Directors of Christian ‘healthy sexuality' ministry share how they overcame struggles with intimacy
After overcoming struggles with sexual intimacy in their own marriage, a Christian couple that runs a company promoting “healthy sexuality” has shared how believers can have a healthy and fulfilling sex life.
Cole and Cait Zick are the directors of Moral Revolution, an organization that seeks to redefine healthy sexuality. The couple participated in a November edition of the “Let’s Talk Purity Podcast” podcast in which they break down “God’s design for sex” and how couples can work through issues of sexual intimacy within their marriages.
The couple said their story started “not great” as far as sex was concerned. But eventually, they were able to find a sexual connection more easily.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
“In the beginning of our marriage, [sex] was such a struggle. We weren’t enjoying it. We weren’t on the same page. I had stuff from past traumas coming up that was really hindering us,” Cait Zick shared.
“I feel like we fight for connection, but if the sex bonding and intimacy isn’t there, then that causes its own things, and it’s like: ‘Oh man, is there rejection?’ There’s frustration. There’s all these other layers that come in,” she added.
The couple struggled with sexual intimacy for several few years, she said, before they developed a mantra: When it comes to their sex life, “they will never settle for less than God’s best.”
“And so what that looked like was us having to pursue counseling and Googling Christian sex therapist while I’m crying tears and thinking, ‘What’s wrong with me?’” she recounted. “Going through 18 months of counseling, fighting for total health and freedom in my own mind and in my own body so that I could allow my body to enjoy sex, I was refusing to settle for less.”
Despite their research and undergoing couples therapy, years later, similar issues arose in their relationship involving struggles with sexual intimacy. At that point, Cait Zick said, she was discouraged and confused.
“Again, I won’t settle for less, so I went to counseling again and I had conversations with friends, and we continued to be committed to talking about it and not just saying: ‘Oh well, this is what it is. This is our lot in our sex life. We’re stuck here,’” she recalled.
Cole Zick remembered going on a pastoral retreat with his wife. There, the two of them approached their senior pastors, asking to talk with them. In response, the pastors invited them to dinner.
“At the dinner, we said: ‘Sex is awful. We don’t know what to do. We’re not having good sex. We don’t feel connected. Can you help us?’” Cole Zick recalled. “Both of us were like: ‘I would rather have an embarrassing conversation than a painful divorce. I would rather uncomfortably go to some really deep and vulnerable places than to have this thing fall apart.’”
Now, after years of seeking help, the two said, sexual intimacy in their relationship is thriving.
“It’s like we know how to communicate. We know how to honor each other and respect each other because we never settled for less,” Cole Zick said. “We always went after the tough vulnerable conversations that ultimately led to where we’re at.”
Cait Zick said she and her husband will always pursue growth, health and physical healing.
“Whatever it takes so that we can stay connected and bonded in our sex life,” Cait Zick continued.
“It takes having the tough conversations. … If you don’t have the tough conversations, secrets will begin to thrive,” Cole Zick emphasized.
The couple agreed that “God has designed sex to be a powerful bonding agent inside of a covenant marriage.”
“We exist to tell the world a better story about sex,” said Cait Zick, referring to the couple’s Moral Revolution website. “The website is all about God’s design for sexuality and trying to restore our perspective to His intention. We have [information on this topic] for marriages, parents, pastors, singles and college and high school-aged students.”
Cole Zick directed listeners to what he said is “God’s mission statement for marriage” in Matthew 19:6. The verse reads: “The husband will leave his father and mother, will cling to his wife and what I bring together, let no one separate.”
Cole Zick said that explaining God’s design for sex is not easy to define in one statement because the way marriages happen in the Bible differed from how marriages happen today.
“A lot of people have dated four, five, six, different people before they got married. In Bible times, it was, ‘I think she’s hot, I want to marry her,’ and I’m married in 48 hours,” he explained. “You have to understand too, it wasn’t like there was this very clear sex talk in Scripture.”
“And there was even some cultural movement, where at different times, the Lord would readapt a little bit for where the culture was currently at. Pastors don’t like to talk about that. But, that’s the reality,” Cole Zick argued.
Christians must look at Genesis and creation because they “need” to understand creation and how it ties in with the New Testament before they can understand God’s hope for marriage and singleness,” he stressed.
“God always has a plan A. The ultimate goal for Adam and Eve was that they never ate the apple. We’re in the garden. The beautiful thing about God is that there is always a redemptive route,” Cole Zick said. “That’s not the freedom to go say, ‘I get to go sleep around,’ [or] ‘I don’t have to fight for this marriage I’m in,’ but it’s hope for anybody that says: ‘Well, shoot, what if I haven’t lived God’s design out.’”
When someone breaks away from God’s original design for sex and marriage, Cole Zick said there is hope in a “plan B,” which involves redemption, God’s forgiveness and mercy. This, he said, “leads to things being worked out as if a person obeyed in the first place.”
“That’s the beautiful part about the Lord. There’s a beautiful plan B redemption that feels like plan A. Once the Lord has done His redemptive work, all of a sudden, you’re like: ‘wait a second, was this plan A,” he said. “That’s how good God is. He makes it feel like it was part of His plan.”
