Phil Inglis - February 21, 2021
Alternate Sex
Perhaps you've heard the phrase, “It doesn’t matter where you get your appetite, so long as you always eat at home?” It simply means that it doesn’t matter if you lust after someone, so long as you don’t act on that lust. Instead, it implies you should store up those feelings of lust and channel them into your relationship with your partner when you get home. Lust is one of the most significant drivers of human relationships. Marriage is perhaps the most significant relational construct in human society. It is no surprise, then, that there are so many pitfalls where lust and marriage intersect. According to research, lust is the second most prevalent cause of relational breakdown and divorce (the first is money). In addition to this primary cause, many relationships have failed and are failing due to a fundamental lack of understanding of love, lust and marriage. One of the key messages in pre-marriage preparation classes should be that love is a choice, not an emotion you fall into, and therefore marriage is a commitment, not something you can fall out of. A healthy marriage is not based on feelings of lust or infatuation, but on the everyday choices to make loving sacrifices together. This Sunday at 10 am we continue our study of Jesus words in the Sermon on the Mount. In this instalment we discuss Jesus' instructions around adultery, marriage, and divorce, in an attempt to develop an alternate view of these things, one that lines up more with the values of the Kingdom of Heaven than the values of the world around us.
Scripture References: Matthew 5:27-32
