The meaning of sex can’t be addressed outside of the context of what it means to be a man or a woman

Austin Gardner • March 1, 2023

Gleanings from Today

The Lord wanted him to catch a glimpse of the full import of God’s final and most magnificent work. He wanted the man to feel the longing intensely—to love and want a soul mate with such passion that he was willing to pay the ultimate price to win his bride. God knew that He had to wound His firstborn to create woman. It would draw blood. Having a bride would cost the man dearly. When the man named the last animal and turned back to his Maker, the Lord knew it was time. Time to make “her”—the one who would captivate the man’s heart as completely as the vision of the Lord’s coming heavenly bride had captivated His.


 Mary A. Kassian, Girls Gone Wise in a World Gone Wild (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2010).


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The Lord created woman with a bent to be amenable, relational, and receptive. He created man with a bent to initiate, provide, and protect.

 Mary A. Kassian, Girls Gone Wise in a World Gone Wild (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2010).


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The meaning of sex can’t be addressed outside of the context of what it means to be a man or a woman—nor can it be addressed outside of the context of marriage. Manhood, womanhood, marriage, and sex are indivisibly connected.

 Mary A. Kassian, Girls Gone Wise in a World Gone Wild (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2010).


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When the Holy Spirit fills us, He will use the Scriptures we already know to give us more insight into the mind of God. When we pray in the Spirit, our human spirit and the divine Holy Spirit work together as one. The Holy Spirit will make our emotions more expressive and accentuate our personality, but we won’t become one with the Spirit and lose our identity. God is always God, and we are always human.

 Elmer L. Towns, How to Pray: When You Don’t Know What to Say (Ventura, CA: Regal; Gospel Light, 2006), 224.



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This caution and call to extend Christian charity in regard to the issues of eschatology was noted by Charles Spurgeon. He was a premillennialist, although he was not pretribulational. In one of his sermons he said the following:

If I read the word aright, and it is honest to admit that there is much room for difference of opinion here, the day will come, when the Lord Jesus will descend from heaven with a shout, with the trump of the archangel and the voice of God. Some think that this descent of the Lord will be post-millennial—that is, “after the thousand years” of his reign. I cannot think so. I conceive that the advent will be pre-millennial—that He will come first; and then will come the millennium as the result of his personal reign upon earth.


 Danny Akin, “A Rapture You Can’t Miss (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18): A Judgment You Must Face (2 Corinthians 5:10): A Supper You Will Want to Attend (Revelation 19:1–10),” in The Return of Christ: A Premillennial Perspective (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2011), 52.


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Early Methodist preaching had several characteristics which account for its immeasurable power. The preachers believed themselves called of God, and as a result were in deadly earnest whenever they discoursed. Believing further that they were to be, as Wesley urged, 'men of one book,' they lived in the Book as did John Bunyan, accepting it as a divine revelation, and their sermons, therefore, were biblical through and through. The prayer element also vitally entered into Methodist sermon-making, Methodist sermons, and Methodist preaching.

 Ezra Tipple, Francis Asbury


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There are seasons in the lives of people who have been indwelled with the Spirit all along when the Spirit resident becomes the Spirit reigning. Jesus moves from a peripheral role in their lives to a prominent role. It is as if the Spirit of God has only recently begun to move.

 Jack R. Taylor, After the Spirit Comes (Bedford, TX: Burkhart Books, 2013), 6.

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When the Holy Spirit of God seems to come in a new capacity, there is a crisis. When the Spirit moves, so does the enemy. When the devil cannot stop revival on the spot, he will attempt to prostitute it immediately, distort it gradually, or wreck it eventually.

 Jack R. Taylor, After the Spirit Comes (Bedford, TX: Burkhart Books, 2013), 8–9.


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