Christian Sex Tip

Warning: Christian sex talk ahead . . .

Hopefully with my provocative title I now have your attention. I was reading "Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts" by Les and Leslie Parott (yes, they have the same first name, weird, eh?) and I got to the last chapter which was on spirituality in marriage. I thought it was going to be cheezy and I wasn't looking forward to it. I was pleasantly surprised when the chapter added a few new insights on the importance of a shared spiritual life between husband and wife. One section that really got my attention was the section on prayer:

Sociologist Andrew Greely surveyed married people and found that the happiest couples were those who pray together. Couples who frequently pray together are twice as likely as those who pray less often to describe their marriages as being highly romantic. They also report considerably higher satisfaction and more sexual ecstasy!

There is an old story about a young couple who decided to start their honeymoon by kneeling beside their bed to pray. The bride giggled when she heard her new husband's prayer: "For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful."

As strange as it may sound, there is a strong link in marriage between prayer and sex. For one thing, frequency of prayer is a more powerful predictor of marital satisfaction than frequency of sexual intimacy. But get this: Married couples who pray together are ninety percent more likely to report higher satisfaction with their sex life than couples who do not pray together. Also, women who pray with their partner tend to be more orgasmic. That doesn't sound right, does it? After all, married churchgoers are painted by the media as prudes who think sex is dirty. Well, let the media say what they want but prayerful couples know better . . .

Well, you can't say you never learned anything useful from reading my blog. If you have been thinking about praying with your spouse more, this may be the confirmation you've been looking for!

May Light increase!

On-Line Counseling?

Recently I saw that one of the google adsense ads on my blog was for a website called 4peaceofmind.ca. I went to the site and found that it was a counselor's website from which she offers email and chat counseling with individuals. I really liked this site for several reasons. First, it looks good. Second, it's informative. Third, it has a really cool idea - offering counseling and wisdom to people who may not otherwise have access to it.

I have been interested in experimenting on line counseling (or eCounseling) for awhile so I contacted the counselor and gave me lots of information. Hopefully in the fall I will begin to offer it on a limited basis and see how it goes.

So two questions: One, would you ever consider getting therapy from a professional on-line and why or why not? Two, if you are a counselor, would you consider doing email or chat based therapy? I'm just curious.

May Light increase!

Stigma Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

I had an interesting experience at Olive Garden a week ago. I went to greet a table and was delighted to see that it was a former faculty member at Steinbach Bible College, a good man, who was now in a pastoral position. We chatted and caught up and all was well. He asked me about my future plans and I told him that I was beginning my counseling career but had decided to keep up waitering for the summer to pay the bills. "Hey, that's what you said last time I came in," he said. Just the way he said it seemed to connote something I have often felt from other ministry type people - basically the idea that waitering (or other "menial" work) is in some way a sub-par job choice that I should get out of as soon as possible (before I get stuck in it). The funny thing is that I recognize this prejudice because I used to share it.

Back when I was a youth pastor and camp director I would watch as fellow ministry professionals would leave behind their ministries for some totally unrelated job, often a humble one. One former camp director managed a luxury property. Another became a carpenter. A youth pastor told me he wanted to work at McDonalds. I often subtly looked down on these people, thinking that either they couldn't cut in it ministry or feeling sad that they had abandoned their "sacred calling." I'm ashamed to say it, but that's what I thought.

Imagine then my surprise when I decided to go back to school and realized that I needed to make some money to keep my family afloat. Since I couldn't take on a job that had too much responsibility I was forced to something more menial: waitering. It took me a long time to get over my own stigma against myself and to truly become comfortable with a non-professional job. That it is not so much what I do, but who I am as a person. A man (or woman) is not their job and God will not love them more or less if they are in ministry or mow lawns/pump gas/wait on tables. Waitering can be fun, fulfilling, and is rarely boring or overwhelming. I'm comfortable with the fact that at this point in my life I'm a waiter and it amuses me when other people (especially those in the ministry business) sometimes feel awkward with that. Yet I can't fault them as it was not too long ago that I shared the same thoughts and prejudices.

Men are especially bad at getting their identity from their jobs/careers. I'm reminded about Henry Nouwen, a Catholic priest, popular professor (Harvard, Yale, Notre Dame), and author who at the crux of his "success" decided that to preserve his own soul and rediscover God he needed to leave it all behind. He joined a L'Arche Community in Toronto and spent the next years of his life serving and living with mentally handicapped people. If you want to check out his story read "In The Name of Jesus," a short book about what he learned through this experience. When Nouwen left his old life behind he too struggled with who he was now that he wasn't an important leader and professor in the Catholic Church. Eventually he came to the same conclusions I have - Jesus cares a lot more about how you serve Him then the job you do. I will never look down on someone who decided not to forgo full time ministry and transition to something else, even something of humble means. There are so many noble and good reasons to and I do not want to pass judgment on any of them. Hopefully neither will you. And if you are in ministry and think you need to get out, hopefully you will have the courage to do so - no matter what you or others think about it. A stigma only has power if you choose to believe it.

May Light increase!

The Tao of Psychotherapy

"Accept what is useful, reject what is useless." - Bruce Lee

Warning: This post may only be remotely interesting to martial artists or counselors (and maybe not even them)!

The way I figure it, counseling is like martial arts. There are many different schools (or core types) of martial arts. There is karate, kung fu, tae kwon do, muay thai, capoeira, savate, etc. Each of these is founded on certain principles that then influenced the art (or system) that they became. Not only this, but each martial art can be subdivided into offshoot schools, for instance there are literally hundreds of different styles of karate (shotokan, shite ryu, kempo, etc) which are similar but have subtle differences. Each martial art in its purity has strengths and weaknesses that are born out of the foundational principles that each art embodies. For instance Tae Know Do has some of the most powerful kicks of any martial art. But it is weaker in grappling. But to make each a system that is true to its founding principles, they all compromise one thing or another.

Counseling is much the same. There are several main schools of counseling theory. These include cognitive behavioral, psychodynamic, gestalt, rogerian, etc. Like martial arts, each is a system founded on certain principles. Each has hundreds of offshoot systems (cognitive behavioral for instance has REBT, CBT, Reality Therapy, etc and many of these each have offshoots). Like the martial arts, each school of counseling theory has strengths and weaknesses. Reality therapy is strong on motivating people by showing them their ability to choose their destiny but is weak on resolving difficulties from one's past. The "sub-systems" attempt to solve some of these weaknesses but can never quite do so without losing their strengths.

Some marital arts are relatively new and aim to integrate the strengths of several different martial arts into a new, improved one. Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do was an early example. Today you see this kind of integrated "art" in the current fascination with mixed martial arts (MMA). Mixed martial arts are a kind of practical combat system and are usually very effective. To get this effectiveness they have to reject much of the "art" and philosophy of each system they incorporate. Thus they don't fully experience the truth strength of each system, but they get enough of it that when integrated with other systems is a powerful result.

Counseling too has new "integrated" theories. In fact when I was in school you could only study integration - there was only one or two courses of a true "pure" theory. You were expected to take the best from each system and make your own system that fit you. This makes a lot of sense in theory but in practice I wonder if it had been better if we had all learned one theory well before trying to come up with our ow integrated systems. Sometimes I wonder if it would be better to be great in one system (although it couldn't help every issue) then to be "OK" in many. If I could do it all again, I think I would take specific training in one theory (maybe REBT or solution focused therapy) and only after I had mastered it begin the task of integrating it with other systems. That's after all what most martial artists do. Just some thoughts I have been having.

May Light increase!

If You've Never Failed . . .

Is God A Matchmaker?

"Are marriages made in heaven? Maybe, but so are tornadoes . . ." - Unknown

I'm reading "Singles at the Crossroads" right now as part of my Pre-marital and Marital Counseling class. The book is a in-depth exploration of what it means to be single from a Biblical perspective. It attempts to debunk the myth of "the gift of singleness," works through discerning God will as a single, and generally suggests that a balanced, Biblical view is one that honors singleness as a status equal to marriage. What really got my attention in the book was the author's discussion of the "Has God chosen a specific person for you?" question. Ah yes, I know the debate well: Does God have a soul mate for you? That one person who he created for you to get together with? When I was young I was strongly in the "yes, He does" camp. I believed in God's sovereignty, his interest in my life, and the beauty of romance.

I still believe in those things! But over the past few years I have changed my view. Although there are probably a few cases where God specifically chooses (predestines?) a mate for someone (Mary/Joseph as an example), for the most part I do not believe God chooses our mate for us. Why not? Well, for two main reasons: not enough evidence and too many problems:

1. There is no Biblical evidence that we are supposed to discover the one, specific person, who God wants us to marry or that he has such a person "saved" for us. Seriously, it's not there.
2. The idea of a soulmate (or "there is only one person in the world who is meant for me, and without whom I'm lost") is actually a pagan idea borrowed from Greek philosophy. Plato believed that everything in the material world is merely a temporal copy of an ideal, universal, and perfect form. Applied to relationships it means we have an innate, preconceived image of the one person who we are meant to be with, and our never ending quest is for a human facsimile that will match that perfect ideal. Voila, the birth of soulmate anxiety!
3. Unnecessary pressure and fear. I know people who literally suffer mental illness from worrying about if they can find their soulmate, if they'll be able to recognize them, if they've missed them, or that they've married the wrong person. That's a lot of pressure to put on oneself - discovering God's specific choice for who you are to marry or not missing that person when they come into your life. And does God change his mind about who you should marry? That idea too has problems.
4. Reality doesn't fit well with the theory. I know Godly people who have been completely convinced that they were supposed to marry someone - and then realized that they were wrong. My roommate in college one year told me he was absolutely sure that God wanted him to marry his girlfriend. God has confirmed it to him in several ways. A week later she broke up with him! Suddenly he wasn't so sure. Or what about the Godly Christian woman who's guided into marrying a guy who cheats on her and then divorces her against her will? Was it God's will that her soulmate would do that to her? Though I do not think it's impossible to discern God's individual will in some things (very, very carefully) and I don't want to put Him in a box, but to presuppose that everyone (or even most people) should be able to figure this out seems absurd to me.
5. Believing in one specific soulmate can make us passive and reactive. If God has someone for us, someone who is meant to be together with us, that person logically will come to us no matter what we do. Thus, we don't have to put much or any work into it. God will take care of it because it's God's will. Why put the work into becoming a better person, meeting people, discernment potential partners, etc?
6. Free-will. I'm always amazed at the number of people who believe strongly in free will as it applies to salvation but ignore it completely when it comes to the romantic notion of the one true soul mate.

It seems to me that the New Testament is much more concerned with how we treat the person we marry then whether or not we have married the right individual. But if we become a devoted Christ-follower, we have freewill to choose between several great (or poor) choices in a mate or perhaps to choose not to have a mate at all. Perhaps we need to focus more on God's general will for our lives then worrying about his possible specific will for us. If he wants something (or someone) specific for us, he is a Big enough God that he can make it happen. But perhaps you disagree? Feel free to comment or vote on my poll on the right hand side (near the top) of the blog . . .

May Light increase!

Book Review: Boundaries In Dating

Book Review: Boundaries in Dating by Henry Cloud and John Townsend (2000).

I really enjoyed this book (except the cover - definitely not guy friendly). I have not read any of the “Boundaries” books before but found this one to be really informative, practical, and Christian. In many ways, the title of the book is a misnomer. Although there is certainly much in the book about boundaries in dating, this book is really a treatise on Christian dating in general. It is not just "boundaries" but a philosophy and theology of dating as well. I wish that I had read this book many years ago when I was in the dating stage and found myself seeing myself and others in the many stories sprinkled liberally throughout the book.

A new idea for me was taking the idea of boundaries (in dating) beyond just the physical realm. Personal boundaries about respect, values, time, control, and blame and applied in the world of dating made a lot of sense to me and I can certainly see this being an issue in many of the couples and individuals who I have counseled in the past. Before I saw dating boundary errors only in the sexual realm (which is also discussed) but my view is expanded significantly. If you aren't able to stand up for your boundary of say, having your date be honest with you, how can you expect them to stand up to your boundary of staying sexually pure? It sounds like common sense but I had never put the two together before.

Two (of many) nuggets of wisdom stood out to me: one was that to be happy in a relationship, you need to be happy without one. This was my experience and I have been telling people this for years, but the authors explain it really well and show grimly what happens if this rule is not followed. The second was in relationships, you get what you tolerate. When we allow someone to get away with things, we enable them to be less then mature with us. I found that to be a very powerful thought and hope it will be a way to help motivate clients to enforce their boundaries (and take responsibility for their own part in it).

I will definitely be using this book with clients in the near future and would also like to try doing psychoeducational seminars or groups with it as well (pairing it with the workbook). It's quite readable and I would highly recommend it for anyone who is dating or wishes to be in the near future. It will teach you what to look for (and watch out for) in your dating choices, how to work on your personal issues that might effect your ability to attract mature future mates, and teaches great ideas for all sorts of common dating issues. It's probably best for those in the 18-30 year old bracket. Recommended at 4.8 ninja stars out of 5.

Rusty

Today I did a little speak on Father's day at my church. It was a short one, about some of the things my Dad taught me and some of the things I was trying to teach my kids. And it had to be in the context of camping. Sounds easy, right? Actually it was not.

I haven't really done any public speaking for almost two years now and I found myself a little . . . rusty. Actually, downright scared is more like it. There was a time (when I was a youth pastor and a camp director) when I had to do some sort of public speaking at least once a week. And back then I hardly got nervous at all. But last night as I was preparing my thoughts (which of course I did last minute) the old feelings of inadequacy and stage fright returned. I did eventually get to sleep but it was fitful and uneasy.

I remember some of my earliest public speaking moments. The Church Christmas play. My baptism. When I went to college the ante got upped: Homiletics class. We had to preach two sermons in front of our whole class. Later I had to do a presentation in front of one of my other classes and I actually started to pass out in the middle of talking! Luckily I did not go down but I did lose my spot reading and started again in a completely new place, confusing my classmates entirely. And in what might have been my most terrifying moments, I had to address the entire student body (over a thousand people) to give announcements about our GAP (Go And Pray) events. I remember the first one clearly because I felt so sick and then spoke my two minute announcement in about 25 seconds. Jobina was there and just smiled at me when I sat down.

Fast forward to today. Rationally I know that speaking won't be that bad and yet I can't stop the nervousness. All I can do is desensitize it by speaking often - something I haven't of course been doing. As is usually the case the anticipation is worse then the event itself and midway through my speak I felt OK. Truthfully, like hiking, the best part of public speaking for me is when it stops! The sweet feelings of escape and relief! Perhaps it's worth speaking just to feel the joy of not having to worry about it anymore after you finally do it.

I'm a "mediocre at best" speaker and I really admire the people who can do it without feeling nervous (and do it well). Perhaps you are that sort of person. So why did I do it if I despise it so much? Now that I'm graduated I want to get back into serving my church and this one the first thing someone has asked of me that I had the time and ability to do. I also want to challenge myself - to step out of my comfort zone. Lastly, camping is one of my favorite subjects and it was supposed to be short so I had no excuse. Although it was a little nerve wracking I'm glad I did it. And I'm really glad it's done.

Happy Father's day everyone!