QUESTION OF THE DAY! - Honoring God, Your Spouse and Your Marriage During Conflict

Hey Covenant Groupies,

Ok, so we switched the QOD from yesterday to today so that we could post the story of the world's longest married couple. So, on to today.

For a while, Kevin and I had often found, not only with ourselves, but with other couples, that we would disassociate honoring God, our spouse and our Marriage in how we handled conflict in order to make our point. It never amounted to reconciliation, just more arguing. The longer we we've been married, peace has defnitely overriden point-making sgnificantly. We do, however, slip back into some old habits when it's really deep.

We talked about this briefly last week at our Love Dare workshop. We studied Hebrews 13:4 as a guide to practical ways to esteem and highly value our marriage.

So, the QOD is: How do you handle conflict in your marriage? Do you escape, deny, become brutally honesty, spew angry attacks, surrender, offer loving acceptance, become sarcastic, resort to substance abuse, welcome long talks or offer a humble apology?

Holy Sex - From Defiled Back to HOLY!!!!

Hey Covenant Groupies,

Several months ago we wrote severals posts about Holy Sex. It was refreshing to be able to write and speak about something that's been so demonized; yet created to be so beautiful. The church has taken such a "hand'off" approach to this holy act. Far too many couples need it though; otherwise, couples continue to live in marriages where their sexual relationships are lacking the Holy experience so graciously given to us by God.

If were honest about our introduction to sex most, if not all, of us learned about sex from some very defiled places; pornography, friends, sexual abuse, TV, magazines etc. None of these places are the environments ordained by God in which we are to learn about sex. With that in mind, it begs to question, what are we doing in our bedrooms. Do we actually realize that God doesn;t turn away when we make love to and with our spouses? Hebrews 13:4 says, "Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure (undefiled)for God will judge the adulterer (married) and the sexually immoral (single)." Does what we do in our bedrooms honor God?

Gary Thomas wrote something that we found very interesting. "Sex means that I see my wife as a holy temple of God, not just as a tantalizing human body. It even means that sex becomes a form of physical prayer - a picture of a heavenly intimacy that rivals shekinah glory of old... If we experience sex in this way, we will be transformd in the marriage bed every bit as much as we are transformed on our knees in prayer." WHOA!!!!!!!

That is such a dynamic and pivital picture of what God has really called, sex between His Chosen, to be