Signs You Have Been in the Hospital Too Long

Back in the second week of February, my sweet pregnant wife had to spend a week in the hospital recovering from a nasty kidney infection. As she lay sleeping, I got bored with the slow passage of time. Thus, I began to do what I do when I get bored and have a computer or paper handy: I write. So what began as a boredom breaker, has now become a post on this blog. So here goes...enjoy!
1. You have the nurses shift changes memorized and know that you better get things done before shift change happens or after.
2. You start to like the color of your hospital room. (Mauve is a color, right?)
3. You know that a good night’s rest is impossible till you get home.
4. You begin to rank everything in your life on a one to ten scale, ten being the highest.
5. You memorize the cable channels that are good to watch.
6. The cafeteria food begins to seem normally priced and full of flavor. (ever heard of salt?)
7. You challenge yourself to find a different route every time you go to the parking lot so you can see more of the hospital. (ooohhh, more vending machines. Twinkie, anyone?)
8. When you are told that the doctor will be by soon, you take a nap, eat lunch, read a book , because you know you have time.
9. The patient’s arm begins to look like a pin cushion and you hate hearing the words, “blood, draw, more lab work.”
10. Hospital gowns seem comfy and you begin to wonder where you could buy one for wearing at home.
11. You start comparing and contrasting the different nurses on the different shifts like ballplayers on a sports team.
12.Can you think of any more?

A Truth That Hit Me Hard

A while back, I heard a recording of a sermon at a church in Nebraska (Nov 27, '07). The pastor, Bryan Clark, was preaching on Colossians 3:1-11. But one of the areas that he stopped and hammered home the truth was in verse 5 concerning sexual sin. He said the following,

If we believe that God is our Creator and God has created us the way he wants us, one of the things we have to wrestle with is why did God make us as sexual beings, and why did God make us with such a powerful sex drive...That’s according to God’s design, which raises the question: Why is that? And the answer is, ultimately our sex drive is this living metaphor for our soul’s longing to be intimate with God. It’s a desire for intimacy with a one-flesh life-long partner that’s meant to be just a taste of the intimacy that God wants to have with us. Therefore, I understand that no matter how wonderful my relationship may be with my wife, she cannot fully satisfy me. If she could, she would be God herself. She simply gives me a taste of that which satisfies, which leaves me longing for more. But more is not found in her. More is found in God. It’s a taste of the ultimate intimacy that God wants to have with us.
Therefore, it would be fair to say theologically that the sexual drive is actually, at its core, the soul’s longing to be intimate with God.

...One of the things we need to understand is the difference between sex management and victory over sexual sin... Sin management is if you have a problem with pornography, you get rid of the computer. That hasn’t really solved much; it’s just a management technique. But until you get down deep into the soul and address the core issue, that problem is never going to go away. We have to understand what the soul is longing for is intimacy with God. ...That person has to pursue relentlessly a relationship with Jesus in order to satisfy that deep-down drive. It’s not enough just to say, “I won’t do that anymore.” You have to replace that with that which satisfies, pursing Jesus as one would pursue a lover.

...I think we do our singles and our young people a great disservice if all we tell them is you just have to wait until marriage. Frankly, that just doesn’t work very well. It isn’t enough just to say, “You know, you gotta take a cold shower and hang in there.” What we have to understand is their soul is longing for something. And because of the culture in which we live, they think what it’s longing for is some sort of sexual satisfaction. We have to help them understand that ultimately what your
soul is longing for is intimacy with God. And even as a single, even as a young person you can have that. You can satisfy this need in a passionate, intimate relationship with Jesus.

I sat there stunned and overwhelmed with this truth. Why hadn't someone ever presented this truth to me back in my single days? I battled, as any honest human will admit, with keeping myself mentally pure as well as physically pure. I had never been told that the void that my flesh and heart was battling with was a spiritual one. By God's grace, I entered my marriage physically pure. Unfortunately, I entered my marriage with the mental scars from many battles that had raged.

Until I heard this message, I had never, and I mean never, heard a pastor talk this way from the pulpit about one's sex drive or sexuality. The messages I had always heard about sex were "Don't" and "Wait" both very Biblical messages. But what we need is not a negative but a positive approach to sexual purity. We need to teach believers that their sexual desire will never be satisfied without a proper Biblical approach to handling it; that approach is finding satisfaction in God alone and not in a physical relationship.Why is the church so afraid of sharing the truth that is so prevalent in the New Testament about sex and sexual sin? We must stop looking to psychology and speak what God's word says about sex.

God talks about it, so why don't we? (See I Cor. 7, I Thess. 4, etc.)