How to Restore Purity in Your Marriage Bed

The pain of sexual sin to a betrayed spouse is enormous. Many of these wives have lost all hope for their marriage ever being restored. Any possibility of trust and real intimacy with their husband in the future has been utterly abandoned.

Even after God does a deep transformation in a husband through one of our programs, the road to restoring purity in that couple’s marriage bed still seems difficult and for many impossible.

I, Rose, can testify to this in my own life. Jeff’s sin seemed so insurmountable, so dark. I had lost all hope of having the intimacy restored that we once had, the intimacy that every wife longs for when she finally finds the man she believes God has brought into her life. Intimacy between us had become something unclean and dirty.

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I can remember times when I would weep as I allowed the tormenting memories of all that he had done with others rob me of the joy of being intimate with my husband. It was like a pack of vultures flying around our marriage bed seeking to devour any life that was left between us.  

For me, Jeff, there was a whole different set of problems. Prior to finally finding true repentance and a life in God that I never thought possible, my view of sexuality and my marriage on a whole was very self-centered. I had bought into the lie that sex in all its forms exists to provide pleasure to the lust-driven partaker.

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For so many years this way of thinking had become ingrained, so much a part of who I was. I had to allow the Lord to give me a new mind about these things.

We wanted to experience the sexual intimacy promised by the God of the Bible, but didn’t have the faith or the pathway to find it. But we did believe this, that the answers were somewhere in Scripture; we did believe “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

Six Steps to Pure Sex

1. Renew your minds. Ephesians 43:22-23 tells us to “put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” We realized we had to put behind us all the old and start focusing on the new. That meant putting our past failures under the blood, and begin the process of being made new in all things, especially our minds. The mind is where most of our issues come from, the way we think, and then act. For me, Rose, this meant the difficult work of abandoning thoughts of what Jeff had done to me. These thoughts had imprisoned me and kept me from the pleasure God wanted us to enjoy together.
   
2. Put on righteousness. Paul goes on in Ephesians 4:24 to command us to “put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” To put off sin and not put on righteousness leaves the house empty. For me, Jeff, this meant beginning to look at intimacy with Rose as a time of expressing love to her, not a time to satisfy my lust as in the past. It meant following the advice of King Solomon, “Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth. As a loving deer and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times; and always be enraptured with her love.” (Proverbs 5:18 – 19) It meant taking all the passion that had been misdirected before to vain things and showering it all on Rose.
   
3. Choose to be a blessing. For me, Rose, this meant turning to God in my heart and seeking Him to give me the desire to be a blessing to my husband even when everything in me felt justified not to. As I began to submit my will to God’s will for the marriage bed, I had to believe God to change my heart towards Jeff.
   
4. Ask, seek, and knock. Jesus gave us many promises on prayer especially during his last days on earth, among them, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8) We began to seek the Lord together and ask God to restore purity in our marriage bed. We prayed together every time we were going to be together sexually, and God was faithful to do a work in both of us.
   
5. Glorify God. Paul commands us in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” We had to come to consider sexual intimacy between us as a God-given gift and as a means to glorify Him. A pure and pleasure-filled marriage bed beautifully expresses and glorifies Jesus and the Father’s love for us. When God is in the midst of our lovemaking, and we are focused on pleasing Him and each other, we have found a beautiful, fulfilling and lasting oneness that we never thought possible.
   
6. Read up. Another thing that helped us along the way was going through a book called Intended for Pleasure by Dr. Ed Wheat, which I would recommend for any couple wanting a biblical look at sexual intimacy. This is important because a lot of the time we don’t realize how much our perspectives and views of sexuality have been distorted by unbiblical influences throughout lives.

Above all, we had to trust God to change us, to do what we knew we could not do in our own strength. We had to believe Jesus’ words in Matthew 19:26 which were intended to a rich man entering the kingdom of heaven could just as easily be applied to this matter of restoring purity in the marriage bed. “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Please don’t limit the power of God and the Cross of Jesus Christ. There is unfathomable power in the blood of Christ. Jesus’ blood paid for our sin, reconciles us to God, purges our dead conscience, cleanses us from all unrighteousness, and can wholly sanctify us.

Christ died to give us new life, a new life that can pervade and sanctify everything we do. We testify to you that God has cleansed our marriage bed, and has made it into something beautiful. There is now a bond between us that only God could have brought about. It is our prayer that you too may come to know the cleansing, healing and redemptive power in your marriage bed of all that He has purchased on the Cross for you.

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