There is a misconception, a mistaken way of thinking among Christians when it comes to having sex outside of marriage.  Here is what many people think:

• The best circumstance to have sex in is within the bounds of matrimony or if you are not married, to remain sexually pure.
• The next best scenario is having sex with your boyfriend/girlfriend…but while you really shouldn’t do it, most people will give a pass to those who do. Because after all, you love each other, it’s just so difficult to wait; you can’t really control yourselves when you feel so strongly about one another.
• Then the lowest and most unacceptable sex (in most people’s minds) is prostitution—those who get paid to engage in sexual acts.

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For those of you who have attended my Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage seminar, you are well acquainted with the assessment tool we use called the Flag Page. It is an online inventory that couples complete in a matter of minutes, which yields a colorful printout explaining what your greatest needs, motivations and desires in life. The Flag Page gives you an easy to understand snapshot of your heart and who you are at your very best.

Previously I have referred to how the Flag Page is beneficial to blended or stepfamilies and military families where the spouse is coming back from a deployment. These are “forced change” type situations that can be very problematic if you can’t gain understanding of who the person is. But it is also a very valuable tool to use in any marriage or parenting relationship.

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There is a great song by Michael Buble titled “Everything”. It’s quite romantic actually, as he is telling his girl how important she is to him:

You’re a falling star, You’re the get away car.
You’re the line in the sand when I go too far.
You’re the swimming pool, on an August day.
And you’re the perfect thing to say.

And you play it coy, but it’s kinda cute.
Ah, when you smile at me you know exactly what you do.
Baby don’t pretend, that you don’t know it’s true.
Cause you can see it when I look at you.

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One of the first words that a child learns is “no”.  A small toddler knows what it means and it is an early entry in their verbal vocabulary as they wobble around repeating, “No, no, no” everywhere they go.  Even a dog will quickly learn the word when you are training him.  Yet while it is one of the earliest concepts that humans acquire, and extraordinarily simple to understand, many people never grasp the word or learn to act on it.

It is imperative that we get the whole idea of “NO!” drilled into our heads, learn to deny selfish desires and feelings, and do the right things in life. If you don’t get this, you will live a life that is nothing but a series of disasters that leave a wake of destruction in your path.

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Maleness is under attack in this country and has been for the past 40 plus years. This is true in the culture at large, as well as in The Church, and it is extremely detrimental to male culture and our society at large. For a few years now people have been addressing this issue in books like The Feminization of American Culture by Ann Douglas, and David Murrow’s Why Men Hate Going to Church. The results of this feminization have been disastrous. Men are not real men anymore. Many males themselves don’t even know what it means to be a man because they have no role models. Part of this is due to the fact, that far too many fathers have literally abandoned their children or they are not engaged playing an active role in being a part of their son’s lives. For decades since the industrial revolution, most boys have been surrounded and raised by women who are the caretakers and role models. The message men are getting in spades—consciously and unconsciously– is that they need to be more like women and less like men.

While, there is much to be said about the causes and cures for this phenomenon, for the sake of this argument, we are going to zero in on one particular area: living by feelings.  More importantly, how it’s a dangerous thing when men live by them. In his book, Man and Woman in Christ, Dr. Steven Clark states that one of the earmarks of a feminized man is that “he will place an unbalanced emphasis on how he feels (and how other people feel), in turn becoming highly visceral in his personal thinking and reactions”.  In other words, because such a high emphasis has been placed on feelings, men have incorrectly learned that they have permission to act on and live by their feelings rather than thinking through logically what is right and wrong.
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