Warning, this program contains content that may not be suitable to some listeners. It contains decency, truth, ageless wisdom, a father who cares. It's Generations with Kevin Swanson. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Generation's Welcome. I'm a pastor. I'm executive director of Christian Home Educators of Colorado. But the reason I'm on the air today, I'm a father of five. I'm a father of Daniel, Emily, Rebecca Joy, Bethany, and Abigail. And I'm raising my children in a day where 36% of children are born without fathers. Up from 5% in 1960, we are facing the devastation of our nation. Indeed, all of Western civilization is going down the tubes. The entire world is suffering right now. It doesn't matter what continent you're talking about. We are living in a time where we are virtually losing our civilization, yet I am a homeschool father, raising my children on the plains of eastern Colorado. And Dave Buhner in studio with me, another homeschool dad, and we are fighting for the life of the future generations that come from us. We are fighting for the life of our country. We are fighting for the very life of the kingdom of God in the 21st century. But folks, we have a vision here. We have a vision for lifelong marriages. Yes, we live in a world where half of marriages end in divorce, but we have a vision that every one of our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will never be divorced. We have a vision for renewed relationships in a world without relationships where there's nothing but psychiatrists, professionals, educators, Professionals, we want to revive a world of fathers, mothers, grandfathers, pastors, and friends. People that just talk together, counsel each other, not for $100 an hour, but for free because we're friends. We have a vision for renewed relationships in the home, in the church, in all of society. We have a vision for applying God's words to every area of life, to family, economics, sexuality, politics, and education. We have a vision for something better than the world we inherited. We have a vision for real life. Real life as God has defined it in his word. We want to live that life. We want to discover it in our homes and in our churches. That's what this program is all about. And my wife is in studio with us today. It's Valentine's Day, so we wanted to take a few minutes and talk about, well, where we came from. It was, what was it, 1990 Sweet, when we got to know each other? I think it was earlier than that. I think it was 1989. 89, okay. Maybe 88. Okay. Well, we got to know each other in California, beautiful state of California. It was 1990 when we first started to see each other. Actually, we remember it was January of 1990 when I said that your goal for that year was you were going to get out of debt and you were going to get married. Right. And we all kind of looked at each other and Amazement, because we didn't know who you were going to marry. Yeah, and we were married by August of that year. So see, it was sort of a goal orientation, but there was more than that. There was more than that. You were a sweet girl, and I had an eye on you at that point. I really did. Oh, you did? I was looking at you. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, I was seriously looking at you. I didn't tell you anything of my affections, but there were some affections, some latent affections, so to speak. Well, I wrote about you in my diary. What did you write? I wrote that I thought you were a godly man and I thought you would make somebody a good husband. Like you? Well, I just didn't think I was worthy of you. You told me you were intimidated by me. Why were you so intimidated by me? Well, because you used words that I didn't understand. Like epistemology. I still use those words. I don't know what they mean. I just throw them out. Yeah, I've since learned the definition. And remember the day that I said I loved you. Yes, I do. It was when we were watching... Treasures in the Snow. Yeah. Yeah, we were both watching it after Bible study. Yeah, it's one Sunday night. Yeah. And I was more taken up with you than with the movie. I remember that. Yeah, you said, I love you. And my heart bleeped. And that was like May of 1990. And then we went right up to my folks. I wanted to introduce you to my folks. And they were just thrilled. For Memorial Day. They were just thrilled with you, and that was it. I proposed. Yeah, you should tell about how that even came about, that I went to see your parents. Oh, yes. I wanted to take you to see my parents. I was a little nervous about it. I remember we were going on a ride on a Sunday afternoon. We were going for a ride on a Sunday afternoon, and and I was gonna ask you. Oh lord. Please help me I need an opportunity to ask Brenda about this and in we were talking about something just completely different And then you change the subject abruptly and said Where do your parents live it's up in Oregon? How far is that from here, and I said it's about 600 miles I'm going up there in a week you want to go with me. It was beautiful. Yes. Yeah, I didn't know you were thinking that oh I was thinking that was totally God's providence. That was God. That was God working in your heart to ask me the right question to open up the opportunity so that I could take you up to see my parents. Yeah. And the rest is history. The rest is history. The romance continued and we were married on August 25th. When I proposed to you, remember when I proposed to you? I didn't actually propose to you. I said, now what I'm going to do next is I'm going to go talk to your dad. And then after your dad, I'm going to propose to you that we get married. So I'm just kind of planning out the action items here. And then you said, well, then when are we going to get married? August sounds good. And then you said, what day in August? I said, why don't we make it the 25th? It'll be like Christmas, only in August. Right. I remember that. And we were married August 25th, 1990. Ladies and gentlemen, in just a moment, we're going to be back. We're going to talk about romance, because it's Valentine's Day on Generations. Kevin Swanson will be right back. Folks, this is Kevin Swanson. We're back. The program is Generations. Good to have you with us on a Valentine's Day. And today, the topic is romance. In studio with me, my dear wife, Brenda, my little girl, Rebecca Joy, and our beagle. Now, the beagle doesn't have anything to do with romance, but you know what? Our relationship did start with a degree of romance. And Dave, I know you don't like the word romance for a lot of reasons. There are some bad connotations about it. Yeah, the word romance is not a word you're going to find in the Bible. You will find some elements of it, but not really the modern understanding of the word romance is really not found in scripture. Well, there's been so many unbiblical influences that has impacted the way we think and live over the last 200 years or so. Think of the Victorian age. It brought in a maudlin sentimentality of the feminization of organized religion and much of culture and women were relegated to objects. There's sort of this warped perspective of sexuality that developed All of these things have been bad. In fact, one thing that developed out of the 19th century was a discouragement to preach from passages like Song of Solomon. People didn't see Song of Solomon as applying to the relationship of a husband and wife. In fact, even today, many people will allegorize the entire book rather than deal with its plain subject matter. Absolutely. And that, of course, is not biblical at all because the Bible speaks to the issue of sexuality. The book of Proverbs is God's book on life. The book of Psalms is God's book on worship. And the book of Song of Solomon is God's book on sexuality. God's Word has something to say about all of life. And maybe that's one of the problems. We came to the position that God's Word had something to say about the spiritual issues of life, the internal, the heart issues. But when it came to what you were doing on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, the Word of God had nothing to say about it. Well, particularly in this area of marital intimacy, people think that they're going to close the blinds and God will not be there. They're going to do something apart from God, and that is where we really start to diverge into a path of sinful ideas. That's when we start to destroy sexuality. I mean, natural man takes God out of the picture, and before you know it, he's ruining himself and the good things that God has given us. And that has been exactly what has happened over the last 20 to 30 years. The age of sexual license started up in the 1960s and of course back in 1950 there were only 4% of burrs to women who were not married. Today it's 36%. So we've had tremendous destruction in this area of family and sexuality and of course by the 1980s we were living in the age of self-consumption and so you know it was all about me, me, me, and me. And so if Sexuality is all about me, me, me, and me, and it's not about a good gift from God, and it's not about serving others. We've got a problem. Yeah, if Hollywood defines our intimacy, our romance, if you want to use that word, if Hollywood gets to define that instead of the Bible, we're going to have Hollywood morals. If we let the Bible, we let the Word of God and God's plan for our life define how we're going to do intimacy instead of Hollywood, then we will have an intimacy that gives us a grateful heart towards God. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Valentine's Day and we believe in what the Bible says about romance. Now the Bible does not use the word romance, but I'm going to steal it from the pagans and I'm going to define it in a biblical context. Here it is, Dave, I'm going to throw it on the table. Romance is sensitization to the good things in life that God has given us, and gratitude for it. That's the way I define it. It's being sensitive to it. See, sometimes I think our senses are dulled, and they're dulled by sin, when it comes to the good gifts that God has given us. I mean, you look out into nature, and why is it, Dave, that as you drive by a beautiful sunset or, you know, a beautiful landscape that, by the way, God has painted for you, You've been through that several times. You get desensitized to it. The first time you saw it, you were saying, wow, that's gorgeous. And there's just this feeling of rapture and gratitude and joy for what God has given. And then the 20th time, the 50th time you've been by that wonderful landscape, that beautiful sunset, you lose the sense of beauty. What is it that destroys that romance? we start taking things for granted. I can remember, my wife and I used to go every Thanksgiving weekend, we used to go out four-wheel driving in the Canyonlands area of Utah. And when we first got there, we were taking pictures of everything. There were arches, there were these beautiful stone, they called them monuments. There were just the most gorgeous sandstone structures. By the third day, It was like the most spectacular of them all would appear and we'd go, man, seen it, done there, been there. Of course, no pictures were taken by the third day. All the neat stuff was experienced the first day. Sometimes that's how we can be with our beloved. We can love them greatly because it's new and we can honor them. But by 10 years, 20 years. We've been there, we've done that, and it's like we want something new instead of plumbing the depths of that affection. The sin is what desensitizes us. In my estimation, the sin of ingratitude, the sin of discontentment. I mean, we have to see these things as gifts from God. These are beautiful presentations of God himself. If we take God out of the picture, whether it be in the marriage bed or before a beautiful sunset, if God isn't behind it, we're not going to be grateful. That's, I think, the point at which we lose the romance of it. We become desensitized. You see, the world's way is a man takes a woman out to dinner. He spends a lot of money to show that she's worth something. She dresses in such a way to titillate him. And they use each other for this relationship. The Bible's way is much different. If we read the Song of Solomon, the tenderness of Solomon to the Shulamite woman, the honor the Shulamite woman has towards King Solomon, this is a whole different paradigm in this relationship. It isn't about using one another, but it is a deep affection and gratitude towards the God who gave them each other. So you're saying it's not just the sin of discontentment, it's also the sin of self-centeredness. When we become the center of the whole thing, we actually are unable to sensitize the beauty, the creativity, and the gift that God has given us in our spouses or in creation about us. I think sometimes the sin of sharp, cutting speech, sometimes our communication can erode the romance that we could be enjoying. Well, certainly we can hurt each other with our words. Nobody can hurt you like the one who's close to you. Nobody can hurt your wife like you can, Kevin. I can't. Nobody can hurt my wife like I can. And nobody can hurt me like my wife can hurt me because she is the closer to my heart. And so our speech has to be all the more guarded, and we need to be much quicker at asking for forgiveness and repentance, because if that pain is allowed to just linger a little while, It can turn to the root of bitterness. And that is very, very difficult to get out. And just the expression of our appreciation is important. When we look at that sunset and say, praise God from whom all blessings flow. When we enjoy our spouses in close fellowship. If we cannot say, praise God for you, praise God for what you have done. We can't express the appreciation for our wives. That's going to erode the enjoyment we have of them. And Kevin, I don't think we just need to express it to them. It's not just enough to say, I love you, honey. I'm sure glad God gave me you. We need to express it in front of others as well. We need to create sort of a community sense that people understand that we appreciate the gift of our wife. We appreciate the intimacy. We worship God because of that act of kindness towards us. Dave, let's talk for just a moment about what the Word of God has to say about this relationship we have, this relationship of intimacy that we have, this romantic relationship we have with our spouses. The first thing that the Word of God says is that love is the operating principle. That our interest must be the others. And you know this runs directly contrary to the way the flesh operates and the way the world teaches us to operate. And that is The world wants us to think that it's all about me, and this woman is there for me. So what I do is seek my pleasure. As I seek my pleasure, then I will have the highest pleasure. But the Word of God doesn't say that at all. We ought to seek the pleasure of others. Listen to 1 Corinthians 7, 3. Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband. Likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. That is, the wife owns you and you own her, so to speak. That is, you are there for her. Your body, your presence is there for her. And so as we seek our wives' interests, our wives' benevolence, our wives' benefit, in the end, we are rewarded. God rewards us. Yeah, and Kevin, that verse is put in such a way that doesn't mean that I have dominion rights over my wife's body, but rather that she is to give due benevolence to me. This is about sacrifice rather than about taking. This isn't an exhortation. Husbands, take control of your wife's body. But it's rather, husbands, give your body to your wife. And your wife's needs may not totally correspond to your needs. And this, of course, is one of the challenges within a marriage. That is what she needs right now may not be exactly what you need right now. But your focus needs to be her needs and her focus needs to be your needs. And if that is the focus of both man and woman in the marriage, it will be a blessed marriage. Indeed. The Song of Solomon is one of my favorite books on marriage. And I believe that every couple needs to read this book. It may be a good book to read today on Valentine's Day. Well, there's a couple of lessons that you get from Song of Solomon. I'm just going to summarize it real quickly on the air for the listeners today. And the first lesson that we get from it is that there is a strong desire that is nurtured for each other in this relationship. Listen to Song of Solomon 710, I am my beloved's and his desire is toward me. And then chapter 5 and verse 4, my bowels were moved for him. There is an excited expectation for the other. And this is a good thing. Sometimes I think we lose it. I think we mentioned that it's possible to lose that in a marriage. But it ought to be something that is nurtured, that is cared for, that is encouraged in the marriage. We ought to look forward to being with each other. You know, that may be the case during engagement and during the first, oh, weeks, months, and year or two of marriage, but sometimes that disappears. Still, God wants us to nurture this strong desire for each other. The other thing we find is these expressions of longing for each other with these appreciative compliments regarding the other's personality and body. That's part of what God wants us to do in the marriage. We ought to compliment each other. How many times do we look upon our wives and say, hey, honey, you look beautiful today. I love your hands. Have I ever told you that your nose is beautiful? This is what is said throughout Song of Solomon. Oh my dove, you are in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs. Let me see thy countenance. Let me hear thy voice. For sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely. This is a biblical view of marriage. I don't know Dave, I think we lose this from time to time. My wife is over there laughing. I think she needs to believe it. Don't you think Dave? Well yes, and the Song of Solomon stands out as the pinnacle of literature of poetry for the intimacy of a man and a woman. There's a whole bunch of junk out there by the world, but the Song of Solomon is the absolute gem of this genre of poetry, and in it is very tender, it is very affectionate, there's a longing one for another, there's an appreciation of different bodily parts and different facets of the person that are expressed in such wonderful poetry. The final thing we got here is all the senses are engaged. Obviously the voice is engaged. We have that throughout as we speak. When we enjoy the voice, we enjoy to hear the voice. Taste, Song of Solomon 411. Smell, Song of Solomon 113. Touch, Song of Solomon 26. Sight, Song of Solomon 4 and verse 5. All five senses engaged in this relationship as we sensitize ourselves. to the beauty of the spouse that God has given us. And Dave, that's the key. We sensitize ourselves. And it's exciting and it's enjoyable, but we do it coram Deo, in the presence of God. Kevin, we do it with all five of our senses and we do it with such gratitude towards God in the celebration of intimacy. We also do it with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength. Ladies and gentlemen, today you've been listening to our Valentine's Day edition of Generations. I'd like to recommend to you a great resource. This book has encouraged us in our marriage. It's called Beloved Bride, the letters of Stonewall Jackson to his wife. And what a beautiful compilation of letters from Stonewall Jackson to his beloved bride, his esposita, that's what he calls her. You can get this book by calling 877-842-CHECK, 877-842-CHECK, or checkbooks.com on the web, checbooks.com. you can interact with this program by emailing me kevin at check.org that's kevin at check.org and you can hear the program anytime anywhere in the world at kevinswanson.com this is Kevin Swanson inviting you back again next time as we lay down a vision for the next generation