Why does love feel so hard to find—and even harder to hold onto?

In a world of hookups and heartbreak, does real intimacy still exist?

What if there’s more to love, sex, and marriage than we’ve been led to believe?

MARRIAGE & SEX are NOT essential to human flourishing.

One particularly beautiful thing about Jesus is that his life is testament to the fact that being single doesn’t have to equate to being lonely, nor does it exclude enjoying deep levels of intimacy. Jesus, just like us, lived within the relational fabric of community in order to sustain his full humanity.

- Debra Hirsch, Redeeming Sex

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Genesis 2:20-25

God INVENTED love, sex & marriage.

Leave:  MATURITY

• Love is more than EMOTION—it’s DEVOTION.

Devotion is a steadfast commitment of the heart, mind, and will toward someone or something, marked by loyalty, sacrifice, and love in action.

The Modern Love Promise:  When I fall in LOVE, then everything will fall into PLACE.

It’s less about FALLING in love and more about GROWING in love.

Cleave: COMMITMENT 

Marriage is a holy COVENANT, not a CONTRACT.

“‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

- Jesus (Matthew 19:5-6)

Marriage is a lifelong one-flesh covenant union between two sexually different persons (a male and a female) from different families, united with the purpose of telling God’s story of faithfulness and creativity; and sexual relationships outside this covenant union are sin.

- Dr. Preston Sprinkle

The 5 Stages of a Relationship

1. The HONEYMOON Stage 
2. The DISULLUSIONMENT Stage 
3. The MISERY Stage 
4. The AWAKENING Stage 
5. The INTIMACY Stage 

One Flesh: INTIMACY

Sex is more than just PHYSICAL—It’s SPIRITUAL.

 Sex is a God-invented way to say to another person, “I belong completely & exclusively & permanently to you.

- Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage

Sex is a SACRED act of ONENESS.

God DESIGNED love, sex, and marriage, and so it works best by His DESIGN.