I’ve talked a bit about how we lose the taste for things, so now I’ll turn your attention to sex. (I smile at this, since some people already have their mind turned too far in that direction.) I have pointed out how people end up unable to enjoy the natural flavours of life and of God’s glory, because they have become addicts to sensual stimulation.
One of our problems is that we adapt to the stimuli, so anything that is tantalising becomes normal as we continue to experience it. We can find ourselves adding more sugar, more salt or more spice, because we keep adapting to the flavour sensation we have created.
Another problem is that we must avoid crossing moral boundaries. We are moral beings and many of the things our body craves must be kept within moral bounds as well. If we indulge a human appetite we become a slave to their thing. Our body then makes demands of us and will not be satisfied unless we indulge it. We are in a moral bind. What was supposed to simply be a delightful additional experience becomes a slavery and an acid hole in our being.
In our sensualised western culture we are constantly prompted to indulge our appetites. In so doing we begin destroying our taste for those things and we come under the power of the sensuality. We find that we are spoiled for the ordinary, not because we have transcended the ordinary, but because we have damaged our taste buds and can no longer taste the flavours God created for us.
So, how does this apply to sex?
Most westerners do not know how to enjoy sex that is not sensualised. Sex has been so immersed in pop-culture sensuality that many people think their sexual experience is a failure if it just ordinary.
Sex is packaged for us in song, books, movies and TV programs as a highly sensualised experience. Pornographic or sensualised images, eroticised stories, voyeuristic entertainments and immoral lifestyles have so swamped our appreciation for sex that most westerners are permanently damaged goods.
In my Straight Talk on Sex seminars I point out that sex is often fused with adrenalin in the experienced of sensualised people. Those people don’t want sex without the accompanying adrenalin rush as well. The taste of sex has been lost to them.
I recall talking with a new Christian who had recently dealt with his pornography problem. He had begun to use pornography to give himself a sexual excitement. However, the consequence was that he found himself unable to enter into natural sexual relations with his wife. He finally resorted to keeping pornography beside his bed and using that to get himself worked up enough to be able to have intimacy with his wife.
The wife in that situation felt horrible demeaned. She felt that she was so deficient as a woman as to be incapable of attracting her husband’s sexual interest. The problem, however, was not with the woman but with the man. He was spoiled for the ordinary. He could no longer enjoy the natural and sweet intimacy God gave him in his marriage. What he had indulged in, in order to give himself an upgrade in his sexual excitement, actually did the very opposite. It ate holes in his sexuality.
Thankfully, through becoming a Christian, this man dealt with his sin and addiction.
The devil’s deal just never gets any better. He keeps promising the earth and delivering mud. He promises excitement while he is stealing your ability to taste anything at all.
If you have been damaged in the ways I describe in these posts, I encourage you to deal with the issue. You are welcome to use the Steps to Release which are my main ministry tool in helping people. I have already posted on the topic, giving a summary of those steps, so look for the post titled Steps to Release.