God, Sex, and Your MarriageSample

Intimate Knowing

A second aspect of our relationship with God is that He created us for intimacy. The purpose of our covenant is intimate fellowship with God. Your relationship with Him should be a progressive journey of knowing God more deeply and understanding His love for you.

The Old Testament Hebrew word often used for a husband and wife having sex is yada. This Hebrew word is translated as “to know intimately or experientially.” Interestingly, it is also used in reference to how God intimately knows His people and their longing to intimately know Him. Yada is not just intellectual knowledge, but a deep, experiential knowing.

God intentionally inspired the same word for sexual intimacy as He used to describe the intimate experiential knowledge He desires to have with His covenant people. God wants to know us as intimately as a husband and wife can sexually know one another. It’s not that God wants to have sex with us, but that sex is a metaphor of how intimately God wants to be connected to us. He wants to know us like a man knows his wife when they are most vulnerable.

Both in our relationship with God and in our marriages, we can confuse activity with intimacy. Often our activity keeps us too busy to realize how much we lack intimacy. I had spent a life in the activities of Bible reading, serving, and obeying (which are all good!) but neglected the greater call to intimacy. It is possible to be surrounded by the things of God and never deeply know Him!

In a similar way, you can be sexually active with your spouse for decades without ever experiencing sexual intimacy. “Hooking up” in marriage is far more common than we realize. This trend is reinforced not only by the secular culture but also by simplistic teaching in the church. The focus is on whether or not we are fulfilling a sexual obligation. Sex was never designed to be obligatory, but to be the greatest invitation and expression of intimacy.

Sexual activity focuses on: compatibility and frequency, physical attraction, immediate pleasure, and getting my needs met. Sexual intimacy focuses on: learning to love, intimate connection, a shared journey, and getting our needs met.

The greatest challenge to both your sex life and your relationship with God is to continually pursue yada. No matter how great your married sex may or may not be, your sex life will plateau if you are not willing to enter into intimately knowing your spouse.

Sex without yada is like food without nutrition. God gave you the gift of sex not simply so that your body could experience pleasure, but so that the physical act of becoming one would usher in a deeper knowing and intimacy with one another.

1. How can spiritual activity sometimes get in the way of true intimacy with God?
2. How would you describe the difference between sexual activity and sexual intimacy?
3. What are some ways that you have both intimately known your spouse and been intimately known by your spouse?