Chastity before marriage and fidelity after provides couples with the joy God wants them to experience, Douglas Brinley and Nancy Sarager Jackson said during a Women's Conference lecture Friday in the JSB auditorium.

Brinley, a professor of church history and doctrine at BYU, and Jackson, an institute teacher and marriage and family counselor, repeatedly emphasized that intimacy between husband and wife is essential to strengthening and sustaining marital relationships. Men and women must understand the divine purpose of chastity and fidelity in order to build and enhance their marital relationships.

Brinley and Jackson both noted that prior to coming to Earth, every person was unable to experience the joys of procreation because they lacked a body.

"We are apprenticing ... in the sacred powers of procreation for the very first time," Brinley said, "because in the spirit world, prior to this time, we were unable to marry, we were unable to have children. So now is our chance."

In order to properly use this gift from God, all people must understand the nature of this God-given power.

"Procreative power exhalts God above all other beings," Jackson said. He allows his children to appropriately take part in this experience within the marriage covenant because he wants his children to experience the joy that comes from sexual union, he said.

"Nephi said, 'Men are, that they might have joy,'" Jackson said.

This procreative power is only appropriate between husbands and wives who are lawfully married, Brinley said. When procreation is properly understood, people will recognize that they have no right to exercise those powers outside of marriage.

To illustrate this point, Brinley recalled a letter written to him by one of his students, whose comments he paraphrased. "Immorality before marriage is wrong. That would be creating life under the wrong circumstances - selfishly rather than God supposed. Life is not ours to give," he said.

Brinley gave two reasons why God has allowed couples to procreate, or "to renew covenants in a special way." First, intimacy allows couples to express genuine love. Second, intimacy provides a way for God's children to come to Earth under an eternal covenant.

Brinley and Jackson counseled couples who wish to strengthen their marital relationship to allow room for "none else" in their lives, counsel given by both President Spencer W. Kimball and Elder Mark E. Peterson. They also counseled couples to openly communicate with each other about their relationship.

Jackson listed three tips couples should do to strengthen each other. First, each must be sensitive to the other's feeling. Second, each must feel secure in the relationship. Third, each must feel attraction to the other. of a relationship that should be discussed.



Copyright Brigham Young University 2 May 2003