Sex – Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

Little White Church

August 24, 2025

Have you heard this country song by Little Big Town from 2010? I would like to take a moment to share it with you. Two different feelings come depending on whether you watch the video or just listen to the audio.

Ladies, do you have a guy who will not make a commitment to marriage? Maybe you should play this song for him. As a man, I can tell you our inclination is to delay marriage if we can have what we want without it. Yes, I am talking about sex. As a father of three girls, I made sure my daughters understood this.

Are you worth a man’s love and respect? Then you need to show him that you are. We all have sexual desires, and our culture says that we can do whatever we want to if we are adults. Just because we want to participate in something does not mean it is best for us. Decisions we make today will have consequences tomorrow.

The next verse takes us to the video for this song. It shows the bride going to the church and at the same time her mother drugs the groom, ties him up, and puts him in the trunk of a car.

Many parents have doubts about the potential mate their child has chosen. It is usually wise not to mention this. Most of us do not want to admit that our parents are correct and we are wrong. Voicing your opinion may simply drive them towards making a bad choice. Back off and let them decide for themselves.

The conclusion of this song was the desire of my wife and I with our girls. The decisions are theirs and it is something every man and woman needs to consider. Your choices are your own and so are the results.

All three of our daughters married before having children. Their husbands are fine men. All three are teachers. The two oldest are in public schools and the youngest home schools their children. We have twelve wonderful grandchildren, and life is great for all of us.

Our churches are not always white, and sometimes they do not even meet in what is thought of as a church building, but the idea is to meet with the church that is the body of Christ, the gathering together of believers. It isn’t just there to marry couples. They have solutions for almost everything.

I think I’m in love.

May 5, 2025

In college, this was a saying that many guys my age used. One of my friends or acquaintances would say this when we say a beautiful girl or woman walks by. A friend of mine at Southwest Baptist College in Bolivar, MO, changed that slightly. He was a ministerial student like me. He changed it to “I think I’m in lust.”

There is a difference between love and lust. Let me define the two words. Love is not an emotion. Lust is a desire for something sexual. I do not like to use dictionaries for words like love. Secular scholars are more interested in contemporary usages of the word and not what the Biblical examples indicate.

I agree with Paul’s definition of the love of God. You’ve read it in First Corinthians chapter 13. It includes patience, kindness, lack of envy, boasting, and pride. This is what we should strive for in our romantic love.

Do you know how to define what you mean when you say “I love you” to your spouse? The Association referred to it as “Cherish” in the song in 1966. “Cherish is the word I use to describe all the feelings that I have” is the opening line. This song also tells us that all the other guys say, “I love you.”

All they want is to touch your face, your hands, or hold you. Others say they will love you all the rest of their lives. When I was dating the girls were warned not to believe us when we said that we loved them. Most of these guys would use the line, “If you really love me, we should have sex.”

I never was one to do that. I had one girlfriend that I learned later and she stopped dating me because I never tried to have sex with her. Cindy will tell you that I haven’t had that problem for a long time.

On television and in movies, young people ask their parents or other adults how you know if you love someone. For me, it was because I wanted to be with her. Not every minute of every day like the songs say. When we are apart, I need to get back to her. I hope you have someone that gives you that kind of security.

This is not sexual. That is why I say that sex is not the same as love. I do not like to use the term making love. That makes love a noun, not a verb. Love is something you do. As Paul says, “It is patient, it is kind, it never fails.”

I explain to those who say that they fell in love and have fallen out of love by adding I did not fall. I jumped in. I can leave if I do not want to continue to love. I have a choice to love or not. It is the same for you. Jump or stay where you are.

Love is a choice as the book title says. It is up to you. Like Doc Brown said at the end of the third installment of the Back to the Future Trilogy, “Your future isn’t set. Make it what you want it to be.”

CHOCOLATE

January 27, 2023

https://youtube.com/watch?v=hIlmOk6TUfc

As the Sunday School teacher for 7^th and 8th-grade boys, what they wanted to talk about on any given Sunday and what was in the curriculum supplied by the church was not the same thing. Do you discuss the topics of concern to these young men or follow a schedule set out by middle-aged men and women six to twelve months ago? That was always easy for me.

Often the topic of S-E-X would come up. They were curious. These were church boys. Their parents seldom talked to them about the subject unless they were forced to and then they got over it quickly. As a married father of first one, then two, and finally three children, in their eyes, I was an expert.

Let me pause here and explain what an expert is. My high school word study teacher was explaining to us students how to determine the meaning of an unfamiliar word. You break it into smaller portions and determine the meaning of it by combining the meaning of the parts. He said that ex means has been and that a spurt is a big drip under pressure. Therefore, an expert is a big drip under pressure.

I do not claim to be an expert on anything. I would listen to these young men and discuss what was of interest to them. When S.E.X. came up, I would tell them a story about when I was in junior high school and I stole a candy bar. The following day, I returned to the store and bought another snickers. When I gave the clerk enough to pay for two, she told me I gave her too much. That was when I informed her that I had taken one the day before and did not pay for it. She thanked me for correcting my mistake.

What does candy have to do with S.E.X.? I explained that there are correct and incorrect ways to do the same thing. It is not wrong to desire something like chocolate or sex. There is an appropriate method to go about each.

My stealing the candy was wrong. There is no excuse for what I did. God has commanded us to restrict sexual intercourse to one person to whom we are to be married. We may want to bypass that process. We need to accept that Jesus does not approve of this action. Our culture has changed during my lifetime. As a kid, TV shows never showed people who were not married having sex. Today it is accepted.

Movies and TV are promoting an illicit lifestyle by showing unmarried couples living together and having children. I don’t need to get into the reasons why children need a stable home life with two married parents. Everyone knows the tragedy of broken homes.

Back to chocolate. I told my students that they should say to their parents that we discussed chocolate if they asked what we talked about on those Sundays. One father asked me why his son said that we studied chocolate that week. I explained what it meant, and he thanked me for covering that subject with the guys.

In eighteen years, he was the only parent to even ask the question. Young people will only know what is acceptable by their parents or the Church telling them. Many have decided that we are old-fashioned in our position on this. I believe God’s commandments should be obeyed no matter what our culture accepts. I hope you agree with Him.

Falling in love

January 21, 2023

“I don’t love her anymore. I don’t remember when I did.” This is a line from “The Twilight Zone” episode that is titled “The Trouble with Templeton”. Actor Booth Templeton expresses his disdain to his servant about the current Mrs. Templeton’s dalliance and speculates on what his life would be like if his first wife had not died so young.

The episode ends when his first wife and best friend ask him to go back to where he came from. A disappointing end to time travel reminds us that we must continue to live even when life seems hard. Time travel is a common vehicle on this sci-fi anthology series from the 1960s.

The questions this brought to my mind were do we love because we must, or do we love because we want to? Love is a choice. Love is a verb. These are phrases you may have read in my articles before. It also is not an emotion as many believe.

The term making love is a misnomer, as well. Love is not a noun. It is not something that you can create. The proper term is having sex. There are other phrases that you can use without stating the acronym for the full use of carnal knowledge.

I have heard people using this excuse for divorce by saying they are no longer in love with their spouse. Men and women both reason their desire to end the relationship by this logic. Sometimes lack of sex is considered the indication they are no longer loved. Sex and love have no correlation.

Physical touch is one of the “Five Love Languages” talked about in Dr. Gary Chapman’s books. This demonstration of love is not always expressed through sexual contact. Couples continue to love and experience love when they no longer express their commitment through intercourse.

I will speak about the definition of this word in another column or series of columns. As you know, sometimes I have more to say about a subject than will fit into one piece. Keep in mind that much of what I share with you is not original to me.

I read a great deal. I research through files that I have collected over the last fifty years. Would you believe that I have maintained all my college class notes? I do use the internet; I like to fall back on older research materials.

The Bible is one of my favorite resources. I do not always quote chapters and verses when using the information and wisdom it provides. I am one of those oddballs that believe in the validity of scripture. It says that God is love and those who follow Christ are to love as He did. After all, He is God.

Paul tells us in his letters in the New Testament to love our spouses, children, and everyone that we know. Even the Old Testament commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Jesus said this was the second most important of the commandments we received from the Hebrews.

Wisdom is your sister

July 8, 2021

Would you want to protect the pupil of your eye? Proverbs 7 says that you would. Following these words are as important. Keep them with you all the time as if you tie them to your fingers or engrave them on your heart. Wisdom is like a sister that will protect you.

Why is he hung up on sex again in chapter seven of Proverbs? Because the misuse of it can ruin your life. Solomon sees a foolish young man out his window. The woman is out after dark. Her dress is provocative. She has a plan, is loud and defiant and, does not stay at home.

Her aggressiveness should tip him off. All the preparations for sex have been made. What she wants is not love. She wants sex. She wants someone other than her husband and does not hesitate to seduce an unsuspecting young man. He is completely in her clutches. An ox going to slaughter is an example of how he reacts to her.

This is a life-or-death situation. Plan to avoid the type of person that wants to trap you into an illicit relationship. Ladies just reverse the sex of the tempter, and you could be caught in the trap as well.

Charles (Chuck) Kensinger