
Sex is a lot like this. When God created the perfect gift of sex, He designed it as the product of a process. It requires the right ingredients in the right amounts in the right timing. The key ingredients to good sex are laid out by God in Eph. 5:31. There He teaches that good sex is to be found only in the context of love that is also sacrificial and unconditional. In fact, it requires a man and a woman to make the choice to hold fast to each other unconditionally and always. This is like adding the flour to your cookie recipe and then not taking any of it back out of the bowl. Good sex also requires the man and woman to sacrifice their own selfishness to make their spouse their number one priority after God. In order for the couple to be ready to enjoy sex in it’s perfect and most wonderful form, such sacrifice is expressed as the man and woman leave behind all other loves to declare their union to their spouse in a public marriage ceremony. This is like adding the eggs to your cookie recipe. Once you put the eggs into the other dry ingredients, there’s no going back. You’re committed. Public marriage shows that the couple is committed. No going back. When a man and woman have made the decision to always love unconditionally and have sealed it by leaving all other loves behind in a public ceremony, they’re ready to unite in a sexual bond that’s the culmination of all the preparation that came before. When a married man and woman unite in the act of sex, it produces a sweet ecstasy that gives them a taste of heaven on earth. It’s similar to (but MUCH better than) taking all your cookie ingredients, heating them in the oven and then taking that first bite of a warm cookie. UMMM, UMMM! Good stuff!
Of course, baking cookies can go bad. If you use rotten eggs, your cookies will be terrible. Instead of tasting delicious, they’ll probably make you sick or even kill you. Sex is the same. Fail to follow God’s recipe and things get terrible fast. Fail to add the right ingredients or at the right time and you will NOT have good sex. You’ll have something that will be bitter and even deadly (to relationships and possibly even spiritual life).
Good sex like good cookies requires following the right recipe. Like cookies, it also requires commitment, patience and heat. God provides the “heat” as He puts His Spirit into the hearts of a married couple that seeks His blessing. When a man and woman use God’s ingredients (particularly unconditional and sacrificial love) in God’s timing (in the context of marriage) they have the makings for God’s gift of good sex. Fresh cookies out of the oven are delicious. Sex in God’s way is out of this world. And, unlike cookies, this gift actually burns calories and never goes stale. Sounds like a GOOD recipe 🙂