Dragon Slaying VII

Covenant, Conduits, and Beautiful Barriers

The sexual energy was palpable between them.

Theirs was a fiery love. They were playful, flirtatious, clearly drawn to one another with a magnetic physicality.

And they were both over seventy.

Ron Madsen, my wife’s grandfather, was as stern as they came. A Huey pilot in Vietnam, shot down and awarded the Purple Heart, later managing the local municipal airport with the same steel spine he carried in combat.

A no-nonsense, disciplined man. Direct. Intense.

Until he got anywhere near his wife of fifty-plus years, Claire.

Then this precise, measured war hero became a goofy teenager, unrestrained and obnoxious.

“Stop it, Ronnie!”

I’d be on the couch pretending to read as Claire swatted away his latest ambush in the kitchen. A quick slap on the backside. He’d strut into the living room, grin wide, a triumphant rooster winking at me, and collapse into his recliner with the satisfied delight of a seventeen-year-old boy discovering that the universe is responsive.

And she loved it.

Not the immaturity. The attention. The choosing. The fact that after more than five decades, he still reached for her and flames erupted.

We tend to assume sexual energy belongs to the young. Tight skin. Fast metabolism. Hormones doing wind sprints. But in youth, sexual energy is often volcanic and undirected. It erupts. It burns hot. It consumes all the oxygen.

In Ron and Claire, it had become something else.

Even as the residual effects of Agent Orange came calling, even as oxygen lines trailed behind him like the tail of a weary comet, he would grab her and shuffle-dance across the living room. One hand steadying the tubing, the other firm at her waist. She’d laugh and lean is as the awkward trio, a frail old man, his oxygen tank, and a wobbly old woman, kept in time with the harmonies of heaven.

Their bodies aged. Their desire did not. It remained steady and constant all the way until death parted them and they entered the fulfillment of longing, ecstasy, and intimacy that humans were designed for.

Here was the secret: their sexual, emotional, physical energy had been channeled toward one another and contained in covenant union for over half a century.

Commitment, unbroken vows, through sickness and health, poverty and wealth. Covenant is not the extinguishing of sexual energy; it is the fireplace that makes it habitable.

By the time I married into the family, Ron and Claire were well past the infernos of youthful physical desire, but those initial fires, held in commitment to one another, had lit something deeper and more profound than sexual pleasure over the decades.

Sex is never merely friction and release. It is the embodied rehearsal of a deeper reality: I am yours. You are mine. I choose you again, and again, and again. Hints and whispers of the intimacy shared within the Trinity.

Over time, that choosing spills beyond the bedroom into every place a couple goes.

The covenant shapes speech. How you forgive.

It makes vulnerability and awkwardness sacred. No one is leaving. No one is performing. It transforms the sexual energies of youth into dances with an oxygen tank dragging behind you and fills rooms with embarrassed grandkids laughing, warmed by the intensity of love.

Mature sexual energy is not frantic. It is focused.

Ravenous appetites give way to a more refined palate that delights in the full spectrum of human intimacy, with physical union as the result of life together, not the foundation of it.

Covenant never asks, “What can I take?” but “How can I give myself?”

In covenantal union, sexual energy becomes more than sex. It becomes strength. Playfulness. Tender authority. A steady pulse of affection that outlasts hormones and survives hospital rooms.

Sex is a spark. Covenant is the structure in which relational intimacy becomes an inferno.

And this is where the broader biblical vision comes into focus.

We’ve been exploring the fire-breathing dragon of lust in the human heart.

From the prophets, to Jesus, to the dragon slayers of the desert, the testimony is consistent: containment is the only way sexual desire can be rightly ordered.

Sex is nuclear.

Unleashed and uncontained, it destroys cities.
Controlled and contained, it heats them.

The world imagines freedom means removing walls. Nuclear physics teaches the opposite. The greater the energy, the stronger the containment must be.

Within the biblical framework, the only safe and generative place for that power is lifelong covenant union between one man and one woman.

So strong is the heat and glory of sexual desire within marriage that the New Testament names anything outside of it as porneia, sexual immorality. Not because Scripture is prudish, but because it is protective. The boundaries are not restrictions of joy; they are the conditions for it.

In a sex-obsessed culture, this sounds ludicrous, even impossible.

The questions I’m asked by modern people in my church when first exposed to such teaching are: What about oral sex? What about masturbation? What about heavy making out?

These are important and fair questions. But they are usually driven by the wrong instinct.

How close to the flame can I get without getting burned?

Jesus answers differently.

Stay back until you are standing inside the fire, held to the flames by vow and promise.

Vows absorb the excess volatility of impulse. Faithfulness slows the frantic rush for new stimulation. Shared rhythms of life—conversation, forgiveness, prayer, sacrifice—cool and stabilize the heat. Marriage becomes the steel vessel capable of holding the pressure of passion without cracking. The thick concrete of commitment through sickness and health, poverty and wealth.

But not everyone stands inside that structure.

Stewarding The Fires of Singleness

The fire burns in our biology, whether married or not. The heat is no less real. The question does not disappear with the absence of vows—it intensifies.

What does it look like to build a life that can hold this kind of power without the containment of marriage? What does it mean to construct a reactor without vows?

For many in my life, this is not theoretical, this is physiology aflame. I pastor a church where nearly half the room is young and single, or dating but not yet married. Hormones are humming. Attraction creates irresistible gravity fields across the room.

And the question presses: What am I supposed to do with all of this?

I feel like I’m going to explode.

The Christian tradition does not leave that question unanswered.

Both modern psychology and ancient theology offer a vision for how sexual energy can be directed, even in celibacy, in ways that generate warmth and life rather than fragmentation and harm.

Let’s start with psychology.

The transformative power of modern psychology lies in its ability to take us beneath our surface desires and into the deeper layers that drive them. Since the inception of psychological investigation, careful observers of the human condition have discerned patterns, tracing the internal currents that give rise to our external behaviors.

What feels immediate and urgent is merely waves on the surface of a very deep ocean. Beneath it are longings for connection, affirmation, relief, power, comfort. To engage desire at that level is not to suppress it, but to understand it, and in understanding it, to begin redirecting it.

These insights are not merely clinical tools for the unmarried or techniques for managing celibacy. They are wise guides for anyone seeking to live with integrity of desire. Singles learn to hold and channel their longings without fracture. Married couples learn to remain faithful not only in body, but in attention, imagination, and affection.

The work is the same: not the elimination of desire, but its direction and formation.

Learning Our Sexual Story

One of the best books on this theme is Jay Stringer’s Unwanted.¹

Stringer reframes unwanted sexual behavior not primarily as a failure of willpower, but as a map of deeper, unexamined desire. Drawing on research and thousands of personal stories, he argues that our sexual struggles are rarely random. They are shaped by our histories—family dynamics, wounds, unmet longings, moments of shame, early experiences that unconsciously script what we find compelling. What we label as “unwanted” often reveals where we are still seeking comfort, power, connection, or escape.

Years ago, this kind of self-examination opened new horizons of understanding and healing for me.

My sexual formation, like that of many young men, began early and was shaped by a constant stream of pornography and the objectification of women. I was experimenting by twelve, fully sexually active by fifteen.

I carried no illusion that this lust-filled life would simply disappear when I became a Christian and married my wife at twenty-four.

What I carried instead was fear and shame. Fear that I would objectify someone I loved in ways I never thought possible. Fear that my neural pathways were so inflamed I would never be free from second glances and compulsive fantasies. Shame over the ways my desires had been distorted and the pain I had caused in others—and in myself.

In prayer, I began to examine my sexual history. Not just the behaviors, but the why beneath them. At the surface was the biology and unchecked patterns of a teenage boy and the dopamine rewards of pornography. But underneath, as I kept asking, why these things?, I began to uncover a soul in disrepair, desperate for control and contact.

I was pursuing intimacy through false forms of contact.

While that epiphany was clarifying, the other drivers I discovered were shocking to me. My sexual behavior was motivated by power and control.

Not domination or harm, but something more subtle. My inner world found a sense of stability through sexual pursuit. Sex places human beings in their most vulnerable state. If I could be the initiator, the pursuer, the one in control, then my fractured soul could experience brief—though false—moments of security.

And suddenly, it made sense.

My prayers began to change.

From: “God, just take this lust away from me.”

To: “Lord, where am I lonely and in need of real connection? Meet me there.” “Lord, where do I feel out of control, uncertain, or insecure? Be my stability. Be my security. I trust you.”

This practice has not erased the misdirected formation of my youth. But through growing self-awareness, I can now discern what is happening beneath the surface. And in that awareness, I am able to offer my sexual self more honestly to God for the sake of healing.

Whether single or married, the invitation is the same: do not suppress desire—become curious about it.

The path to transformation is not white-knuckled avoidance, but honest exploration. Trace the patterns. Name the underlying stories. Bring those places into the light of relationship with God and others.

Sexual brokenness, in that sense, becomes a doorway.

When engaged rightly, it leads not merely to behavioral change, but to deeper healing, greater self-awareness, and a reordering of desire toward love, integrity, and true intimacy.

Beautiful Barriers and Consecrated Conduits

This inward work acknowledges weaknesses and intentionally avoids that which inflames sexual desire unnecessarily while channeling those energies productively.

The Christian tradition has never been naïve about desire. From the desert monks to modern therapists, the consensus is clear: what you repeatedly expose yourself to, you will eventually desire. And what you desire, you will move toward.

So we begin with restraint.

This is very practical.

Turn from the second glance, without punishing yourself, and then offer a simple prayer for the person and for your soul.

Take custody of your attention.

You’re not an animal driven by instinct but an image bearer whose deepest impulse is the protection of the other. Where your mind goes, your body will follow. Interrupt fantasy early. Not with panic, but with redirection. Bring your attention back into your body, your breath, your present moment before God.

Turn off your phone.

What I mean is strip it down to absolutely nothing. Take off web browsers. Take off all apps. Anything and everything where there is access to temptation. The modern age has deceived us into believing we can’t exist without these types of connections. I argue these “connections” are killing our existence.

Put any and every kind of filter available on you computer. Appoint people you’d be embarrassed to the point of devastation to see what you’re seeing.

Not your buddy.

Your mom.

I cannot access anything without a code on my Iphone that only my wife has. Is this a pain sometimes when traveling. Of course. We use a filter that allows her to see where I have been on my computer.²

What I know is that my willpower in certain season has been like a house of cards in a hurricane. An impenetrable structure stands in the way of weak flesh, no matter how willing the Spirit is.

Dan, that’s so extreme.

Honestly friend, if my humble admonitions are extreme then Jesus is going to terrify you.

“But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” (Matthew 5:28–30, NIV)

Jesus wasn’t kidding around with this fire. He understood that hellfire burned under the surface and said what needed to be said, in the way it needed to be said, to save us.

Yes, but Dan, even with all these guards the sin remains in the heart.

True.

That’s why we flee.

Joseph didn’t hang around with Potipher’s wife trying to reason with her. David’s legacy would have been very different he had closed the blinds and bowed in prayer instead.

This is sober mindedness and humility in the face of a lion.

It’s not all blockades and barriers. Channeling sexual energy through consecrated conduits is the goal.

The celibate traditions are a rich repository of wisdom. They channeled their sexual energies towards non-sexual intimacy. Those who practice life-long chastity have always insisted on this: chastity is not the absence of passion, but its transformation. The monk does not become less alive; he becomes differently alive. The priest does not renounce love; he widens it.

Giving one’s time to serving the poor and tending to tasks within the church community build intimacy with humans that is deeply satisfying.

Limit isolation.

Sexual temptation thrives in secrecy and idleness. Structure your life with presence—friendship, community, shared rhythms. The monks were relentless here: stability of place, stability of people. Friendship is one of the most overlooked channels of sexual energy. To be known, to laugh, to share life—these meet real needs that lust often counterfeits. You do not drift into holiness alone; you develop it in the midst of others.

As we do with gluttony, we do with sexual hunger.

Order your body.

Eat well.

Nourish your biology and give your brain a chance to put the brakes on.

Fast for the sake of submitting all the appetites of the body unto holy dependence.

Sleep.

Sleep and diet are not peripheral to sexuality; they are deeply connected. A fatigued, undisciplined body is far more susceptible to disordered desire.

The desert fathers often emphasized manual labor not as punishment, but as grounding. Energy must go somewhere.

Workout.

Expend the energy.

Create.

Engage meaningful work. Sexual energy is creative energy. When it is not given expression in love, it will look for expression elsewhere. Pour it into building, creating, leading. Sex is generative. Make something beautiful.

The dragon of sexual desire can devour, or be directed towards God and others for the greater good of all.

I close with Jesus.

Jesus of Nazareth was not less sexual because he never married and remained a virgin his entire life. He was fully human, carrying the same embodied energy we do. But in him that energy was wholly integrated, entirely given over to the love of God and the service of others.

His life did not lack.

It overflowed with astonishing fruitfulness and profound intimacy.

He multiplied life not biologically, but spiritually.

He generated communities, disciples, movements. He poured himself out in a way that made others come alive.

Be Loved Unconditionally and Forever Forgiven

The same Jesus who said, “Gouge it out and cut it off,” offers mercy beyond comprehension. He is the God who forgives seventy times seven. Even at the four hundred and ninetieth failure, he remains, offering forgiveness without end.

It is only through this love, through this constant and unconditional acceptance of our souls, that our bodies, nervous systems, and spirits begin to settle into stability. There, God reconstitutes purity and holiness, mysteriously and supernaturally, through his presence and the Holy Spirit.

Every temptation becomes an invitation to deeper trust and surrender.

Every failure becomes a doorway back into forgiveness.

Our whole life is held in perfect love. Therefore there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. This is the ground of purity. This is the only way the dragon of sexual desire is slain not by repression, but by covenant, its fire redirected toward union and intimacy with God and others.

This is the invitation.

Not to extinguish the fire.

Not to be consumed by it.

But to become the kind of person in whom that fire becomes love given away for the life of the world.

1. Jay Stringer, Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2018).

2. Covenant Eyes, “Accountability Software for Screen Accountability and Filtering”

Covenant Eyes provides screen monitoring and accountability tools designed to help individuals avoid pornography and build healthier digital habits through shared visibility and trusted relationships.