Podcast about Awaken-Love Men’s Edition

My husband and I team up to teach a class called Awaken-Love Men’s Edition. About a month ago, I sat down with Belah Rose from Delight Your Marriage. She asked me to share some of the information that we teach at the Awaken-Love Men’s Edition. You can listen to the podcast at Delight Your Marriage.

The three goals of the Awaken-Love Men’s Edition are…

  1. To help husbands understand the difference between just having sex and truly connecting with their wife through sex, the way God intended.
  2. To help husbands be a great lover to their wife by helping them understand the battles in her head, how her body works, and how to woo her with words and actions.
  3. To equip men to talk to their wife, kids and other men about sex so that others might know the truth about sex.

Right now the class is only available in Minneapolis, but Jim and I have dreams of somehow making it available to more men using videos. If you want to listen to the podcast please go to Delight Your Marriage.

I would love to hear your feedback.

Do We Only Show the Presentable Parts or All of Me?

Sometimes in the church, we think in order to commune with God we need to have our life put together. It seems like nobody struggles in their marriage, with depression, with pornography or rebellious kids. If they do, they sure as heck don’t talk about it. Pretty soon we begin to believe that God only wants to know the presentable parts. When we struggle, we go into hiding and say, “God, when I have this figured out, then…” As a college kid that drank too much, church was the last place I wanted to go. I did not want to see God, talk to Him or hear from Him. I thought I needed to fix myself first, and honestly that might never have happened.

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A Great Sex Life – Not all Rocket Science

Having a great sex life is not all rocket science. The small everyday things that we do make a huge difference. They set the stage and are the meat and potatoes of our relationship that great sex rolls out of. So, I thought I would share some of the small practical everyday things that make a difference to my husband and me.

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Is Your Marriage Your First Priority?

Anything and everything will get in the way of your marriage and your sex life.

  • Kids
  • Work
  • Social Media
  • Staying fit
  • Ministry
  • Keeping up with the Jones
  • Serving
  • Screen time
  • Chores
  • Insecurities
  • Expectations

In the same way, anything and everything will get in the way of your relationship with God.

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Do We Settle for Boring?

I think one of the most powerful messages that Satan uses to destroy marriage is the simple lie that …

Marriage is supposed to be boring.

or that…

Sex in marriage is just going to be boring.

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Mismatched Sex Drive

“Why don’t I have a drive like my husband?”

This wasn’t the first time I had heard this question. It is easy as a lower drive spouse to feel like something is wrong with us because we don’t have a drive. It must be awesome to want sex all the time – it would make life so much easier.

When it comes to sex, I don’t really think there is an easy road. We just have different challenges to navigate.

Honestly, I think part of our problem is giving our drives way too much power. As Christians, we say that sex is not just physical, but do we really believe it and do we live it? If we believed sex was a gift from God to strengthen marriage, wouldn’t we be having sex regardless of whether our physical body was screaming for it.

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Intimacy with ChristsMirrors Intimacy in Marriage

Over the last 6 years I have read a ton of books on sex, both secular and Christian.  As you might imagine, with a million different opinions on sex, it’s hard to know what to believe and what to throw out.

One of the fundamental flaws that I often see is defining sex by what comes naturally to men or women.

Writers create surveys or observe natural tendencies and prescribe how to understand each other and work around each other’s brokenness. This thinking completely ignores the fact that our understanding about sex is wrong. We have believed lies and carry that impacts us. It also takes God out of the equation.

Just because we act a certain way, does not mean that is who God wants us to be. We need to give God room to work and to change us. We have walls that need to be taken down and lies that need to be righted. Even though knowledge can be gleaned from our natural tendencies, I choose to put every idea about who God wants me to be, and what I believe about sex through a filter – God’s word. What is God’s intent for me, for my husband and for sex.

One of the most profound passages on sex in the bible is

Ephesians 5:31-32 (NIV) – “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.

In essence it says that becoming one in marriage – SEX – is a mirror to becoming one with Christ. Intimacy in marriage is supposed to teach us about intimacy with Christ. And our relationship with Christ teaches us about intimacy in marriage.

You might be surprised by how many common beliefs about sex are turned on their head if you run them through this filter. So, join me for a journey of comparing “Oneness with Christ” to “Oneness in marriage” every Thursday. It is going to be an interesting ride.

Intercourse Insight

Intercourse is God’s design to make what seems like an impossibility, an opportunity for growth.

 Over the course of my marriage, intercourse has changed drastically from

  • something that I just endured
  • to something that frustrated the heck out of me
  • to something that I crave- regardless of whether I reach orgasm.

Intercourse, more than any other sexual act has stretched my husband and I to talk about really hard stuff. It has forced us to not just focus on mechanics but on connection. We have thrown out every preconceived idea of what intercourse looks like and instead created something that works for us. And we have grown enormously because of it, individually and as a couple.

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Top 10 Reasons to Take an Awaken Love Class

Top 10 Reasons to take an Awaken-Love Class

10. To learn how to say “orgasm” without blushing

9. To help me feel more comfortable talking to my kids about sex

8. To make some amazing friendships

7. To learn about my body and how it works

6. To learn some creative date ideas

5. To make my marriage even better than it is

4. To deal with my baggage so that I can experience God’s freedom

3. To surprise the heck out of my husband

2. To learn how to integrate being both Godly and sensuous

1. To learn how powerfully good sex can be within marriage

Start the new year right by taking an Awaken-Love class with your friends.

Do it for You

I will never forget the woman, tears streaming down her cheeks, her gentle husband just a step behind. She came to talk during intermission at one of my couples seminars on sex. “I am sorry”, she said, “I have to leave. This is just too painful. You see I was abused as a child… I want to do this for my husband… really, I just can’t right now.”

As I listened to her story, I was struck by the common thread that holds so many Christian wives.

Do it for your husband

It is a thread that weaves throughout our sexuality impacting us so profoundly and yet many of us may not even know it exists.  This message of “Do it for your husband” sounds so Christian, putting someone ahead of yourself, and yet in many ways it slowly strangles our sexuality until it all just feels like a chore. This subtle thread insinuates that sex is not important to wives. It implies that God did not create sex as a gift for women and that, IS A LIE.

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