Weaving His Tapestry

For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”  Esther 4:14

God is dealing with me to write a blog on marriage once again.  I did not want to write it for fear of offending someone.  He laid this verse at my feet and I knew I had to write. So here goes.

Night before last I was innocently taking a shower when God began to speak quietly to my heart.  You cannot miss that voice.  It goes straight to the heart penetrating it with words that bury themselves deep into your very being, bringing great joy or great agony of spirit, whichever you are in the need of at the time.These words brought both.  As soon as I heard them my heart did a flip flip of joy and then immediately my stomach began to twist as I realized this was something I had to share with whomever would choose to read it.  I did a short battle of words with God, to which I of course lost quite handily.  I finally told Him, "Okay God.  If You really want me to share this, then give me the appropriate way to write it so that it is not embarrassing and offensive to people."  I know that no matter how this is worded someone will try to pull it apart and prove it wrong if they find it goes against their desires and or belief system.  Still, I must write. 

God placed a gift at the very heart of marriage - sex.  (Here is where it gets interesting or offensive - the reader's choice.) 
But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. I Corinthians 7:1-5

The world's society has kept me wondering for many years as to the whys of sex in general: Why did God create it?  Why is it considered sin if it isn't contained between a husband and his wife?  Why did God kill Onan (Genesis 38:9) for spilling his seed on the ground?  Many more questions have poured through my head over the years, but I have a tendency to simply ask a question once, place it on a shelf and wait for God to reveal the answer.  Sometimes He answers right away, others it is quite some time before I am ready to receive the answer. This one has taken a few years.

The answer came in one statement, but it answered all my questions.  I have found over the past 39 years of studying God's Word that He is really big on explaining the whys of life in pictures.  When Moses struck the Rock (Numbers 20:8-12) when God told him to speak to it, God punished Him. Realizing that this Rock was a picture of Christ and what He was coming to do for us,1 Cor 10:4 And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. it was imperative that Moses speak to the Rock as he had already struck it once before in Exodus 17:6.  Christ came once for all to pay the penalty for our sins, not twice.  In hitting the Rock when God told him to speak, he was giving a picture of crucifying Christ again for the sake of the people. This could not be so. 

For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.  Hebrews 6:4-6

Therefore, Moses was not allowed to enter the Promised Land - another picture God was using to show that He is preparing a place for us to spend eternity with Him. 

There are hundreds, possibly thousands of pictures like this all throughout Scripture.  Sex in marriage is one of the most beautiful (in my opinion). 

Here are the words God spoke to my heart in the shower:

"The woman must accept the shedding of blood before she can become fertile and receive the seed man will plant in her.  If there is no shedding of blood, she cannot conceive new life."

So simple and yet so profound, these words answered all my questions.  Why does the Bible condemn prostitution, homosexuality, adultery, fornication and any and all other types of sex outside of the marriage bed?  Because it destroys His tapestry, the picture He is weaving before our very eyes that demonstrates salvation so perfectly! 

Jesus is the Husband - the Church is the bride.  When we receive the shedding of His blood as the cleanser for our soul, He plants the seed of salvation in our heart and new life is formed within us.  We become one with Him just as He prayed to the Father in John 17. 

When we hold a newborn baby in our arms we are looking at the oneness of husband and wife:

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

This perfect picture can only be demonstrated through the love, devotion and sacrifice of a husband/wife marriage relationship.  There is only one husband to one wife because there is only One Savior and one Church - the true believers in Jesus and His gift of love on the cross.

Father, I have written what You laid on my heart to be written.  May those who read it gain the same understanding You have given so graciously and undeservingly to me.  May we learn from this not only the importance of marriage in general, but the importance of the Church remaining united.  Divisiveness is as divorce.  It stains Your beautiful artistry.  May we truly become one as You are One, Christ in us and over us, uniting us and binding us together in spirit.