Does this sound like you?

You wake up another morning from a night of non-sex and you have to fight the bitterness that wants to wash over you.

You wanted it, but she didn’t. She never does.

If she would just loosen up and be affectionate like she used to be, it would fix a whole lot of your marriage problems.

But she didn’t again. She never does.

And so you continue in the pain of it and do your best to grit your teeth and hope for another opportunity tonight.

Meanwhile, your confidence either plummets or remains in the plummeted state already entered long ago. And let’s face it, that’s not sexy in a man. What woman would want to have sex with that anyway?

And you start to think to yourself, “I must not be that great at life. If my own wife—the one who knows me the best—doesn’t want and like me much, then who the heck do I think I am, to be trying to offer any kind of value to the world? If I’m a sucky husband, then I probably can’t do jack.”

Also…you’re a Christian. Doesn’t that mean that Jesus is supposed to help you with things like sex and having a good marriage and joy and all that. Aren’t Christians supposed to have MORE help with their sex lives? Aren’t we supposed to love better and therefore have hotter, more-often sex? If God made marriage as the ONLY way to have sex rightly, then why does everyone else seem to have a lot more fun and a lot more…period?!

If that’s you, then I’m happy to help Jesus wake you up. It might sting, but it will be good. You need it if you are ever going to get out of this cycle. Because I want you to first of all become a more unshakeable man, who isn’t rocked by the current state of his sex life. But I also really do want you to have a happier and more mutually fulfilling married sex life.

It’s Time to Rebuild. Welcome to a New Kingdom Paradigm for Sex in Marriage

By now you know it’s no secret that many men in our culture are unsatisfied in their sex lives. And we’ve all heard the oft-quoted statistic that half of marriages end in divorce, and half of christian marriages end in divorce, and we’re all just doomed.

You’ve probably also heard at least a dozen married people respond in less than hearty gusto when asked about their marriage, home-life, sex life, etc.

Excuse the mildly offensive pun, but I’m willing to bet that a LARGE portion of marriages in modern church culture are not bangin’ on all cylinders.

So…the question is…what about you?

Do you feel like you’re in line to be the next statistic? An unsatisfied, undersexed, bitter guy whose life is on hold because his marriage is struggling?

If that’s you, then I’m sorry. It’s not easy. In fact it hurts a lot.

And it’s not necessarily all your fault, as many in the church have been made to feel….like the man is always to blame. Like the man’s sex drive is inappropriate. Like we’re broken because we want our wives. A lot (if we’re being honest).

And…you may not like this…it’s not necessarily all your wife’s fault either. What if we are both—husbands and wives—at fault. AND what if we are both falling prey to the brokenness of the married sex system that we’ve inherited. AND what if that system is heavily infiltrated by hell itself?

It’s almost like we never had a chance to begin with?

How could WE have massively screwed it up, when the thing was already destined for a crash landing?

But the fact remains, however we got here…we’ve got to get out. Because where we are in this whole issue of sex is killing us as a church. It’s killing you, the husband. And it’s killing your wife.

It’s time, sir, wherever you are…now matter how deep your pain is—it’s time that we men rise up into the mighty warriors that God says we are, even in this arena of sex.

Believe what God Says about Sex for Your Marriage

Trust me. I realize that this sounds at once both too tiny and menial to really change anything and also incredibly difficult to actually do. I get it. But so I can earn some of your trust back, let’s address both of those objections.

First: Will it actually change anything if I believe differently about sex?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Your believing differently is all it took to go from eternally lost to eternally saved, right?

Seems like a pretty simplistic step to take for such dramatic results. And yet that’s the way it is. If you want to stop living as a victim to your wife, a victim to your lackluster or non-existent bedroom activities, then it must start with faith.

And this is difficult, because it will piss you off.

It will cause you to take God to task and say, “If you promise something for my marriage, then why don’t you deliver on that promise?!”

It will force you to reckon with your pain and bitterness and to be honest with God about how you feel like he’s let you down.

It will back you into a corner to where you have no other option but to face head-on your own inner lack of confidence, your lack of strength, your misplaced identity and your sinful worship of your wife.

This dive into faith about sex is not easy. It is not fun. But, like the Bible says, anything NOT done from faith is sin.

So we’ve got to go here.

The Power of Faith in Rebuilding Your Sex Life

Have you been praying that God would heal your marriage? Have you been praying that he’d revamp your sex life? That he’d make your wife more in-the-mood for you?

Has it happened yet?

Crickets.

Now, I’m not claiming to know all the reasons why your prayers may not have been answered thus far, but I’m willing to bet that a major area for improvement in your praying about sex and your marriage is the attitude/mindset that you pray in. It was for me.

I spent who knows how much energy praying for God to reach down and flip the switch in our marriage so that we would enjoy a lot of sex, all the time. everywhere. And I prayed this way in the middle of the pain, the heartache, the deep bitterness, the self-contempt—all of it.

But none of it was faith. Desperation? Yes. Dependence on God? Maybe. Faith? No.

This is bad because, as Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please [God].”

Then to add insult to injury, James 1:6-8 says that we need to ask in faith because, if we doubt, we’re like a wave tossed around in the sea, and we are unstable, and we’re foolish for ever supposing we’ll receive anything we ask for.

Well crap.

So even if we’re praying with all our heart that God spices up our marriage with amazing sex—if we don’t know how to pray this in faith, then what’s the point? We a) don’t please God, and b) don’t get what we’re wanting: a fulfilling and fiery sex life with our wives.

Then we’d better figure out how to have faith when it comes to this painful and volatile part of our lives. Jesus told us that real faith can move entire mountains. Nothing would be impossible for us. If your marriage is currently marked by sex that feels lackluster, non-existent, pain-filled—and you can’t imagine how it could possibly get any better—then I’d say that qualifies as a mountain. And, according to the promise, it WILL move…IF you have faith.

Faith Activates You

See, what you believe about anything, including sex, heavily influences what you will experience.

Because, not only does faith activate the hand of God to work on your behalf, but it also activates YOU.

Your belief is what fuels your getting into your car every day and driving it. Yes you have to put actions into the situation, but if you didn’t believe the car would get you anywhere, you wouldn’t take the necessary action to get it to drive. There are countless iterations of this principle that have been taught on over and over again, but one of the most famous comes from Ghandi:

“Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny.”

If you allow yourself to stay stuck under the self-pity, the defeat, and the discouragement and you entertain thoughts like, “My wife just doesn’t want me anymore. Our marriage is never going to change. Etc.”

Then your actions, your attitudes, your behavior and the contribution you’re going to make to your general atmosphere (which your wife will UNDOUBTEDLY pick up on) will be exactly those things: defeat, discouragement, and self-pity.

You will behave in ways that will subtly cause the outcome that you are believing for: more pain, bitterness, and coldness on this topic of sex.

But as you walk in faith and learn to grow in your confidence in who God says you are as a man and a husband, then you begin to carry yourself differently, more attractively. You begin to create an environment that is conducive to this new set of POSITIVE beliefs.

See, this journey toward rebuilding sex in your marriage is not one-dimensional. It is not all on God to fix your life…nor is it all on you. It’s a partnership. It is “both…and” not “either…or”. I really need you to get this. Your path to victory is not going to be one in which it is done for you. You must get up, dust off the cobwebs, and go take your promised land in accordance with the promise of God and the power of his declaration over your life.

He shows himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to him. And you show your loyalty by acting in faith as if what he has said is true…even before you see it (as painful as that may be).

But we could use a little more pain, men. It strengthens us. It builds our muscle.

So you have to figure out what you believe. And you have to get it so firmly that you will not falter or waver or draw back in the face of opposition, discouragement, and seeming lack of results.

Don’t be driven by results. Be driven by principle.

How to Have Faith for Awesome Sex in Your Marriage

Now, I know you’re still asking, “How do I actually have faith to believe for amazing sex with my wife? This all sounds great, but also impossible. You don’t know our history. You don’t know the pain. You don’t know the coldness…”

Hebrews 11 says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for. Jesus said that whenever we ask anything, we should believe that we have ALREADY received it, and then it will be given to us.

Faith goes backwards from how we normally operate.

Normally we need to see evidence of something before we’ll accept it. Faith requires us to accept something as true before we see evidence. In fact our certainty, assurance, belief, faith IS the very evidence.

This gets dang hard when life doesn’t match what we want to believe for. Like when we want to be healed from sickness. Or when we want our children to come back home. Or when we want our marriage to be marked by intimacy, fun, passion, and connection rather than pain and coldness.

And it requires us to make a choice between believing what circumstances whisper to us in our thoughts throughout the day or believing what God has said. And if we have grown in intimacy with God to the point where his word carries more weight than life’s whispers…then we’re on the right track.

So we need to know, then…

What the heck does God say about sex? What does he want for me? What has he declared?

Because, friend, if he’s declared something that doesn’t match the current state of your marriage, then you have license—actually you have the obligation, the duty, to fight for change. It is your job as a man to fight for the most passionate, intimate, fulfilling sex you and your wife could ever imagine.

How do I know this?

God says it.

Proof from the Bible that God Wants Good Sex for Your Marriage

1. The entire Song of Solomon

I don’t think I need to say much more about this one. Just go read it. See for yourself how the two burn with desire for each other. They celebrate each other. They express their desire physically.

2. Proverbs 5:18-19

3. “The two shall become one flesh”…repeated 4 times

Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:5, Mark 10:8, Ephesians 5:31

4. The marriage bed is undefiled

Hebrews 13:4

5. Don’t deprive each other

1 Corinthians 7:5

These verses, brother, paint the most amazing picture of sex you can imagine. There is no prudishness here. There is no business-like duty sex here. There is no guilt, no shame, no modesty here. God is telling you and me that, “SEX IN MARRIAGE IS MIND-BLOWING!”

At least, that’s what he wants it to be. And he’s telling you, “Psst. That’s what it can be. That’s what your marriage can look like. Even now. Stop listening to your own past, and start listening to ME, MY voice.”

So the very first piece of the puzzle in reviving your marriage and having amazing sex again is for you, man—forget about your wife for a moment—for YOU to change what you believe. Let the truth of God’s heart for sex wash over you and seep into your cells and start to reprogram your DNA so that it matches his truth. And don’t be a baby and whine to your wife that she needs to see these verses. Or she needs to believe it too. Or she this or that. Don’t! Don’t be a little boy who needs his wife to make him feel better.

Do this for yourself. Be a man who gets his mental and emotional crap together and believes good healthy kingdom thoughts. Your woman will be drawn to you when you blaze your own trail into kingdom thinking and you don’t give a crap about whether she joins you there or not. You’re on a non-negotiable mission to become a better man…and that includes a better sexual man.

But my telling you a list of verses is not going to do jack in changing your beliefs or getting you better sex. In fact, I’m willing to bet that the pain of your unfulfilling sex life is way louder and stronger in your brain than the wishful-thinking-sounding words from the Bible. I get that.

This is the part where you go to war.

You must take action for yourself. You have to decide whether you are going to live in the self-pity of wound licking and continue listening to the lies that awesome sex is just not in the cards for you—or whether you’re going to find the manly courage, strength, and grit that Jesus injected into your DNA and choose to believe it can be different.

Because if you say that you follow Jesus and you believe the Bible. Then, as a man, you’ve got to be authentic. You’ve got to actually believe it all the way through. That means, when you read Proverbs 5 and see, “May her breasts satisfy you always, and may you forever be intoxicated by her love,” you’re going to have to overcome the initial gut-wrenching wave of self-pity that rises up and push through to the place of saying, “NO! I will NOT agree with those feelings anymore! God has spoken this possibility, this promise, over me, and I will fight for it!”

But how do you get there? How do you actually become that kind of man? The best way to start is by getting alone with God. Go climb a mountain, sit by a river, kneel by your couch, sit at your desk…whatever. And open your Bible. Shut your computer. Grab a journal. Open yourself to your Father. You have to make this stuff your own by wrestling it through with him.

If you’d like, you can download my own battle plan, process, field guide…whatever you want to call it right here. I’m giving you actions, routines, exercises, scriptures that you can implement right now that will help you move in the right direction…to a rebuilt inner man, and a rebuilt sex life 🙂

Remember:

1. Understand that all change in this area will begin with what you believe.

2. Faith moves God and it also moves you.

3. Figure out what God wants for your sex life.

4. Choose whether you will believe him or your circumstances.

5. Fight. Not for results, but for principle.

6. Don’t whine to your wife. Do this for yourself.

7. Grab the step-by-step, day-in-day out plan I’ve made for you that helped me become a WAY more sexy man to my wife. It all started with this stuff we’re talking about.

8. Watch for the next post where we’ll go deeper into your journey to a rebuilt married sex life.

9. Join the Man Warrior King movement by grabbing a copy of the book that God is using to transform men’s lives: The DNA of a Man.

Good job. You are more than a conqueror.