Sexual Prowess and the Call for Extraordinary Men
To beloved sons, As you can see from the above definition, PROWESS requires both bravery and extraordinary ability. And of all the endeavors of men, few require more of these two attributes than sex. That is, if physical intimacy is to be enjoyed to the fullest measure possible and troubles—some of which make for the most agonizing heartaches imaginable—are to be avoided.
If we men are to offer to the world the best of our masculinity, of first importance is to acknowledge that the woman you are attracted to belongs to God. Before any claim you may think you have upon a woman there lies the higher claim of her Maker, God himself. Every aspect of her being belongs to her heavenly Father who loves her with a fierce and unfailing love. To disregard this fact is to trifle with your very life. With this truth—that every woman belongs first to God—as your starting point, build upon it with other truths the next of which is the fact that, as its author, God knows more about sex than any other conceivable source. To read Solomon’s Song of Songs in the Bible is to realize God is a die-hard romantic, uninhibited and passionate to the core having created sexual relations to be an extravagant body-mind-spirit adventure for both partners. Under certain conditions…
The first condition God insists upon is that of total commitment. The kind found only in marriage. Make no mistake, no other form will suffice. All else is counterfeit, fools gold that will leave you wallowing in a wasteland of unforeseen consequences that may not be apparent at first but will bare fangs another day. You can count on it! To take a woman to yourself that isn’t your wife is to take to yourself what will one day likely be the wife of another man. You would, in fact, be a thief, stealing from another what should have been his alone to enjoy—not to mention defrauding your own future wife by giving away the gift of your own body to another—saddling both prospective couples with a sorrow stubbornly resistant to any of the world’s attempts to pooh-pooh it all away as religious nonsense. Repeat the offense multiple times and you multiply the sorrows. The conscience God gave us runs deep…
This is where the bravery aspect of sexual prowess comes into play. It takes bravery to stand against culture’s false claims, the pressure of peers, and the tug of raw desire. If you are to be a protector of women—especially the woman you profess to love—you must be brave enough to slay the dragon of temptation in all its forms and be found siding with truth.
The second condition God insists upon is that of love, the sort of love that delights in giving above taking. Selfless love that holds the welfare of another above your own. Sexual prowess requires this kind of love if two souls are to be deeply satisfied. True, sexual intercourse can provide momentary thrills absent of either commitment or love. But the pleasure is short lived. Intimacy outside the life-giving safety offered by total commitment and selfless love sooner or later gives birth to regrets, tearing down instead of building up.
Sexual prowess requires the extraordinary ability to love as God loves, preferring another above ourselves—an ability dependent on our own relationship with God. Popular opinion holds up technique as the ultimate expression of sexual prowess. The deep wisdom of God knows better. Sexual prowess is a confluence of bravery and ability. The bravery to abstain from sexual intimacy until prepared to fully commit to another in marriage coupled with the extraordinary ability to love another more than you love yourself.
I have come to appreciate these truths by a combination of personal failure and success, heavy on the failure side until my marriage to Sheila. So I speak to you not from some lofty height of unblemished moral excellence but from the perspective of someone who, by the overwhelming mercy of God, has received grace upon grace. Which leads me to the last, and the most important, of my counsel. There is no right doing apart from right being. You were created by God to be dependent on him. Being a man, a true man, all that is meant by the very idea of manhood, requires an active bond of love between you and God. It is never too late to call out to the God who came down from heaven in the form of a man to free us from the grip of sin. Real life begins with a love affair with Jesus. In the everlasting love of God!
-Dad
My name is Michael Kimball. What you have just read comes from a post recently published at Longings End, the blog my wife, Sheila, and I co-author. It is the first installment in a series called Letters to sons. The purpose behind the series is to make a way for me to talk to not only my own sons and grandsons but those in my extended family and those sons of all ages who have an appetite for truth. And in the serious matter of survival, truth counts! After all, isn’t that what brought you here to this website, a sense of confidence in hearing the truth about survival products so you can make good decisions? Well, I offer up the idea that you might consider what precedes as a vital addition to your gear. After all, what good is the survival of your body at the expense of your heart?
~ About Michael Kimball ~
