Sex is one of the main reasons we get married…and sexual problems are one of the main reasons people get divorced.

When I talk about sex to married couples, I like to refer to it as both a thermostat and a thermometer. In your home, you control the temperature by turning the thermostat up or down. Sex heats up a marriage. It makes it better.

Sex can also be a marriage thermometer: it tells the temperature. If the sex is bad or infrequent, then a married couple probably isn’t communicating well. You may have stress, or unresolved anger, or a host of other issues. Poor sex is a symptom of these problems.

So a married couple’s sex life not only can make their marriage better, but can also reveal whether or not they have problems. What kind of sex life do you and your spouse have? What does it reveal about your marriage?

I believe there are three truths that we need to understand about sex. The first is that God created sex for pleasure and lifelong enjoyment. Our God is a fun God! He wants us to enjoy sex in marriage.

The second is that God gave us sexual boundaries to protect us. Just like vehicles come with an owner’s manual that tells us what not to do, God gave us sex but set parameters for it. Things like adultery, fornication, incest, and lust—the Bible says these things are wrong.

No one gets mad because their owner’s manual says to put oil in their Fords every few thousand miles. No one says, “Ford Motor Company doesn’t want me to have any fun!” Ford wants us to treat the car right so we can enjoy it.

God is the same with sex. His rules aren’t to keep us from having fun, but from getting hurt. He wants our bodies to be places of pleasure and delight for our spouses…but for no one else.

The third truth I believe about sex is that God created our sexual differences to make marriage more fulfilling and dynamic. Men and women are very different sexually. For men, sex stimulates our emotions. For women, emotions stimulate sex. We’re two halves of a whole.

A woman becomes more sexual as her husband becomes more romantic and emotional. At the same time, men tend to open up more emotionally when their wives become more sexual. It all works together.

Because sex is so important, I tell couples that there are five basic ingredients of a healthy sex life. Husbands and wives should:

Commit to meeting their spouse’s sexual needs.
Communicate their sexual needs to their spouse.
Commit to sexual purity (thoughts and actions) to protect the integrity of their marriage.
Be honest and accountable about temptations that can hurt a marriage.
Refuse to be close friends with those who violate the marriage covenant.
Those ingredients will keep a couple’s sex life active, fulfilling, and healthy. God created sex in marriage to be an Eden of pleasure and delight. Embrace it. Talk about it. Pursue it within the safe boundaries of your marriage. And most of all, enjoy it together.

For more about this topic, watch this week’s show!