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You may have an inkling, but I bet you’ll be surprised by my guest Sharon Jaynes (sharonjaynes.com) and the interesting topics we dig into to help others understand in what ways the Song of Solomon was speaking about intimacy between husband and wife.

(Hint hint, they’re not talking about the farmer’s market). 🙂

Sharon Jaynes has authored over 20 books and is passionate about women walking confidently and freely in their God-given calling. She loves marriages and seeks for women to be free in intimacy as well as love their husband through prayer. Sharon and I had a lot of fun talking about how the Bible specifically gives us the green-light to do far more in sex than most Christians realize. Listen in!

Be sure to get Sharon’s new book: Lovestruck: Discovering God’s Design for Romance, Marriage, and Sexual Intimacy from the Song of Solomon to find out even more!

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A couple of free resources I mentioned on the podcast that I’d love to offer you:

transcript

 

0:02
Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. You’re joining me belah rose as I dive deep into the beauty, power and truth about intimacy, learn not only the practicals, but the heart behind what making love is all about. delight your marriage. Hi there, I hope you’re doing well. This is belah rose. Thanks for joining. So, I have a really great show for you, I’ve got an interview with a woman who really dives into the Bible and what it says about intimacy in that beautiful book, The Song of Solomon, so I’m excited to talk to share in jeans. And before we dive in, if you are a wife, I have a free something for you. I would love to give you my eight secrets to stay present in intimacy. If you’re anything like me, there are times that despite your best efforts, your mind wanders away, away in the midst of the act. And so these are some really easy tips to stay present and kind of bring back to you actually enjoying and having a good time. And then if you’re a husband, who’s listening, I have something for you as well that you can get the PDF for the seven blocks to her libido to really figure out what’s what’s stopping her. So if you’re a husband, you go to www dot delight your marriage.com/seven blocks BL o CK s. So it’s just the number seven and blocks. And if you’re a wife who wants the eight secrets to staying present, go to www dot delight your marriage.com/present pr e s e n t

2:02
Awesome. Well, welcome back to like your marriage listener. This is belah rose. And I am so excited because I have Sharon Jane’s on Welcome, Sharon.

2:11
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

2:13
Oh, you’re so welcome. And I’m so yeah, so we’re going to be talking about not only are you an author of your new book, lovestruck. But you’re also an author of many other books. And it sounds like you know, I want to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself, but what is basically your your major passion here. And, and yeah, a little bit of introduction.

2:36
Well, thanks. Well, this love strat was book number 24, I think, oh my gosh, yeah. And it’s kind of it’s it was a different book to write my, I think my biggest passion and working with women is helping them understand their identity in Christ, learning how to live fully and free and understand their true identity as a child of God and leaving the past behind. So a couple of my titles are enough silence in the loss is still your confidence. So again, that’s big on identity. Another one is take hold of the faith you longed for with let go move forward, lift, bold, so you can get this kind of suit that theme of letting go of everything that holds us back and moving forward to everything that God has for us. But I also have a passion for marriage. So it’s kind of like two different compartments there. And with marriage, I’ve written praying for your husband from head to toe. So I’m learning how to pray scripture that covers him from what he thinks about to the places he walks. So the 14 day romance challenge was just a little book on how to kind of stoke that fire again. And then another one on marriage is called becoming the woman of his dreams. And that was that that’s kind of an older book. But lovestruck is the newest marriage book. So I love talking about marriage. And I love studying the Bible. So those things got married. Writing, lovestruck Oh, that’s

4:04
so exciting. So excited. So really focused on women feeling fully living fully and free. And I love that because obviously on the delight your marriage podcast, we talked so often about intimacy in marriage, and freedom and intimacy. And I think that would be really interesting to hear. Maybe your journey in that area, or how you help women in becoming free in intimacy given that they can rely on the Bible for that freedom,

4:39
right? If you knew that was in the Bible, right. The cool thing about the Song of Solomon is that we’ve got these marriage verses are kind of sprinkled throughout the Bible, you know, a lot of them in the New Testament, but the Song of Solomon is eight chapters that are just concentrated on marriage and a lot most of that own sexual MMC so we’ve got that one nugget of gold right there. But the problem is most of us don’t even know what in the world he’s talking about. I mean, what’s this with the palm tree, you know, really important isn’t anything to do with it, so that we’re gonna get into that. So that’s about digging into what the Scriptures really saying. But for my own life, I’m balustrade raised in a really rough home environment. My parents fought all the time, they argued all the time, there was a lot of violence in my home where my dad would get drunk and hit my mom, she’d hit him back. And so that’s what I grow up seeing the marriage in my home. And what’s so amazing about that this is not in the book, but I was helping, I was looking for a pin and one of my mom’s junk drawers. And I came across this little records. And back in back in the day, during the Korean War, and even World War Two, they soldiers would make these little records that they would send home. And I found this little record from the Korean War that my dad had sent my mom. And I pulled it out. And I listened to that. And it was, it was the first year of marriage, he was off at war. And he was saying how much you loved her and he missed her and her his voice was cracking because there was so much emotion in it. And I held that thing. And I thought how in the world did this happen? How did a marriage that started out like this with the man overwhelmed with emotion? For love for this woman? How did it turn out to be what I ended up growing up with? To being such awful marriage with with, like I said, the violets now on there was my dad was into pornography and just saying things that kids should never see. How did that marriage become that? So I had, I had that to look at. Also, I had my husband’s parents to look at now. They they were married 65 years, I think. And he’s had the most precious loving marriage. And back to the war time. After they both passed away some things we got rid of some wood just put in my attic and said, Well, I’ll deal with it later. And one of the things I pulled out right before right, lovestruck was a box of letters that Mr. James had written to his girlfriend who became his wife, two and a half years worth of love letters.

7:25
Oh my God, that’s precious. I mean,

7:28
I ended up taking all those letters. And my other sister in law worked with me, and we made them into books. So it’s just volumes. They’re about as big as the New York City telephone book, but to buy if I wanted to have all these letters that he wrote to her and it, it’s a little bit of history, and it’s a glimpse into wartime. But it also just shows that love that he had, and they were 19. So think about a 19 year old writing these letters, and then getting married. But I thought those two examples there. And plus a came this is a whole nother story for a whole nother day. But I became a Christian to a woman in my neighborhood when I was 14. And both of my parents ended up coming to Christ. But that’s what not what I grew up with. And I did get to see what a Christian marriage looked like when I was a teenager, saying this other family who just really loved the Lord. So anyways, when I got married, I’ve learned to make sure that I had a good marriage. Yeah. And I remember sitting in the Brad group, the Brad remember the Brad room if you had a traditional marriage where you sit before you go, and I was remember thinking about how happy I was, and other people I love are in one place. And I just love Steve man of my dreams. You know, what a wonderful man, all that. And then I had this terrible thought. And I thought, well, doesn’t every bride feel that way on her wedding day? I mean, who goes into a wedding thinking, Boy, I hope this works out. You know, you just don’t have that thought. So I thought what’s what’s the difference between how I feel right now, and how almost every bride feels. And I made a decision that at that moment, I was going to do everything I could to have a great marriage. But Bella, I found out it didn’t take too long, that I don’t have it within my power to have a great marriage. I mean, I can do the steps and do what I need to do. But I need God to help me do that. Yeah, that’s where I became a woman of prayer, who learned how to pray for her husband and her marriage. And that’s kind of where praying for your husband from head to toe for that book kind of was birth, after 37 years of praying for my husband that way and helping other women pray. But part of the reason that what I see in marriages, the whole sexual part of marriage is in trouble. Yeah, it just is. And and, you know, when I first started writing the book, I honestly had in mind, the person who had been married for a while that, you know, he just kind of fizzled out. But as I started writing the book and And as I started interviewing people and talking to more young people, it’s a problem with people who haven’t been married very long at all. Yeah, so it’s just a problem across the board. A lot of it is because of what what people are saying on television. And in the movies, they’ve got a certain expectation of what sex is going to be like. Another reason is that, so many people are coming into marriages already have haven’t sex a lot with different people, or they have already had sex with the person they’re married, marrying. So that changes the dynamic of what they’re taking into marriage. So, you know, often say that sex is a gift from God, that can so easily be turned into baggage. It just depends on when and how you open the box. So what I see is, sex has become baggage. For some people coming into marriage. I remember being on an airplane and there was this guy, I guess he was about 25, sitting beside me on the plane moving the back row, the last seat in the corner. And so he was so polite, and just love to chat and, and he said, What do you do? And I said, Well, I’m an author. And he said, Then he said, What are you working on? And so you know, I just, I know what turned beet red. And I said, took a deep breath and said, well, actually, I’m writing a book, I’m on sex, based on the Song of Solomon, from the Bible. And it didn’t bother him at all. He said, I’m so glad you’re writing about that. My generation is so confused about sex, that the term our friends get married, they’ve already had sex so much, it’s lost, its meaning it doesn’t have the specialness. We need someone to tell us how to do it, right. And I’m like, oh, that’s bluffing at that response. But it’s awesome. But you know, that’s a young person here. And so it’s just a problem across the board. I mean, pornography. The industry in the pornography industry makes more money per year than the NFL, the NBA, and the Basketball League have it together. So that in itself is one problem.

12:21
Yeah, no, it’s true. It’s huge. So let’s dive into that the Song of Solomon, um, here’s what I’m imagining in my head. A woman who’s married, who believes that, you know, she, she’s got her Bible disciplines, she’s got her, her prayer discipline, she’s got, you know, she’s a wonderful mother, and she’s very active in church, and she’s very active in lots of different activities. That’s who I want to imagine. And I want to imagine talking to her about what is in the Bible about sex. Okay, specifically Song of Solomon, can you like, dial in on the verses, and I would

13:10
be happy to jump in. One thing I want to say is, we can start in Genesis with that. Because if I want, I want us to imagine that we are an angel, maybe watching God, create man, and watching God create woman. Now, if you think about all that God put into both man and woman, for the pleasure of sex, that has nothing to do with creating a baby, nothing to do with it. I mean, you know what I’m saying? I don’t want to get I mean, you know, I’m not gonna go and say the words. But you know, there’s, there’s the saying the egg, that’s all you need to create a baby. But think about the physiology of what God put in both man and woman so that sex is enjoyable. Okay, that right there tells you that this is something holy, that God created for a reason. So this is God, this is all God’s idea. And it was his gift to a husband and a wife. Now with almost every gift, He’s given us the world of flesh, the devil has corrupted it, but go back and put yourself in the garden when God is creating it, and then even go this far to think about God explaining to the angels how all that works, huh? Isn’t that a cool picture? You know, this is something that’s God ordained. It’s nothing dirty about it. This is God’s gift to us. So let’s go over to the Song of Solomon. Now, I want to I want to talk about the elephant in the room. Before we hit this, because I know somebody is thinking already. Hey, wait a minute. In Solomon, the guy that had all those wives and concubines so What’s the deal with that? Well, yes, he is. No, we’re not absolutely sure that Solomon wrote the book, I think I think he did. But here’s the thing. God made sure that this book was in the Bible, regardless of how Solomon turned out. And he started out well, he did not finish well. Right? There are a lot of strong people of God that we know, have experienced the same thing. But they start well, and they don’t end well. And think about that, that even the wisest man of the Bible, the Bible says that, why is this man in the Bible did not end well. So we need to just keep that in check for ourselves. But regardless of what he did,

15:39
and in my ad, the power of sex was the thing that brought him away. That’s what made him stray was women and their gods, the power of sex is that powerful for your husband?

15:53
It is that powerful. Now some of those women, he required, this is kind of a sad note, but some of those women he acquired because of making treaties with other nations. So he might not have known who those women were, hey, equator, every time he would make a treaty with a nation, they would give him a wife, you know, give him one of their daughters, that kind of thing. But with, with all those different people, you know that that was going on. But regardless of that, God made sure that this book was in the Bible for a reason. You know, marriage is very important to get it started. The Bible starts with marriage is with marriage. It’s the marriage of Jesus Christ and the church, Jesus first miracle, or was it at a wedding. So then right in the middle of the Bible, you’ve got this one, eight chapters on the relationship between a man and a woman. Now the first two chapters of the Song of Solomon, I call those the dating phase. This is where and listen to this bell. This is so cool. But first of all the words that says Song of Songs, or the Song of Solomon depends on which translation, but Song of Songs is like saying, the King of kings or Lord of lords. When we say the King of kings, or Lord of lords, what that means in the Bible is, he is the King of all kings. He is the Lord of all words. So when we say the Song of Songs, this is like, this is the best song of all. husband and a wife. So there’s that. And it begins with the woman saying, kiss me and kiss me again. Or some verses say, kiss me with the kisses of your mouth. So there’s no warm up. It’s just a woman who is expressing that. So that is another thing that’s really cool about the song Assam, it’s really about the woman more than it is the man. So she is very excited. We don’t know when she met him, I would think most likely she was working in the fields with her brothers. This is what we’ve learned later on working in the fields with her brothers, and land, that was what we would call rented from the King. So they’ve got their land, they’re working, somehow they meet each other, maybe he’s looking over the land or whatever. And she just falls head over heels for him. But the cool thing is, he falls head over heels for her to so in the conversation that we see going back and forth forth. In chapter one. They’re just admiring each other and she’s admiring his body. He’s admiring her body. She does say that his name is like oil poured out, which is like saying, I’m talking about his name is more like his character. And she’s talking about his character as well. And no wonder the other women love you. But But she does compliment his body. And he complements her. And that’s one of the end it sounds like they might be getting together a little bit more romantically than they really are. Some of it is them thinking about it. They’re dreaming about it. And let me ask you this, before you got married before you were with your husband, and that way, did you not think about it? Yeah. I thought about it. A lot. No, the thing is, little fun fact, Steve and I only dated three and a half months before we got engaged, or that we we got married six months later, and that was 39 years ago. So just saying but but I did think about it. You know, I couldn’t wait for that to happen. And we see that going on in the first two chapters. They are both thinking about it. There’s a lot of comparison Bella in the Song of Solomon. With with fruit and produce. There’s talks about pomegranates that your cheeks are like pomegranates, and now pomegranates back in that culture was a fruit for infertility. If you think not just the Hebrew culture, but in the Egyptian culture, it was just kind of a cultural thing, period. It has a lot of seeds in it. And that’s they compare pomegranates to fertility and to love you can even look into some old Egyptian art work, and you can see them handing someone a pomegranate, or Mandrake, that is another aphrodisiac kind of plant. You could get back and read and remember, when there was Leah and Rachel, Rachel couldn’t have children and, and, um, Leah was and Rachel asks Leah for her mandrakes. So what she was asking for whatever you got, give me that. That so anyway, anytime you read about fruit, and the Song of Solomon, it is referring to something sexual,

20:54
even palm trees. You know, it’s so funny going back and reading some of the old ancient scholars when I was doing this study, they were really uncomfortable with talking about the sign of Solomon from a literal perspective, they were much more comfortable talking about the Song of Solomon as an allegory of Christ in the church. You can you can look for Christ. In every book of the Bible, he is in every book of the Bible, and certainly we can read it that way. But I don’t think that’s what God that’s not the original talent. For example, there’s one verse after they are married, where the man says to the woman, and I refer to her as the Shulamite says to her, your stature is like a palm tree, your breasts are like fruit, I will cop climb that palm tree and take hold of this fruit. Now that is allegorical. Even one of the guests said that he thought that the pomp that the palms, the breasts, were referring to the older New Testament. And like, really well, first of all, New Testaments not written yet. And he is not talking about taking hold of the old New Testament, he’s talking about taking home press says.

22:18
I have to add here because I think sex is so deep, and so much, there’s a reason our society is so obsessed with it, that I think God has so much more mystery around. So I think there’s just, we could probably go on for hours. A day is going back and forth about the depth and the neat things that God and how there’s metaphors and all sorts of things, kind of like you said, in every book of the Bible. And in all of creation, we can see, you know, God’s glory and His goodness. So I don’t want to take that and say that it’s not possibly, you know, because God is bigger than our perceptions of any of these things. But I do love that you’re saying this is also definitely talking about sex? We are not. There’s no

23:11
Yeah, I was on a doing a radio program with family life. And I’m someone there mentioned that they went out in grid that verse they did a man on the street video and read that verse to people on the street. So where do you think that comes from? And they were like, the book, Twilight, or, you know, that that was in the Bible. You know, I know our time is short. And I want to I want to bring up one thing that I think is so important in the Song of Solomon. In chapter two, the man, he’s bouncing over the hills that he’s, he’s going to where she is, he wants to see her. And he wants to have a conversation with her. And she’s hiding behind the cliffs of the rock and, and say she’s been talking about all this for two chapters. And now all of a sudden, she’s getting shy. Some people think this is maybe when he proposed, it doesn’t really tell us that in scripture. But one thing he says Solomon says, he says, catch for us the little foxes, no little foxes or anything. These were people who, who had vineyards, and Little Foxes could come in and eat the fruit and ruin a crop. And they particularly like the young grapes. So when he’s praying catch for us, the little foxes that can come in and ruin the vineyard. First of all, who was he talking to? He’s saying catch for us. So I think he’s praying. He’s not talking to her. He’s not talking about himself. He’s I think he’s praying and asking God to show us anything that could come in and destroy the preciousness, the holiness, the the wonderful aspects of our marriage. That is what he prays that as we move along, in chapters three and four, we see that they do get married. It’s a wonderful, wonderful procession. And we see that God’s in it as the smoke is coming at the beginning, which is a representation of God going before them. They get married mother loves it, his mother makes them a crown special crown for the wedding day. And then the next chapter, they have the honeymoon. And God allows us to stand on tip toe, and to watch or listen to what’s going on. I mean, you’re going to read and you’re going to see it up the honeymoon and how one thing she says about herself. She says, I’m the Rose of Sharon in chapter two. And it sounds like she might be thinking well of herself. But the Rose of Sharon was a common Desert Flower and like a dandelion we would consider, and she felt badly about her parents. She didn’t think she was pretty she thought she was ready Burnt by the Sun. So what a Solomon do on the honeymoon night, he praises her appearance from head to toe. So one thing I say is he touches her with his words before he touches her with his hands. And they have a wonderful honeymoon. Absolutely amazing. Next chapter, he comes knocking many times the king wouldn’t live in the same have the same bedroom comes knocking at her door. And she says no thanks, not interested. And she doesn’t go when he comes to knock on the door. Okay, let’s get back catch for us a little foxes, anything that can destroy our marriage. Then we get into the middle of the book after the honeymoon after the passionate night. She’s just not interested anymore. Her her passion cools, and he leaves. She ends up her friends. There’s three characters. There’s the man, the woman in the France, I call them the backup singers. Her friends say to her, Hey, what do you love about that guy in the first place? Tell me about what you love to better remember. And I say remember return. She remembers she goes to him. They make up. They have makeup six, just saying. And they’re back there again. Okay. Can’t trust the little foxes, the little fox, I think then the one of the biggest little foxes in marriage is apathy. And that can be sexual, it can be in a lot of different areas of our life. Being apathetic towards your husband, I think is one of the things that can destroy marriage. And then finally, at the very end of the book, she goes seeking for him. He said, he’s at work in the field. And she goes seeking him and she says couple of ways. Let’s get away for a while. Let’s go to the villages like we used to. She said, I’ll give you that old fruit that you have always loved, not the farmer’s market.

27:33
I’ve got some other tricks up my sleeve. Really. That’s what it says read your bibles exciting. That is in chapter seven. So I want to I want to kind of close out with that thought that that is one of the major themes that we see is that he prayed catch first a little foxes, be careful, anything that can destroy your marriage. In the middle of book after the honeymoon, we see that Fox of apathy coming in and destroy it. And then at the end of the book, she shows us how to avoid that by being intentional. We have to be so intentional with our marriages and belah. I know you tell people that all the time. We cannot expect to just have a good marriage on its own. It doesn’t matter if you’re both Christians. I don’t I take that back. It does matter if you’re both Crusher, have two Christians that do not have a great marriage. They can kind of settle into an apathetic state of well, this is what I got. So I’m gonna stick with it. That’s not God’s intention, either. Yes, he wants to stick with it, but he don’t want to, he doesn’t want us to just get through it. He wants us to celebrate our marriages and have that 65th anniversary like my in laws do and, and make sure it’s the best that it can be.

28:47
Oh, I love it. I love it. This is exciting. Well, clearly Sharon, you have got so much more wisdom and insight into this book, then we could clearly capture this conversation. So I’m excited to you know, to to point everyone to love struck. And that’s on Amazon and they can find it there or

29:10
they can find it on Amazon CBD. My website is Sharon Jane’s dot com and Jane’s it’s kind of a strange name. It’s J A y n e s Sharon Jane’s dot com. Also have a Companion Bible study guide. And that’s on Amazon as well as my website to those are the only two places where you can get the Bible Study Guide is my website and Amazon, but it’s a great book for brave women who want to dig into God’s word and see what he has to say about sexual intimacy in marriage.

29:43
I love it. I love it. Um, you know, I have one question I forgot I was gonna ask you I have read and this wasn’t like backed up necessarily when I read it so I’m curious your your take on it and if you have resources better but um, that the Words were actually at the time like the produce words. At the time. Were slang words for those things. Like, for example, right now, in our society we have slang words for sex. But at that time those types of words were actually slang. Do you think that’s true?

30:18
I don’t know I hit that’s a that’s an incredible thought. I mean it very well could have been slang words, whether slang or not. They knew what they were talking about. We have to figure it out. We have Yeah. Know what they mean. But when she’s holding up a Mandrake, he didn’t have thing. What does she symbolizing with that? You know, he knew exactly what it was it was very common language, not just with it, again, not just within the Hebrew culture, but the entire culture at the time. We see it in Egyptian art, we see it lots of places of where it occurred during that time. So I’ve never thought about it as slang. But it was certainly common. And okay. understood it. Yeah. Yeah.

31:03
Awesome. Well, and awesome. This is this is exciting. I mean, there’s so much more obviously. So we’ll have to have you back on and talk more. So this is up? Would you be willing to do a quick prayer for the listener, to our left to

31:20
Lord, we thank you so much that we can just visit with each other, through the internet. And we can listen and watch. And we thank you for this new medium that you’ve given us in these days. Lord, I thank you for the women and the men who will be listening to this podcast. And, Lord, we are so thankful the way that you have created our bodies the way you have set up marriage for to to become one and every aspect from not just physically but emotionally and spiritually. Lord, I pray for the women that are listening today they are discouraged about their marriage, Lord, even ones that maybe are desperately praying for their marriage. And, and I don’t mean this jokingly, but you have said that faith without works is dead. And, Lord, help us all to say that as we’re praying for our marriages, what we actually need doing, to honor our husbands to honor our marriage. And, Lord, I pray for that woman now who feels like the only choice she has is duty, or, or love, and there’s not an in between. And I pray that we will all see that fulfilling this need in our husbands is an act of love. It’s a way to honor you, Lord, because we are honoring our husbands in a way that only we can in a way that you’ve created us to what are pray for the physical relationships of the women and the men that are listening, that they will see this as a gift from you that you have given a husband and a wife to enjoy. And that will be a good part of their marriage. In Jesus name we pray, amen.

32:59
Amen. Thank you sharing this has been wonderful. Welcome. Yes. Okay, so sharing jas.com, I encourage everyone to go to And if you’d like any other of the link, she mentioned, I’m happy to have those links on my show notes. But yeah, pick up love stripe, this is awesome.

33:19
Here’s another link, I’d love for you to share. On Facebook, I have something called the praying Wives Club. So if you go to Facebook, slash the praying Wives Club, that is a place for women. I post a prayer every day. And you can read that prayer is a scriptural prayer and share it with friends. And you can also post prayer requests about your marriage. Awesome.

33:42
Awesome. Awesome. Okay, thank you, Sharon. And I hope that that has piqued your interest, dear listener, about what the Bible does say about intimacy and how God did in fact design it for you and for your spouse. So thank you for joining. And again, if you’re a wife like me, who sometimes has trouble knowing how to keep your mind in the game, I want to invite you to go to delight your marriage.com/present p r e s, e n t. And for men, if you’re wondering what’s keeping her from having a libido, whether it’s a low libido or seems like none at all, you can go to delight your marriage.com/seven blocks BL o CK s. And these are really the ones that after working with men and women separately, and in groups, I really see this over and over and over again that I wish men understood and their wives would feel much more free in intimacy. Well, God bless you. Thank you so much for joining me today. And I look forward to speaking with you next Thursday. Bye

 

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