To Have and to Hold

Asking For a Friend

By Ed Traverse, September 11, 2022

This incredible gift has intentional

1 Cor 7:1-3 – Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”  2  But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.  3  The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.


The shall become


1 Cor 7:4 – For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

Gen 2:24 – “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh”

1 Cor 6:16-17 –   Or do you not know that he who is joined [a]  to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.”  17  But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.


This gift isn’t a tool to be used as


1 Cor 7:5 – Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.