Text. Prov.5:15-19

Memory:
Let thy fountain be blessed:
and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe;
let her breasts satisfy thee at all times;
and be thou ravished always with her love. (Prov.5:18-19)

Apart from helping relationships to be intimate, active sex life can provide for a longer, healthier and more enjoyable life. The following are some of the health benefits of regular sex in your marriage as adapted from articles.mercola.com.

* Improves Heart Health.
Couples who have sexual intercourse regularly (twice weekly) are 45 percent less likely to develop heart disease than those who did so once a month or less according to a study. Sexual intercourse is also linked with better stress response and lower blood pressure.
* Eases Stress.
During sexual intercourse, your body is triggered to produce feel-good chemicals, helping to ease stress and boost pleasure, calm and self-esteem. Research also shows that those who have sexual intercourse responded better when subjected to stressful situations.
After a stressful day, if you are met with a romantic husband or wife who lures you to bed for an exciting sexual adventure or responds to your sexual moves in a loving way, the effect of stress on your health will be less damaging than if you were met with an indifferent spouse.

* Improves Sleep.
After sexual activity, the relaxation-inducing hormone, prolactin is released, which may help you nod off more quickly. The ‘love hormone’ oxytocin, released during orgasm, also promotes sleep. That is why you may not need any other sedative towards sound sleep after a satisfying sexual round with your spouse.

* Boosts Your Immune System.
It has been observed that people with active sex life are less prone to diseases than people with negligible sex life.

* Improves Mental Health.
There are evidences that healthy sexual life in marriage also affects mental health of the couple. It has been discovered that sexual frequency and satisfaction is directly linked with the mental health and well-being of partners in marriage.

* Helps Weight Control.
Sex is really a great form of exercise. It burns an average of 5 calories per minute, making it a significant form of exercise. It can help you maintain your flexibility and balance.

* Can Help Relief Pain.
Sexual activity releases pain-reducing hormones and has been found to help reduce or eliminate back and leg pain for menstrual cramps.

* Can Help Women With Bladder Control And Men With Prostrate.
Sexual intercourse helps strengthen your pelvic floor muscles, which contract during orgasm. This can help women to improve their bladder control and avoid incontinence. Research has also shown that men who are sexually active have a lower risk of prostrate cancer.

Discussion Points With Your Spouse
• How well do you sleep after a satisfying sexual encounter? (Physical health)
• How easily annoyed are you when you are having issues with your spouse on sex? (Emotional health)
• How focused and articulate are you when you are having sexual issues with your spouse? (Psychological health)

PRAYER
Father and my God, help me that sexual intercourse will be a source of pleasure for us in my home in Jesus’ name.

QUOTABLE QUOTE

ILLUSTRATION
MARITAL SEX GOES BEYOND CHILDMAKING AND PLEASURE; IT IS A TONIC WHICH ENHANCES YOUR PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH. – Dr. Mike Oluniyi

Text:SS.2:1-6

Memory:

His left hand is under my head,

and his right hand doth embrace me. (SS.2:6)

Yesterday, we started our discussion on matters arising from sex in marriage by looking at some basic truths regarding your sex life. Today we shall continue by looking further at more basic truths which you must always be mindful of.

Satisfying Sex Life Is One Major Index Of Healthy Marriage.

When the sex life of a couple is satisfactory, they are likely to be best of friends. A man that is sexually starved is very likely to overreact to situations that are connected with his wife, while a woman with an unsatisfying sexual life is usually very difficult to satisfy in any other way.

Sex With Your Spouse Is Not An Unclean Exercise, It Is God’s Idea.(Heb.13:4)

Sex within marriage is wholesome and scriptural. It is only when done outside marriage that sex becomes unclean and a sin that will have negative effect on your spiritual growth, stagnate or even destroy your ministry.

If You Don’t Handle The Issue Of Sex Appropriately In Your Home, You May Not Be Able To Counsel Other Couples Appropriately..

As you mature in marriage, you will often need to handle situations in which there will be need to talk to couples frankly about sex. If it is not carefully handled, you may end up creating unnecessary problems for those homes that you counsel. It is from the depth of your own experience in marriage that you are very likely to teach others.

Sex Outside Your Marriage Can Destroy Your Future And Prevent You From Finishing Strong.

Extramarital sex, for whatever reason, is like a poison which will appear pleasurable initially but will most certainly destroy your future in God. Every married man and woman must know that temptations will come especially as you become more and more successful in life.

If you want to be greatly used by God, you must realize that He is passionately against sexual immorality: (1Cor.6:18-19)

God May Choose To Teach You Vital Lessons Through Sex Challenges.

Often, periods of challenges with your spouse over sex may be used by God to point you to some valuable lessons for your journey in life and ministry.

Discussion Points With Your Spouse

• Discuss with your spouse the effect of satisfying sex life on quick resolution of conflicts.

• Do you agree that a satisfying sex life is an index of a happy home?

• Discuss with each other how you feel when denied of sex.

Prayer Point

Father help me to be desirous of satisfying my spouse in all areas of our marital life.

QUOTABLE QUOTE.

SEX WITH YOUR SPOUSE BLESSES YOUR LIFE BUT WITH AN OUTSIDER BRINGS A CURSE THAT MAY JEOPARDIZE YOUR FUTURE, INCLUDING YOUR ETERNITY.

Mike Oluniyi.

Text: Gen.26:8-11

Memory:

When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelek king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah. (Gen.26:8)

One of the biggest problems in the life of many marriages is unfulfilled sexual life – a situation in which the wife of a man consistently denies him sexual satisfaction either in quantity or quality. On the other hand, there is also a growing number of women who are complaining of being denied sexual satisfaction by their husbands. One of the reasons why it is such a problem is that people don’t readily discuss this vital area of their marital life with others because it is by nature supposed to be private between husband and wife. Consequently, it takes high level of trust or setting in of frustration before most people will open up concerning their sexual life.

Many also hardly complain about it because there is hardly anyone to ‘safely’ complain to. This is because many of those that counsel have also not taken time to really study the fact that this is a key area in marriage. Many ministers of God will just counsel the woman to submit in everything to the husband but they fail to teach couples that sex to a woman is a matter of the heart – when a woman submits her body to you without her heart, it is as if you robbed her of something vital.

One major reason why the problem must be addressed is that unfulfilled sexual life has a way of affecting other areas of life, both marital and non-marital, negatively.

Following are some basic truths that you should always be mindful of about your marital sex life.

It Is Your Duty As Well As Your Deepest Expression Of Love.(1Cor.7:4-5)

Sexual intercourse with spouse is an important responsibility of the two parties in marriage. You owe it as a duty, once you are married, to make yourself available for sex with your spouse.

You must also know that when you make yourself available for sex with your spouse, it is one of deepest ways you can demonstrate that you love your spouse.

God Ordained Sex Not Just For Procreation But Also For Pleasure.(Pro.5:18-19)

You and your spouse must get to know that God invented sex not just for procreation but also for pleasure. Romance and sex with your wife is endorsed by the Bible.

Discussion Points With Your Spouse

• Discuss with your spouse what excites you about your sexual life and what frustrates you. Discuss also what the two of you can do to make your sex life more fulfilling.

• What is the place of romance in your relationship?

Prayer Point

Father help us in this home to make sex an instrument of love and unity rather than a source of constant argument and quarrels in Jesus’ name.

QUOTABLE QUOTE.

YOU ARE NOT DOING YOUR SPOUSE A FAVOUR WHEN YOU RESPOND POSITIVELY TO HIS OR HER SEXUAL ADVANCES, YOU ARE RATHER DOING YOUR HOME A FAVOUR.

Mike Oluniyi.

Main text: Eccl. 4:9-12.

Memory: Ecclesiastes 4:12

‘And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.’

God loves variety. In all marriages, the husband and wife are differently gifted, so what is missing in one is embedded in the other. Any marriage that can overcome every inhibition to be ‘lone rangers’ and combine the potentials in the two members is bound to achieve great things.

The covenant of marriage is also a very powerful covenant. When you do anything in agreement with your spouse, it appears that God backs it up and it comes out successfully. Consequently, agreement is very important in marriage.

If you can strive in your home to reach an agreement in whatever step you are about to take, especially business or ministry decisions, you will discover the power of unity in the home. I have noticed that in any business where the husband and wife are in partnership, the success rate is very high.

Agreeing in the family is however often easier said than done. As a man, your ego may often prevent you from doing things in agreement with your wife. As a wife too, there are potentially internal and external factors that may be inhibiting you from doing things in agreement with your husband.

Agreement on any matter before embarking on it improves your rate of success in any endeavor and in turn contributes to the success of the home because you will need each other to take every important decisions. Once you are married, God looks at you both as operating a joint account with Him. Can you imagine the difficulty of trying to singularly withdraw money from such account without your co-signatory?

‘And this is the second thing you do:

You cover the altar of the Lord with tears,

With weeping and crying;

So He does not regard the offering anymore,

Nor receive it with goodwill from your hands.

Yet you say, “For what reason?”

Because the Lord has been witness

Between you and the wife of your youth,

With whom you have dealt treacherously;

Yet she is your companion

And your wife by covenant.’

(Malachi 2: 13 &14)

Your dependence on each other, fostered by the desire to agree on issues, do improve communication and strengthen the home. When you depend on each other, it increases the chances of success in whatever you are doing and has great impact on the success of your marriage.

Discussion Points With Your Spouse

• What are the obstacles you have identified preventing you from joint decision making in your home.

• What steps can you take to eliminate such obstacles.

PRAYER

LORD, I come against every obstacle that has been preventing us from taking decisions together in this home in Jesus’ name.

QUOTABLE QUOTE

WHEN YOU DECIDE ON ANY MATTER IN AGREEMENT WITH YOUR SPOUSE, THE QUALITY OF YOUR DECISION APPRECIATES.

Mike Oluniyi.

Crisis period is inevitable in any marriage.

Text: Jn.16:31-33

Memory:

‘These things I have spoken to you so that in me ye might have peace. In the world, ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.’(John 16:33)

However beautiful a relationship may be, there must be a period of shaking. It may be loss of job, illness, adultery, investment loss, deviant child, disaster etc. Such crisis is sometimes caused by either or both of the husband and wife, but most of the time, the causes are beyond any member of the family. A drastic change in government policy may sometimes throw a comfortable family into serious crisis just as an accident can leave an indelible mark on the family.

While not praying for crisis, you must be sufficiently committed to your marriage so that whatever happens, your home will continue to be on its feet. There is nothing that will happen in your home that has not happened somewhere else; most of the couples you are seeing are still together because they learnt the appropriate strategy of overcoming their own challenges. Maybe your spouse was caught in adultery, I can assure you other spouses have also been caught in worse cases when compared with your own. They are still together because they have learnt that your ability to overcome the unpleasant challenges that life throws at you is one major thing you must achieve if your marriage will make it.

However, if you find yourself in such situation, it may be better to take the following steps:

1. Convince yourself that you could have found yourself in a worse situation. Whatever might have happened to you, there is still a situation that could have been worse.

2. Find a way of scaling down your standard of living, if it is a financial crisis. For instance, if your children are attending a high fee-paying school, there is nothing wrong in taking them to a lesser one or even to public school. You may also need to adjust your ways of life with respect to the friends you relate with.

3. Don’t complicate things for yourself. For instance, if you are in a financial crisis and a proposal is presented to you that you should obtain a loan, using your house as a collateral, you may discard the proposal because if you fail to pay, you will lose your home and your family will be subjected to greater stress than you are presently experiencing.

4. Don’t lose your faith and don’t lose hope. (Luke 22:31-32)

5. Stop blaming your spouse. Your encouragement may be all that will be needed for him to weather the storm.

While not praying for crisis, you must realize that the unexpected often occurs in marriage, make up your mind that whatever happens, your marriage will not crash. The expectation of God is for you to keep your home to the end. So help you God!

Discussion Points With Your Spouse

• What are the resolutions you have made as a couple to help you during any period of challenge?

QUOTABLE QUOTE.

HOWEVER STABLE YOUR HOME IS, THERE WILL BE A PERIOD OF SHAKING. WHEN IT HAPPENS, IT IS NOT THE TIME TO DISCARD YOUR SPOUSE BUT A TIME TO DEMONSTRATE THAT YOUR MARRIAGE IS ‘TILL DEATH DO US PART’ – Dr. Mike Oluniyi