Become ONE in marriage

The other night in class we were talking about the reasons God created sex. I asked, “What does it mean when the Bible says God makes us into ONE?”

Silence filled the room until one woman began to share. She said, “The other night, my husband and I had a disagreement, and then my husband starts making a move on me. In the past, I would have just gotten mad, or brushed him to the side. This time I made the choice to get on board. We had sex, and the amazing thing was that afterward, the disagreement didn’t seem like such a big deal. We easily worked through the problem.”

Matthew 19:5 – For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh

I used to think that when we got married and had sex, God made us into One – end of story.

I now realize that God makes us into One EVERY TIME that we have sex.

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by Ruth Buezis May 23, 2016

4 Year Anniversary of Awaken-Love

A year ago I wrote a post called REMEMBER that celebrated what God had done in my life and through Awaken-Love over the last 3 years. At the end of the post I made this statement…

The safety of staying in the back ground can be just as insulting to God. Why couldn’t God use me in those ways? What if I am supposed to speak to large groups? What if I am supposed to develop a video study? What if…?

I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would actually make videos of the Awaken-Love study, but this June it will become a reality. God has given me an amazing ministry partner in Melanie – we point each other to God, we challenge each other, we speak God’s truth, and we dream the impossible. God is moving so fast, it is both terrifying and exhilarating. He has led us every step of the way and we are so excited to offer the Awaken-Love study to every married women that wants to take it. We are praying for doors to open and connections to be made to get the videos into women’s hands. We are praying for deep conversations as women meet and use the videos to learn about the intimacy God desires for them in their marriage and in their relationship with Him. We are praying that women would be made whole and marriages strengthened as they journey thru Awaken-Love.

So today I REMEMBER year 4 of Awaken-Love

Deep and Wide

have a hard time turning people away from class just because it is filled. I figure that if they have enough nerve to contact me, then it is a divine appointment, that I had better keep. So for the last 6 months, every class I’ve taught has been filled with as many women as the room will hold. I worried that the large size (18-28 people) would result in women not sharing or going deep, but I have been completely proved wrong. Women have joined in on discussions, they have openly shared their struggles and in fact, they have ministered to each other in powerful ways. There has been laughter, compassion, righteous anger and tears as the women learn and share, and it has been amazing. I love teaching Awaken-Love and I consider it an absolute privilege to walk along side of women.

Friends

Melanie joined me in June . She is an amazing teacher, my ministry partner and we are joined at the heart. It has only been a year but it seems like a lifetime and I cannot imagine doing any of this without her. Erin, Melissa, Margie, Rebecca and Tracy have since joined our teaching ranks. Interviewing each of them was such a pleasure and privilege. To see God’s calling on them so strong, that they would step out and teach about sex – even when it was terrifying. They are amazing women and I consider it a privilege to minister side by side with them.

Men

One of the surprises that came this year was God calling us to further develop a men’s curriculum to compliment the women’s Awaken-Love study. With all that has happened this year, it has felt at times like a distraction, and yet I can’t seem to let it go. Melanie and I have spent time wrestling with ways to make the Men’s Edition most effective, accessible and act as a reinforcement to the women’s class. I am excited to team teach with my husband Jim in June as we continue to refine the curriculum. We are open to God’s calling and direction as we have no idea where we are going.

I asked Melanie to read last year’s post REMEMBER and she emailed me saying,

I read this last night and smiled a lot. It is amazing to know more of the details about the journey God has you on – and brought me to go on alongside you. I can’t wait to hear the stories at year 5 and 10 and 15! We have no idea what He has in store…which is a great thing because it exceeds anything we could plan!

And so we ask God for immeasurably more that we could plan or imagine…

If you want to help, we are still raising funds towards all the details that go with distributing the videos. Thank you for your support, for you encouragements and for your prayers.

by Ruth Buezis April 11, 2016

Priorities

Melanie came to Minnesota this weekend for the first time. We drove thru snow, and walked on a frozen lake. We also experienced the spring thaw that leads to wearing t-shirts in 55 degrees. The two dimensional rooms of my house that she had only seen thru skype became real spaces that form the walls of what I call home. She met three of my daughters and ate dinner as part of our family. She held her own in the sparring spree of wit that never ends.

Retreat

Melanie came to join me at a winter retreat I started hosting five years ago when God placed in me a desire for more intimacy. Intimacy comes from many places -God, our spouse, our family and our friends. This retreat was born out of a desire to have intimate connection with friends.

At retreat 20 women talk, eat, worship, serve and pray together. Instead of listening to a speaker, we spend time sharing stories of how we have seen God. Our focus this year was how we have experienced God’s healing in our lives and asking for more. While sharing testimonies, we heard amazing stories of God’s goodness and power. We spent time alone asking what we needed to dig up, lay down, or unwrap. We asked God for what we needed and wanted and we worshiped Him.

Priorities

During the weekend, Melanie and I got some much needed time just talking. We talked about how we met our husbands, how they proposed, the mistakes we have made, our insecurities and about what God is telling us. Over and over we are reminded of the importance of keeping our priorities right – God, our husband, our kids, and then everything else. For us, a lot of the that “everything else” is Awaken-Love.

Melanie and I have always encouraged each other that we don’t want Awaken-Love to become a full time job. But honestly, for me, it is. With my family grown, my husband has blessed me with the opportunity to spend my time devoted to Awaken-Love. Even though I thrive on ministering to people thru Awaken-Love, I have to be so careful to not let things get out of balance. I do not get my worth out of Awaken-Love. The only thing that matters is that I love God and I am following Him. As I sink more and more into full time ministry, I realize the importance of not just staying glued to my husband, but glued to God. Without Him nothing else matters. I do this for Him and because of Him.

And so whether you are working on your marriage, your sex life, helping others or whatever passion God has place on your heart – be careful to keep God at the top.

Guard yourself from worshiping what God does in your life.

Worship God Himself.

Next Monday, we start an awesome 4 week series called Getting to Know your Wife’s Body.

by Ruth Buezis March 7, 2016

TO ORGASM OR NOT TO ORGASM

The other night one of the ladies stayed after class to ask a question, “I was just wondering…” she said, “in our reading, a couple of places it has said that women don’t always need to have an orgasm. Do you agree with that?”

Her question reminded me of the importance of filtering everything we learn about sex through God’s word – even Christian resources.

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by Ruth Buezis February 22, 2016

That Intimate?

I know this is kind of a stretch, but I am going to go there…

Five years ago when I studied Song of Songs as an allegory of God’s love for me, I kept thinking, “So when I am most intimate with my husband, that is what God wants with me? “ In other words, “So, when I have an orgasm – that point in time when the rest of the world ceases to exist, when I stop worrying about what I look like, or what I sound like, when I see my husband more clearly than my eyes are capable of seeing, that is what God wants with me?”

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by Ruth Buezis February 8, 2016

Comfort SEX

I never thought that I would reach for my husband when I felt sad, stressed or overwhelmed. Things have drastically changed. Finding comfort through sex has been one of the most surprising results of figuring out this thing called SEX.

In Awaken-Love classes we talk about all the reasons that God created sex. The book Intimate Issues shares that one of the reasons is for comfort. After David and Bathsheba lost their child in 2 Samuel 12:24 it says, “Then David comforted his wife Bathsheba, and he went to her and lay with her.”

In class, I often ask if any of the women can relate to sex as a comfort. Often I hear about women comforting a husband because of a bad day at work, a job loss, or even a death in the family. We tend to think about sex being a comfort for men. Remember, this was David comforting Bathsheba, not Bathsheba comforting David. God intended sex to comfort wives, too.

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by Ruth Buezis February 1, 2016

NOT OUR OWN

The other night while teaching a group of newlyweds and engaged couples, we were brainstorming the wrong messages that we received about sex and contrasting them to God’s truth. When talking about sex as a protection against temptation, someone brought up 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 which basically says that our body in not our own.

³The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. ⁴The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. ⁵Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

I have to be honest – this has never been my favorite verse about sex.

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by Ruth Buezis November 30, 2015

BACK FROM VACATION

After 2 weeks of traveling around Copenhagen, Norway and Iceland with my husband and parents, I am getting back in the saddle and writing. So let’s just put a few thoughts out there….

I love vacation! Seeing the world with my husband and holding hands as we walk the cobblestone streets. I love taking a day off and ordering room service and not exiting our room until noon. I love dressing up for my husband and watching his jaw drop. It is so fun to have sex in different beds, in different rooms with different views. I love waking in the middle of the night because we have not adjusted to the time zone, rolling right into great sex and then back to sleep. Vacations are great!!

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by Ruth Buezis September 8, 2015

Naked

There is Nothing easy about getting Naked
I have gotten naked more times in the last 5 years of my life than I have in the previous 45 years. I got naked when I worked through difficult topics in my marriage bed in order to communicate my needs. I got naked when I fully opened myself up to praying with my husband. I got naked as I shared my testimony before baptism with my entire congregation. I got naked when I nervously told a dear friend that God was calling me to share what I had learned about sex. I got naked when I taught my first class on sex and trembled in fear. And today, I will get naked as I participate in Shannon Ethridge’s Women at the Well workshop in Texas. I will spend 4 days unpacking my emotional and sexual baggage with 8 other women in order to experience healing and freedom in my life. Ultimately I am going so that I can bring back tools to help other women, but I know that the journey will be very personal.

I have also shed more tears and relied on God more than I ever have in my life. Getting naked is like hanging out on this cliff, and all you can do is cry out to God. All you can do is ask God to work through you. All you can do is hang on tight, because He is going to take you for this awesome ride that you could never have imagined. You keep your eyes on Him like Peter did when he was walking on water, and the minute doubt enters, you begin to sink.
God created me with a deep desire to be in relationship because I have been molded like Him. I want to be known. I want to be known by God, I want to be known by husband, I want to be known by friends. It’s not that it is easy. I am human and so is my husband and friends. We mess up all the time, and we do things that hurt each other. But I still want to be known. I would rather experience the pain of being known than live in an insulated world of walls.
I love to share what God is doing in my life. I love to pray for friends. I love to lie naked next to my husband, fully known, completely exposed.
God works wonders through our nakedness. In John 13 Jesus washed His disciple’s feet, but before He did, He took off his clothing and wrapped a towel around His waist. Jesus got naked before He washed them. We need to get naked before we serve others. We need to be real and unraveled and then God can really work through us.

So don’t let fear stop you from getting naked once in a while. God does His greatest work through our weakness.

Blessings, Ruth

by Ruth Buezis August 2, 2015

INTIMACY – IT IS NOT ORDINARY

This week while at the doctor I was lamenting about how much I hated getting old and having reader glasses hanging on the tip of my nose in order to teach classes. She innocently asked what I teach, and I squirmed a little bit and then thought, why not?

“Sex classes to wives at church.”

She replied as she listened to the thump, thump of my heart, “That’s a good thing. Women can probably use all the help they can get.”

Then she said, ” Do you teach men’s classes?”

I was just about to answer that, ” actually I do and they are awesome…”

When she caught me by surprise and acridly laid out, “Cause men need to learn that our libido changes, especially after a certain age..”

This woman wanted her husband told that she didn’t need to have sex anymore because her body was not physically screaming for it. She could not have been older than 35 or 40 – tops. For many women, this is when we are just starting to relax and really enjoy things, but she was ready to be done.

I sensed the conversation was over, but I have been thinking about it all week.

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by Ruth Buezis July 20, 2015

Category: Foundational Truths

Become ONE in marriage

I now realize that God makes us into One EVERY TIME that we have sex.

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4 Year Anniversary of Awaken-Love

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NOT OUR OWN

I have to be honest – this has never been my favorite verse about sex.

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Category: Foundational Truths

I now realize that God makes us into One EVERY TIME that we have sex.

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I have to be honest – this has never been my favorite verse about sex.

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