Sex Talks Pt8 . James Parker 3.0

Pretty excited by tonight.

Um, I am really quite passionate about this topic, and so I appreciate your

curiosity for being here and your desire to want to, uh, learn more and

to be more equipped in this space.

And I am exceedingly grateful to our friend James here, uh, for his wisdom,

his vulnerability, he just, your boldness and courage in this space.

I think I'm mad, don't you?

I think I'm mad.

Well, a little bit, but I quite like mad people.

They certainly keep life interesting, that's for sure.

Okay, I'll accept that.

And I think, um, I think what I appreciate about you, James, is your thoughtfulness.

So it's not just that you've got a story and your story is incredibly

impacting, but it's, you don't just rest on your testimony.

You like the work you do in terms of understanding topics related to

where we're going tonight, not just theologically, but medically as well.

Uh, scientifically also understanding things like the

political landscape as well.

So you bring such a, um, a really well-rounded perspective to this topic.

Thank you.

And, uh, I think you are such a. Um, such a blessing, such

a, um, resource to the church.

And you are more than a resource, obviously.

Uh, you are a human being, loved by God.

Uh, but, uh, one of my very great passions and convictions is around equipping the

saints for the work of the ministry.

And so to be able to have someone such as yourself to be able to step into

that space, to help equip the church in an area where I think our equipping

can sometimes be a little bit lacking, I think for a lot of aspect, a lot

of perspectives in the church, but I think perhaps people are very, there's

a willingness to wanna engage in these topics, but feeling a lack of confidence,

um, and feeling equipped to enter these waters well in a way that is, uh, careful

with people and their stories and their vulnerabilities, and also careful to

be theologically sound as, as well.

So, uh, all of that to say deeply appreciate you, deeply appreciate

you giving your time as well.

I know, um, you know, we've been podcasting these nights and that has

been a great resource for people as well.

So just take note of that.

If there's anyone, you sitting here thinking, oh, gee, I wish such and such

was here, uh, you'll be able to get hold of the, um, podcast and, um, send that on.

Uh, yeah.

All right.

So with that in mind, how about I pray and then we'll kick off, shall we?

Um, no, just first.

Okay.

I'm assuming everybody knows what the topic is tonight as my dear

friend Ben here just said, oh, it's about mortgages, isn't it?

No, it's not.

So tonight we're talking about a biblical and compelling vision

of sex, marriage and singleness.

The title has been chosen very intentionally, uh, 'cause I think

at least for the Protestant church, of which many of us here tonight

are recognizing not all, um.

I think our theology around this space isn't always super compelling.

And, uh, you know, just telling people to not do X because it's a sin probably is

not the most compelling way to actually communicate where what is actually

incredibly beautiful and profound.

Um, the theology around these topics when we understand them well, incredibly

beautiful, incredibly profound.

We actually have a beautiful biblical, compelling vision to share with the world.

We actually do have a beautiful and better story to share with the world.

It's just, we're just not often taught it, uh, in such a manner.

And so this has been my journey the last couple of years really, um,

going on this journey of working to develop a true, compelling theological

vision in this space around matters of sex, sexuality, gender, marriage,

singleness, and that kind of stuff.

And so, my friend James, I think you communicate this

stuff beautifully in that space.

So let me pray enough waffle for me, and, uh, then we'll get into it.

Father God, we commit tonight into your hands.

And Heavenly Father, we thank you.

We thank you that we sit here as your creation.

As your image bearers, we thank you that you have placed us in this time

and in this space, uh, for a reason, for a purpose to bear your image, to

be, uh, salt and light in this world.

And I pray that through what is shared tonight, that you would be honored, you

would be glorified, and that we, your people would be encouraged and equipped,

strengthened, uh, Lord to be salt and light in the world and in these very

dark places in the world where there is such deception we're the enemy is

working to steal, to kill and destroy.

And so, Lord, may each of us tonight have ears to hear what it is that you

are saying through this conversation.

May each of us tonight walk out those doors, uh, with a sense of deepened

awe and wonder about who you are and who you have created us to be, but also

with a sense of encouragement, a sense that, oh yeah, I do feel equipped to

more and more to step into these spaces.

And so, Lord, we commit all of this evening into your hands.

We ask and we pray for your kingdom to come and your will to be done.

Amen.

Amen.

Ah, amen.

Hi James.

How are you?

I'm great.

Really good.

I'm, I'm excited to be with all of you.

Uh, this is session number three, and I just said to Adam beforehand,

I said, um, uh, I come sort of most nervous but most excited about tonight

and I've got a clipboard Last time I didn't come with anything and

I've come with a clipboard folks.

Clipboard folks.

Well, for this reason that, um, everybody who knows me knows I can, I'll talk till

midnight on just the first question.

Um, that's midnight tomorrow.

Not tonight, by the way.

And, um, so I thought I, and you were very gracious in letting me know

some of the themes and, and different aspects you wanted to talk to.

And, and I just started jotting down notes.

I thought, if I don't consolidate this, we are literally gonna

be here till Christmas 27.

Yes.

There was quite a bit there.

Wasn't there?

There was quite a bit there.

So I just, yeah.

So, and, and, and look, I've got a couple of slides that, um, if your

mobile phone is handy, at some point you might like to take a picture of screens.

I've tried to consolidate some of the things we're gonna share tonight so that

you've got a visual there on your phone.

Um, we can always make them available as well afterwards for you as

well, if you want those slides.

A hundred percent.

And, um, yeah, I'm grateful this is being recorded.

Yes.

You know, it is very good.

And Slido, do you need to mention Slido?

Yes.

So we do have Slido here.

So James, and I'll chat.

Uh, for a bit through some of these, uh, questions that, um, I have already

put before James for his consideration.

And this will just help grease the wheels.

But, uh, if there's anything occurs to you, anything you want clarification

on, anything you'd like to ask more about, uh, feel free to jump on Slido,

submit your questions, or perhaps vote for another one that's already been

posted if you're like, oh yeah, I really want that one, um, responded to and,

uh, hopefully we can, um, get to those.

And so we will maybe, Adam, what you could do is, um, based on how

the questions are going, like maybe if you're like, okay, you two have

talked for too long, we need to get to the questions they're mounting up.

Maybe you could just do a bit of a. Kind of gesture.

Yeah, that would be fantastic.

Yeah.

Alright.

I might just begin by referencing, is that okay?

This book?

Yeah.

So I have found that essentially my last slide.

So Adam, if you put the last slide quick, Adam, that way it's the resources slide.

As your wife holds this up, then people will have another few of it as well.

So I have found this book here, it's called Our Bodies Tell God's Story,

incredibly helpful, particularly on the topics that we're hitting tonight.

Uh, the author is Christopher West.

He is a, um, Catholic author tradit traditionally.

Um, however, this book is, is probably his attempt to ground

his, um, writings or to direct it more towards a Protestant audience.

Uh, but it's still, it's based, his teachings are based on what is

known as John Paul ii Theology of the Body, which I have been looking

into the last couple of years.

Incredibly beautiful, incredibly profound, um, has just opened my eyes up in so

many ways, uh, to just the beauty and the wonder of God creating us male and female.

And, um, yeah, an incredibly profound and beautiful theology and compelling.

And so Christopher West does a brilliant job of basically taking what was 126

lectures, 129 lectures, 1 29 lectures Wednesday morning between 1979 and 1984.

There you go.

John Paul, I second 129 lectures on Theology the Body, which essentially

came from the passage in Genesis.

And God created the male and female.

That's right.

And he also wrote a book called Love and Responsibility, which broke

open the understanding of marriage.

Um, and he wrote another book about, um, the jeweler shop.

And it's not a bad thing to start with around marriage.

Okay, sure.

And the story is, this is basically, there's a guy who decides my

marriage is over and he wants to go.

He goes to the jeweler shop and he says, right, I wanna sell my ring.

And the jeweler takes this big chunky gold ring, and he puts it on

the scaly, says it's worth nothing.

The guy said, well, it can't be.

It's made of gold.

He said, it's worth nothing.

It doesn't weigh anything.

He said, well, of course it weighs something.

He says, it doesn't on its own, it weighs nothing.

Bring the other ring in, then it will weigh something.

This ring doesn't stand on its own.

It is part and parcel of a union and of a covenant that you made.

Therefore, it means nothing on its own.

Now that should put a bit of a tingle up your spine to begin with.

That's the direction we're going tonight.

That is the direction we are going, and it is profound and it is good.

Okay, so let's kick off, shall we?

Uh, so Christopher West, just a reference, uh, the author there in his

books explaining Theology the Body, he makes this statement and really stuck

out to me the first time I read it.

Our bodies are not just biology, but theology and, uh, I think

that statement itself was just really helpful one to sit with.

Um, I think something I don't know so much, I'm not so familiar with the

Catholic tradition, but I know in the Protestant tradition, something that

can often happen in our theology is we think our bodies are just this flesh

suit that's gonna be done away with.

So they're not really an important part of who we are and, uh, so that we,

we don't really think about, um, our bodies being theology in that sense.

So I think maybe that's why that statement really stuck out to me.

Our bodies are not just biology, but they are theology.

Can you expand a bit on what that means, particularly in

light of our focus for tonight?

Well, look, everything contains identity.

Everything

the air contains identity.

The chair you sit on contains identity and it has a purpose.

And if we fail to recognize the fact that our creator, God.

Who is all intelligence and beyond creates things with identity.

And if we miss that, even in the smallest things, we'll miss it about ourselves.

So I need to contemplate about a pen.

Just a pen.

It could be a Parker pen.

If you know a Parker pen, let's ignore that bit.

Sorry.

But a pen in and of itself, you might go, do you like my pen?

I'm like, yes.

So what?

What is the purpose of a pen?

If it has nothing to write on?

It's just an object.

It fails to fulfill it's very purpose.

You know its identity.

It's a pen mate, but it fails to fulfill its purpose.

Now, it could be a pen that doesn't quite have a little ball bit at

the end, like you're having a bi, or it doesn't have a nib.

Can it fulfill its purpose?

No, it can't.

Or if there's a little bit of plastic in between where the ink is and the

little plastic tube thing, and there's a little bit of plastic there that's

stopping the ink from touching the ball to make it right in somewhere, that

what's happening is there's something preventing it from actually fulfilling.

Its very roll as the pen.

That's just the pen, but you put it together with a piece of paper.

If I said to you, oh, Dale, here's a piece of paper, you might

go, cheers, mate, forget that.

But if I said, here's a piece of paper and I've written on it.

I could sit there, you could be in tears within 30 seconds.

In fact, it could change your life.

This book changed my life, not because it's paper, it's because of the ink

and the words that put there, not the ink and the paper that changed my life.

It was what was communicated through the ink and the paper coming together.

That was God's voice that speaks to the very essence of who I am.

Why do I mention pen and paper?

Because as I've said, you bring those two together, the potential is phenomenal.

You

have a Beatles song.

You have Viktor Frankl writing about the meaning of life.

You've got Nelson Mandela writing his memoirs.

So what happens is this is coming back to Christopher West.

It's important that we learn to make God sense of our bodies.

Ignore the Catholic thing.

Seriously.

The word theology means Theo God.

Logos is another word for word or even sense.

We have logic.

The logic of something.

So in other words, a theology of the body is trying to say to us what you've gotta

make God's sense of your body, because if you don't, you will make nonsense of it.

Okay.

We either make God's sense of it or we are led to make nonsense of our own bodies.

So they've got a distinct purpose.

And when somebody's got a distinct purpose, it communicates something.

So I'm looking out here now at these slices of heaven in front of me.

What Ephesians three tells me is God's workmanship, his his masterpieces.

That's you breathe it in.

You are my God's masterpiece.

So your bodies are communicating something.

This is why in, um, Ephesians chapter five, verses 31 to 32, it says, for

this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife.

The two will become one flesh.

This is a profound mystery.

It says, Paul, I'm talking about Christ and the church.

So overall, what West is saying to us, he's breaking open what Carol

Vier, John Paul two, is saying to us, who's trying to speak to the

world at a time when literally we're becoming overtly sexualized.

And he's basically saying that our bodies proclaim a message,

but not just any message.

They proclaim God's message.

And God's message is a good news message.

Your body, you may never have seen it this way, but when you place it into

God's hands and you make God's sense of your body, your body is gospel.

Your body becomes gospel.

Well, it doesn't become it.

It is it already.

It just depends how you read it.

You can either look at it through an eyes of academia, which many theologians

do you know, there's plenty of people studying theology in universities across

the world who've got no time for God.

Or you take it with the eyes of faith and you will be mystified,

mysteriously fired if you like, because our bodies contain a mystery.

The male body, uh, our bits are external female body.

Your bits are internal when it comes to bearing fruit.

God penetrates us with his word.

And gentlemen, it's really important we reflect on that.

Otherwise, we'll have no concept of the fact that as church, we are

all of us, the bride of Christ.

I'm not saying you're female, but what I'm saying to you is that the body of a

woman is speaking to us as men to call us how to live and operate with the gospel,

but also our bodies speak to women about what it means to penetrate our

world with the word and with the gospel.

So there's, again, there's much richness.

If we stop there tonight and I sent you away for a whole week, you could

meditate on this till the cows come home.

That's how powerful it is.

I've got a little exercise.

Normally I do something midway.

I didn't tell you about this.

No, you didn't.

I didn't.

Gentlemen, I'd like you to stand up.

Stand up with me just to, guys, you haven't got to do much at all.

In fact, you haven't got to move from where you're standing.

I want you just to sing this note with me.

Love.

Oh, for goodness sake.

Let's try that again.

Okay, here we go.

Law.

Okay, sit down.

You failed the, the um.

Ladies, stand up with me please.

Ladies, I'd like you to sing this note with me.

Okay.

Law.

Let's try that again.

'cause you've got bigger voices than that.

Imagine you're screaming at the man.

Okay.

La

You may sit down.

What did you hear?

Could you hear the difference?

Please.

One person did.

What?

What came to mind?

Ladies?

What came to mind when you heard the men's voices?

Maybe second time round.

'cause they were a bit nervous.

God bless us.

Actually, I'll be honest with you.

The very fact that you were almost hesitant to do it says a lot about

where you possibly are in your own muscular identity at the moment.

And that's not to judge you.

It's the fact is, it's to some extent, even as men, we have lost

our voices for the greater part.

But ladies, what did you hear when those men's voices came together?

Anything?

A richness.

A harmony.

Strength.

Okay.

Unity.

Gosh, I wish I'd had where.

Okay.

Anybody, any other ladies?

What did you hear?

Warmth.

Thank you, gentlemen.

What did you hear when you sang together?

What did it sound like for you?

Beautiful.

Yes.

Softness.

Yeah.

Depth.

Depth.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Amen.

Yeah.

But there was, there was depth compared to the ladies.

There was great depth, sounded completely different.

Okay, gentlemen, what did you hear when you heard the ladies' voices?

What did it remind you of or speech you about?

The angelic realm

that was speedily off out the tracks, wasn't it?

What else, gentlemen?

Harmony, softness.

Again,

a gentleness.

Glorious.

Glorious.

Woo.

I like that.

Ladies, what did you hear as your voices came together?

A higher pitch.

Very significant.

A higher pitch

Wasn't that depth, it was the higher pitch.

Pretty, yeah.

Was it was, it was lovely to hear

soaring.

Yes.

It was something that was heights.

It took you to a heights, didn't it?

The blokes didn't.

The blokes are much more grounded.

Did you notice that?

Now what did I, what did we just do?

I just just asked you to sing a note.

That was question number one,

and in some way or other, what I'm trying to say to you is this is you,

your body, even the way you speak.

Proclaims a message, wake up to that message.

It has the potential to be gospel in its fullest sense.

This is an incredible journey that God calls upon to understand our bodies.

Let's leave it at that for number one, shall we?

Very good.

Alright, next question.

Um, how does a proper theology of the body help us see sexuality

as more than just pleasure?

Ooh,

yeah.

Particularly the 21st century.

Mm-hmm.

Everything's about pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure.

I wanna say this to begin with, everything that God creates is pleasing because

he's good, he's holy, he's righteous.

And to some extent what's happened is this is a as man,

as mankind has pushed God away.

What's happened is we've ended up so tarnishing that which is beautiful,

that we've learned to see that which is beautiful in accordance with how

it's been tarnished, and therefore, to some extent we see sex and we

see sexuality as something dirty.

God loves sex.

God loves sex.

How did you come into being?

I know it's a horrible thought.

Uh, mom and dad doing it.

Yes, but that's exactly how we came into being.

God designed it in the sweatiness and the messiness and the nakedness.

I'm not, don't think it too long, but it, but the, but I wanna say this.

I don't think they thought, oh, well, I suppose we better make a kid tonight.

This was, there had to be a degree of pleasure within it.

One of the things I do is I, I work a lot with survivors of childhood

sexual abuse, and one of the biggest challenges for the survivors of sexual

abuse is not, is not what was done, is, hang on, let's get this correct.

Wasn't the effect that they hated what was done to them?

It's the effect that even in the greatest sinful act of child or sexual abuse,

there was often a degree of pleasure.

That's what they struggle with, because what happens is

their erogenous zones got used.

And I wanna say this to you because do you know something if we're not careful?

We learn to hate the very thing that God has created to be good and beautiful.

It's not to be our God.

And that's what the devil does.

He goes, it's so great.

Let this become your God.

Remember, the devil can create nothing.

He can only twist that, which is good.

To the point that he wants to, and thank you for mentioning it in

our prayer, to destroy, to steal, and ultimately to kill from us.

So a proper theology of the body helps to see sexuality is much more than pleasure.

The human body isn't just biological, but it's what's called a sacramental sign of

our inner reality, and it's a sacramental sign of our vocation, our calling

to love, and therefore to be loved.

What's a sacramental sign?

Well, the word sacrament is in some way, if you translated it almost literally,

it kind of means wholly making holy.

So a sacramental sign is a sign that makes something holy.

Our bodies, therefore is something that should be manifesting what is holy.

The difference is this is real love is about the gift of self.

It's about gift.

It's not about grasp.

And we live in a time where sex sexuality is about, well, what's in it for me?

What's gonna make me feel good?

What's gonna bring me to orgasm?

What's gonna give me the fantasy that I want that's gonna self-soothe

and help me to, you know, escape reality for a little bit.

We've lost the essence of the fact that our sexuality is about the

gift of ourself, just as Christ gave himself in sacrifice, the entirety of

his body and every bit of his blood.

The challenging thing we have is this, you see then is lust.

Basically fragments.

Real love unites lust, fragments, real love unites

and lust severs the unity between body and soul.

It just takes the body for what it is and says, this is about feel good.

Well, we live in a world today that says, well, you, you hurt my feelings.

Well, I'm sorry, but being offended is a part and parcel living in society.

Get over it.

We are now making laws around it.

Oh, they didn't feel nice about that.

Well, there's lots of things I don't feel nice about, which shouldn't

make laws about it, but we are being pushed in that direction of

pleasure rather than recognizing that.

So it's about what I grasp and have for myself rather than what I give.

Now, when we understand love in its right context, what it does is it heals shame.

It heals the fact that we might feel a little bit uncomfortable or

very uncomfortable about our own body or even our own nakedness.

And what happens is, is.

We're able to heal that shame, then our dignity is restored to what it should be.

So going back to Genesis, here we are with Adam and Eve, literally walking

in the garden with God had ability.

Now, did they have bodies?

Of course they did.

But their bodies so radiated the light of God that they didn't.

All they saw was the light of God

at the fall in disobeying God and eating from the tree, they

were forbidden to eat from.

What happened is the light went out.

That's why Jesus says, I am the light of the world.

He's basically saying to each one of us, I'm the light in your world where

you have a darkness and an under a dark understanding about your body.

I want to come and shine my light there and show you that you are a visible

sign of the invisible me, says God,

you not your neighbor.

You, you are.

You are created as and you.

You literally are a visible sign of the invisible God if you come to understand

and make God sense of your body.

Is that another way of understanding sacrament?

Sacrament is something that makes visible the invisible.

That's exactly what it is.

A sacrament really is anything.

That is something visible that makes that witnesses to the invisible

in some way is a sacrament.

Yeah.

Which is why, and Paul talks about the mystery of marriage.

That's exactly it.

It is a sacrament in the sense that it's revealing some,

the mysteries of the gospel.

That's exactly what it is.

And some people think that, you know, if you, if you get married in a church

and, and the pastor is there, et cetera, that in some, and that's called a

sacrament, if you like, of marriage.

But it's not, it's not the pastor that's putting the sacrament on the cover.

They are performing the sacrament to each other.

He's saying, I'm giving all of me in covenant, not commitment.

Commitment and covenant are two completely different things.

Covenant says, that's it.

I can't get outta this.

That's why when Moses came down the mountain with the covenant on the

10 Commandments, the Jews say there were two tablets, not one with five

commandments, the other with five.

Both of them had 10.

One God had signed and the other was for Israel to sign.

That was his covenant.

So my body is to be given in marriage as covenant and your

body's given in covenant.

Now does that mean that I can just take advantage of your body?

Absolutely not.

That might come up later on.

Not at all.

What happens, there has to be that deep respect.

But if I haven't gained a deep understanding of respect for

my body, how am I going to be able to respect your body?

And that comes a bit later in singleness.

All right.

This next one, I just wanna talk about this idea of eros and agape for a moment.

'cause I found this incredibly enlightening.

Yeah.

And helpful.

So agape is obviously a word that we can be familiar with in church

circles, describing the love of God, this unconditional agape love of God.

But then we hear this word, eros.

Okay.

Which is another, uh, Greek word for love.

And I think sometimes when we recognize, you know, the brokenness, uh, around sex

and sexuality, and we think that, that it's desire, that's the problem, right?

I, so things like, um, that are erotic, okay, they're bad and they're wrong.

But what I really appreciated, uh, through reading, you know, um,

teaching such as Christopher West here, is this idea of redeemed eros.

And that actually how eros and agape actually were designed

by God to function together.

So it was almost like that, um, you know, that CS Lewis quote, it's not

that our desires are too great, it's actually God finds our desires too little.

That's right.

That we are far too easily.

Pleased.

And, um, so I've just found this, this, I found it quite compelling, this

idea of redeemed eros and what that actually means and how that actually

is meant to be the fuel for agape love.

'cause we all know we're meant to love agape ish, aren't we in the way of God?

Uh, but when we, it is fueled by redeemed eros, it becomes a thing

of delight, not a thing of duty.

And so, do you just wanna explore that a bit, James?

Yeah, yeah.

Can, can Adam, can you put up that slide?

I think it's called God's Healthy, whatever it is.

It's got a black background.

It's got lots of pictures, a little, but that's the one look, just 'cause

I wanna put Agape and Eros also in, in a fuller context, perhaps

as we begin to break this open.

So if you look down there at the bottom line, the greeny colored line, and

then the very, very bottom, you've got the blue, sorry, the yellow line.

I can't, I'm colorblind tonight.

You've got agape, storge, philia, eros.

Sometimes it's, it's spelled phileo.

But just to break open those four words is, is agape.

Basically is God's unconditional love, which is about the

creation of the new soul.

Even so me and you being created is, is a witness.

The fact that he knits us together in our mother's womb is evidence

of God's unconditional love.

Then what happens is, is this is put very simply for those first few years of

life, we have to learn store gay love.

The easiest way I can describe that is a boundaried love.

There's God's ways.

And then there's other ways which aren't God's ways.

And he says, don't go there.

So our parents teach us ways, so they teach us.

It's a really good thing to clean your teeth.

It's a really good thing to take a bath pretty often.

These are good things.

They'll keep you socially acceptable, otherwise no one will want to talk to you.

They're boundaries.

And once we've learned that you don't touch the fire, even though you give it

a go and you don't touch red wet paint, even though you give that a go, what

happens is you realize this is dangerous.

Don't go.

There's some things that big nos and some things are yeses.

That's boundary love.

The other love that we learn in primary school, for the most part, is

that filial love, and this is where we learn to demystify what it means

to be male for us boys, and what it means to be female for the girls.

And that's why for the most part, even in all of our co-ed primary

schools, the boys generally go for the boys, the girls go for the girls.

It's not gender is, it's just healthy.

It's demystifying.

Now we have that phrase to fall in love and we associate it with eros and romance.

But to understand eros in its redeemed sense, we have to fall

in love three times beforehand.

If we really want to understand the fullness of redeemed love, the first love

we have to fall in love with is our God.

And humble ourselves to his ways.

His ways are higher than our ways, not our ways.

The next love we have to surrender to is boundary Love the fact there

are some things that God says no to, and our parents should have taught us

no blame on parents if they didn't.

But if we didn't learn them, it's never too late to learn them.

And if you don't understand the difference between yes and no in life, and to

some extent people think they've got the right to do what they like, Eros

will never be redeemed in your life.

The next thing is this.

If you don't have a deep understanding of what it means to be male or to be female,

it's very difficult to give yourself as a gift in eros to towards the fruitfulness

that Eros can bear in its redeemed sense.

If you're a new Christian, this might sound like another

language altogether, my apologies.

But basically overall is this, is eros is a fruit, something deeply, deeply,

deeply, passionate, desire driven that seeks union and it seeks fulfillment.

But if it doesn't, if it doesn't have its underlying, um, context to it

of understanding particularly those other three loves, but of agape, of

course, above all, then what happens?

It's almost like eros becomes limp.

And there's nothing worse than Limpy eros for anybody, for that matter, anyway.

Um, and I'm being frank.

We'll, that shall be Francesca as well, if you like, but there we are.

But, but you see what I'm saying here.

You gotta laugh about this stuff because this is, this is what we're made.

This is our life.

This is our, this is, this is who we are in its fullest sense.

And this is why when a guy gets married, I often say to him, who are the four or

five guys around you who know you, who will keep you sharp through marriage?

And I say to women, where are your friendships?

Where are the women that you can go to and you can deal with your woman's stuff

with women, rather than trying to put your women's stuff on the man who's gonna

go, she's talking double Dutch again.

I don't get it.

And all that happens is if you're not careful that aeros love

begins to sort of almost divide.

Now, it's not that men can't understand women and women men,

um, because that is a possibility.

And the more that we surrender to the Lord, we begin to gain

a deep understanding of the mystery who each other is.

Um, both of these come together without the unconditional love of

God and that ability to show mercy,

to be repentant.

I got it wrong today.

You were talking to me when I was filling the dishwasher.

I should have stopped and looked at you.

'cause what you said was really important.

I'm sorry.

And most women would be happy if the man was filling the dishwasher.

I get it.

But another further step, and there's always further steps with God.

Because he's infinite.

This is about what it means to be deeply, deeply present to each other.

If you came to the previous talk, you remember had you looking in each other's

eyes, I'm not doing that tonight.

Few, some of you say, but it is this thing about being deeply present to

one another that begins to bear fruit.

It's so, so important.

I keep looking down at my, my, my list.

Otherwise I say I'll go on and on and on.

Um, yeah.

Platos wrote something called Symposium, and here Eros was portrayed as this, this

ladder that was ascending up from physical desire towards the spiritual realms.

And a gap.

A is that love that comes down from heaven and saturates everything else.

So really it's a coming together of heaven and earth.

And notice eros when it functions in its fullest and most vulnerable

sense, creates a new soul.

It is the only thing, it is the only act.

That sexual act between a man and a woman that can create something that

will go on forever into eternity.

The only thing, and therefore it becomes divinely fruitful, not just having a baby,

but this is another soul has been created.

Again, these are deep things to ponder and to treasure in your hearts as well.

That's on that first question.

So would you say, um, the Song of Songs is like a, um,

demonstration of eros in scripture?

A absolutely, absolutely.

It's, it is this, it's the hound of heaven pursuing, suing.

You see, this is the problem.

It it, it's pursuing the greatest depth of vulnerability and transparency.

And that's not just a nakedness of body.

This is a nakedness of your deepest inner thoughts.

This is the nakedness of your own emotional world, which

is neither right nor wrong.

Emotions aren't right or wrong, but they are signposts to where you are.

So if you are angry, God wants to go, Hey, I see your anger.

Be careful.

You don't turn that on yourself.

And even more be careful you don't turn that on.

Others, bring it to me and let it become redeemed righteous anger

and express it so that you are able to move beyond the anger.

But we don't talk enough about even that emotional redemption either.

But Eros and Agape, they come together.

One brings about the other, and again, I'm looking forward to

talking about singleness later because even single people.

Even if they are waiting to be married or never marry, Eros is also

important to them as well, because it's about creative, fruitful love.

Notice next to Eros there.

I didn't put babies or sex.

It just says fruit.

It's about you bearing the fruitfulness of all you are, and that's in business,

that's in intellect, that's in real relationships, that's in your play.

Yes.

You become even more fruitful in how you play and your laughter in

your ability to mourn and grieve as we all do in some way or should do.

So that's the really, that's the kind of, there's, I think that

there's a lot there, isn't it?

There's a lot there.

Isn't you bored?

Yeah.

All right.

Can you explain how lust distorts our desires and what it means for society

when sexual desire is misdirected?

Well, what happens, you see is, I mean, lust is basically

misdirected love and therefore lust.

Rather than coming outta that self-giving, it becomes about a self-gratification.

As Catherine Kim would say, look at me, look at me.

Look at me.

You know, me, me, me, me, me, me, me.

It's all about me.

Lust says, and, and, and, and of course, lust as one of the

seven deadly sins is the, is a failure on our part to surrender.

To the, um, to the design of the creator himself.

Lu says, no, thank you God.

I will sort out my own desires, basically.

Um, and I don't care what that costs me, but even more so, I don't care

what it costs the other person.

Now, some people say, well, I don't look at porn and don't must about,

I should have a bit of fantasy.

But even fantasy itself, lustful fantasy, what that does is that turns around

and that makes an object of somebody else that makes this objectification.

They become an objective this world, and we lose sight of the fact that they

are a subject of the eternal kingdom.

That's why lust needs to be nipped in the bud.

And yet we seem to live in a world that just, that that turns out and

says, lust is freedom, lust is not.

Lust is regression not freedom.

The more that you entertain lu you, you regress and you regress and you regress.

It's interesting because in theology of the body, and I'm not gonna quote

it verbatim, but the essence of what he said is John Paul two said, he

said, the problem with pornography is not that it shows too much.

It doesn't show enough.

In other words, you're presenting.

Bodies being sexual, but the essence of why they're sexual,

all that contains is not there.

It's teaching you to regress.

It is actually leading you away from authentic relationship and the ability to

fulfill all that you are created to be.

Who's the loser?

Me and everybody around me because they'll never, ever really come to know me.

So basically lust, replaces reverence with use.

Another person becomes somebody that I can just use.

And that deep communion that can take place between man and woman

is replaced with consumption.

People just become goods to be consumed.

That's the issue with loss.

So I say rather than seeing each other as a gift, we go to

a place where we want to grasp.

Adam, could you put up that first slide with Lust versus love?

I mentioned earlier on that lust fragments and love unites lust fragments and the

other's person's dignity and your own.

It's not just the other that's affected, but you are affected by it.

We're each affected if we let Lu run, run riot.

Um, and lust isn't just a feeling, it's a symptom of the fact that we

are, our desires are still disordered.

And therefore they need to be brought in submission and in a long surrender before

God in prayer in communion with him.

Let's take a quick look at some of those four different aspects then.

Uh, the differences between lust and between Godly desire, which is love.

So lust focuses on self gratification.

Love focuses on mutual self-gift.

When it comes to other people, lust sees others as an object to consume,

but love sees the other person as this priceless representative of

heaven who I'm to cherish and call to holiness and hope they'll do the same.

To me, the outcome of entertaining lust is you'll be more isolated,

you'll feel greater shame, and your life will not be holistic.

It'll become more fragmented and compartmentalized, and you'll be trying

to deal with this bit, and this bit will fall off the edge of the cliff

and this bit, and you just won't.

You won't know who you are.

Whereas the Godly desire and the love brings about a real sense of communion.

You feel warm with God.

You feel warm with yourself and at peace, and you feel warm with others.

That brings about joy and that brings about integration or wholeness.

What is at the root of lust?

The fact that we are living from the broken covenant or concupiscence,

this thing of just desire rising up with no boundaries to it whatsoever.

We just go, oh, it's just the way it is.

Well, it is, but it doesn't have to remain that way because of what Christ has done

at Calvary in the shedding of his blood.

So what does Godly desire and love look like at its root?

We begin to understand and see that we are walking gospels, that we

bear the image and likeness of God, and that we are called to sacrifice

ourselves in all situations.

Imagine if everybody around you was working solely for your good, solely.

You'd have everything you needed.

And if you were doing that for others, you'd be giving

them everything they needed.

What a harmonious world it would be.

That is the image of the Trinity Father, son, and Holy Spirit in

constant, continuous covenant, loving each other without condition.

Now, as a society is upholding lust and it's upholding it by law.

These laws that have come in other states and that the cook government

at the moment, and if it was a Embolous government, I'd still be

criticizing it if they were doing it.

So it's not about a political party, it's about what our

governments themselves are doing.

But they are now forming anticon conversion practice laws.

We are being converted in our sexualized world to accept lust and what anybody

thinks and feels as being okay and normal.

And you dare pray or try and turn around and suppress or regress or

try and change any way what somebody feels around sex and sexuality.

You are the bigot.

Well, that's just a lie that leaves people in a place of broken covenant, isolation,

shame, fragmentation, seeing themselves as an object to be consumed in other people.

And basically it creates a world of self gratification.

And we wonder why we have the mental health problems and other

problems that we have today.

That's why it's important to understand these.

Do you think, um, like just reflecting on like Genesis and so you've got Adam

and Eve and then they're naked and they felt no shame, and then the fall

happens, and I've heard it described as, you know, suddenly they're covering.

Shame has come in and that potentially one of the reasons for that is they are

no longer seeing the other as someone that they are giving themselves wholly to.

But now that sin has corrupted desire, the other is now someone that I take from.

And then that's when shame becomes part of our narrative.

And if you're taking that, I guess that image into modern day society where we

are so consumptive and so consumer driven, even in the area of, and especially in

the area of sex, is there, you know, do we have a shame epidemic in a sense?

Because Beyond words?

Yeah, beyond words.

I mean, this is why I say one of the issues is not never the

pandemic, but the porn demic.

The porn demic is trying to heal shame, but it's creating more shame.

This is why we mustn't be frightened of going near these topics.

That's why honestly, red door guys, I love this building and these people

because you have the guts to turn around and, and talk about these things.

Every church should be talking about these things.

We should be, we should be affecting our society and affecting our politicians,

affecting our schools, but we're not.

So I just take my, my invisible hat off to you.

My,

we received that.

No.

Said Okay.

But, but that is, you've exactly, you've hit the nail on the head.

And, and if you, if you're not careful, if you don't heal shame, then you take shame.

If you don't humble yourselves about your shame, you will take your pride

into public and you will make your shame something to be proud of.

And if that isn't Mardi Gras, what is, that's what it is.

People almost naked with chains and BDSM stuff and dressed as dogs and

all sorts of things, and everything's overt and, you know, it's, it's,

it's, that's exactly what it is.

And then we call it on occasion to go out with the family, sorry, this is how far

we have been removed from an understanding of making God's sense of our bodies.

And I just feel prompted to say, and they, you know, when we see things in

the media and things like, you know, pride parades and whatnot, the, uh,

the response can sometimes be, oh.

You know, that's terrible and to judge or condemn, but really it should break

our hearts, uh, because here we have image bearers of Christ who become

so corrupted and, um, by things like shame and just this, a society that

promotes lust and consuming of one another to gratify our own needs.

That such distortion of God's image bearers is happening.

So it should, should grieve us.

Um, it should, it shouldn't.

It might be Mike six verse eight.

You know, I think we all know it.

You know where you go.

We are called to act justly, righteously, but we're also called to love

tenderly and to walk humbly with God.

And to do that means to do it with each other.

We have to do it with ourselves.

You know, that we have to, um, uh, act justly with ourselves and say,

wait a minute, the life, the way I'm living my life, this is not righteous.

This is not right.

This is fragmenting me and making me isolated.

I have to learn.

I've got, I, I have to take this shame stuff seriously.

Therefore, I'm to love myself tenderly with that agape, totally forgiving ocean

of mercy that God wants to give me.

I've got to, um, walk humbly with him, and that means walking humbly with

each other in the midst of this area.

That's why, you know, this could be just something we did over Zoom, but,

but collectively it makes a difference even for you to hear each other's voices

and realize, oh my goodness, there is something crazily amazing about what

our bodies display and who they are.

I hope this isn't too, oh, you are waving.

Oh, okay.

We're getting the cutoff signal already, but it's only five to eight.

You getting lots of questions in?

Are you okay?

All right, well, let's just, um, okay.

I won't go down that rabbit hole then.

Oh, I was such a good rabbit hole.

Um, okay.

Uh, okay.

We have touched on marriage as a being a signpost did of being, you know, this

visible sign of an invisible reality.

Did you wanna touch any more on that?

Oh my gosh, I got 10 points on that one.

Um, yeah.

Um, look, just to, basically marriage is to be a reflection of

the eternal marriage of heaven,

where Christ is the bridegroom and we, the church are his bride.

And this doesn't mean a one-off falling in love.

This means love beyond love, beyond love, beyond love forever and ever

and ever, because God is infinite.

So the physical lived union between spouses.

Its purpose is to reveal a deeper spiritual truth.

That is why sex is fire and you don't play with fire.

You revere fire for what it is.

Fire's not bad unless you play with it.

It can cause a lot of damage and scar you for life.

Well, temporal life, and this is why it's so important that we understand

marriage, you know, um, marriage can, marriage is a visible way of

conveying the invisible hope that we all have the invisible call to be

one with our bridegroom for eternity.

Now, be careful as we talk about brides and bridegrooms in Christ.

'cause if you're not careful, you go, blokes go.

I don't wanna be some bride.

But it's it, it's not about being female, gentlemen.

It is about living the fullness of harmony

and unity.

Communion forever with that, which in and of its essence is love.

And actually that's what we all do.

Desire as blokes, even though we may not be able to word it that way.

Mm. Very good.

You had some thoughts you wanted to say about singleness?

'cause I do wanna, I do wanna touch on that.

It's really important 'cause I think, um, that we address the topic of singleness.

'cause I think often single people, particularly in church context Yep.

Can feel like second grade citizens in my good northern accent choke me, that

slide up with you about single people.

There we go.

Okay.

This is just, this is just some things about, uh, about singleness.

See singleness, if you can't experience joy and purpose in your singleness,

then actually I doubt very much you'll be able to experience joy and purpose

in marriage because you don't know what it means to be able to live

that in and of itself within you.

How do we, uh, and, and look, ultimately, marriage is a, it reflects the eternal

marriage that we're all called to.

And Paul's quite clear, some people bypass that marriage not because the,

some people want to, they're like, sorry, I'm, my loins are not burning.

What's happening?

Is my heart's burning for God?

And therefore they're called to be single for other people they've

never married and may never marry.

Does that mean their life is any less?

Not at all Far from it.

In fact, they're able to bear grapefruit for the kingdom.

They really can.

And these are some of just practical ways that single people can bring

about joy and purpose in their lives.

Just looking at 'em through deep friendships.

So cultivate relationships that are marked by honesty, mutual

support, emotional depth.

Make these a deliberate focus of your life and take care of them.

We struggle often here in Oz with making friendships because for most

of us, we've only got two, maybe three generations of our family here,

or we might be the first generation.

So we are not used to having cousins and aunts and uncles and extended

family, and therefore brushing alongside people to then go make friends.

We're almost looking at our friendships to become kinda like, I want you to

be all that my family should be and more, and, and, and, and we fail.

And this is why we have to be gentle with them and cultivate

them, but really take care of them.

Secondly, friendship.

Um.

As single people, we can, we need to find a creative and spiritual expression

to be able to use your God given gifts.

Now, I spend my life running a lot of groups.

I love doing group work in all sorts of different areas.

Um, it's not too hard.

Once you've led a few groups, it's easy to lead others.

But, you know, I, I wish we were facilitating more book clubs and

baking clubs and all these things, you know, and, you know, getting

a book club for our bodies tell God's story, whatever it might be.

Hey, man, who loves a good book club?

Oh, yes, yes.

My, so my, my point to you is this is if you find your joy and purpose as a

single person, whether you're separated, divorce, whatever it might be as well,

what happens is it's highly likely that you will cross paths with somebody else

who has similar values to you and is also finding their joy and purpose in that way.

Sling out the apps, stop looking at the perfect version of the every

tries to put up of themselves, and then when you meet them and they

fail you miserably, I wonder why.

Because what's happening is you're misleading yourself and them.

So, be creative service and mission of your time and energy to build up

the body of Christ through ministry and service, through advocacy, through

justice, mentorship, and pastoral care.

Understand what it means to, to live a sacramental life.

What is making my life holy?

What visible in my life is making my life holy?

In some cases, that means part of our wardrobe may need to change.

We may not need to be as explicit.

We might learn to live a little bit more modestly, even on the beach, being

honest with you, you know, sometimes we're not each other's friends.

In this way.

Having somebody you trust enough to go to and say, I would like to come to you

regularly and confess I have somebody to go to every couple of weeks, and I

go and say, these are my sins, so that my voice is heard and I take ownership

for where I am trying to be pulled back into that disordered desires, what it

means to be in communion with each other.

James is very clear, James chapter five, about confessing your sins to one another.

I says, and then you'll be healed if we're willing to do that.

These are different things.

Interior integration doesn't mean say that married people shouldn't do this,

but what I want to do is to say to single people, stop going out there looking.

Oh my God, will I ever find them?

Will I ever find them?

Like not?

While you're acting like that, you won't.

If you are looking towards the he who is the light and there's a spouse

out there, they too will be walking towards the light, and guess what?

You'll see each other and you'll know it's each other.

But on the way you'll have been grounding yourself in what is your

eternal vocation, which is to love the Lord your God with all your

heart, mind, your body, and your soul.

And to love yourself.

So you can love your neighbor as you love yourself as well.

Um, can I throw this at, of course.

See what you think of this picture, uh, of, because I've saw it written somewhere.

Um, marriage points back to Genesis.

Singleness.

Points to revelation.

And so if we're talking about making the invisible visible, so marriage is that

mystery that declares the gospel, but singleness like a content and satisfied

holy single life actually proclaims the fullness of what is to come.

That is exactly right and this is why singleness is important

and must never be belittled.

The church is one of the great is has to be the place where singleness is honored

because what happens there is in the midst sometimes of a difficult marriage.

Somebody who's single striving after the Lord and perhaps begin

to experience that joy or even watching them in the purifying fire.

We realize that, that you can be married and going through that fire

definitely and unmarried and go through that fire, but the single person

reminds us that none of us stand with our spouse before God is our judge.

That we are each created in some way or other.

Uniquely to display what heaven is.

Remember, we're gospel or should be in our redeemed sense, redeemed form, and

the single people remind us, keep walking the journey because this is ultimately

what we were created for to be one eternally with God in that covenant,

unbreakable covenant of marriage with him.

Do you think we, like, we in a way, I think destroy maybe is a strong

word, but we, we can destroy marriage.

We can destroy singleness or erode them or degrade them because we

don't have an eternal perspective.

And so, you know, single people can look at marriage like it's marriage, like

it's some kind of utopia fulfillment.

Um, it's not, it's just a different, just a different

sort of hard cheers than single.

That's right.

Um, choose your heart as they say.

Um, it's just different.

Hard, but it's when we lose that eternal perspective and, and lose that sense of,

we all ultimately share the same vocation, whether you're single or married,

and that is to love as Jesus loved.

It's just we have different, uh, context in which that happens in.

And so our ultimate vocations don't change regardless of our marital status.

But when we get our eyes off that eternal perspective, that heavenly perspective,

then we miss the opportunity or we miss, well, everything moves from subject.

God is that subject.

Suddenly I become the subject I want to be God, and you'll all become my objects.

And therefore what happens is, I mean, I mean literally we, we plummet ourselves.

That's very good into darkness.

Yeah.

That's what we do.

That's why, you know, uh, uh, orgasm alone, when it's masturbation,

whatever, it, it's, you know, it's the most fleeting thing imaginable.

It, it's actually, it's, it's lying to yourself.

Time and time and time and time again to the point where if you're not careful, you

start to, you, you start, you lose hope.

You enter into despair.

And despair makes the heart sick.

Mm, that does.

And that's, and in some way, that's, that's the place, to some

extent, that our societies move to.

Yeah.

And then what happens is then you will end up finding yourself, and it says this in

Romans one, is that you will give yourself over two more and more shameful acts.

So it won't be two people who are married, but three people are married.

And you'll get the four people and five and the rest of it.

And then before you know it, marriage means nothing.

It means nothing.

And that is the direction in which we are going.

And so a little step towards the light will shine brightly in this world.

It really, really will.

Very true.

Um, well, as you just touched on it, let me just, uh, go to this question here.

Um, is self pleasure okay?

Um, no.

Why?

I mean, look, look it, it, the, the, the, I've gotta put

this, this is in, in context.

If you're looking for a yes or no answer, it was a yes or no question.

You know, I've got somebody saying, oh, you know, I walked into my

son and, you know, he was playing with his penis and blah, blah.

I said, well, how old is he?

About 11 or 12?

I said, he's working out what's going on.

Don't shame him.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, and I've seen people so shamed.

They, they'll never give themselves in marriage 'cause their parents

shame them or somebody shame them.

Um, but there comes a point where if it's about myself pleasure, then I'm turning in

on myself and saying, I will be my own God and I'm taking this gift of my fertility

and in some way I'm squandering it.

I wanna be careful with this answer.

I tell you why, because there's, there's a number of tentacles

that come from this question.

One of those is this, and I deal with a number of people who are self pleasuring

and regularly, sometimes two, three times a day, in many cases, what's happening is

when it's that often what's happening is they're trying to soothe themselves and

they're trying to soothe the deep inner pain within them, often because of abuse.

And in some cases they've been taught to, to, they've been taught about their

argen zones and they don't even remember being taught it when they were a kid.

So we're not out to judge people.

We are out to invite them to keep surrendering that desire before the cross

in the presence of Christ and to learn to trust, trusted others to walk with them.

Another side of it, of course, is, and I've used the phrase

before, is that somebody is literally looking at self-soothing.

We live today with an a massive issue of anxiety.

Um.

If you look at a, and it's proven with these newborn babies.

If they're born premature and you place 'em into an incubator,

what often they will do is they will go and rub their genitals.

We're talking a newborn here.

The newborn isn't masturbating.

The newborn is trying to deal with the intense anxiety of not being close to

mom and the fact they've been born early.

And what happens is anxiety manifests itself in the genitals.

So people who are stuck in their self pleasuring, if you like, in masturbation,

when we've come to a deep understanding as we ponder and treasure these things

in our own hearts before God and in prayer to listen to what the spirit

of God may be showing, telling us.

'cause Jesus said, he'll remind you of all you need to know.

Then what happens is often, rather than the person repenting of the masturbation,

they say, Lord, what I'm really wrangling with is anxiety, and I'm trying to deal

with my anxiety and it's not working.

So I go through this circle, circle, circle, circle, circle.

And before you know it, I'm no better off.

In fact, I'm more fragmented from myself, from you and from others.

So we have to be able to look at what it is to deal with the anxiety, you

know, and to look at what it means to be integrated in the rest of life.

So this, again, God isn't looking to find ways to condemn us.

He sends Jesus to redeem our sexuality.

So if you are stuck in a place of self pleasuring.

I invite you to invite the Holy Spirit into that time, whether you're

in the middle of it or after you've done it and say, Lord, talk to me.

Let's have a conversation.

Isaiah one 18.

You know, come sit down together.

Let's talk these things through.

That's what we need to do, rather than trying to run away from them or

feeling more shame because of them.

Next question.

No, I think that's, that's really helpful.

And if you are, I guess, uh, engaging with somebody who's maybe trapped in a

cycle of maybe addiction in this space, uh, masturbation, um, whatever it might

be, is to have that very gracious posture.

Um, not, uh, you know, affirm, they're already gonna feel

ashamed enough as it is.

Oh, it takes you many, it takes incredible courage.

Isn, somebody says to me, I'm struggling with masturbation.

I go, oh, what a hero.

Gold star.

How well done.

What a, you have the virtue of courage that's already growing in you.

You start to affirm the fact that people are, that's honestly, it's beautiful.

Yeah.

All right.

Uh, what are some ways of appropriate flirting with my partner?

Unmarried?

No.

Could you like, just, uh, demonstrate some of those you a married woman get?

That's my tension.

No, no.

Um, look, that I'm, I'm, I'm challenged by the word flirting.

Mm. Um, because in some way I just want to acknowledge the fact that has

a connotation of, uh, of, of, of being sexual in, in, in, in some way in.

You see,

you're right to laugh.

Look, they say that good sex starts in the kitchen, and I

don't mean sex in the kitchen.

I mean, it's that, that thing of brushing Jesus.

I know, I know.

I'm not talking about that.

The buildup to what happens that, look this, there should

be three altars in our lives.

Okay?

This is important to understand as well.

The one altar is the place that you go into communion with others.

So in your church, does communion.

That is an alternate of its own self, and that represents Christ shedding

his body and his blood for us.

The first, okay, the second altar is your dining room table.

Which is where you learn to honor each other.

That's why we've got to come back to what it is, is to listen to each other.

Very good look at each other.

Very good.

Turn the radio off, put the phones away, and sit at a table together and invite

the Lord's presence to be there with us.

God banquets with us.

And the third altar is the sheet on the bed in the marital bedroom,

because that also is a holy place.

And I say that because again, using the word flirt, if you're not careful,

you, you want to do everything you can to safeguard, objectifying or

sexualizing somebody who is your partner with whom you are not yet married.

You owe it to yourselves to do that as much as you can.

I would say this, if you've learned to pray together and really look into

each other's eyes and really learn to be honest and vulnerable, et cetera,

that if you're looking for a way to grow closer and a more of an understanding

of, Hey, yugas girl and me as boy, that is where your practice should be.

If you want a marriage that's gonna be awesome with awesome sex, and it's

gonna continue what you invest before your marriage will say everything

about what your marriage will be like.

Is that helpful?

Mm. I think that is good.

Yes.

I mean, look, there's, I mean, I, so many young people, I say

she came out to your house.

Well, yeah.

They said, oh yeah, we, you know, and blah, blah, blah.

And then I showed 'em my new keyboard in my bedroom.

I'm like, what?

You took your girlfriend into your bedroom?

Are you mad?

Did you not agree with that when you started getting out with each other?

You don't walk, you never go into each other's.

You never go into a room with a bed together.

In fact, you shouldn't really be hanging around in the lounge room

together in somewhere or other.

I mean, years ago, parents weren't able to have hanky pan, if you like, because

they lived at home with mom and dad.

There was no way they were gonna get anywhere to go.

Mm-hmm.

We have, we have moved every boundary and smashed it.

Storge barely exists.

That's why we're no good today doing friendships and flia,

which is why Eros becomes limp

and who's losing out our society, the rest of us.

It's not God.

God says, I've given you what the, the design is.

Yeah.

But if you are not willing to humble yourself and walk with my ways,

he said, you're gonna miss out.

Yeah.

And I love you.

It's interesting.

I was just reflecting the other day, um, you, after a number of years in

this pastoral role, I think it's very, in our journey with couples towards

marriage, um, I think it's, yeah, it's, uh, it's a very common story when,

um, couples aren't living at home.

It's rare they make to the, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's, so take, take heed from

what, um, James says here it is that yeah, there's just gotta be those no go areas.

Um, and I think what you said there, seeing if you see that bedroom that,

like you said, the sheet as an altar, oh, I think that's gonna change

your perspective somewhat, isn't it?

Yeah.

You'll all wanna start making the bed, won't you?

No, but I mean, yeah.

You see, that's the visible sign of an invisible grace that's waiting for you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what I mean.

Yeah.

Very good.

Uh, what does healthy sex within marriage look like?

It's a big question.

It it, it is a big question.

I mean, there's many pastors would say, well, what couple do behind

closed doors is, uh, is up to them.

The, the, the thing is this is, is eros is a gift to bear fruit.

Now you may say, well, what about a couples in fertile?

Ultimately, the fruit is about spiritual.

It is about the invisible.

So it's that which is going to draw you closer towards God.

So it's not that I've got this fantasy and this image has come to mind.

Let's give this a go.

This says, what is going to call my bride or my groom to a deeper place

of manifesting that which is holy?

That demands communication not about what I want.

And it's an invisible communication as well as a spoken communication.

And it, it is literally, it's saying, my desire and my pleasure

is always secondary to who you are, and yours is to be the same to me.

So no one party in a sense is, it's not that one doesn't take the lead, but

what I'm saying is it's not about one.

It's never about one ruling over the other.

Never about that.

It is all the time being sensitive to the other.

The reason I said sex in the kitchen, by the way, and what I must qualify, that is

what I mean is this is gentlemen, the way in which we may turn around and say, you

cook the meal, sit down, I'm washing up.

Let me do that.

You know?

Or it comes along and goes, darling, that smells lovely.

So do you, you know, at the end of a tough day when you know she might've

had the grandkids or baby's just vomited down the back or something.

You know, there's something about that thing of coming alongside

and being aware that of all these billions of people in the world.

I chose you, you are the one for me.

And there's that lead up.

You know that it's papas five, six o'clock, but I can't wait till laps nine,

10 o'clock when that door gets shut.

And it's me and you reflecting heaven and seeing each other for who we really are.

I think, um, I, I was, um, listening to something today, I was talking about

this idea of the, uh, the internal gaze.

And so it is this, and I think what you're touching on there is like

these moments in the kitchen of going, oh, you put that down, I'll do that.

It's a moment of feeling seen.

So, and I think, and as for whether you're male or female, when you, uh,

feel like you have been truly gazed into and seen, even for something as simple

as, you know, I'll take care of that for you, that creates an intimacy that then

leads to that deeper intimacy of sex.

So somebody I do, you know, I don't that I dreamt this, I had a conversation

yesterday the other day before I, I can't work it out, but, but it was

something about I could turn around and just say like, you want some water?

We'll hear some water.

There you go.

You got some water and walk off.

Oh, there you go.

Um, or keep it back.

No.

Or I could say no, no.

I could say, here's some water.

Does that feel better?

Yeah, it does so much better.

Good.

Thank you, James.

Now there's a differences is what's happening is one is just

an action, another is a communion.

It's an engagement.

Yeah.

And that's the difference.

You know, many a guy can sit there tucking into a meal that his wife is lovingly

prepared going, this is delicious.

But he doesn't look up at her and say, this is delicious, thank you.

And allows his eyes to meet.

And her she goes,

it's like you can taste the love.

Mm. Ladies, wouldn't you love that?

Isn't it great?

I'll answer it for you.

Of course.

It feels great.

Do you feel like you've been seen?

You feel like you've been seen?

The same is true for a guy coming back from work and rather than

lots of different problems.

The rest of it's saying, you must be tired.

How is today?

Yeah.

Thank you for the labor of your arms, or thank you for the wisdom

of your mind and the qualifications you've got that you sustain me and

the children here in this house.

These are small little ways that we begin to build love

and build love and build love.

Otherwise, what happens is we begin to see others as objects

and we take them for granted.

Love does not take anything for granted.

That's why we have to recognize the context and that every single thing

down to the pen and the paper, and particularly our bodies and our souls all

have purpose and they scream a message.

Very good.

So a healthy sex life in marriage.

It looks like seeing the other and the other knowing that they have

been seen Well, you long before they take their clothes off.

That's right.

And and of course the other thing is this is, is, and, and

I mean, and understand this is,

um, two things is first of all, human beings are the only species created

by God that can look each other in the eyes as they're making love.

The only ones that's for a reason.

Because it is about soul to soul.

It's what it should be about, and it's about healing, shame.

We've all got it, some shame or other.

And it's about healing that shame and restoring dignity.

We said that's the first thing.

Um, the second thing is it's totally gone from my mind, so

we're gonna have something else.

Oh, you hate it when that happens.

I do.

Yeah.

Oh, it happens to me all the time.

Uh, all right.

Uh, we have touched on this a little, but um, I still ask

the, uh, question explicitly.

Um, how can men honor women and their bodies as opposed to objectifying them?

Um,

that's a great question.

It's a very important question.

It is.

And, and this is also about the transforming and the renewing of

your mind that Paul talks about.

Um.

Gentlemen, we, we aren't the best at being reflective and meditative, but actually,

um, we do need to be able to gain a deeper understanding of our own bodies.

And we need, our attention needs to be on curbing our own disordered desires.

In other words, the freedom that we have now been given and we give

ourselves to be able to objectify.

There are a number of ways to do this.

I would say one of the simplest and easiest ways to describe that you can

practically do is this is with every woman you see and every woman you might

think about, and I don't care whether you're straight or L-G-B-T-Q-X, Y, ZX,

double squared, whatever the fact, the matter is, this is every single person is

somebody affected by the fall who needs the grace of God to be able to say yes

to Jesus and to be surrendered to him.

Everybody.

So if a beautif, I see a beautiful woman on the street, I can say, I

bless Lord what you have created.

And I remind myself that she's a subject to the kingdom of God.

Lord, bring her to the fullness of redemption.

Help her skirt to grow longer, whatever it might be.

No, I mean, I can, I can pray modesty, I guess I can pray modesty, Lord, may

she come in touch with the dignity.

And what I, the other thing is, and again this is about how we think 'cause it's

all about the mind and also what happens.

This is recognizing, there might be a time I say, I see myself Lord kneeling

before your cross with my hand upon her praying for her, interceding for her.

My focus is you on her behalf.

I look to you to redeem her.

Of course, the other side of it is this, is that what happens is if we do have

thoughts and we do, and they're all over the place, well we're being tempted from

all over the place that come to mind.

Often what happens is I literally see myself taking a hand.

I grab the thought and I place it at the cross and I step aside and say, Jesus,

you take that and it can be a slight image you see at the beach or something.

I go, hang on a minute.

If I'm not careful, that image is gonna be with me for the next three

or four hours and it's gonna be with me in a place when I'm on my own

that I don't need it to be with.

And therefore I need to take that image and I, and this is the discipline

we have to have, this is why it's important to find a trusted other

or others where we can begin to say, this is where my struggle is.

This is where my struggle is.

This is when, this is my porn category.

I go to, this is my struggle here.

This is my fantasy.

You know, this is my emotional expectation of my man, and I just don't

think it's ever gonna be realized.

It probably isn't.

And therefore, we need to be able to take these things.

We have to take them captive, and we have to place 'em with the Lord.

And we have to spend time in way the letting the Lord speak to us in this,

and often with mature others if they're able to do that with us as well.

There's so much more we could, this is a book in its own right, this question.

Hmm.

Absolutely.

Um, all right, next question.

Is it okay to sexualize my married partner to intentionally think of them

as sexually attractive or focus on how they look and act in a sexual way?

Absolutely.

Uh, in fact, I would, I would encourage that within the context of the

gift of self, not about my partner, of what I'm gonna get from them.

That's self gratification.

That's them as an object.

But I hope you do think, well, my part, my, my spouse is like, oh,

very nice.

Thank you.

Thank you.

In fact, I would encourage you to go in that direction because God loves sex.

I mean, you know, we kind of laugh about it almost as though, oh, could we really?

I'm like, yes.

This is what we've lost.

We've, we've so gone in the wrong direction.

We've forgotten what the right direction looks like.

She's dropped dead gorgeous, or he's dropped dead, whatever.

I mean, a woman is to be radiant, even in her sexuality, she's to

be radiant and a man is to be majestic in his sexuality as well.

He's supposed to be the, like the king of the house.

You know that song of songs, isn't it?

That's exactly, that's exactly it.

Yeah.

And what's happened is, you know, as I say, because we don't talk about

these topics in church, why I'm grateful to Red Door, my same spiel.

We, we, I'm, I'm saying to you, it's not just that we've got to try and

deal with this direction we've gone in.

I'm saying swing the pendulum.

Yeah.

That's what's waiting for you.

It's waiting to love being in the body you're in.

That's it.

I love it.

Speaking of capturing images and bringing them to the cross, thank goodness

she's only a podcast and not a vid.

This isn't a vidcast, it's a vid cut.

No, don't tell.

No, it's, you're saying, okay.

To those who are listening, you don't want to know what I just did.

That's okay.

It's all very pg uh, I think, um, maybe just to go back to that ERO discussion

with that, with that question though.

Okay.

It's like.

Okay.

I, uh, you know, to find your spouse sexually desirable, but then

redeemed eros is that desire then to give myself to them, not to take

them for myself, um, because I find them desirous, but it's the desire.

Then the redeemed desire is to give myself, look, if the giving of

yourself is there, if you, if you are learning by the grace of God

to master that, then what happens?

You will find yourself giving more and more and more of yourself.

And what happens is when you lose yourself, you find yourself, Hmm.

What happens when you, I've heard that somewhere.

When exactly when you, when you lose, what am I gonna get?

Then what happens is the, the fullness of you is open for the fullness of

you to be satisfied, which is what you are looking for in the first place.

This is why we die to self in everything.

Yeah.

Particularly, and that is manifest through sex.

And the devil has deliberately turned, used this to turn it around.

Most of all, because he knows this will deeply, deeply frustrate

every soul and also frustrate them in their relationship with God.

Which is why I'm so proud of you for coming here tonight to listen to this.

I really am.

I'm really proud of you because thi this stuff really, really matters.

Really does.

It's important we grab a hold of this, we grasp a hold of it, uh, you

know, so that we understand the gift.

Yeah.

All right.

Here's a fun one.

Um, our are sex toys.

Okay?

In a marriage, if both parties consent, my big question with

this one will be why, why?

Why would you want to have sex toys if you have each other and all that

you are about in somewhere That, that, that's, that's inviting something else.

And, and I mean, and I, it's a genuine question why I'm not, I'm, it's

not for me to turn around and say, I'm not out to be anybody's judge.

I'm saying Why?

You need to say to yourself, why, why would we need.

Why would we need this?

Are we trying to more pleasure each other?

If what's happening is I feel that I'm not able to pleasure my, my husband

or my wife, whatever it might be, um, there's only husband and wife, sorry.

Um, then if I'm not able to pleasure them, then what happens is, is I, I,

we both need in some ways to be able to go back to the foot of the cross,

to the drawing board, if you like, and say, what is our relationship about?

Where are we trying to take this relationship?

Because what happens is ultimately, as I say, the visible expression and the

visible, um, communion of each other is about a deeper spiritual communion.

And what happens is to bring anything additional into that is stealing from

you or likely to steal from you the opportunity to build up or to keep walking

towards that greater spiritual communion.

This is why, you know, the the, you sort of see these articles

saying, you know, sex at 70.

It's like, oh my God, people have sex at 70.

I'm like, too, right?

They do, and they, you know, some say this is the best ever because what's

happened is, is they have learned the rhythm, not just how their bodies

work, but they've realized this is a spiritual union like nothing else.

Nothing touches it because we've been building on this time and time again,

we all know that if we take our prayer life seriously or we enter into God's

word on a regular basis, it changes us.

The same is true with how we, we deal with sex.

So we, we bring the sexual act and an understanding of the invisible

dimension into it, it changes us, and it does just get better and better

and better and better and better.

When you think about this, um, idea that, like, I wonder if say a desire or

a curiosity to bring things like sex toys into, um, a marriage, I wonder if it's

fueled around unrealistic expectations, you know, or informed by movies and media.

Absolutely.

That, and this should be the sex life we're having.

Well, this is, and this is the problem, and we're not so let's,

this is the problem with porn is that, you know, spice things up.

That's right.

You know, you might watch a porn clip of 10 minutes and suddenly it's like there's

all these exciting bits and these grunts and moans and everything else, and screams

and, but, but we can't seem to do this.

I wonder why not?

It's silly.

Why?

Because it probably took about three hours to do that with enough

breaks and the rest of it, and the, and the camera's taking at angles.

You shouldn't take camera angles out with people having sex.

Um, and that's been blunt what happens.

We have been lied to.

We have been absolutely and utterly lied to.

You know, this thing of all our, you know, some people say, well,

I've gotta have sex before marriage.

I've gotta find out if we're compatible.

I'm like, what?

Compatible for what?

Well, they, they might not be very good at, at sex.

I'm like, you think that marriage is sex?

Well, so you get up in the morning, you have sex, and then you have

breakfast, you have sex, and then you, you know, then your sex.

I'm like, get ghetto.

You know?

Whoa.

I said, by the time the second kids come, you ain't you.

You're exhausted.

That's it.

Get over it.

You know?

And so what happens is you are right.

We have been misled to believe these different things.

The other thing is this, we have to be careful that we don't use Eros.

Love to try and fill the voids that have been left by store,

gay love or fill your love.

There are too many women out there who want to try and find somebody

who will give them the affirmation that their father never gave them,

and they're looking to their man to try and play a role that their

husband shouldn't be playing.

The same is true, gentlemen.

There's many of them who have not been deeply insufficiently, nurtured,

and they're wanting their girl, their woman, to be everything their mom

should have been, and their sister should have been in a redeemed

way, et cetera, and they can't be.

These are the voids in the areas.

This is why being single, you can do a lot of work before you get

married and should, if you can.

Um, and if you are married and you haven't dealt with these voids, you

need to take time and be responsible to take the time to address those

voids and to make sure they are met in somewhere through Christ, in a healthy

way to restore you to your dignity and to heal your shame rather than taking

your shame and your, your unrestored dignity, which leads to depravity.

By the way.

That's what happens if you don't aim for the restoration of your dignity.

You look to what's depraved to try and fulfill it, and it can't,

it may give a temporal pleasure, or it might make it be a bit of

fun, but ultimately it will steal.

It's either stealing, killing, and destroying, or it's

bringing life to the full.

That's why Deuteronomy talks about, God says, I lay before you life and death.

Choose life.

Beautiful.

All right.

As a single person, what is the go-to with sex before marriage

as a Christian, don't go to,

um, are you able to interpret that?

Look, I, I, I, I am.

It's again, if we are looking for a clear answer in somewhere, you, you, you said,

in today's day and age, and I'm really serious about this, if you, if your

emphasis is on the sex, on sex before marriage, and it's really hard, look.

It's really hard not to go there in a world that is

throwing it at you everywhere.

But if you, in your own heart and mind, do not make a resolute

decision that this is what I want.

This is where I'm going.

I dealt with a young man the other week.

God bless him.

I mean, he's a, he's a handsome lain and he's fit, he put a lot of rugby and

stuff like this, but he, you know, he's, he's just fighting the girls off him.

He says, you know, he says, I keep saying to him he loves Jesus.

He goes, I don't believe in sex before marriage.

I don't wanna do that.

And he's gone so far at such with things, but he's, you know, there's

been, there's never ever been intercourse, no form penetration.

He said, these girls are just throwing themselves at him and

it's really, really hard for him.

And I said, well, you know what?

I said, you've gotta be careful with the choice of women that

you, you, you, you, you, you date.

I said, you'll soon realize within a month or two if she's not going back to

your home and you're not spending hours in your car and you are meeting in public

places and getting to know each other.

Um, I said, I mean, I'll be honest with you today, we, we almost need

to, to, to, I'm not saying this is to be structured as such, but if you're

gonna marry someone, what harm is the not holding hands for the first month?

Not even holding hands.

Get to know the person for goodness sake.

If we're not careful again, we are leaning on her.

Where does the boundary kinda stop?

At what point does, will the fire burn me?

I'll say, just stay away from the fire.

The fire in the right place will be wonderful, or it can be, but you

could steal the potential of that if you try and get burned beforehand.

But of course, we're surrounded by lots of fire and lots of sexual temptation.

So where's the boundary for that?

Well, you need to make that, you need to able to go to God's word and see what

it says, and to talk to spiritual elders about what they've come to understand,

and whether it's to Dale here as a, a pastoral leader in this church or somebody

else, um, they'll have heard a lot of stories about what people have done

and how they've burned themselves, and also how they've learned to be able to

understand the fire of their passions and how they've curbed that so that the fire

brings life and not death ultimately.

Again, it's a question you could say, well, you should and you shouldn't.

But I'm, I'm not into that.

I'm into the fact that we each have our own unique journey.

And this, again, is another conversation that happens in the prayer closet.

This is something that happens in a sense.

We know in our own hearts when we're stepping over a

boundary, we shouldn't step over.

God is not out to condemn you.

He's out to lead you into and towards your redemption.

Be careful you don't mistake redemption for regression.

Yeah, I think that, I mean, it's a, it's such a, um, relevant question and

one that's so often asked, but when it gets divorced from relationship

with Jesus, uh, that's where.

It just then becomes a legalistic line in the sand.

That's right.

And that doesn't, that doesn't help anybody.

No.

Well, it's, you know, it's still probably a better way to go.

Uh, but within the context of church and relationship with Jesus, it's, look,

the other side of it is this is, you know, if, if, if you, if you are not

willing to uphold those boundaries, the God-given boundaries before marriage,

do you really think they're gonna on your wedding day, all those boundaries

are gonna sort of fall outta heaven.

And they thought they're all gonna be there.

No, they're not.

They're not.

If you don't learn to curb and to surrender, therefore to surrender,

to be curbed, those desires before marriage, then in some way or other,

you are gonna struggle in marriage.

You don't, you don't serve yourself well and you don't serve this person

that you've just spent $50,000 getting married to whatever it is people pay

today, I think, um, one of the ditches that I have found wrestling around

that question is that, uh, in an effort to stay pure before marriage, which

can be unhelpful phrasing, uh, the message can be sent, oh, sex is bad.

Sex is bad.

Don't do it.

Sex is bad.

Sex is bad.

Don't do it.

And then what happens is you come to, you see, you get married,

come to the wedding night.

It's not like your brain suddenly switches over.

So sex is now great.

Okay.

That's right.

That's right.

And you've infused within yourself, you've embodied this message that sex is bad.

And so we've gotta be careful of sending that message, uh, in an attempt to honor

a biblical ethic in this space, uh, to not send a condemning or negative

message around sex, because then that can really become an issue for people.

Look, I, I, I know I wanna say this because people don't talk

about it much, you know, as far as these is from the West.

That's how far the Lord removes our sin from us.

If we're repentant,

most people today will have fallen to some form of sexual sin, somewhere

other, whatever that looks like.

God is a restorative guard.

He gives us second virginities, lots of second virginities if need be.

And I'm saying that to you because I'm saying it's not about

taking advantage of his mercy, I'm saying, but apply his mercy.

He knows that we struggle and we struggle desperately in this world today.

But he says, come to me.

With that burden you have and where you feel heavy about your sexual stuff,

come to me and be yoked to me and learn what it means to be attached to me.

He says, because my yoke is much easier and lighter.

It's gonna be I, I'll make it easier for you to walk this journey.

Don't think God isn't right there at the very heart of sexuality.

He's in every single aspect.

He really is.

You know?

And I'm hoping if there's no other message we get over tonight, I'm

saying where you think these might be two separate conversations or not.

It's all, it's all one with God.

He's in the midst of it.

And we're not to be shy of that.

All right.

I am.

Maybe you can interpret this next question.

I'm not quite sure where it's going, but anyway, I'll read it and see.

See how you go.

Is it okay to buy a wife for two cows and a goat?

No question Mark.

How is that different to sex before marriage?

Today's context?

Are you picking up what the author of the question is putting down there?

Where did they buy the cows from?

Just kidding.

So is it, is it okay to buy two cows and a goat?

Buy a wife, two cow, two cows, a goats?

Yeah.

So we're talking about a like a, like a dowry.

Yeah.

And lost not a bit.

Old Testament, new Testament.

Are you gonna get a DAR or to be able get a wife?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm just not sure of the link between how that links with sex

before marriage in today's context.

Hmm.

All right, Debbie.

It's almost, well, maybe it's a legalistic side of things.

Um, look, this is, this is real interesting.

Um, some of you may know I'm adopted and, um, um, I'm half Syrian.

This half is Syrian.

This half is British.

No, I'm just kidding.

Um, I'm half Syrian and, um, uh, I went and found my birth father and I

have eight Muslim brothers and sisters and just over 14 nieces and nephews

called Achmed Mohammed Muhammad Achman.

And I don't, anyway, um, I kid you not.

Um, but the difference is, this is when I first met my siblings, my

sisters all had arranged marriages,

and I talked to my father about this.

This goes back to the dowry thing in somewhere or other.

And I'm like, oh.

Now as I met my siblings with their, their spouses, I could see they were

really happy and these marriages worked.

Um, and that got me questioning things deeply thinking, hang on a minute.

I've got all these brothers and sisters.

I shadow the eight of them.

One is divorced, I admit.

But in today's day and age, it would be likely that four out,

the eight or five out, the eight will be divorced to some extent.

And my father said this, um, in my conversation with him, he said, um.

He said, I didn't force them to marry.

He said, but what happened?

He said, I went out and chose a number of suitors for my daughters

because parents know their children better than anybody else.

I think those of us who are parents would admit that.

Um, and, um, he said, so literally we got a selection

of men for them to choose from,

and they made the final decision.

It wasn't like the six blokes lined up like a police line, you

know, there's option to, to brush alongside, to meet, et cetera.

And then the conversation would happen.

In other words, the family itself became part and parcel of the

selection of this marriage.

If we're looking at the visible side of the invisible grace that's there,

and, um, uh, what happened is this is, is, is be because everything was, was

there's a rigidity around the life.

They, they, they live in the Middle East or in many cases, at least,

their marriages work because they don't have all this so-called freedom

that fragments us here in the west.

Going back to the question, therefore, the sex before marriage is the.

These men probably have only ever had sex with one person that's their wife.

And their wife has only ever had sex with one person that's their husband.

That certainly was true of my own parents.

My own parents, you know, um, admitted were that they were

virgins on their wedding night.

Um, and they had sick 57 years of marriage together before

my my adoptive father died.

Um, but this has a lot that you see in somewhere that what's happened

is, and it's a okay, kind of a, a question we may not fully understand

even before we go home tonight.

Um, but the, the fact is, is that there was ways in which marriage,

in a sense, was tried to be formed.

That wasn't just about me on my, on my own, trying to make a decision.

It almost became a communal event.

There was a communion that was enabling me to remain in communion.

Today we've got, things are just, we've become so isolated.

Yeah.

And we talk about our relationships with each other

when they're really, really bad.

We don't go on and actually learn to be honest about what's going on, even the

good things that happen and, and to, and, and very little space to talk about

the bad things or the challenging things because we're layered in shame, which is

why the gospel is such good news because Jesus takes all that shame to the cross.

So, um, whether there's a dowry or not a dowry of two cows and the goat, um, all

I'm trying to say overall through this spiel is, um, there are still boundaries.

And if we follow God's precepts, there will bear fruit and it will

fruit and abundance a hundred percent.

All right, so Adam sent me this response.

He put it into ai, the question, okay.

Okay.

This is a response that AI came back in.

Well, I like ai.

Go on.

So, buying a wife as property distorts the biblical picture of marriage while

sex before marriage disregards the covenant God intended to protect intimacy.

One is a cultural negotiation within a covenant, imperfect,

but legitimate in context.

The other is a moral sin because it tears covenant blessing

from covenant commitment.

A great answer.

Well down.

Ai.

Okay.

Ai, yeah.

Ah, ah.

Um, can a person get married if they are repulsed by sex?

I look, I, I'm, I'm only hesitating in the answer because A actually,

um, anybody can go through the, the, the marriage situation.

Mm-hmm.

And, and people can, can,

can grow in that.

I mean, I, I have a look.

I, I, I've got a couple who got married and, um, they've been married

eight years and they came over from Eastern States and they stayed my home.

And, um, um, we put two single beds together and they found that basically

that there was sort of in the movement of the night, the beds were separating.

So they, they, they separate the beds.

I said, I'm really, really sorry about that.

She goes, oh, it's okay.

Like this.

I said, I know, but you know this, you're on holiday and there's opportunity

for, you know, a bit of, you know, a bit more closes and friendliness.

And she says, um, she says, oh, well that's okay.

I mean, I hope we might have a child one day.

I said, have you been trying?

She said, well, no, not yet.

We haven't consummated the marriage.

Oh, wow.

And they've been married for eight years.

I said, would you like a child?

She said, yeah.

I said, we're gonna pray, we're gonna fast.

I'm delighted to say it felt a bit like Abraham and Sarah, but

a year later they had a baby boy.

But for, but we had, I had a long conversation.

I I, I've got a very, as you might imagine, a very close

relationship with both of them.

And after they revealed this to me, we talked it through and, um, uh, of

course she had a great discomfort of the oatmeal for the vagina, et cetera.

Um, it's called ve, it's got a specific name, but I can't remember at the moment.

Anyway, what happened is he, he was, he was resolute that he would

not want to harm her or hurt her.

This was not, so he said, this is not what my set out to do.

And so they, they got some expert advice and, um, again, clearly the marital act

took place and they ended up having a child, but to begin with, because she

had a history of abuse, which is why she was sharing so intimately with me

about this, was able to do so, we were able to look at some of those underlying

causes and to help her to deal with that.

Now, in some way, she was still dealing with the repulsiveness of the sex

that she'd previously experienced, which was the context was repulsive.

She loved this man, and they went on, I mean, those eight years she

came to feel so re respected and trusted by him that they went on.

I mean, the, I, I love getting pictures of the family, little boy's, about

four or five now he's a real cutie.

And, um, uh, so in ask that question, yes, but again, it's all about context.

Yeah.

All about context.

And it's, you know, it can be quite complex.

Can't of, and I think just to touch on something you said before, I

think this is where you do bring community into the picture as

well, and you go, well, you explore what's, what is really going on here.

That's right.

I mean, and look, again, I share that story.

If you hadn't come here tonight, you may never, ever know a story like that.

Yeah.

And, and it's not that, you know, we don't go on advertising each other's

stories, but I think we need to be, have more honest, robust stories

about the reality of where we are at.

Yeah.

In the midst of this topic, like again, again, some of these maybe

people want a yes or no answer.

And I say, this is part and parcel of your intimate walk with the Lord.

You know, who are, are we to be able to turn around and judge?

But be careful that you don't fall for the dangling carrot in front

of you where the devil is literally offering you an aspect of truth, but

he's twisting that truth to try and fragment all that is love rather than

to make love become that gift that fits.

Remember lust, fragments, love unites.

Amen.

Okay.

Uh, should we wait till we're healed?

Before we date healed is in, uh, Inver?

If we've been through something massive and made mistakes in the wake of that

pain, how long until we're worthy?

Look, we are worthy because Christ makes us worthy.

And the second thing is this is, is really it.

If, um, if you were on your journey of healing, depending on how, um, difficult

or even traumatic your experience or experiences might have been, it

could well be that you end up meeting someone who is a fitting spouse to help

you along with that healing journey.

And in some cases, what happens is that healing journey speeds up.

Because of that spouse.

The person is so fits in, it's, it, it, it what happens, it reflects him.

So if the woman has been sexually abused and she meets a man who is