Let Sexual Virtue Garnish Thy Thoughts

 Hello faithful readers, 

I wanted to make note of a thought I had recently, regarding a concern many of our faithful brethren and sisters in the church have been struggling with when working so diligently to keep their carnal desires bridled (not eradicated) and in check. 

We've been taught since youth in the church that when it comes to sexual morality and the law of chastity, we should let virtue garnish our thoughts unceasingly. (Doc. & Cov. 121:45) If this is the only thing you may have been given as a guideline to hing your sexual thoughts and feelings on, I want to give you brethren (and even sisters) some words of comfort that when it comes to sexual thoughts, you have more righteous leeway than you may have previously been aware of.

When it comes to sexual purity, we have also been instructed by our beloved prophet Spencer W. Kimball " In the context of lawful marriage, the intimacy of sexual relations is right and divinely approved. There is nothing unholy or degrading about sexuality in itself, for by that means men and women join in a process of creation and in an expression of love.” (Eternal Marriage Student Manual, 2003,139)

This means that thinking about your spouse in a sexual manner is well within the realm of righteous and virtuous options. In addition, you not only can but should let sexual thoughts of your spouse garnish your thoughts!  Sex is intended to be used as a tool to bring you closer together. If sexual thoughts of your spouse help you desire your spouse more and therefore intimately bring you together, it's not only a "good" thing, it's a "virtuous" thing. 

Satan's battle plan is to push you apart, keep you from thinking about each other in any kind of positive way and to keep you from having sex. Because, he knows these are the tools that keep an eternal marriage strong.  

Only the world thinks that sexual thoughts are "bad, nasty or dirty" thoughts, because the world only think of having sex in terms of outside of marriage and give no merit to thinking about sex inside of marriage. As though it loses some kind of power or its pleasure and enjoyment is marginal to what a sex outside of marriage experience is.  In this, they not only show their ignorance of how astronomically better marital intimacy is, but defile the sacred act of thinking about sex. Just because the world defiles it doesn't make sexual thought "unsacred", anymore than someone performing temple ordinances on YouTube makes the ordinances we perform in the temple profane, and require us to no longer perform them. They are still sacred and we still perform them in the temple.  

We reverence the sacredness of sexuality by keeping our sexual thoughts within the bounds the Lord has set  - that boundary being marriage. So go forth, be happy and fill your thoughts with that of your spouse - in a sexual way.

God bless you all and make your marriage one that makes you smile when you think of being in it for eternity. 

~Sam Zaragoza, LDS Marital Intimacy Coach