Psalms 65 talks about a God who waters and enriches the earth. He prepares the soil & provides food. As the fields overflow with abundance, His creation shouts and sings in triumph. 

God is a creative being; he forms things and works to perfect them. To be like Him, we must also learn to create. But most of us are consumers. We don’t make anything. We buy what other people make, and we use it. 

Our consumer mentality disconnects us from our immensely creative God. This is especially true in our relationships. God made marriage to be like farming. We are creating something beautiful together. A beautiful marriage doesn’t simply happen. We work together on our issues; we talk through our struggles. We laugh together; we cry together. Even in our sexual relationship, it isn’t supposed to be about a physical act alone, but it is an expression of the unity we have built in other areas of our life. It is a sanctified time where we celebrate our unified existence before God, the one who loved us first and then joined us together. 

For that to happen, we must become like farmers. We must cultivate the relationship for sexual pleasure to move beyond the physical and into the emotional and spiritual realm. But Pornography has destroyed this beautiful expression and convinced us that farming and cultivating is too hard. It is easier to consume. 

Porn says, “You can consume any pleasure you want; it is available. Search it out and devour it. Do you want to try another woman? It’s okay, have your pick and enjoy. It’s natural. It isn’t necessary to love them or to cultivate a relationship. Sexuality is all about the physical, don’t worry about all that other nonsense. You don’t even have to meet them; just enjoy them. They are sexual objects to be consumed by anyone and everyone who desires them.” 

Interestingly, they said the same about our food. Decades ago, we stopped having gardens and growing our food. We closed down family farms and ranches across the country and stopped raising animals for food. We gave that job to big business. 

We stopped cultivating, and we started going to the supermarket. We consume things that come in plastic, and sometimes our food even contains plastic! We can’t even understand the list of ingredients anymore. 

We don’t appreciate what went into raising and even slaughtering that animal. We buy a cellophane-wrapped chicken raised and slaughtered in a factory and made ready for consumption. 

Since we have shifted from being a cultivator of our food supply to consumers of products other people produce, the health problems in America have grown astronomically. We are not meant to consume this garbage. Our bodies need more natural things. 

I’m not some granola hippie, but I can certainly see these undeniable facts. When we ignore the hidden ingredients in the porn culture (sex trafficking, abuse, rape, degrading other humans, desensitizing our eyes, treating people like sex objects), we too become sick, and it is a sickness that leads to death. 

Death of marriages and families, 

death of an enjoyable sex life, 

death of normal relationships and 

eventually, death of a culture  

God created us for natural relationships. He wired us to crave emotional intimacy, and we are at our best when in a committed and loving relationship. A good marriage can make fundamental differences in how we see ourselves and how we treat others. It can also profoundly affect our character for the better. So, my Christian brothers and sisters, It is time to stop consuming sex and begin to cultivate and form healthy marriages that build up our spouse and glorify God. But don’t think it is going to be easy. You must struggle through real issues instead of ignoring them. You will sacrifice yourself daily for the one you love.

• Weed out the habitual sins you have developed and plant seeds of faith, hope & love.
• Then water your marriage with intimate conversations with your spouse and your creator.
• Fertilize it by seeking God together
• He will cause your marriage to germinate and bear fruit in a way that glorifies God and brings you unspeakable happiness.

This is the organic process, the way the natural world functions. God is a farmer, and his ways are the best. That may be hard to admit in this modern day that sees everything godly as outdated and boring. 

 But before you write it off as old-fashioned, could you do one thing for me? 

Look at the things in this world that are relatively untouched by our instant gratification mentality, and you will see beauty beyond measure. 

God offers the same to you if you trust Him and allow Him to do what only He can do.*

*a conversation with Robert Lane inspired much of this post. Robert comes from a family of farmers, and he helped open my eyes to the parallels I laid out above.