How Open Are You About Sexuality?

Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. The second and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. Finally, the woman died too. Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”

Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection.
- Luke 20:27-36

This story comes in the midst of a whole chapter in Luke where religious people are trying to trap Jesus with trick questions. This week in our devotions we’ll be looking at sexual ethics, but let’s start with the question of openness. Are you open to what Jesus may be saying to you, or are your ideas so firm that even God couldn’t change them? That’s a strange way of putting it, but that’s what happened back in the day in this passage - the Sadducees had no interest in what Jesus actually said, they were just setting him up to show how wrong he was. How about you? What questions do you have, especially in the area of what is good and healthy about sexuality? Are you willing to let them surface and to break the sound barrier with God about them by asking them and really leaning in to hear what God might have to say?

Take a few moments and write down the questions you have about sexuality and then read them out loud to God with the simple prayer, “O God, help me surrender this area of my life to you and to respond to what you want to say to me about it.”