The Great Sex Rescue Quotes

“Defeating lust is not about limiting a man’s encounters with women; it’s about empowering men to treat the women around them as whole people, daughters of Christ. The key to defeating lust is not to avoid looking at women; it’s to actually see them.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“You defeat porn by rejecting the kingdom of darkness view of sex, that it is only about taking and using someone to meet your needs, and adopting a kingdom of heaven view of sex: that it’s about a mutual, passionate knowing and sacrificial serving.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“The spiritual beauty of sexuality is seen in service, lovingly meeting the physical desires and needs of our mate. The spiritual meaning of a Christian’s sexuality is found in giving. When we have power over another and use that power responsibly, appropriately, and benevolently, we grow in Christ, becoming more like God, and reflect the fact that we were made to love God by serving others. But when we have power over another—particularly power in an area where someone feels so vulnerable and needy and where they can go nowhere else to be served—and then use that power irresponsibly, inappropriately, and maliciously, we become more like Satan, who loves to manipulate us in our weakness rather than like God, who serves us in our weakness.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“The real God (the one we like to think also sounds like Morgan Freeman) knew he could not have real intimacy with us unless we chose it ourselves. But in many marriages, sex is not being freely chosen. It becomes transactional instead of intimate or a duty instead of a joy. It can even become a weapon when a spouse is pressured to do things against their will. But love is not love if it’s forced.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“If you are continuously choosing video games, Netflix, or anything else over your spouse and your marriage, your marriage will seriously suffer long-term. If you aren’t making your spouse a priority, you are not fulfilling your marital vows. You married a person; your Netflix account, your console, and even your children should not come before your marriage. In fact, what your kids need more than to be in seven extracurriculars is to have a family that is stable, loving, and fun.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“The root problem for many women, then, is not that they don’t want sex enough; it is that they simply don’t have a reason to want it.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“Many women live in sexless marriages because the husband prefers pornography. Or he’s used porn so much for so long that he suffers from erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, or delayed ejaculation, all of which increase with porn use. Without the stimulation of pornography and masturbation, many men are unable to maintain an erection or reach climax.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“Evangelical culture primes women to repress their sexuality but then turns around and chastises them when they are married for doing that very thing.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“When we set up marriages where a husband has decision-making power, we create marriages in which his opinions, by definition, matter more than hers.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“That may be why we found that the risk of divorce skyrockets in marriages in which the husband is the one who ultimately makes the decisions,”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“But when we unquestioningly buy into traditional gender roles, we create a strange dynamic in marriage in which we view each other as categories rather than as people.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“Here’s an interesting finding from our research: Women who do not believe traditional gender roles are moral imperatives feel more heard and seen in their marriages. In fact, women who act out the typical breadwinner-homemaker dynamic also feel more seen if they see it as a choice and not a God-given role.9”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“Wives are made paranoid because they are told they can’t trust the man they married, the good man who loves them. These books unjustly paint husbands as sex addicts and pathological liars, while normalizing ogling women. If this is the fruit, why have we kept the tree?”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“You cannot embrace passionate vulnerability if you cannot trust your spouse. You cannot be vulnerable if you cannot be yourself (and you cannot be yourself if you’re motivated by fear of your spouse having an affair or losing their love for you). You cannot be vulnerable if you’re full of shame for your past. You cannot be vulnerable if trust has been broken and hasn’t been rebuilt. You cannot force passion. Passion flows from the ability to be vulnerable, which flows from the ability to trust, which flows from a safe relationship.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“I finally understood that sex was a God-sanctioned way to experience a complete, ecstatic loss of control mixed with intense, overwhelming pleasure. And it completely blew my mind.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“Hagar is the first person in Scripture who is given the honor of bestowing a name upon God. And the name she chooses? “The God who sees me.” After being sexually assaulted, forced to carry a baby, and then abandoned, never having her needs or wishes taken into account, being invisible and used to meet other people’s needs, God sees her. And being seen makes all the difference.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“Can you imagine any other area of life in which God would tell a person, “You have the right to use someone else for your own gratification, even if it causes physical or emotional pain”?”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“Sex is a natural part of loving, tender, selfless relationships. That is the real reason why sex starts in the kitchen—not because if he does dishes, she owes him, but because if he is a mature, responsible, and caring husband, he grows a relationship marked by tenderness and selflessness.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“In any relationship, the person who is least invested holds the power. In a dating relationship, the one who loves the least determines how often they see each other or text each other, while the one who loves the most sits staring at the phone, willing the notifications to beep.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“When people feel used and discarded, having sex intensifies these feelings of rejection. Eventually people just give up.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“wrong. “If you try to compete with porn, you will lose every time.”37”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“You can’t defeat porn by simply having a husband transfer his lust and objectification to a “safe” source—his wife. You defeat porn by rejecting the kingdom of darkness view of sex, that it is only about taking and using someone to meet your needs, and adopting a kingdom of heaven view of sex: that it’s about a mutual, passionate knowing and sacrificial serving.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“Our catchphrase should not just be “Wait for sex until you’re married”; our catchphrase should be “Wait for sex until you’re married and turned on!” Save sex for when you’re married, and then once you’re married, don’t have sex until your body is begging for it.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“Sex is not just about me; it’s about me knowing you and building us.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“Billions of people on this planet have had intercourse. I don’t know how many have actually made love.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“Great sex is the fulfillment of a longing for intimacy, for connection, to be completely and utterly bare in every way before each other.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“This whole book has been leading up to this point. Vulnerability, the key to passion, requires all the things we’ve talked about. You cannot embrace passionate vulnerability if you cannot trust your spouse. You cannot be vulnerable if you cannot be yourself (and you cannot be yourself if you’re motivated by fear of your spouse having an affair or losing their love for you). You cannot be vulnerable if you’re full of shame for your past. You cannot be vulnerable if trust has been broken and hasn’t been rebuilt.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“Passion says I want you as you are—not who you could be, not who you should be, not who you were when we met—I want you now, and I want you in the deepest of senses.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“Sandra explained, “physical reasons and oneness reasons. Sometimes sex is mainly about having fun meeting each other’s physical needs, and that’s okay, but the majority of the time its main purpose is to bring you closer and more united. Sex is the pinnacle of marital intimacy.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended

“What would happen if we saw sex as an opportunity to mirror Christ’s servanthood to our spouse? Seeing sex through the lens of the cross encompasses so much more than being naked and unashamed; it becomes a conduit for intimate relationships and reconciliation to each other.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended