Sex Talks Pt7 . James Parker 2.0

Excellent.

Why don't you welcome James?

He comes up.

There you go.

Thank you brother.

Comfy seat.

Oh, lovely seats.

Very nice.

This one wasn't warmed.

Yeah.

Sorry, I, I'm glad I didn't put the cold, but water bottle on there.

That was

exactly,

yeah.

Hey, before we jump in, I'm just gonna pray for, for our time this evening.

Is that okay?

Just bow your heads for a minute.

Father, we thank you that we can come in Jesus' name as family, as friends,

as, as the loved ones, loved by God.

Father, thank you that, uh, tonight we bring, well, we bring our stories,

we bring our histories, we bring our experiences, our families, our friends.

We bring all of that to bear tonight and we ask God that you would just open

our eyes to reveal your way, your path.

For all of us, as we love others, as we respond with your love, as we

approach a broken world with your heart.

Father, we thank you God that you long to share your heart with us and, may

our heart break for what breaks yours.

Father, tonight we ask for your Holy Spirit to illuminate our

hearts and minds to your way of thinking and your way of being.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Very good.

Part one was fantastic.

I had so much feedback.

We had so much feedback in relationship to the content.

Great.

And I thought we'd basically approach tonight with going through a number of the

questions that we didn't get a chance to.

I think we had 742 questions we didn't get to.

So we might be here for a long time.

Probably a part 14 will be coming up soon, but we'll see how we go.

I think one of the things that impacted me in part one was just the nature of,

I think all of us come here tonight

with a sense that, we do live in a broken

world and how do we respond as followers of Jesus in that broken world?

How do we respond with the, with

the father's heart?

and I think obviously

the focus here is about sexual brokenness, but the reality is how

we respond in a broken world is actually the same no matter what

the brokenness kinda looks like.

And the thing that I think resonated with me when James was speaking

was just a very simple model.

I'm a pretty simple guy, was just the, the

idea of the three A's, around how we respond

in the midst of.

People, we love people around us who are broken.

And specifically we're talking about sexual brokenness tonight.

Do you wanna just quickly recap our, the three A's about how we respond?

Which I said wasn't the Australian Automobile Association, that one.

Correct.

That's it.

A a a, it, it.

This is in some ways my elevator pitch.

I'm gonna be honest with you.

And I once was grabbed by a guy, an older guy in a, in an elevator in Adelaide.

He said, he said, my grandson's gay.

Tell me, uh, uh, how can I help him?

And I said, three A's, give him your attention.

Give him your affection and affirm him.

Give him affirmation and attention.

Looks like this.

Notice him.

Look at him.

Don't be so busy on your phone or doing something else around the corner.

If he stops, be present to him.

By the way, this works in your marriage.

It works with your kids, it works with your colleagues.

It, it just works.

You might even like to try it with the mirror.

Might be good to even see yourself sometimes.

The second thing is, of course, it, it really the easiest one of the affection.

The affirmation is the affirmation.

And really, we live in a culture and people, many, I'm, you can tell from the

British accent that, I've not always lived

here.

And, and Australia's partly known for its tall poppy syndrome.

It's pretty quick to go, I should be all right, man.

I don't bother trying that, or whatever it is.

But that if we're not careful, we live in a culture where we, we

deeply, we, we question ourselves.

We don't really know who we are and whether we're that worth it.

And as much as we may take in God's word and we may meditate upon it, if there's

an underlying sense that we are not really made in this image and lightness

and glorious, then it, that, that word falls into very, very shallow soil.

So the need to be affirmed in who we are, the fact that we have been made

and we are breathing with heartbeats, this means that every one of you.

Is being sustained by God now and God is love.

So you are being sustained by love.

So therefore I'm to find love in everybody.

That's that bit.

Then the third area is affection.

Now, affection in, in such a sexualized culture sounds like

you've gotta jump on top of somebody.

It doesn't mean that at all.

I can have a great affection for you in the way I am present to you, and

you feel my presence with you and you go, oh, I feel at peace here.

I feel I can be myself.

I feel accepted here.

And really, that's that last word's important attention,

affection, and affirmation bring about a sense of self-acceptance.

So there are the three A's that just became the four.

So with affection, does that mean we run around hugging everyone left, right?

Absolutely not.

In fact, I'd say please don't go and do that.

You're likely to be arrested.

But on the other, on the flip side of that, what's happened

is this is we've almost got to a place that we are so scared.

That for many of our young people, many of whom have a touch deficit today, by

the time they're 11, 12, 13, they're being tempted into sexual situations

just because what happens is they have not been appropriately kissed

and cuddled and loved, and the rest of it, they say that between the ages

of five, I think it's about the age of 10, particularly a mother's love that

is continuous throughout a child's life, will set them up to seriously

understand the dignity of their own body.

To also to be able to

understand that which is, harmful touch anyway,

uh, harmful touch or, or healthy touch.

But it will also give them a deep sense of inner confidence.

So affection, you know, by trusted people.

Bring on the hugs.

Mm. Untrusted people.

A child will go, oh, I don't feel comfortable with this.

This is why, you know, we live in a culture that suddenly

becomes safeguarding mad.

But if we're not careful, the safeguarding is now putting the pressure onto the

child to turn around and understand what touch is right and wrong, which

gives them a concept of wrong touch, which leads them down in a, a, a

rabbit war that really we shouldn't be leading them down at this age.

They should have received sufficient healthy touch that you don't need to teach

them what unhealthy and healthy touch is.

They just know.

So

good.

So good.

I know, you know, as a pastor

of a church, oh, by the way, if we haven't met before, my

name's Adam and I'm, one of the pastors

here along with my wife Dale, here at Red Door, and I feel like part of what

makes Adam, Adam is, I have, I feel like

I have a bit of a hug ministry, you know, where I, I feel like I, I get it mate.

I get, mate,

I get it.

Physical touch.

Oh, yes, yes.

I just, I think part of what.

You were talking about is we don't necessarily, all of us need to know how

to engage in that kind of discipline of, of how do we show appropriate affection.

Just a little tip for you.

Is it actually really appropriate when you have connection with someone is,

is to ask, oh, would you like a hug?

Would I like the one, can I have a hug?

'cause it's like they've got this level of humility where you say,

oh, can I have a hug from you?

You know what I mean?

So I think just know that when we're talking about appropriateness,

asking the question is good.

I ask my wife all the

time, she says, no.

Can, can, can I join to something that was on the video there?

Sure.

That, that was, is I talked about the

fact that there I was, I'd left the gay community and then this, I met

this Christian minister, pastor, whatever you want to, was kind of

doing therapeutic work with me.

And he had this fatherly love for me.

Now, the very fact that I even ended up saying yes to Jesus in

the first place is because if you imagine I'm there, I'm in London.

I'm the first guy to come out in my university.

It wasn't that long ago, man.

I'm not that old anyway, but uh, you know, but I was the first guy to come out.

There's no coffee machine, you know, a special room for

me, you know, to be stroked.

And there was no rainbow flags and all this.

It was just, I was the, the

college queer.

And, people would come up

to me and they'd kind of shake my hand from a distance or

kind of pat me on the back and

move away quickly.

and I was very flamboyant,

very flamboyant.

But there was one guy at uni, the Christian Guy who would hold my gaze.

Hey, James, how you doing?

You see, well, actually he called me Jim, or Jim, you know, in his London accent.

And then what happens is the more that we correspond that we

communicated with each other, then he'd come up and he'd embrace me.

Now, understand this.

My body had only ever experienced somebody else being that intimate with me.

When they were taking from me.

I'd had years of sexual abuse.

I just thought, well, after you've been abused a few times, you

think this is what my body's for.

Let's get this over and

done with and move on.

within the gay community

itself, I mentioned that I came to a realization that we, I believe we

were using and abusing each other.

It's not just me.

Many people I know who let the community also say the same thing.

This man's touch was a giving to me, which is what I was

actually looking for all along.

That's what I was looking for in the gay community.

Now, if you go into something like an app like Grindr, which is renowned as

the global kind of gay app to go picking people up, you know, on that street and

that street and that street and everywhere else, many of the guys today are saying,

I just want somebody to be honest.

Kiss and cuddle.

Not even sex.

They're just saying, would somebody just see me acknowledge me?

You know, we talked before about the fact that the entirety

of our bodies is sensory.

So appropriate affection is something that is deeply lacking in our

society, and when people find it, they try and grab it like crazy.

And we, we have to, we have to learn what it means to

appropriately be affectionate, I

think afresh today.

I could talk more on

that, but I, I'll I'll let you ask a question too, maybe before.

Oh, I was, I was just pondering the nature of

the world we live in, is where we make these

two things.

One thing, and the two things, let me tell you, is the acceptance of a person

versus acceptance of their lifestyle.

And those, those two things are actually two things.

They're not one thing.

So in the world we kind of see it like, well, unless you accept my

lifestyle, you don't accept me.

And that's not true.

I can completely make it.

It's completely possible.

Just ask any parent, I can completely accept the person distinctly differently

from accepting their lifestyle.

And many question, you know, oh, if I accept the person, isn't that sending them

a message that I accept their lifestyle?

And if you'd think that way, you actually need to see that you actually

see those two things as one thing, and you need to actually begin to separate.

Accepting that person is a completely different thing

to accepting their lifestyle.

And as you, as you walk in that way, you actually find how you conduct yourself.

With the sexually broken, you actually find that a place of life giving both to

them and to you, which is the beautiful thing where it's, it's rigged everyone.

It's all rigged the way.

When you love others, you are refreshed, man.

You actually, you're filled.

I, I can't explain it.

That's why I think God's got rigged.

Right?

A friend, a friend of mine has an employee, and on the weekend he was

telling him that he goes to the, to the mall, the shopping mall, not to

buy anything, but to walk down the, you know, the, what do you call that?

You know, the boulevard kind of thing?

The boulevard thing.

And he is just walking down there and he is walking down there and he

tries to walk in front of people.

So people have to get out of his way just to affirm the fact that he exists.

That's sad.

Hey, like, he's so lonely.

So in need of.

Being seen that he goes to a shopping mall to walk down the boulevard so that

some, so he feels seen when someone kind of adjusts their walking course.

This is the world we live in, and so affection, how we show

affection is so important.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Question,

how can we approach a conversation with those in the LGBT community to

introduce Jesus and the word of God?

Respect, respectfully.

Let's lay a ground rule here or a foundation.

Today's great.

There are many people today who identify as LGBT, but they are people.

They're people.

Some of you might identify as LGBT, but to me you're just, you're still made in God's

image and likeness and you're lovely.

Some of you may have all sorts of kinks and fetishes that have nothing

to do with LGBT, but your pain is a deeper or the similar struggle to

somebody in the LGBT community and you may be in the LGBT community

and not have that painful struggle.

My point is this is we're dealing with people.

You said it yourself if we're not careful, we've, uh, and the, the

very essence of the devil, I, I think I mentioned this last time,

is to steal, to kill and to destroy.

John 10, 10 A and Jesus came to bring a sense of harmony and

union communion about everything.

So the devil splits and divides not just things up, but bits

of us up and groups of us up.

And he tries to put us in all these different little groups.

So we begin to see each other as almost like an enemy, et cetera.

And I'm saying, please, if we do that, that's really not helpful when

it comes to delivery of the gospel.

So going back to the question, how would we bring up Jesus and, and who he is,

et cetera, to another an LGBT person?

Well, how would you bring it up with somebody who is an X, Y, Z person

or somebody with cancer, or somebody who's a Trae or whatever it may be?

I would say this first and foremost, partly what gives you the right to

turn around and in any way, possibly lecture, it's a strong word, but to,

I mean, I appreciate we want to share the good news of Jesus with others.

Well, I'd say this, if your life is authentically being lived in pursuit

of Jesus, you won't need to find a way to share it with the others.

They will be asking you what's different about you?

They'll be doing that.

What is it about you?

You know?

Well, of course I get anxious, but it only stays in me a little bit.

You know, I feel great hope and people will see these aspects of our lives.

So it isn't that we don't want to share with others, but I do say this if it

is by our witness in some way or other, that we are given an authority to be

able to authentically speak to others

into their own lives.

and I'd say this, in

a world that appears to be getting much darker all the time, if you are

hanging around the light, the light will have affected you and you will

affect the darkness and you just will.

I do understand where the question is coming from, and I would say this rather

than look at the LGBT stuff, L-G-B-T-Q people, if that's how they identify

themselves, they have to pay bills, they have to keep fit, they have health issues.

They might have lots of friends, but feel they haven't got that many at all.

In other words, they're just like everybody else.

Meet them where they are in their humanity rather than looking at their

this compartmentalized sexuality, even if they're screaming their sexuality,

meet this human being in front of you.

That's what I reckon

to that.

So good.

So good.

Here, here,

some of these questions are a bit of an overlap, but I think there's

just little sort of, nuances that are helpful

to speak into, if that make sense.

Great.

Yeah.

so inviting someone

to church, there's this dynamic and stigma around what's a recent

comment around conversion therapy?

So how do we invite people to church knowing that there's this tension,

like, oh, you're inviting me to church.

Oh, you must be trying to.

Change me.

look, and, and, and

this is a, a very, very deliberate usage of those two words,

conversion and therapy.

Yep.

that have been put

together by L-G-B-T-Q advocates, partly because they, they actually know that

good therapy is good for everybody.

And the one thing they don't want people to question is the fact that they proclaim

a message that everybody's born gay.

And yet again, even the science itself doesn't say that.

So, but if the science doesn't say that, then we couldn't have laws specifically

that honor the LGBT community.

And let's be honest, there's a, well, you may not be LGBT, but

there's some pride in all of us that we don't want to humble ourselves.

We don't wanna surrender before the cross.

So how would you deal with something like that?

Well, I'd say to somebody, whoa, you know, for me, church is, you know, basically the

love therapy I receive at church makes.

I just, I love it.

If you don't want more love in your life, well okay, but if ever you do come back

out, I'd love you to meet the come Taste of the Love in, in, in, in, at my church.

So you take the focus of this language that's been deliberately used to

try and say, watch the Christians.

You move away from that language and you bring it back to actually what is

the cry every human heart, which is, will somebody please love me some more?

'cause I'm gonna be honest with you.

As I say, I don't know your stories, they're none of my business.

But I do know this.

Every one of you wants some more love in your life because you

haven't arrived yet and it was love.

He who is love God, who is Love.

One John four tells us who created you.

And until that love is complete, you're gonna still be hungry for it.

This is a great place to start.

Mm.

Such a good response.

Uh, a friend of mine, uh, we had an opportunity

to go sit down with, she actually became

the speaker of the upper house and she was pushing for this conversion

therapy bill in Western Australia.

And it was fascinating to be able to talk to her and hear her story.

She was, it was so awkward because she was, she was straight away

on the defensive 'cause Pastor Adam's coming to have a chat

with her and it was very unique.

But what was interesting around this idea of that use of the word conversion,

she was telling me stories about people who have been traumatized by

people wishing to do well, but actually doing poorly because they didn't leave

conversion up to the Holy Spirit.

They took it into their own hands and tried to force something

that shouldn't be forced.

And we had this fa fascinating conversation about.

The distinction between what Christian faith actually is versus

what she was using as a, an example.

Now she was not a believer, so it was a, a really interesting conversation.

My point is, if you're fearful about this conversion therapy stuff,

don't worry about it because you're not even there to change a person.

That's the job of God.

That's the job of the Holy Spirit.

Totally.

So you got nothing to fear because we're not trying to convert

anybody at FYI that's God's drawing people unto himself, not, not us.

And so I think that's a helpful frame to always keep in your mind.

It

is.

And you know, the, the other side of it is, this is, I mean, I would say that

if I'm a victim of anything, I am a victim of L-G-B-T-Q conversion practices.

And I know many people who are literally victim survivors of

L-G-B-T-Q conversion practices because they try and say, well, this is it.

This is who you are, this is all you are.

That's where you, that's where you stay.

So then the person who detransition and suddenly this so-called loving

community that accepts 'em, et cetera, totally rejects them.

And then the mainstream community may not understand them more

of anywhere for them to go.

And, and, you know, this is again, this is why our, our church doors need to be as

open as possible to, to any, anybody linked

in with a topic of sexuality and gender identity today.

Again, thank you to Red Door for putting on this second evening.

Gosh, having the first one was like a miracle.

The second one feels like, oh, I feel quite at home here.

You know, I'm back next

Wednesday.

No.

Anyway, but, but these are the important

issues that are there.

And if we are really, and, and this is why tonight's important.

If we scratch beneath the surface, we realize that there's a whole nother

level of communication that we need to have with each other, and that God is

trying to communicate to us as well.

And that is, that is so true.

And yet what happens is for our beloveds, and I mean that word very deliberately,

who identifies L-G-B-T-Q, that, that they also, their lives are driven by fear as

much as our lives are driven by fear.

And I've never seen more homophobia as I have within the gay community.

People who are scared stupid of each other.

'cause they're scared of being rejected by even ones in their own community.

It's mo, it's,

it's, you know, uh, it's very hard for

others to admit that that's true.

But it, but it is, I've seen it time and time again.

I remember in the gay bars myself in London, I've

seen it here in Perth, Sydney and other places.

And, so yeah, there's lots

of work to do, but, and again, I'm just so pleased that the

door of this church is open.

Just going back to that idea of giving attention.

To people.

Can you give us a couple of really practical dynamics on how we could

cultivate a listening posture to others?

Uh, I mean, a, a list, a listening posture is unquestionably, begins with the eyes.

S the eyes they say are the doorway to the soul.

You may never, never reflected on this, but the only creatures that

are able to reproduce and look each other in the eyes are human beings.

No other animal does it and can do it, and God has designed

that we would be sold to soul.

Now if we can't hold somebody's gaze and appreciate the beauty and the dignity of

them, even as I'm doing to you here now.

Then what happens is, this is why I think so many people struggle today

with dating, with being committed, and even in marriage itself.

Because what's happened is this, is they're actually, they don't know their

own soul, or they're not willing to expose their own soul in a way that they're

comfortable and un frightened to do so.

Unusual word un frightened, and I use that deliberately, it means un

timid, and you can't have intimacy if you've got fear, if you've got

timidity, you can't be un timid, which is what intimacy is all about.

Intimacy is almost like into me.

See, we have desperately lost that because of these things and

because of our screens everywhere.

You know, we've, we've lost what it is to be deeply present, and

I'd say this to you, if you wanna practice being attentive to someone.

Take time in your life to absolutely keep ha have, have periods in

each day as much as you can.

It's not too like going to the gym, have periods where you just will

not look at the screen and you'll be deliberately present to others around you.

Very good.

I've got a friend who identifies as a homosexual and they

ask for me to pray for them.

I'm assuming like in person, not just kind of at home.

Where would you begin as you begin to pray for someone?

I mean, clearly depends

on the needs of that person, situation, et cetera.

But again, I've got a friend who's a homosexual.

I've got a friend who doesn't know Jesus.

I've got a friend who's not got complete joy yet as Jesus promising.

John 15, come on, I've got a

friend, you know who, um.

He wants to talk

about Jesus in the nighttime 'cause he's a bit scared of talking in the daytime.

A bit like Nicodemus.

How would you treat them?

You in some way?

First of all, if somebody asked me to pray for them, the first,

my first words are come Holy Spirit, show me what to pray for.

I've prayed with many, a person who describes themselves as a homosexual

or a bisexual or a whatever, sexual or you know, a coffee sexual or it

might be, I dunno.

And and my first words

are, holy Spirit, how would you want me to pray for this person?

And I tell you something, I don't think I've ever prayed immediately for something

around sex, sexual stuff, or sexuality.

Now if they deliberately asked me to, I'm also listening saying, why are

they asking me to pray about this now?

Because of the knowledge that I have and the understanding.

If they say I'm struggling with same sex attraction, I'm homosexual help.

Would you pray with me?

I'll say, of course.

So the first thing I may do is say, Lord.

I just wanna thank you for the courage in this man or this

woman for being so honest.

I wanna thank you that you brought them to this realization of this

is what their experience is, and I pray you'd increase their courage.

Come on.

The fact that they've asked for prayer.

Lord, increase the gift of their faith to trust in you, even with

this part of their life that they seemed to be challenged with.

We never assume and then we say, Lord, I just put your heart

and their heart would be wrong.

Graft them into you as the vine, whatever it may be.

I mean, can you see the direction I'm going in here?

I'm not looking at the sexuality.

I'm looking at what we as human beings each one of us needs to have.

Now I say if they're very specific, even with the very specific, for those

of us who pray over other people, et cetera, just 'cause somebody comes

and asks for something doesn't mean that's what we should be praying into.

We say, Lord, what short agenda?

This is why it's important that we develop that intimate relationship

of learning to listen to what God is saying to us, and we learn to

understand what his voice is like.

Because if somebody comes forward and asks for prayer, this could be

a dynamic opportunity for the word of God to be used in their life.

Like the double-edged sword, as it says, it tells in Hebrews, it's gonna cut them

in a place that, that they need to be cut.

That goes more of you, Lord.

We don't just want a prayer.

We want this to be a, a love bombing by our Heavenly Father towards this person.

Sorry.

Good.

Last time in part one.

I think you spoke into this a little bit, but I feel like we

just want to address it again.

The question is, how do I deal with a guy wanting to be called a girl in my place

of work, especially with criticism from others, even unbeliever around this whole.

You know, how do we frame this him, her business dynamic,

as I said previously, you know, to we, the, we owe each other the truth in

love, but we are also to be incredibly sensitive to where somebody's at.

I mentioned my own gender dysphoria there in

the, in the video.

and I'm constantly

walking with different people who

are gender dysphoric, body dysmorphic, and

all these other different things.

The important thing is this, is that we come to a place where they understand

that we deeply respect who they are, where they are, and hear me in this, rather

than being concerned about the pronouns or what they're even asking us to call them.

First and foremost.

Pray for the grace to be more present to this person's heart and to an

understanding of where they are.

Because when a bloke leaves the house dressed as a woman or a

lipstick on mate, that takes courage.

Any bloke, he would go, oh God, yeah.

You know, and any girl that's binding her breasts or, you know, dressing as a

man and shaving her head, whatever it is she's in, she's struggling deeply around

a sense of who she's in, her identity.

This is where our compassion needs to come in first and foremost.

Now I say we owe each other the truth in love.

Uh, to this day, I, I've, I've, I've never called a he a she or a she, a he.

I've never done that.

Or a they, for that matter.

I. I've actually trained myself, I think not to do that.

And I find myself just finding different phrases to you, so I

have to refer to 'em as that.

I I appreciate that some people changed their name.

I, I, I've got, I know a couple in London who had a, a daughter and they

wanted to call their child Gareth.

And their daughter, who's a top legal specialist in London, is called Gareth.

Well, people say, have you met Gareth?

We all know who we talk about.

This is this

great female lawyer.

and nobody questions

that.

So it's a name, a pronoun, however, determines whether or not God has made

somebody male or female, and therefore,

where possible we refer to them by through their biology.

But I say this, I, I could be seen as being profoundly insensitive and I

don't want to be, because I do think that the compassion for the person

is more important than anything else.

Um.

So in the midst of that, you know, the, the person at work,

rather than wondering about the pronouns, I'd say get to know them.

Take 'em out for lunch one day.

Give them your attention and say, tell me a bit of your story.

You know, and then they'd say, well, what about why I'm just like this?

Well, not necessarily that.

I just wanted to hear some of your story about your life, really.

You know, I see that, I think some people walk around you at work, and I, I

just wanted to hear some of your story.

I'm just genuinely, genuinely interested.

If you wanna hear a bit of mine, I'll share a bit of my story, you know, and

it's only by those, when we do that and is we begin to start to understand

where this person is coming from.

In other words, we put ourselves alongside them and as much

as possible into their shoes.

And let me say this to you, because of the fragility of the, and the dynamics of a

situation such as being, described there in

the question.

That means there's gonna be, if you are, if you as a Christian are

going, Ooh, a bit about this, there's gonna be lots of other people who

are going, Ooh, but they haven't got the grace of God like you have.

So I'm saying, take that grace of God and apply it to the situation.

You have nothing to be afraid of in Christ, nothing.

There's times in conversation I said to somebody, if I say something that

might offend you or I get it wrong, please understand that is the last

thing I want to do in this conversation.

I, I really am genuinely, genuinely interested in you and want to hear you.

So in some ways I've removed all the externals and I've

just come for the heart.

You've won someone over when you talk like that.

Mm. So good.

I think part of just a bit of an insight into some experiences that

I have, and maybe one thought, and you said you've got little phrases.

Because all these little phrases and anecdotal moments of, of connection,

uh, are so keen, keenly connected

to who we are.

And, I have, uh, had moments,

I just remember a moment at a

wedding actually, and, a very important family in our world.

and I hadn't spoken

to this person who is

struggling with their, their, their gender

story.

And I remember sort of the, this reception ending and being out the front

of the reception place, and I hadn't really had a moment to talk to them.

And I used the phrase, I used two thoughts.

I said, oh, it's so great to see you, and you're looking amazing today.

I didn't try to address a greeting as sorts, you know what I mean?

I didn't try to say.

Uh, a pronoun.

I didn't try to say a name.

I kind of bypassed that and went straight to a position of encouragement.

A position of being seen.

Does this make any sense?

Now you're gonna have your own language.

I get in trouble for using the word champion all the time.

So he's laughing now 'cause I use it on him as a joke.

But, you know, but you gotta find your own language, right?

You gotta find your own way of just declaring a sense of, I see

you and I see goodness in you.

And that's just been something I've struggled with.

And it doesn't mean I get it right every time, but my goal is that they're seen.

Do you know what I'm trying to say?

Anyway?

And, and you know, it's not about learning what Adam says

or learning what James says.

It really is.

You, you find your own way in this.

But if you approach it with fear, others will see and taste your fear.

And you have nothing to be frightened of on this topic.

Mm,

nothing.

Pure.

Pure love.

Perfect love.

Cast out all fear, all fear.

Getting into some theological

questions here now, James.

here we go.

I've heard

in Romans chapter one, verse 26 and 27, in the Hebrew Bible may have

been addressing p pedophilia rather

than homosexuality.

what was the original

language addressing?

So for those who aren't aware, Romans 1 26 talks about, do you wanna

address that as I get my Bible out?

This is the NIV version.

Yep.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts, even though

women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.

In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were

inflamed with lust for one another.

Men committed shameful acts with other men.

And received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Now, there are some that would say, well, that's

written to the, the, uh, to the believers

in in Rome.

At that time.

And

of course this is, we know that, uh, or

history would tell us at least that older men would ha would be sort of, that'd have

a p rustic kind of, inclination towards

'em.

Or they would be introducing young men in

towards sexual aspects.

but this, so this was

looked at as we might say, pedophilia today.

And this wasn't just men going with men.

Well, by the time Nero had his way, I think there was just

raging orders of all sorts all

over the place.

And uh, it's commonly known.

there was an anthropologist

called JD Unwin at the turn of the 20th century, wrote a

book called Sex and Culture.

And he said that when a society gets to a place where anything in everything

is acceptable sexually, literally that society fragments and disintegrates.

And we saw the great strong Romano Empire, which of course has still got

traits all over Europe and Greece and other places, but it fell and rapidly

going back to the biblical verse.

Some would argue, well that's to pedophilia because let me tell you,

that's an easier way to explain away your same sex attraction.

If you are a man who fancies other men or a woman who is lost, flee towards

another woman, it means, well, I haven't got to go to the cross and humble myself.

Pride.

It's easy.

The challenging thing is this and it, and it's the the end phrase there and

then of verse 27, it says, they recede within themselves the due penalty.

Interesting.

Now that due penalty could be many things, but what happens is this

is, and this is one of the reasons I believe there is such a push, put all

the gender stuff into young children, there is something incredibly addictive.

Not just about sex, but about sex.

That demands that I don't actually have to make an effort

to win over the other person, to have sex with me.

So, in other words, an unredeemed man who's never found self mastery

around his sexual behavior and his fantasy could meet another guy who

hasn't, who's unredeemed as well.

And before you know it, they've got an addiction going on, not just to each

other, but elsewhere and the like.

The penalty of that is this is their ability to be able to be pure of heart

and soul and to enter into the mystery of marriage between man and woman,

which reflects heaven, which draws us towards heaven, that is stolen

from them, that is the due penalty.

So they're not able to live out the true nature of who God has called them to be.

They just can't do that.

Now.

There's many, many due penalties.

There's many, many areas in our lives.

If we don't follow things in accordance with the boundaries that

God lays down, there's a due penalty.

And things get stolen from us.

I mentioned in the video there were five people I had to go and see,

and I talked about going to see my two abusers, and I went and met

my birth parents as an adoptee.

When they edited the video, they failed to put in the fifth person.

So I get people sending me emails.

Who's the fifth person?

The fifth person was Steve, my boyfriend.

So there I am.

Steve and I, we'd been discussing going to the Netherlands to get a blessing

because we'd both come to Christ.

I come to Christ.

He saw the difference in me.

I became much, much more at peace within myself, very rapidly.

And he said, I want a slice of that.

So you got this other gay guy, if you like.

So he came to Christ and we both spent time worshiping and

reading our Bibles, et cetera.

Thank goodness nobody decided to come and super witness to us

about how bad our sexuality was.

Otherwise we'd be.

Probably left the church, but they, but others just loved us where we were

realizing the conversion would come through the Holy Spirit, unless of

course God specifically at some point gave them a word to challenge us.

But that would be later down the line.

However, what happened is this, when I finished a relationship with Steve, Steve

decided to leave the gay community me.

Now, at the time when I finished with Steve, I literally am this

very, I'm still a really camp guy.

You know, I've stopped wearing so much false tan and

eyeliner and stuff.

Steve had been a soldier

in the British army.

He'd fought in the Falklands war.

He was Mr. De Macho.

He got the guns and the tats, or actually known, you'd never

necessarily think he was gay.

You definitely knew I was sweetheart.

Anyway, but anyway, but we finished with

each other.

Steve went back into the gay community.

10 years later when the Lord was saying to me, go and meet these five people.

It took me a long time to find Steve, by the way.

And Steve had been the heartthrob of the party and the rest of it, when

we were going out and rest of it, there was always people knocking at

his door, whether it was for coffee or class A drugs or whatever it was.

10 years later, Steve is living on his own in a one bedroom apartment with about

six cats that never go outside, smelly.

And I knocked on the door and I was dressed in a, a suit, uh, got

a professional job and I knocked on the door and he opened the

door and he went, hi, come in.

And I walk and I'm looking at this guy and he's basically, he's skin and bones.

He goes, oh my God, I got HIV and blah, blah, blah.

And then my, my legs collapses and I got gonorrhea from so and so.

I got this and dah, dah.

And we're talking.

I'm like, okay.

Okay.

And, um.

Towards the end of the conversation, he said, uh, I said, look, I, I

need to go in about 15 minutes.

He said, oh, that's not long, but we can go to the bedroom if you want.

I'm like, no, Steve, Steve, I, I, I didn't come here to have sex with you.

I just came here just to say, look, whatever happened in the water that's

gone on the bridge, I'm sorry for any way.

I might have hurt you and ask you to forgive me for any way.

I hurt you too.

And he just said to me, he said, no sex.

I said, sorry, mate.

No.

And he just turned around to me and said, then F off pointed to the door.

And I just stood up and I walked out.

Why do I share that example with you?

It's not necessarily a common example, but it's certainly neither an uncommon

example I've noticed from people who've left that community in that way.

Because what happened is the Lord showed me that he had received

within himself the undue penalty.

I had stepped outta that world and I'd taken the fact that God

had created my biology male.

I began to take this seriously and the Lord affirmed me.

And I love being a man, and I love working with other men, and I love honoring women.

Steve made the opposite journey.

He rejected God and therefore what happens?

He went back into a community and really what happened is he, he renounced, if you

like, his manhood to the altar of Baal

and the gods of prophets of Baal, if you like the, and so what

happened is this is he ended up having the due penalty with him.

He became incredibly effeminate and everything about this beautiful

strapping guy who'd just been badly wounded as a teenager.

That's another story altogether.

But those wounds, rather than being healed, he ended up those wounds,

became his identity in a whole new way.

And he received within himself the undue penalty.

I believe I've tried to find Steve or what happened to him.

No sign of him anywhere.

Thanks for sharing that.

It's, uh, sobering.

And, uh, you, you use a, a phrase, I'll get to that.

But God's, God's intent is for us humanity to flourish in godly

order is how humanity flourishes.

'cause he made us.

And you're using that sense of there's a lifestyle that leads to life.

And there's also a

a death style.

A death style

that leads to death.

Leads to death.

That's right.

What we're talking about here is things that are outside God's order and

it's That's right.

And everything outside of God's order.

Uh, and, and that's the word sin, the Greek word.

I'm missing the mark.

I think we've mentioned this before.

So there's a mark that we're supposed to hit.

Now, the beauty thi thing about God, I mean, it, it, look, he says there's

a, there's the, the wide gateway, which many go through, you know?

But then, but go for the, seek the narrow gateway.

But I said to myself, knowing the mercy of God in my own life, it's not that narrow.

It's not that his mercies are just, he just keeps pouring out mercy after mercy.

'cause I knew every day, even the righteous man falls seven times.

In other words, he's gonna fall every day of the week.

Every morning he gets certain, God goes, hello, I still love you new mercies.

Don't, don't abuse that mercy, but do know it's present there for you.

Yeah, very good.

And the more addictive your lifestyle is, the more, the more fragmented

your life is, the more God is saying, I have an ocean of mercy.

In other words, an incalculable, infinite amount of mercy that's waiting for you.

And I don't, I just wonder sometimes whether or not we forget

that just a little bit too much.

It is fascinating to me how the word of God, you can kinda read it to make

it say what you want it to say, because it, it actually begins with a heart

posture that's illuminated with the spirit of God to actually lead you to

the truth that the word is pointing to.

Well, you know what?

Often in, in much of my own, my own peer support work that I do alongside

people, it's a phrase I, I I often use, forgive me, those of you who do know

me here and you've heard this before, is I talk about a long surrender,

but long surrender today, I mean, you know, you want a loaf for bread.

We can add it in the next 10, 15 minutes if you want.

There'll be a spread, she somewhere near here, or a Coles or wool, but if you

wanted a loaf of bread 120 years ago, you'd be waiting several nine months

every year for the, for the wheat to grow, and then you gotta grind it and then you

gotta to this it and everything else.

Everything took time.

So they had the ability to surrender.

With time in a, a long term process.

Today, everything is so instant.

We've lost what it is to have a long surrender to the Lord and realizing

that some people say, I've been praying for this for six months.

I'm like, oh, is that all?

But you don't realize, you know that.

I'm like, no, no.

I, I really do realize, you know, if St. Paul had a, if he knew the, if he

knew the Jewish word of God back to front and was the tip of the Pharisees,

et cetera, and he'd met Jesus on the road to Damascus and he still needed

a three year discipleship course.

I said, why should you have any less?

But we forgotten that it takes a long surrender.

And this is true also in our journey with the Lord.

We need an absolute and utter long surrender.

The Bible's got a

lot of guidelines, that we don't follow

today.

Women should

cover their heads.

tassels is another one.

The tassels, on what the basis of

modern Christianity should that how do, how do we navigate that space in terms

of how do we look at the word of God?

And it's saying, well, you shouldn't do that.

But then again, it's saying, well, you shouldn't have same sex marriages.

Why do we not say not yes to that?

And why is it, why does it appear to be pick and choose?

Okay.

Context, context, context.

Again.

You just said, we take the word of God and we manipulate it to the

way that we want to manipulate it.

We have an understanding scientifically today of crustacean

fish with hard shells.

We know the certain circumstances don't eat that fish.

It's been out too long.

It not just make you sick, it'll kill you.

So God was giving instructions to the Jewish people to say, look, I'm

gonna tell you how this stuff works.

Follow this rule, you'll be okay.

When it came to women with head covering.

Et cetera.

You know, I, I mean, was the raping and pillaging in ancient times?

Of course there was a woman's hair tell a mile off.

It's a woman, they'll probably go off, you know?

And so my point is, this is context, context, context.

But if you look at the context also of really being honest about what goes

on in homosexual relationships, both relationships, gay relationships, or

really come alongside somebody who's experienced gender dysphoria and

then transitioned, you will realize and you'll be able to see the deep

fragmentations in these people's lives.

So for example,

somebody said to me, well, I went to my

friend's gay wedding.

It was wonderful and I loved it, and I dunno what your

problem is around gay weddings.

I said, I said, my problem is this.

I said, if I go to a wedding of my friend Jack, with his fiance Sally,

and they have a lovely wedding, and then oh, a few months later

this Sally goes, I'm pregnant.

We go, yeah, you know, if I go to Jack and Bill's wedding,

we could wait 90,000 years.

There ain't gonna be a pregnancy.

But then they turn around and they talk about discretion needed here.

Warning, okay, oh well we make love, et cetera.

I'm like, mate, you've got two offices.

And if you're sticking a PHUs in this orifice too much.

That's why we have a rise in the oral and throat cancers today.

We talked about this last time, and if you're sticking it in the other

orifice, if you wanna call that love making, you are slowly leading

someone towards a massive, a greater possibility of anal or rectal cancer.

That's an exit, not an entrance.

That's how God's designed it.

Sorry, bit of crude biology.

Ladies, the one gentleman, the vagina is made up a 37 layers of muscle it

can take penetration and childbirth.

Thank you, Lord.

Your butt is basically.

You've got all the bloodstream, and then you've got this thin air of

tissue inside, which is your feces.

If you rip out that tissue, you've got the toxins going into your bloodstream.

Not a good idea, and particularly on a regular basis.

So in other words, when you understand that and you watch these two guys

saying, oh, I love you, I love you forever and ever, well, I've got

no problem if two people love each other and want a good friendship.

That piece, you can't call that marriage to me.

That's a mirage to me.

Put me in

jail.

I don't care.

some good conversions

to do in jail anyway, then, but Paul did it.

Why don't, why shouldn't we?

But the, the, the point is, this is context is everything.

When we think deep beneath the surface and we deeply understand and we're willing

to ask the right questions, we, we'll realize if we're not careful in the name

of love, we are doing a gross injustice to the people that we say we love.

That is not love.

It's injustice.

And it's not fair to lead someone that way because that's what the devil does.

He takes truth and he starts to twist it.

He can't create anything.

He just twists truth.

So we've gotta say, okay, Lord, reveal to me what is the truth of this situation?

What is the truth of this context?

And give me your grace to be surrendered to that truth and to meet someone where

they are in their lie and to slowly accompany them out of it, not me.

Study again, bark, bark, bark.

Finger point.

You shouldn't, you mustn't.

This is Jesus doesn't like you.

'cause that's just not true.

Jesus loves that person.

In fact, that's exactly what he's, he's taken their pain to the cross.

So we need to go and have compassion.

I think, again, we used that before.

Con paone, two Latin words with suffering.

That's what compassion means.

We suffer with them and we help walk with them.

And maybe they can help us in our suffering too, if we're willing to be

humble and admit we are broken too.

'cause we all are.

That's very good.

Good answer.

Feel free to clap because it needs encouragement.

It's good.

He doesn't need it.

We should encourage him.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Seriously,

this is an

interesting question.

I know God doesn't

make mistakes.

Is it possible that he made transgender people on purpose with the intent for

them to pursue a gender transition?

No.

Excellent.

Look, look, the, the, I am, I'm blessed and I want, I really want you to hear that

I am blessed to have a number of friends who are who, who identify as transgender.

I'm blessed because they trust me to engage with their lives.

They're a bit suspicious of me.

They're now, I'm a Christian.

Mm-hmm.

Um.

But I know that I, my calling is not just to love them, but it's to outlove.

Come on,

you know, out love, hear that word tonight.

We are to out love in every situation.

You know, our love's gotta come out and we've gotta out love everybody else.

And that's the way it is.

When you understand their stories in their lives, you begin to

realize this person is not at peace

and they're not free.

And we've all sung that line where the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom,

and I'm sat thinking there is not freedom here and there is not peace with those who

have det transitioned and found Christ.

In every single example.

They say, this is what I was looking for.

I was misled and I was lied to in every case.

I'm honored again to know detransition in many different countries

because that's the nature of

my own walk as well.

and I'm honored to,

to know the people here who permit me to be their friends who are in

the trans community.

I know even recently, I was with three wonderful

people who all identify as trans females, and they just

said, we just want to be normal.

They were actually admitting where we are and who we are, where this is.

There was a realization deep down they, they were admitting this is not normal.

Just answer the question.

Do you think the overall culture of our world is actually beginning to see.

The deception in this space.

Use the word deception carefully.

I like used

the way we said the overall world rather than our nation.

No, I think

the thing, the world itself is beginning to see this.

I think what happens for us in in Australia is we are there.

There's some, look, there's a pride in our nation.

I've got the Aussie passport even though I've got a PO accent, forgive me.

But there's a pride in our nation and really rather than saying,

oh, the CAS review said this, the Tavistock clinic got it wrong there.

There's lots of people who would be

speaking out the us.

all these different

countries have enough stock giving puberty blockers.

We here are now running as much as we can towards more cross-sex hormones,

more transition, more this stuff.

Just because what happens is, I think the health departments,

state health departments realize if we admit we got it wrong, we're

going to be sued for millions.

And they are, and it's us who pay the taxpayer.

Uh, but they're running in

that direction.

And, but are people waking

up to this?

I do.

I really do think they are.

I

mean, you know, it's, I was talking with

a,

a doctor yesterday, who said that in his

clinical work in the hospitals, he said, we are told we cannot and must

not bring up the topic of identity.

We just have to go with what's on the paper.

You can't even question an aspect of it.

Now, I've been before with somebody who was a, a, a, a female

transitioning to want to become a false male because that's what she

was trying to do and, she was taking different

medication

and began to have, what she thought was

a serious heart attack.

He contacted me.

So I went to a place, grabbed her out the place, put in the car, took her

to Fiona Stanley, and then the doctor comes in and does all the examinations,

the rest of it, and goes, oh yeah, see?

And then walks out the room and I run after the doctor and said, look,

I said, I just want you to know this isn't a male body you're dealing with.

This is actually a female body.

And I know the heart is different because it's over 6,000 chromosomal

differences between us as men and women, but there's different ways

the brain works and different things.

That's called the mystery of God for is beautiful it's design.

Now.

She just turned around and came back in and said to my friend there, said,

oh, did we get your pronouns right?

And Mike, who cares about fucking pronouns, she's having hearts messing.

You know, treat this person in accordance with how they were originally designed.

And if you wanna call them a bloke or anything else afterwards, you can call

'em a fish as far as I'm concerned.

But don't, it's not about the pro it are a doctor deal with them responsibly.

So to some extent, even the medical.

Our medics have gone, they've gone off to another extreme.

After my last talk, a number of doctors came up to me saying, thank

you, thank you, thank, thank you, thank you for how you're speaking.

Because they're now, they're scared in some way to speak up.

I don't want a doctor to be scared about anything when I'm dealing with them.

I wanted to come and say, sorry mate.

This is what we're gonna do.

Bang, and get on with it.

Thank you for saving my life.

And the more that we are collectively speak about these things, then what

happens is if we see, we have to say it, it, it's going to cost us

to love others in a sacrificial way.

Otherwise, what happens is everything just becomes, it is just what it is.

It's what it is.

And let me tell you, the devil said very clearly to Jesus, Hey, guess what?

If you bow down before me, you can have all these kingdoms.

They've all been given to me.

So who's running our world?

Good question.

You know, it's not getting darker because Jesus is sat on his laurels.

Jesus is per, he hasn't changed.

He's not gonna change.

It's getting darker because we're failing to speak up or willing to actually,

in some cases, to, to take on that divine courage that the Lord gives us.

That's very good.

What we might do.

We

we're about an hour in.

we had a little, little,

well, you had a little exercise we might do just from a place of going potentially.

Something we've actually already addressed is this idea of attention,

affirmation, affection.

we're just gonna go

back there for a little bit in terms of how, how do we as individuals can

actually grow and stretch ourselves to places of intimacy, I think is the

word you used before.

is it okay to do that?

Do you wanna lead us to that?

Yeah.

Let,

okay, let's do this.

Okay.

Because so yeah, it's

Whoa.

8 0 7. Yes.

why don't you just

stand up?

Would you stand up?

All of you.

Oh.

Can you hear me creaking?

Okay.

Now what I want you to do is I want you to go and find a

random person of the same sex.

Okay?

So, so blokes go and find another bloke.

You've never met him.

Just go and stand next door to him.

Yeah, I'm gonna look at each other.

Just face me at the stage.

Okay, ladies, find a lady, random lady.

Can you a bit of exercise.

You can say hello and your names if you want to, but you don't have

to become best friends tonight.

I want numbers one and two.

That means both of you just quickly just to turn to each other and for

three seconds, hold each other's gaze.

Look at their eyes.

Three seconds, then turn back to me.

Ooh.

Bit weird, isn't it?

Awkward.

A bit awkward.

Yeah.

Awkward.

Okay.

Well, is that awkward?

You need some practice.

So when I ask you to, we're gonna do it for five seconds, okay?

Don't worry that after that you haven't got to talk to each other.

You can then walk off.

Okay?

So turn to them Now look 'em in the eyes for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Oh.

Now turn away.

Turn away.

Quick, quick, quick, quick.

Oh, oh.

Thank goodness.

That's over.

Okay, now gentlemen, you find another random, random gentleman

you don't know, and ladies find a random lady you don't know.

There's a little scripture.

It's lovely.

I love it.

It's Ephesians three 20 and it basically says, your God's work of art.

Number one is gonna go first.

You're gonna turn to each other three seconds.

And then number one says to the person, you are God's work of art.

You wait three seconds and then number two says back, number

one, you are God's work of art.

And then you can quickly look away 'cause it'll be okay.

1, 2, 3.

Okay.

Now the, the, the, I just want to let you know you've just been doing attention

and affirmation with each other.

The opportunity here now is for you to appropriately at the end,

to be affectionate now and I mean appropriately, but you will sense it.

And this is why I'm asking you to do it within these four walls.

And we haven't got any cameras on anybody.

Okay?

It's a close situation.

In other words, when you've, we're gonna do the same as we've just done.

The five seconds.

Your God's work of art.

I'm God's work of art.

Your God's work of art.

I'm God's work of art.

Very brief pause and then you make a decision how you're gonna end this.

You can either bow, you might shake a hand, you might do one

of those men, men hugs, okay?

Or you might just go, oh, Kaia.

But you'll sense it and I want you to understand that.

You'll sense me the person that, that this is, that they don't

want a hug either or they're like, this person's gagging for a hug.

Let's do it.

Okay.

You are, sense it.

You will sense this.

Okay, so member number one is on the left.

Number two is on the right.

So we're going to turn to each other.

Fi I countdown five.

Then number one delivers and you know the process.

Okay,

turn to each other.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

We do have the Slido bar, uh, QR code up.

So if you do have any burning questions, um.

My advice is review the questions that are there before you

throw your next one in.

because you might find

that there's actually something

that's very similar.

so just be aware of

that because as I look at all the questions from

actually part one, there are, there are,

there is overlap on questions.

So we're just trying to manage that the best we can.

So we've got

one more question on, theology and biblical

interpretation, but I think it's just important before we jump into

this again, is to just address what Dale had mentioned, maybe

just intentionally right now.

Yeah.

And that's the very fact that, you know, I, it says in Isaiah, I think

53 verse six, that, you know, we all, all of us like sheep have gone astray.

Everybody, everybody's sexualness, whatever you wanna call it, is

affected by the fall, everybody.

There's not one person who doesn't in somewhere that need to be able to

surrender their sexual attractions and feelings, et cetera, to God

and to ask him to speak into them.

You know, some people say, oh, I dunno why God made pornography.

I said, well, God made pornography to show us that we get stuck

in different categories.

And those categories tell us something about where we're stuck, because I tell

you something, there's some categories.

People don't go nowhere, anywhere near them, but others, oh my

goodness, gimme a bunch of those.

But that's, that tells people where they're itching.

So even in the midst of what is, we might say is dark and immoral and un permissive,

et cetera, but God wants to speak.

God sees everything and knows everything.

But the same is true for all of us.

There's not, there's not one person here, not one person who in some way doesn't

have a fractured, fragmented, or fragile.

Sexuality to the, to the, to themselves.

And again, I, I don't even want to compartmentalize sexuality because

we are who we are as a whole, and we meet each other as a whole.

It's just, I'm saying that we all need to be open to letting God touch us.

Now, some of you may be saying, well, my sexuality is fine.

I, I dare you say that.

You know, I, some people do come up then and, you know, chew my ear off

and I say, well, maybe you've matured a, a fair amount, or This isn't

something that deeply affects you.

I said, but actually, when it comes to being totally and utterly

alive as the men and women God has made us to be, I still haven't met

anybody who's fully alive like that.

I just haven't.

Very good.

Yeah.

I find in pastoral settings,

I use the phrasing, that, that we all have

the need to place our sexual life into the hands of God.

And the apo, the opposing position is actually when we take our

sexual life into our own hands.

And that's where the brokenness for all of us actually sits.

Regardless of whether we're talking about the LGBT community or whether

we're talking about the heterosexual community, all of us have the tendency to

take our sexual lives into our own hands.

And when we do that, we are, we are running, all running the risk of actually

not following God's God's order of things.

That's great.

Very good.

Just wanted to talk that

specifically.

Next question.

hope when you get a

question and you're like, I don't even know what that word means, so I'm

gonna have a go, is asexuality slash aroma, it's a very interesting word.

You gonna look that one?

That's the one I struggled with, is that, is that asexuality aroma, is

that the blessed spiritual eunuchs that Jesus and Paul spoke of in the Bible?

Jesus speaks about euch in Matthew.

Think

it's chapter nine.

a, a romanism is often

also referred to as a romanticism.

In other words, people without any sense of

romantic inclination.

look, there are three types of unuc.

there are those who

are born who just will never marry, may not have the capacity to marry.

And we're aware that, we have some people who, maybe they are physically

disabled and can't marry.

Maybe they are mentally disabled and therefore they won't marry,

they will remain unmarried, which is in a sense a un.

There are some, and Paul's very clear about this, he said, if your

loins are burning, get married.

But that clearly means that some people whose loins aren't burning

and they just want to get married to Jesus and, and bypass marriage on

earth and just go try and start the marriage feat in heaven down here.

And therefore, there are people like that who are also euch.

Then there's others who it may be that it's inflicted upon them.

And that might well mean that what happens is they could have been in battle and part

of their groin was damaged to something.

Or we have people who may have had testicular cancer and their testicles

are removed and their ability to tend make testosterone might be affected.

And, and so what happens?

They end up being a unuc.

My point is this is, so there's, there's people like that now,

there's people today who are, who re who say, oh, I'm just asexual.

I have no

sexual feelings.

And, I've met a number of

people who said that to me after different talks I've given in different

parts of the world.

what it is is often

in some cases they, they either are repressing what's there

and just don't want to face the world of sex and sexuality.

And that's often because what's happened is they have been deeply

wounded or wounded so early in life that they built such a war within them.

They just can't bear to go near anything sexual it.

And, and, and even as I say this, I almost, my body tenses up because

this isn't a person at peace.

This is a person who's going, I, I'm asexual.

I'm like, if you are asexual then, then you wouldn't have an, an understanding

of the beauty of your manhood or of your

womanhood in some way.

and it seems to me

that the rigidity with which you almost present this to other people shows us

something underlying in the context that's much deeper that we don't yet know about.

Now we love the people where they are, but in answer directly to the

question i I, a romanticism to have no sense of romanticism is almost to

say, well, I don't read the Song of Songs because it doesn't apply to me.

People I know who are single for the Lord and absolutely love the Lord They are.

And experiencing a romanticism with God, that is a heart to heart passion.

And therefore, I believe because our father has a heart and we have a

heart, our heart should be awakened.

To divine romanticism, if nothing else.

So a romanticism is, I think it's just a byproduct of the fall and it's

something that needs to be addressed.

Mm-hmm.

That's a great answer.

I think you address, uh, uh, a larger theological narrative about which

some people may hear maybe unaware of in the nature of this sexual

experience we live on Earth is actually just a forerunner to the divine

marriage that's coming in the future.

Absolutely.

You just touched on it, but I think it's important to know

that what we're experiencing in this earth, in, in, in all its

goodness is going to, you know, be very much

like a shadow of what is to come 'cause so, so, so great is the

marriage feast that is to come.

And, and, and this is why when we talk about due penalty earlier on in

Romans one, you know, it, it, I mean, God just goes, so, so you've, but

I mean, I, I would say for the most part, if not all part, really in some

way that, that, that, gay relationships are eroticized friendships.

and for the most part,

for many

lesbian couples, they're, emotionally fraught

friendships.

There's a desperate emotional need there that yes, there's a, a sexual aspect

to it for the most part, but often that can wear out for something doesn't,

but anyway, but, but, but generally, it ends up becoming this settled

friendship that people were looking for.

So it's a neurotic, it's a, it's eros and philia, you know, Eros has taken over

the opportunity to develop that filial.

Sisterly, sisterly, brotherly, brotherly love.

And, and we live in a, in a, a time today, particularly since the

sixties and the sexual revolution, where what's happened is that, you

know, if I start being even slightly affectionate with you, well, look at him.

He's touching other men.

Well, I'm sorry mate, there's no, I'm fancy in the million years.

I can see why she does, but I don't, you know, get your hands off him.

No.

Get your hands on him.

No.

anyway, but, yes, that's correct.

But you can get the point.

I do.

But so, but, but in, but in the mystery, you talk about that

mystery of heaven, and this is it.

If there's a mystery in marriage and many couples look towards the

other person to fulfill them and they can't, they just can't do it.

This is why the church is a wonderful place to be able to come to.

If we are able to explain to people, look, this is your soul support.

This is your helper.

And they're gonna reveal to you much of the mystery of who God is.

But you'll never fully understand the mystery.

No, very good.

That's why marriage is so beautiful between, and the covenant between

a man and a woman is because gentlemen will never understand

these ladies who, and ladies, you'll definitely never understand us.

'cause we don't talk.

No, just, just kidding.

But that's the mystery.

And so when it is difficult in marriage or ladies, you're talking, you know,

25 to the dozen, well, I dunno.

And, and he is not saying anything, just realize this is the mystery

of God before me and it's gonna be incomplete here on Earth.

But at least you have the invitation to begin to explore that mystery.

And I believe it's an injustice for our brothers and sisters who don't even get

the opportunity to move into that sphere.

Very good.

There's a lot of questions that deal with the concept of experiencing

trauma in their early life and in their

life to that matter.

I'm gonna read a couple

of questions that are kind of kinda lumped into.

One idea is, is there a link between tr trauma and gender

dysphoria for some people who are considering gender transition?

In what other ways, uh, is sexual abuse and trauma causes for a person

to turn to, uh, homosexuality?

Uh, one of the questions that came up today, there's five votes on it right now.

Is there a link between childhood sexual abuse and same sex attraction,

pedophilia, fetishes, and kings?

I think first of all,

we have to, uh, determine how we see sexual trauma.

We can drive past the billboard today and, you know, there's some linger

advert, et cetera that would've traumatized people a hundred years ago.

We don't think twice about it now.

Mm, very good.

Many of our teenagers go, oh yeah, they, uh, they just sent me a

picture of their private parts.

They might use other terminology, but that has become almost relatively commonplace.

I'm sad to say, but I

know that's happening.

exposure to pornography,

I, I, people talk to me, I said, let's talk about your sexual history

and let's, where did it start?

And I saw porn when I was five, just once.

Oh no, it was on the TV a lot.

Dad had it on most evenings.

And I'd just come in, I couldn't sleep and daddy got, dad was watching

porn, whereas mom, oh, she's out at work somewhere, whatever it might be.

And so the fact is, is people had been exposed to stuff today that would've

traumatized people years ago, but we no longer see it as sexual trauma.

Even the way, and I'll be honest with you, to some extent, whether it become

a GQ magazine or whether it's Vogue or something, the pressure on all of us

to have a certain type of body is huge.

And it's traumatizing people.

A couple of examples.

I had a conversation with the deputy principal at a, a high school in

the uk and we were talking about the whole transgender thing.

He said, we've got 11 girls in year nine who've transitioned.

So basically hair cut, short long pants, got boys blazers,

et cetera, taking on boys'

names.

And I said, I bet they still hang

out with all the girls, don't they?

He said, yeah, they do.

I said, uh, how big was the porn problem in your school?

He said, what makes you ask that?

I said, don't just answer the question.

He said, huge.

We had a massive problem with porn.

I said, those girls are reacting outta something called sexual trauma.

Because if it was that big and the 12, 13 year olds were showing each

other porn, that it would affect the girls at the age of 1213, that by the

time they're in year nine and 14, they want to be a boy, a present as a boy.

That means that for the last few years, they've had the boys making

sexual comments at them about their bodies while they're budding.

It a very tough time for girls early puberty.

It's not diff, it's difficult for boys, but it's very

difficult for girls.

I said, but it's likely

that they've been hearing the boys talking about violence and different

things towards women's sex from about the age of nine or 10 in the last

couple of years of primary school.

Now, nobody may have laid a single finger on one of those girls, but every one

of those girls is sufficiently sexually traumatized to reject her own body because

she's like, I cannot bear the thought of ever having to be like one of those

wretched porn stars they talk about.

So I say to myself today, how many of our children have got sexual trauma?

I, I dunno the answer, but I'd say probably about 95% sexual trauma today.

What it looked like a hundred years is completely and utterly different.

And yet there's all this pressure that somehow you might be in the wrong body.

So therefore, rather than going your body's your body, it's what you've got.

You'll take it with you everywhere.

It's okay, it's great 'cause God made it blah, lovely.

You are God's work of art.

What they do is they go, Ooh, is this right?

Am I wrong?

Am I wrong?

When there's all this advertising, there's all these billboards, and then

there's all this pressure for the porn.

And before you know it, you've got a whole generation that

feels sexually traumatized.

The word king con

fetish was put in there.

I wanna talk to you about a guy who, I knew he was basically,

he was in, um.

Well, he wore a suit.

I'll just say this.

He wore a suit.

He looked very proper, you know, got the shirt and the dress shirt

and the tie, and wore a suit.

This is in London.

A Friday

night, he would go to, his master's house

and he would take off his suit and he would dress up as a dog.

And he lived in a cage underneath his master's bed, a life size cage for a dog.

And then he'd learn his doggy language.

There's a way humans can learn.

It's not even wolfs, it's just the way they just move their body parts

to say, I need to go and defecate, or I need to go and wee whatever.

And he had a kind of private back garden.

So literally he lived as a human dog and would defecate outside

and all these different things.

And it, this, of course, was having, there was a due penalty.

He was, he was dissociating more and more and more from himself.

So he brought this painful predicament before us.

Because what happens is he wanted to, he wanted to spend more and more time

like this, and he just knew he couldn't.

And as we prayed, we invited God to come and speak into the situation.

And we waited and we had this image, he must have been about

three or four years of age, and his sister's two years younger.

The image that God gave to him to us as we were praying was

of him grabbing this toy off.

His sister who'd taken his toy, wanted to play with it, a natural thing

for 2-year-old to do the 4-year-old.

So he pulled it back off and she went to pull it back again.

And Dad was sat there on the couch watching television and the

kids were playing on the floor.

And what happened is this, of course, big scream, rest of it.

And, um.

Dad's watching tv.

Mom walks in screams at Dad, can't you sort the kids out?

Basically, you know, and he stands up.

He goes, I've had enough.

He stands up, takes the dog who's beside him and walks

out and he doesn't come back.

The Holy Spirit showed us that this young man, his hero was his dad and he loved

the dog as much as he loved his dad.

The dad loved the dog, but his dad and the dog left that day and he

realizes I caused my dad to go.

That's the blame, the power of that situation to a 4-year-old.

And so what happened is this is, he just wanted, he thought, if only I'd been

the dog, dad would've taken me with him,

and therefore the masculine presence would've remained in his life.

And it didn't.

So what did he do?

He sought out somebody else who was strong, the master,

and because his dad hadn't trained him how to speak as a boy

and walk as a born rest of it.

So he found this other guy who didn't want him to speak.

He just needed him to learn his actions and get on with it.

But he then began to enter into unnatural ways, and it says again in

Romans one, they took on the images of animals and creatures, and today

we've got pigs and we've got bears, and we've got otters, we've got furries.

We've got all sorts of different things now that we're calling people.

What happened there is he had to repent of the fact that he'd made an inner vow

as a small child, and that he was trying to repair the woundedness of that early

life situation and the consequent effects of not having a dad or the dog around.

And what happened then is he had to Togo through a time of incredible grieving.

This takes time, long surrender.

To the point where he realized this will not and cannot serve me, and therefore

I need to attach myself to the light and not to keep living out into the darkness.

And therefore, his persona, the essence of him was restored.

So he didn't need to keep acting like an animal.

And this is, as I say, when we understand that in the midst of kinks and fetishes

and all these different, different traumas that are around the place, God

is speaking, if, if the church took this seriously, we'd see so much more freedom

where the spirit of the Lord is there.

You know, I meant to ask you just quickly, how did you find the exercise wasn't easy?

Was it, what was it like to get that perhaps hug at the end when

you felt good, didn't it there, you know, or just to have, just to feel

a connection with other people?

That was a simple exercise because you did it with randoms.

It was tough.

But I ask you and encourage you, consider in a slight way each of those

different aspects to try them with people you do trust and you do love.

Because if you, if you as Christians get a hold of this, let me tell

you, people won't, you won't need to proclaim the gospel to others.

They'll say, what is it about you?

Be honest with me.

And you say, do you really wanna know?

I do.

It's Jesus.

I thought there was something different about you.

It's the way you look at me.

It's the way you, that's what it is.

We're entering back into that intimate relationship with

our father who is in heaven.

The only prayer Jesus taught us, the rabbis used to have long,

long, long, long, long prayers.

The longer the prayers, the more impressive the rabbi.

That's why they're all like, what is that Disciples are like, is

that all the prayer's gonna be?

What type of rabbi did you call?

You said Jesus.

You know?

'cause it was so short.

But he comes back to that intimate place.

Not too many words, just deeply present to our father.

Ask me another question or I talk on another.

No, it's good.

Just staying on that trauma thing for a moment.

This is a complex world we live in and it's not, I would have happened to say,

based on what you've said, every single one of us sitting in this room has

experienced sexual trauma to some degree.

We

obviously have a spectr right?

But that doesn't

mean a forego conclusion that everyone's gonna have.

No, it doesn't.

No thank you.

And this is an important point depending on the amount of, of deep

nurture and connection that you've received from, from your parents.

So let's put it this way, you know, a little boy is born of

mom, as far as he's concerned.

I'm mom's body.

I just come out of mom, whoosh, a feed off.

Mom.

I'm mom.

So he needs to have a male around.

A father figure of something that's consistent that permits him by the age of

about 18 months to two years, they reckon it's about this stage where with deep

within the little boy, again, context, he goes, uh, like, mom, I want to marry mom.

I'm like, dad or granddad or uncle or whoever it is.

What happens?

It's a, it's important that he realizes I have to in somewhere to recognize

I am not like mom, even though I'm dependent on her, the little girls

or soon to reckon I'm just like mom.

But there's another thing called oh male and I'm not like that.

And there we begin to experience the mystery of male and female.

He created them, which takes us back to what Jesus said in Matthew

chapter nine, think it was, and in Genesis one and Genesis three,

by being created male and female.

So the um.

That, that stage there is really important, the nurture you get, and then

depending on the quality of your filial friendships, your male, male friendships,

then what happens there is there could be sexual trauma around you, but you've

got enough of a buffer around your heart to go, oh, that's quite harmful.

I don't want anything to do with that.

Or, I've gotta be able to process that carefully and not let it flt me.

If you are an empty void and you've had no nurture, deep nurture from your

parents, or you haven't really been able to construct those truly appropriate and

sufficiently appropriate fill friendships, then what happens is the sexual stuff,

because it is so strongly infused, if

you like, with, with, with arousal, then

what happens is people end up being gravitating towards it.

So what you might see may not affect you because of your

upbringing, but what affects me has a radically different effect on.

My mother told me something at the age of 35, about 35, I didn't tell

my parents about my childhood sexual

abuse till I was 30.

and it was, no, it

was about 37.

'cause that's when there was a court case with one of the abusers.

And my mom said to me before the court case, she said, uh, and just so you know,

I have an older sister who's five years older than me and two older brothers.

One's three years older and one's two years older than me.

My parents had three of their own blood children then

adopted me and my twin sister.

It's important to understand the context.

So I went to school with my two brothers.

One was two years old, one was three years older.

I was sexually abused by a teacher at my primary school.

My mother told me at the age of 37 when the court case was

on, she said, I'm so sorry.

What happened to you as any parent would be?

She said, but I just, James, I just assumed you, you would've done

something about it at the time.

I said, why'd you say that?

She said, well, you know your brother, some teacher tried to touch him up.

This answers your question.

I said, did he?

What happened?

My mother, she said, my mother never swears very lovely

spiritful Christian lady.

She said, well, your brother came home and said, I think

I've done something really bad.

Said what happened?

He said, this teacher tried to touch me.

She said, what did you do?

She said, I kicked in and told him to F off like this.

My mother said this.

I'm like, I've never heard my mother use that word, you

know, but she said it, you see?

And she said, I just therefore assumed that you would all have

understood if anybody was inappropriate to you, would've done that.

What my mother hadn't taken into consideration is her three blood

children had always been united and connected to her, but me

and my twin sister as adoptees.

We had a mother wound and a father wound even before being adopted.

So I'd lived my life with this fragile relationship with my

parents, and therefore I didn't have a deep sense of nurture.

The teacher obviously realized, my teacher realized.

These two older brothers, if I make him love me, they'll

go home and say, he's great.

He's wonderful.

He's wonderful.

Which means if the little brother goes home and says, I don't like

him, nobody's gonna believe me.

So he groomed my brothers to like him while he groomed me to be sexual with me.

Can you see what's going on there?

So understand this sexual trauma, if you like.

My brother was approached in a way that he went, Ooh.

It came towards me and slowly groom me and lured me into a place where I was in

the trap and I couldn't get out of it.

So it just shows how sexual trauma or different things affect different people.

It just does.

Some people say, well, I was sexually abused, but I don't think

it's that much of an effect on me.

I go, oh, okay.

But please don't go around saying, oh, sexually abuse

doesn't have an effect on people.

I said it, it in some cases, it totally violates them.

And the way I describe it's, I put a globe into a plastic sandwich

bag and I get a rolling pin and I go whack on the top of it.

And I hold it up and say every bit of the globe is still in there.

But it ain't gonna work.

And that's what sexual abuse is like.

Peter Philly has mentioned there.

Can I say something to this?

So this is an area that myself and a number of other, we, we, we are

actually, very, rich in having good

clinical psychs here in wa who

deal with a topic of, a minor attraction

or pedophilia, you might call it this pedophilia.

There's a phi, there's hemophilia, different words.

Let's not get too complicated.

Let's just say attraction to minors.

As I talk with these different clinicians and as I've walked with people and

still do walk with people who are attracted, and we have a rising number

of people struggling with this issue today, partly because they've been so

pornified as well.

but the issues, this

is when we, if, if for me as an 8, 9, 10, 11-year-old was sexually abused for those

three years, and it deeply affected me and my understanding of my persona, et cetera.

What's what sexual abuse of, and as awful as it is to think about a

six month old or a 1-year-old or a 2-year-old or a 3-year-old, likely to

do to somebody at a time when everything is visual and heightened sensitivity.

We read in the newspaper recently, I think very few of us will not have seen the

story about the guy who apparently could have abused up to 1200 kids in childcare.

Childcare.

We're talking zero to three year olds.

That has a deep effect on the soul.

It just does.

And I was talking with a very senior national clinician around

who deals with people struggling with attraction towards children.

And uh, I said, do you think that it's, do you think the people themselves will

have been sexually abused as a child?

You know, so some of them have been sexually abused.

She said, some of them, she said, all of them.

All of them were probably se sexually interfered with before they had, were

able to visualize and remember things.

So it could have been about the age of one or two, whatever it may be.

As horrendous as it is to think about when you understand that this

means that what happens is the person with the pedophilic trait to them,

they too are an earlier victim, possibly than some their own victims.

And what's happening is they're often going back trying to repair and heal that

deep early wounding by trying to take the innocence from another to try, in a sense

to, to stop their own inner bleeding soul.

That's a very simple way of putting it.

It's perhaps not as simple as that.

But I want you to understand tonight that this is a topic that

we really have to look at carefully.

'cause otherwise what we do is we so reject and we so stick a knife in and

let the media get away with going.

They are the despicable scum of our society.

All that does is isolate them to want to go and victimize people even more.

It doesn't help them, it doesn't help more, Vic doesn't help anybody.

It doesn't help anybody.

And I know being in my late twenties and going back and looking

at the tea, the last time I saw the teacher abuse me, I was 11.

So I was about this tall and he's this big.

And I went back and I knocked at

his front door and he invited me in and

of course I'm about this much taller than him.

And we had this conversation and I realized he was like

a little broken boy inside.

Yeah, the spirit of God had grown me up, and here he was as like a broken boy.

And so I realized there's a lot more discussion that we as a

society need to have about this.

And the church may need to kickstart that.

The devil would turn around and point a finger at the church.

Uh, they're all full of pedophiles, whereas actually there's no more

pedophiles in the church is necessary than there will be a mainstream society.

In fact, I run support groups of survivors, and it would be easy for

people to come along and say, oh, I got abused in the church, or whatever it is.

But I hardly see anybody coming forward saying that it's mostly

familial or, and the family or the, the, not the immediate family

necessarily, although that does happen.

Clearly both moms and dads do this.

But then there's also, it's often the wider family or its people known to the

family that are likely to do that because there has to be a grooming process.

Oh, it's just deep.

Yeah.

Keep breathing.

Please Keep breathing.

Don't go blue.

Yeah, I'm,

I'm feeling that too.

that's a huge trauma

dynamic.

Huge trauma dynamic.

I'm just gonna pray right now.

Is that okay?

Yeah, please do.

Father, uh, you know, those who are dealing with such heavy, deep scars,

wounds that run so deep, they don't even know how to approach it, see it,

understand it, and father, we just wanna, we just wanna stand in the gap

tonight for those who are hurting in such a manner that you, that, that

you would have mercy on their souls.

'cause we know you do.

But that mercy would be made visible to them.

Father, we ask for you to draw close through people, through circumstances,

through divine appointments, that they would feel the heart of the

father in such a way that they would begin a journey of deep healing.

Father, this is something that is beyond even our understanding and only you

know how to take a such a broken heart.

To take a heart of stone and turn it into a heart of flesh.

And so, Lord, we ask God for those who cannot pray tonight, we pray for

them and we say, haveve your way, holy Spirit, rescue them from the pit, from

the lies, from those moments that have ruined and destroyed and what the enemy

meant for evil God, that you would do the miraculous and you would turn it for

good in the lives of those loved ones.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Just a slight, uh, variation to that idea around the connection

between trauma and sexual dysfunction.

Is there any overlap between gender dysphoria and neurodivergence?

So we're talking about people who are

in the autism spectr social anxiety, um.

Does you understand the question?

Yeah, I do.

Yeah, absolutely.

Uh, and, and the answer is very simply yes.

That, well, what we are seeing an overlap, the jury in some way is

still out on this one because this is, uh, we are seeing such a high

percentage of those who struggle

with autism, who are, uh, transitioning.

it would be interesting

to see where they would be if we didn't have

social media and the, the conversion practices

that go on

through social media.

so it's not that we

haven't always had autism.

We seem to have a high degree of that today.

Again, the jury's still out

as to why that is.

but what happens is

also autism means that generally in their neurodivergency there's

an inability to find a sense of peace within where people are.

And, and so the idea of having attention and, and, and, and acceptability and

belonging, et cetera, they can be quickly

swayed or possibly groomed into believing that they are somehow other

in the wrong body.

one of my favorite, uh, people to watch

on on YouTube is a, a guy called Dr. As Hakeem, as spelled Az

Hakeem, spelled HAK double EM.

And he has been walking

alongside those in the, uh.

Uh, the non-binary

well, in, in, in the, in, in the trans community, if you like, and the

non-binary community, for many, many years.

And his whole understanding has changed as he's dealt with group work.

Individuals.

He's both a psychologist

and a psychiatrist, and has got, I think

he's also a psychoanalyst.

And of course they're all different.

And so he's, he has just profound insight and he's saying things that

many clinicians will be frightened to say because they haven't got all the

experience that, I mean, he literally sees this topic from different angles

and he's just saying, we literally, it's like we take the neurodivergent

and we almost just slaughter them and we're just saying, it's all fine.

This is part of, part of being neurodivergent.

He says, no, it's not.

Now

that's what he's saying.

because I trust him

and see the insights that he's got, I would tend to go

with that.

But I'm, also one that likes

a long surrender.

I think that we need to wait and wait very carefully.

I just know this is God doesn't create anybody in the wrong body.

He

just doesn't do that.

and let's be honest

with, even if you know you're male and you're male, you might still think

there's something wrong with my body.

So just multiply that by X, X, x, X, but not by X. Because that's

like X and Y. Just multiply it by lots and, and you can see how people

feel that they're in the wrong body.

But that's, that's why we did the glad wrap thing last time.

For those of you who were here, remember it and I said to you, people

come to a point where they've lost the fact that I am loved by God

for all eternity are men, so be it.

Yes.

And they've come to a point where they no longer know who I am.

They're so dissociated that that's what happens.

I mean, I was having been sexually abused for three years consistently by.

A teacher and a friend of the family.

No wonder by the time I hit 11, 12, 13, I began to think I was in the wrong body.

'cause I dissociated, I had to cut myself off from being present to my body.

There was too much pain around the abuse.

So we see this, this is, this happens a lot to to to those in the trans community.

Is there a likelihood they've been sexually abused?

I think it's very likely.

And I know a number of cases where it is true, it's not always true,

or the sexual abuse isn't quite what we think the sexual abuse is.

But as I say, sexual trauma looks different for different people.

And I hope I gave you a bit of an example of that just by

understanding those.

11 girls in year nine

who transitioned.

I mean, that's an enormous number of girls.

And I said 10 years ago, porn is going to fuel.

Transitioning and nobody's listening to it.

I now hear some of the experts over east saying, oh, we think

pornography is really affecting this.

I said, I've, I've been seeing this at grassroots for a long time

as we did that exercise about just speaking, what was our phrase again?

You are God's work of art.

You're

God's work.

That's right.

You are God's work of art.

One of the reasons why we do house church at the table, uh, in our sort of red

door rhythm is we're trying to create a culture at the table where we can speak

life into one another.

I think as we begin to bring this home, there's a boldness

that's required in the everyday follower of Jesus to be a, a spokesperson, a ve

a vessel for God's voice to be heard

through your voice.