"I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life.
No one comes to the Father except through Me."
John  14: 6
The Way Of The Lord Ministries
Reverend Noreen T. Kevern
Mr. Henry A. Kevern
520-237-0329
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What Love Is And What Love Is Not

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered, it keeps no
record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7

God has been leading me to write about how Christians do not realize that love has been replaced with sexual immorality and lust especially in
marriage. I have seen more and more married couples that have confused lust and sexual immorality in their marriage for love. It’s been a slow fade
for people and their understanding what is good and bad. But it is pretty clear in God’s eyes. We have allowed over the years for pornography,
crudeness and vile behaviors to enter into our lives and these ugly things have become accepted in life in general.

In the beginning God found no suitable helper for man so He caused man to fall into a deep sleep and removed a rib from his side and created woman
to be a helper for man. For this reason a man leaves his mother and father, and the man and woman come together and become one (see Genesis 2:
20-25) and so God created man and woman to complete one another. That is why we hear in marriage vows that husband and wife forsake all others
and cling to each other. Marriage is a new beginning in life; one that is God ordained and the marriage bed is to be kept pure. Sex is an important
part of marriage and we can read that in the Song of Songs in the Bible. God made man and woman to procreate; we are created differently, taking
both to multiply and create other human beings. Sex was created to make babies, and to become one during the very act, a beautiful touching and
caressing, an intimate time, completely abandoning one’s very self so that the other is made to feel love and beauty. It is a time of letting go of all the
outside things of life and to come together, wholly and completely. Our bodies are created for one another and our touch for each other is to be holy
and perfect in God’s sight, but for far too many, sex has become dirty and evil. And these are the issues that I am going to discuss today.

For many couples, sex is not the same as love but it should be. Sex is beautiful, loving, caressing, holding, enjoying each other and sharing love as
God created. When God created man and woman, they were naked, but when the serpent tricked Eve as Adam watched and then as well ate the
forbidden fruit, their eyes were opened and they realized that they were naked (see Genesis 3:1-7). Think about this a moment: God created us
naked. We are born naked. But because we listened to the evil one, our eyes were opened to the perverted lies of the devil. Sex changed and
immorality grew because the devil figured out that we are easily led astray. Sex over the years has become dirty and disgusting.

The Lord has blessed me with a wonderful husband, our lives have not been perfect, but we have worked on our marriage over the years. We had
our years of falling away from all we knew the Lord had brought us to and were separated for a time. In reality, it was less than 6 months, but it was a
time that we learned to communicate with one another, the year that began the change of who and what we are and that was over 27 years ago. God
brought Henry to me at a very critical time in my life. I was 15 and a lot of things had happened in my life. I knew God, but things had happened to me
that overshadowed my whole being and as each year went by, I grew to hate myself more and more. One night at the tender young age of 15 I had
decided that life was not worth it. I told God that I was tired of living and that no one would want me as his wife because of the things that had
happened in my life so far. So I tried to kill myself. I had a new razor blade, but God would have none of that for me. No matter how hard I tried, the
blade would not penetrate into my skin. I was not crying, just trying to kill myself because the devil had led me into a place of self hate and loathing. I
was unworthy of anything good in life and so why should I live? But God had plans for me. He stopped me, held onto my hands and told me that the
next day that He would bring my soul mate into my life and that he would be the one who I would marry. The next day Henry came into my life.

My purpose for telling you about Henry and myself was to let you understand that circumstances in our lives can make us vulnerable to the devil’s
lies and we can become confused with what God wants in our lives and make us do things that are not of God. But my purpose here is to tell you
what sex/love is not and then to tell you what sex/love is according to God. I am going to start with what sex/love is not, and if you find yourself in
these circumstances, I pray that you will take to heart what I am saying and change these things in your life and come to a pure and loving sex/love
relationship that will make you feel the love that you share with one another and the love that God shares with you.

Love and sex is part of love, is not doing things to one another that hurt the other. Never in God’s plan for us does sex involve bondage or causing
any pain for the other. Bondage is the devil’s way of controlling another person. One of the lies of Satan that leads one to bondage is pornography.
Pornography is Satan’s way of releasing of unnatural sexual desires in humans. In Leviticus 18 God explains some of the unnatural ways of sex that
He says are wrong and in various other passages God warns us not to follow the practices of others. Bondage is the way in which another holds
control over the other and over time, the ways that bondage is acted upon gets more and more violent and sadly at some point, the person who is
controlling the other can kill the other in order to achieve the high that he keeps trying to have. Sex can be a drug when it is used by the devil to do
things that are not of God. Satan always looks for ways to deceive you and sex is the easiest way to do so. When your spouse wants sex from you that
is not of God, you must realize that this is evil. Bondage is a form of sexual slavery and it is clearly abuse. Your partner becomes your master and
hurts you. That is not love. Love does not delight in evil and bondage is evil. When your spouse binds you and hurts you, he is delighting in evil not
in love and God. Bondage is a form of rape and if you are in these circumstances, I plead with you to get out. The love that you have had with the
other has become evil, and you don’t realize it. You have been lied to and manipulated into believing that the one hurting you is doing so out of love.
But that person is controlled by the devil. Bondage does not protect but rips the very soul of the other person to shreds. It robs you of joy and leads
you into depression.

Now if you are the one who is hurting the other, obsessed with pornography and you believe that it is love, I beg you to stop and look at what you are
doing. Marriage is not a control issue. Marriage is the coming together of two people who have found that their love has grown to a place where they
want to grow together in a relationship of love that should have no end. Marriage is the giving one hundred percent of your self to make the other
happy. If you are inflicting bondage upon your spouse you are in fact raping your spouse. It is not love that drives you, but hate that the devil has put
into you. The devil may tell you that this is okay to do to another, but it is not. What you are dong to the other person is robbing them of joy and
being able to love themselves. You steal their self worth, their happiness and have replaced it with a fear, and in doing so, you instill in them the fear
that you will leave if they do not let you do this to them. You kill a little piece of them each time you bind them and then rape them. You make
yourself a god to them but you are a pawn of the devil, allowing him to control your life. Satan is getting much joy in watching you slowly kill this
person whom you say you love. In Romans 13:12-14 Paul warns us of changing our lives and changing because the Lord’s Day is near. “The night is
nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime,
not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord
Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” The coming of our Lord Jesus Christ will come upon you or you
will die in your sin and you will be left behind and be thrown into hell with the devil. I realize that you may not believe in God or in the power of the
cross, but it is true. Inside of you God has implanted the desire for Him, but the devil is making you believe that God is not real or that you are not
worthy of Him. But God loves you and Jesus died on the cross for your sins, taking the punishment that you deserve for your sins and rose from the
dead so that you may accept your Salvation and live it out your life. In order to receive Jesus, you must confess your sin to God and ask His
forgiveness, believe that Jesus is your Lord and Savior and repent, that means not doing those sins again. If you are ready to accept Jesus as your
Savior and to begin a life in a relationship with God, say a simple prayer. “Lord Jesus, I give You my life. I believe that You came down here and died
on the cross for my sins. I am sorry for … and I ask you to forgive me of my sins. I accept You as my Savior.” It doesn’t have to be this exactly but just
tell God that you love Him and believe in Him, use this prayer as a model and make it your own. There is so much more for you than the lies of the
devil. I beg you to realize these truths about what you are doing. You promised to love, to honor and to cherish, not to rape, to destroy another
human’s soul, and to take away their joy and love and replace it with fear that you will leave.

Now there are many forms of sexual immorality. Rough sex is just as bad as bondage, as I stated earlier, love does not hurt but wants to give joy and
make the other feel good. Watching any sexual activity on TV or in the movies or even reading and then becoming aroused by it is the same as
pornography. These things are the tools of the devil to make you lose your soul. It’s not for us to watch others. There are many ways to show love or
sex in these venues without showing the actual act or the foreplay. Things have become so graphic we see adultery, sex and all forms of sexual
immorality all over the TV.

Adultery is another form of abuse. It is another way that the devil tempts you to do something that is not of God. If your marriage is not going well,
that doesn’t mean you turn to another to find what you are not receiving in your marriage. Or if you are bored in your marriage, you don’t go out and
find another. Adultery hurts your spouse and even if your spouse doesn’t know you are committing adultery, they do sense something wrong in their
marriage. Paying a prostitute for sex is still committing adultery. And the way that you dress could be causing someone to want to commit adultery.
Jesus said, “You have heard it said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed
adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27-28). And yes, a woman can commit adultery by looking at another man. For far too long the saying,
“Looking doesn’t hurt” has caused so much pain. It’s time to stop looking and learn what God wants of you. Your desire should be first for God and
then for your spouse. In order to know love, true love, you must have a personal relationship with God, because God’s love is perfect. One of the
things that I have found shocking is the amount of sexual toys that are out there. We are not made for sexual toys. A man is made for a woman and a
woman is made for a man. That’s the point of the kiss, the caress to come together to know each other intimately. These toys say to the other that
you are not good enough for me. Satan makes you think that you need toys to fulfill your desire but you do not.

If you are single, it is important that you learn to control yourself sexually. Society has come to the point that premarital sex is okay. It is not. We are
to overcome our desires for sex and come into marriage pure so that you will grow together in love. If you are searching for someone to share your
life in marriage, you must build your relationship with God and He will bring you to the one that is your soul mate and then you will have a marriage
that will be truly blessed. If you have already had sex, from this point forward, you can ask God to forgive you and wait for the one that He has for you.

Love is the greatest of all things. God’s love is so perfect that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have
eternal life. For God did not send His Son in the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not
condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the Name of God’s one and only Son. This is
the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the
light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be
seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God (John 3:16-21). In this Scripture we see that we have the choice to choose what we
want to do in our lives. Love the Light that is Jesus, or to follow evil that is Satan. God does not force anyone to accept Salvation. It is sad to see how
many people reject God’s gift of Salvation and choose to follow the devil into hell.  Knowing the love of God has brought such peace into my life and
into so many others. That’s how we know we are filled with God’s love, that no matter what we are going through in our lives, we are at peace and
know that God is holding on to us through it all. A life that is built on love is as God loves us. Unconditionally, even when we do such things that are
not loveable God still loves us. That’s how married love is to be, to love unconditionally as God loves us. Love keeps no record of wrongs is
sometimes the hardest thing to do but it’s what is required in love. When you come to the Lord and ask Him to forgive you for your sins, you have to
do the same for those you love. Forgive the hurt that you feel from something that the one you love has done. Forgive things not for the other person
but for your own soul. When you keep on holding the hurt, it never leaves you, but if you forgive the other in your heart, God will forgive you.
Remember: “Forgive us our trespasses as we also have forgiven those who trespass against us” (Matthew 6:12). So many marriages fail because of
forgiveness. In Ephesians 5:25-30: Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church…In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives
as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all no one hates his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the
church—for we are all members of His body.  And in Ephesians 5:22: Wives, submit to your husband as to the Lord…Now as the church (the body of
Christ) submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. When we look at these to Scriptures we are to give ourselves
to the other, fully committing our love and life to one another. Not submitting to things that are not of God, immoral sex or being beaten or lording it
over one another. No, we are equals in all things. Oh, I know so many of you will disagree with this but you cannot deny God’s Word. “Haven’t you
read,” He replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother
and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh?’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man
not separate” (Matthew 19:4-6, Genesis 1:27; 5:2 Genesis 2:24, 1 Corinthians 6:16, Ephesians 5:31). When God created the world everything was
good, including humans. After the fall of man, things were not as they were in the beginning. In Jesus’ death on the cross we are brought back to
our original state when we have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior. In Hosea 2:16 we read: “In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my
husband’; you will no longer call Me, ‘my master.’” God declared that He would no longer be a master over His people, and that’s the promise in
Jesus’ cross and resurrection. And marriage is a reflection of the kind of love that Jesus has. He is called the bridegroom and we are His bride.

Love is patient, love is kind, and God is patient with us. He has not returned for He is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness.
He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). Love does not envy, does not boast, is not
proud, it doesn’t matter if your spouse does better at something better than you, and you do not boast that you are better than the other. It is not
prideful in self, but love always looks to the good in the other and helps each other in doing all things. Love is not rude or self-seeking but is kind in
word and deed. Love promotes the other person and does things to make them feel good about themselves. Love does things because of love even if
the other person doesn’t deserve it. Love is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not keep remember the hurts of the past
and keeps anger in check, because anger never produces peace. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth, love does not follow the
devil because the devil does not know what love is, but love rejoices in the truth of Jesus and shows His unconditional love, a love so great that He
laid down His life for you, even though you sin. Our love for one another should be the same for each other. It always protects, always trusts, always
hopes, always perseveres. Love does not hurt but protects the other from pain, any pain, and love certainly does not inflict pain on the other. Love is
built on trust, and love is broken when the trust is destroyed. The things we talked about earlier, bondage, adultery, even sex toys, breaks the trust
that we should have for each other. Our love trusts that none of these things will be done to the other and love will not break that trust. Love always
hopes that the spouse will learn from the goodness of the spouse. When there is an unbelieving spouse, it is hard for the other. Our actions as
Christians are to show the love of God in all things. God does not want you to be in a marriage or any situation where there is abuse and He certainly
does not want you to stay when your life is in danger. God wants you safe in Him. But what the hardest thing is in love is to continue to love in spite
of the pain and hurt. You may be separated from your spouse because of abuse, but you should always have hope that they will come to know the
Lord and learn to love unconditionally as our Lord does. Love always perseveres in spite of the devil and when we overcome what the devil has tried
to do in our lives, we will inherit our reward. “It is done. I AM the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End…He who overcomes will inherit
all this, and I will be his God and he will be My son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who
practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur (Revelation 21:6-8).
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