Intimate Details Kept Intimate

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Here’s a short and in this case, followed by my response.

In a recent book review you said that it’s not wise for a husband and wife to tell anyone else how often they have sex together. Can you explain this a bit more and maybe explain how a husband and wife can figure out how often they should have sex?

I believe it is generally unwise and unhelpful for a husband and wife to share details of their sexual intimacy or to read the details of another couple’s sexual intimacy. Of course there may be times and contexts in which a certain level of detail is genuinely helpful, such as when an older couple provides counsel to a younger couple who is struggling in an area. But to share details publicly and to share very intimate details, is usually unwise and unhelpful. I am not saying that it is necessarily sinful, just that there is a better way to achieve the end result.

One of the details that is best kept between a husband and wife is the frequency with which they have sex. There are many places you can go to find statistics on this, and there are even many Christian authors who include such numbers in their books about sexuality. I have several concerns with the appeal to statistics.

In the first place, statistics necessarily provoke comparison. In this case, comparison may well generate either pride or discontentment, either a sense of superiority that you and your spouse have sex more often than the average couple, or discontentment that everyone else is enjoying sex more often than you.

Second, statistics of this kind do very little to take into account context and life stage and even the natural variances in desire between individuals and couples. What is clear about the sexual relationship is that it is always in flux, it is always changing, and every couple needs to give it regular attention if it is to keep from slipping into dysfunction or disregard.

Third, and most significantly, appealing to statistics short circuits the difficult but important process through which a couple can work out just the right frequency in their own relationship. An appeal to statistics may allow a couple to bypass the important matters of heart and character.

With that being said, let me share my thinking on one way a couple may go about finding the frequency that is best for them.
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Distinguishing Between Moral and Natural Inability

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In seeking to explain the difference between moral and natural ability (a concept taught by Jonathan Edwards), taking something we can understand in the physical realm (the realm observable to our senses) and applying the principle to something we cannot see – the hidden desires of the heart. In commenting on Jesus’ words in John 6:44, “No one can come to Me unless that Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day” he writes:

“… Edwards distinguished between moral and natural inability. Because man’s inability is moral and not natural, according to Edwards, the individual is responsible for the choices he or she makes. Here is a simple illustration: in the natural world there are animals that eat nothing but meat. They are called carnivores, from caro, carnis, which means “meat.” There are other animals that eat nothing but grass or plants. They are called herbivores, from herba, which means vegetation. Imagine taking a lion, who is a carnivore, and placing a bundle of hay or a trough of oats before him. He will not eat the hay or oats. Why not? It is not because he is physically or naturally unable to eat them. Physically, he could munch on the oats and swallow them. But he does not and will not, because it is not in his nature to eat this kind of food. Moreover, if we were to ask why he will not eat the herbivore’s meal, and if the lion could answer, he would say, “I can’t eat this food, because I hate it. I will only eat meat.”

Now think of the verse that says, “Taste and see that the LORD is good” (Ps. 34:8), or of Jesus saying, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eat of this bread, he will live forever” (John 6:51). Why won’t a sinful person “taste and see that the Lord is good” or feed upon Jesus as “the living bread”? To use the lion’s words, it is because he “hates” such food. The sinner will not come to Christ because he does not want to. Deep in his heart he hates Christ and what he stands for. It is not because he cannot come naturally or physically.

Someone opposed to this teaching might say, “But surely the Bible says that anyone who will come to Christ may come to him. Didn’t Jesus invite us to come? Didn’t he say, ‘Whoever comes to me I will never drive away’ (John 6:37)? The answer is, “Yes, that is exactly what Jesus said, but it is beside the point.” Certainly, anyone who wants to come to Christ may come to him. That is why Jonathan Edwards insisted that the will is not bound. However, this liberty is what makes our refusal to seek God so unreasonable and increases our guilt. Who is it who wills to come? The answer is, No one, except those in whom the Holy Spirit has already performed the entirely irresistible work of the new birth, so that, as a result of this miracle, the spiritually blind eyes of the natural man are opened to see God’s truth, and the depraved mind of the sinner, which in itself has no spiritual understanding, is renewed to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.”

– James Montgomery Boice, Philip Graham Ryken, The Doctrines of Grace, p. 85, 86

Where did you learn to preach?

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None should approach the sacred desk who have not been personally called to do so, by the Master.

As I watched the short video below, everything in me resonated with what was being said. My heart cried “YES!” Like Dr. Piper, I also was a young boy who could not speak before people. I understand that he also had a severe acne problem just as I did. I was a hospital case for many years. God’s dealings with the heart and mind of a preacher certainly varies case to case, but unless a man is passionately thrilled by what he finds in the text of Scripture, he should do both God and the people he serves a favor and stay well away from the pulpit. It is a high and holy calling to be a herald of the King. Woe to any of us if we are given the most awesome, spectacular and exciting message imaginable, the very Gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and bore people with it. I have seen many people who do so, and it sends a shudder through my soul. Dear God, let not that be true of me! May my love for the Savior and the glories of His word always be both genuine and contagious.

John Piper: “I think the way I became a preacher was by being passionately thrilled by what I was seeing in the Bible in seminary. Passionately thrilled! When Philippians began to open to me, Galatians opened to me, Romans opened to me, the Sermon on the Mount opened to me in classes on exegesis—not homiletics but exegesis—everything in me was feeling, ‘I want to say this to somebody! I want to find a way to say this! Because this is awesome! This is incredible!’

“So preachers today that go everywhere but the Bible to find something interesting or something scintillating and passionate—I don’t get it! I don’t get that at all! Because I have to work hard to leave the Bible and go somewhere to find an illustration because everything here is just blowing me away. And it’s that sense of being blown away by what’s here—by the God that’s here and the Christ that’s here and the Gospel that’s here and the Spirit that’s here and the life that’s here—being blown away by this, you just kinda say, ‘That’s gotta get out. That’s gotta get out.’ …

“I don’t think there’s much you can do to become a preacher except: (1) know your Bible and (2) be unbelievably excited about what’s there, and (3) love people a lot.”