title: God Loves Sex: An Honest Conversation about Sexual Desire and Holiness
author:  Dan B. Allender 
description: <b>"It's rare to find a Christian book about sex that is real and helpful and honest. </b><b><i>God Loves Sex</i></b><b> is all of that and more."--Donald Miller, bestselling author of </b><b><i>Blue Like Jazz </i></b><b>and </b><b><i>A Million Miles in a Thousand Years</i></b><b><br /></b><br />The church's stance on sexual matters has been clear throughout history: all sexual activity outside the boundaries of Christian marriage is sin. So we hide our struggles and pretend to live above the erotic fray, or else we embrace the culture's redefinition of what is acceptable. But in this book Allender and Longman explore what the Bible really says about sexual desire and sexual intimacy.<br /><i><br />God Loves Sex </i>offers a truly liberating, godly view of holy sensuality by recovering the clear meaning of the Song of Songs as God-sanctioned eroticism. Then it uses that lens to answer questions posed by a fictional new Christian struggling with expectations of sexual purity. It asks provocative questions, such as <i>What does it mean to be both holy and filled with rich sexual desire?</i> and <i>How can our sexual struggles take us deeper into the purposes of God?<br /></i><br />Pairing psychological insight with sound biblical scholarship, the authors bring desire and sex out into the open, allowing Christians of any age and any marital status to understand sex the way God meant it to be.<br /><br />"This is not your average Christian book on sex. This is something better--and it is going to bring clarity, healing, and hope to a <i>lot</i> of people."--<b>John Eldredge</b>, author of <i>Wild at Heart</i><br /><br />"I have always loved the Song of Songs, but this book gives me a rich picture of how it can help us to something deeper in our marriage. So healing!"--<b>Stasi Eldredge</b>, author of <i>Captivating</i> and <i>Becoming Myself</i><br /><br />"In a world where sex most often lives in confusion, perversion, compulsion, guilt, and shame, it is wonderful that Allender and Longman use the Bible's sex song to restore sex to its original created beauty."--<b>Paul David Tripp</b>, author of <i>Sex &amp; Money<br /></i><b><br />Dan B. Allender</b> is professor of counseling psychology and is former president of Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle, Washington. He is the author of several books, including <i>The Wounded Heart</i>.<br /><b><br />Tremper Longman III</b> is the Robert H. Gundry Professor of Biblical Studies at Westmont College in California. He has authored, coauthored, or edited numerous books, including <i>The Baker Illustrated Bible Dictionary </i>and commentaries on several biblical books, including Song of Songs.
zlib_text: /~­
  / 
  / 
  Sex & God 
  How Religion 
  Distorts Sexuality 
  Darrel W. Ray, Ed.D. 
  IPC Press 
  Bonner Springs, Kansas 
  
  Copyright © 2012 by Darrel W. Ray. All rights reserved. No part of this 
  publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in 
  any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, 
  or otherwise without the prior written permission of the copyright holder, 
  except brief quotations used in a review. 
  Editors: Deborah Shouse, Kirsten McBride 
  Ray, Darrel W. 
  Sex & God How Religion Distorts Sexuality 
  by Darrel W. Ray. 
  Includes bibliographical references and index. 
  LCCN 20II96I234 
  ISBN-13: 978-o-9709505-4-3 
  ISBN-ro: o-9709505-4-3 
  Published by 
  IPC Press 
  15699 Kansas Avenue 
  Bonner Springs, Kansas 66012 
  Visit www.ipcpress.com for additional information. 
  Published 2012 
  Printed in the United States of America 
  
  Dedicated to 
  Julie 
  
  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
  I want to thank many friends who supported me during this intense 
  process. F