“we are half hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us. like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. we are far too easily pleased.”

- c.s. lewis (the weight of glory)

i have had the privilege of having a couple conversations recently with people regarding relationships and invariably… SEX.  mind you, these people were single, fully sexually active, and saw no problem with it.  what became apparent throughout  these conversations is how we’ve “oversexed” sex as a culture.

sexual appetite is the only appetite we’re convinced happiness is found in  fulfilling its every random impulse! we have so elevated the sexual appetite above everything else that we’ve forced it to play a role it was never intended to play… filling a need it is not capable of filling. sex was meant as an augment, a blessing, the cherry on top of the sundae for an otherwise fulfilling and intimate relationship. it was never supposed to be the sole source of intimacy in relationship.

appetites devour us and become our bondage if we don’t apply discernment and discretion when indulging. we are a culture of sexually-obese individuals wondering why overindulgence isn’t doing the trick.  if you think i’m full of it, talk to a girl or guy who just realized someone used them for their sexuality and ask them how they feel.  these feelings lessen as we sear our consciences with frequent random sexual experience, but  we forget that it didn’t start that way. it was a painful road that lead to the numbness we currently walk around in as a culture.

imagine sex as an exquisite fine dining experience, you know… one of those life changing meals with all the trimmings. as we force sex into trying to fulfill all our relational needs, it’s as if we take the raw ingredients uncooked and begin eating it.  as we remove the context of a loving and committed marriage relationship, we reduce this meal to its separate and very unspectacular parts, resulting in something akin to mutual masturbation.

Jesus didn’t want to hold something away from us; he wanted us to experience sex as an amazing gift… not a curse.  we are far too easily pleased. we can easily convince ourselves that mud pies are the pinnacle of human experience… but God invites us into so  much more!

in january over 1000 college-somethings gathered at the plummer auditorium in fullerton, ca to discuss how three cultural hot-topics interconnect according to scripture…Sex. Love. God. listen to the audio from the event here.

Thursday Main Session
Speaker: Mike Erre

Thursday Q & A
Panelists: Kathleen Doyle, Mike Erre
Host: Steve Carter

Friday Main Session
Speaker: Mike Erre

Do not awaken love until it’s proper time. . . Most of my life I heard those words and immediately thought of physical boundaries.  I heard the echos of conversations with my parents, books I had read and summers of Christian camps.  I still believe that there is a physical side to that statement, but a conversation with one of my best friends shortly after college changed forever the way I hear those words.

On the way to the mountains for a day of snowboarding with my only close married friend at the time, the conversation quickly turned towards relationships, sex and marriage.  I knew that Matt had made some choices prior to following Christ that might make marriage and sex within marriage more challenging.  As we talked I was shocked to hear that it wasn’t his past sexual experience that had been the biggest challenge to his new bride and their marriage, but instead some of the close, emotionally unhealthy relationships he had with other girls.  Girls he never dated or slept with.  Amy was hurt that there were girls that knew Matt better then she did.  That affected their love life.  That affected their relationship.  That was what they fought about.  Sure, she would have loved that they were both virgins on their wedding night, but the emotional baggage carried into the marriage went far beyond previous sexual encounters.

I sat in silence as Matt spoke.  Sure, I had honored physical boundaries (the first and only girl I have kissed is my wife), but emotionally I had been reckless.  As we continued to talk, I became convicted that I needed to change the way I interacted with girls.  I needed to honor them emotionally as much as I honored them physically.  Purity has to be more than just don’t have sex.  Just don’t get physical. Awakening love is so much more than that. . .

generation y. the millenials. generation next. the echo boomers. the net generation.

we’ve heard society call this generation, the college and twenty-something crowd, by several different names. but we’ve also heard God call this generation by name…

chosen. set apart. purposed. ambassadors for His kingdom.

we are passionate to see this generation, the “college somethings”, encounter Jesus Christ in such powerful ways that lead to set-apart lives given to spreading His message and His fame.

we believe that we have a part to play in this. for many of you in this generation, you’ll be where you are now for just a couple of years. before long, God will call you out and ask you to live out His gospel in unique contexts spread across the globe. when that happens, we want you to be thoroughly equipped for every good work. to that end, we’re calling your generation together a few different times over the coming months. through events, discussions, relationships, and more, we’re going to pursue God’s heart regarding some of the key issues surrounding your generation. our aim is to create space for you to encounter Jesus in ways that equip you to live lives marked by truth, true identity, purpose, worship, and community.

we want to see a movement of college-something Jesus followers spread across every corner of the earth and shout to every people group that Jesus is alive, He is good, and He is Lord.

sex, love & god | the event
our first event is coming up! click here for the details