Evidently in this area to date we have focused much more on guys than gals for this particular segment of ministry focus. The reason for the difference in emphasis is partly a result of the earlier focus of the site being more on feminine sexuality, and secondly because masturbation is so much more a component of male sexuality than female. Today’s post also has some application into adult sexuality although this is probably true to a greater or lesser extent to all of these posts in this series.
The most important new learning we want to share in this post concerns the spirituality of sex for males. Until recently we had a key determination and understanding that there was little in the way of spiritual components of sex for males especially outside marriage. Male sexuality in general is very much focused on achieving a spiritual focus via sexual intercourse, insomuch as most guys seek to obtain spiritual fulfilment in sexual activity via a female partner, and this is a key part of why sexual idolatry is so much an issue for guys. Recent insight however is that males are able to develop a spiritual aspect to sex through solo masturbation, and that it is focused primarily on the spirituality of sex in its own right rather than indirectly via another person. This discovery is very important to helping guys get a better spiritual balance in their lives for their sexuality and develop that in a healthy way during adolescence and continue it into adulthood, including in a marriage. If you haven’t kept up with all the updates to this site recently, we recently published a new page titled “Key Principles of Christian Sexuality” and it outlines a specific new context for masturbation in marriage in situations where both husbands and wives can use masturbation on their gap days for the same purposes of affirming their sexuality separately from each other. The post in which this context is further described has yet to be written at the time of writing as the focus went onto developing those 12 principles and publishing the page over a period of several weeks, prior to actually creating a detailed discussion of each of those principles via separate linked posts. The 12 principles page is now linked via the menu that appears on the top of every post of this site and can be read at any time.
So with this new insight we can work on enabling guys to understand that not only are they spiritual people but that in the Christian context, their sexuality has a strong spiritual component that is relevant to solo masturbation and can be developed in that aspect and used primarily with a focus on God during such solo masturbation sessions. The balance that this brings to male sexuality is very important because celibacy has such an important role to play in Christian sexuality as a whole and whilst it is clear that Christian women are more likely to remain single for extended periods as they are generally better at coping with singleness, plenty of situations exist where males are also single for long periods and they have to be able to develop healthy sexuality in those times. Even when males are likely to seek out and enter a marriage, as will be the case for the overwhelming majority, the development of their sexuality in a period of singleness is an important part of the process of being prepared for marriage and especially in the Christian ministry context. The most important focuses of sexual development for both males and females are healthy sexuality as singles without dependence on the other in a marriage and this is achieved both in the adolescent and young adult stages of life prior to marriage, and in the marriage itself through gap days, as mentioned above.
In turn, a focus in ministry on healthy guys sexual development should also reap rewards in youth ministries of churches by adopting these principles, enabling guys to become strong leaders in sexual purity and thereby enable them to take leading positions in youth group leadership, no longer compromised by sexual struggles. We are very much looking forward to the new avenues of prayer ministry that are opened up by this knowledge discovery for ministry to young men, and are already seeing fruit borne in the ministry from this new knowledge which brings a healthy balance to the ministry work in general, by putting guys on a more equal footing with gals. Whilst there are important differences in male/female sexuality that have to be recognised in ministry and which demand that male leaders minister personally to males and female leaders personally to females, the discovery of this spiritual component in male sexuality is an important new aspect of our overall ministry that opens up a critical aspect in ministry to males and its value can’t be underestimated.