The Penny Jar

Your Daddy and I heard about this long after our first year of marriage, but we wished we'd heard about it before we married. I can't even remember where we heard it, but it's said, if you put a penny in a jar every time you make love during your first year of marriage, then take two out every time you make love for the rest of your marriage, you will never run out of pennies. The story goes that you'll be making love so much during that first year, that it will be twice as much as all the other years combined. I think it's a way to make fun of married couples slacking off on love making for the rest of their marriage.

Now let me say first off, I think your Daddy and I would have run out of pennies in that second year. I guess we'll never know, but I'd like to think we've been pretty good of keeping the heat in our marriage. After all, we've explained before how important it is to marriage. If Christ said the two become one flesh, we say do it often. You remember Great-Grandpa Zimanek's advice from the blog on Feb. 22? "Have sex as often as you can, because there will come a day when you can't and you wish you could." Your Dad reminds me of that often, specially the older we get.

To even mention that love making could slack off probably seems ridiculous to you both right now, being all googly eyed with each other, but life does get in the way. Stresses, physical ailments, post-pregnancy, arguments, exhaustion ... sometimes things prevent that intimacy. But strive to avoid that. It is so important to keep that emotional connection - yes, emotional - in your marriage. Let's face it, you can't get any closer than that. Even Paul warned against abstaining from sex for a period of time. 1 Cor. 7:2-5 says: "But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control."

Your spouse is the only person you will be having sex with for the rest of your lives. Song of Solomon 7:10 says, "I belong to my beloved, and his desire is for me." So delight in that desire. Do not withhold from one another. First of all, it's selfish and mean. Second of all, why would you ever want to purposefully withhold sex from the one you love most of all? Paul even says Satan may jump all over that to do some tempting. 

So make love often. Just wait till after the wedding. 

Discussion: Will you start a penny jar? Do you think you'd run out of pennies? Is there any reason to withhold sex from one another?

Prayer: Father, you have given married couples with this beautiful gift of love making. We pray our newlyweds will delight in each other and glorify you. We pray they will not lose sight of the importance of making love with each other. In Jesus' name, Amen.