Married With Children: A Healthy Marriage Bed

In presenting material about marriage, or any other Christian topic, it's important to contemplate both God's Word, and his design of our bodies and minds. Looking at all the clues, what is God's desire for marriage?


The next question is, how closely are we adhering to His design, and lastly, how can we honor Him more in this area?


This article lists a number of Scriptures pertaining to marriage, though we won't discuss all of them today.  Today's topic will focus primarily on the marriage bed.


Western culture presents a battleground for any Christian, especially in the area of purity. Immodest clothing alone causes many a men to give up on holiness. They're not even free from the visual battle on a Sunday morning in church, thanks to the tight and baring styles teens and young women covet. Even among the Christian population, defiled marriage beds are the rule, not the exception, when you consider the wandering eye and mind. Matthew 5:28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.


A married couple should frequently check in with one another concerning purity, especially after children come along and intimacy becomes less frequent. Though difficult, this topic cannot be ignored. Naivete, like secrecy, invites trouble.


God designed a husband's passion to center around the visual, while a wife's passion centers more around her feelings--feeling safe and unconditionally loved in a committed marital relationship. Husbands might have more of a purity battle in the confines of marriage, but both spouses, especially when working outside the home, must take care to avoid emotional bonds with the opposite sex. These bonds are always a mistake. They defile the marriage by dishonoring the emotional bond it represents, eventually leading to ingratitude and infidelity.


When children go through especially needy periods, such as the baby, toddler, preschool, and teen years, it's harder to remain emotionally bonded to a spouse. There may be more opportunity to talk to the woman or man at work, then to one's spouse. Avoid alone time with the opposite sex at work or church, and when that's not possible, keep the doors ajar. We must guard our hearts and minds and our eyes.


Remember that God always provides a way out of temptation. 1 Corinthians 10:13  No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.


I can't emphasize enough that communication becomes especially important after children come and distractions abound. A naive husband or wife is dangerous. Understand the pitfalls in order to avoid them. 


What's also dangerous is a spouse with a low standard of holiness. Husbands can come to believe that since all men look at attractive women, it's okay. It's normal and healthy--part of being a man, in fact. Check in with your spouse's heart in this area. What is his standard for holiness? Is it a biblical standard?


An important question to be asked is this: Has he learned to automatically avert his eyes from another woman's body? If he hasn't, he could be comparing his wife's body--specifically, her post-baby body--with what his eyes feast on daily. When God blesses a couple with children, great joy results. But there are sorrowful things as well: post-baby bodies can be less visually appealing. A mature Christian man expects this and takes it in stride, feeling grateful for his wife's amazing body. Malachi 2:15 Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.



Learning to bounce the eyes is one tactic holy men use to keep their hearts and marriage beds pure. Kristen Welch's husband, addicted to pornography for years, used this tactic to gain freedom.  I urge you to read this link. No man is immune until he develops fighting tactics. Sadly, most affected men began their addiction in the middle school years.


We are more likely to be satisfied with what God has given us, if we avoid comparison. And as always, counting our blessings keeps our hearts thankful. 


Women are not immune to focusing on the physical. An acquaintance of ours recently revealed, concerning his failed marriage:

"We haven't had relations in a year and a half because she said I was too fat and she couldn't stand to look at me."

Sadly, it was a Christian woman who uttered this grievous insult...to her non-Christian husband.


While it's always a good idea to care for our bodies, which are temples of the Holy Spirit, weight control is harder for some people, and harder for all of us after age forty. Our genes determine, to some extent, how quickly we gain weight and how easily we lose it. Stress and a busy lifestyle contribute to weigh issues. 


When a spouse is confronted about weight control, that only adds stress, which makes the battle even harder. The best approach is to be thankful for all of our spouse's good points, and then to pray that both spousal bodies remain as healthy as possible. Loving one another unconditionally contributes to physical and emotional health--there's no question about that.


Scripture teaches not to deny one another "except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control." Scripture also teaches that men must "live with your wives in an understanding way." Something between these two Scriptures is what God desires for the frequency of marital relations. If a wife nurses a baby every two hours for weeks, or nurses the entire family back to health after a nasty illness, her husband should look upon her with compassion, allowing her time to recover before approaching her for relations.


God designed a woman's body such that breaks in marital intimacy are inevitable. After childbirth, during menses (depending on the couple's preferences), and during morning sickness, are just a few examples. 


During the first eight to ten months of nursing, a woman's secretions dry up, causing pain during relations. The presence of pain, possibly designed to make relations less frequent, coupled with the dryness which prevents a man's seed from traveling easily up her body, make it more likely that babies come with a healthy spacing. A woman's body needs to fully recover before carrying another baby. God designed us so that our developing baby's health, and our own health, are maximized. Nursing and childbearing are integral parts of that divine design: women who are fruitful, and those who nurse, are less likely to get female cancers.


Though a man should dwell compassionately with his wife, understanding her body and her emotions, a woman must communicate with her husband about his needs. If he's already struggling in the area of marital purity, the wife should give of herself sacrificially, despite her exhaustion or the presence of pain. 


How overwhelmed moms can hope to meet this expectation is a topic for another day. This post is Part 1.


The key ingredients for a healthy marriage bed are holiness, communication, compassion, and sacrificial love.


Hebrews 13:4
Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.


Genesis 2:24
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.


1 Corinthians 7:1-40
Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. ...


1 Thessalonians 4:3-5
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God;


Malachi 2:15
Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.


Matthew 5:28
But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.


1 Peter 3:7
Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.


Genesis 1:26-28
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 


So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” 

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