Your Sexuality is meant to be a Gift

Could the path to true sexual integrity be less about prohibition and more about understanding our design as beings created to give? 

Join us as we unravel a fresh perspective on sexual purity—one that aligns with our innermost nature and calls us to live as selfless gifts to others. This episode is a  journey into the essence of sexual integrity, challenging the common notion that it's just about rule adherence. Instead, it's about mirroring the selfless love of Jesus and transforming our desires into blessings for those around us. We're not simply avoiding temptation; we're learning to offer ourselves in service, following the ultimate model set by Christ.

Engage with us as we delve into the complementary roles of men and women within the divine blueprint of relationships, and how recognizing oneself as a 'good gift' is essential to fostering selfless connections. 

We discuss how our self-worth intertwines with sexual integrity and the way we see our value, and the value we offer to others. We are called not just to resist sin but to actively embody love and service, with the Holy Spirit guiding our transformation. 

This episode is an invitation to view sexual purity as an opportunity to live out our true calling and be a blessing in a world hungry for authentic love.

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Transcript

Josh: 0:18

Hey friends, I want to get after a thought that I think kind of runs under the surface of a lot of people's lives, that actually keeps them from growing in sexual integrity. And the thought might be I don't know articulated this way Something the effect of sexual sin is about breaking God's rules for sexual purity, something like that. That sexual sin is all about breaking rules. And so if you're going to grow in sexual integrity, you got to stop breaking the rules and start doing what God says you're supposed to do instead. So you want to be a sexually-integrated person? Stop looking at pornography, stop sleeping with someone else's wife, stop acting out homosexual, stop sleeping with your boyfriend or girlfriend. The list goes on and on and on Things that you're supposed to stop. So I want to just suggest that this is an unhelpful way to think about growing in sexual integrity. As true as those things are Like, those are sins, sure, but the reason they're sins is not so much that God has created a list of rules and you need to abide by those rules. Rather, the rules are intended to help begin to give some shape to what we have lost as far as who we are created to be. In other words, the rules are not arbitrary. The things that God says no to are not arbitrary. They are instead helping to give a framework, helping to try to bring into focus who you are designed to be.

Josh: 1:47

Those things that God says don't do this, it's because to do that goes against your design. So an easy parallel would be something like you know, don't take a hammer and try to wash your windows by banging the hammer against the glass. Why not? Well, because that's not what a hammer is made for. It's not just an arbitrary rule. That hammer doesn't work when you do that way, or it works, but not in the way you want it to. Glass is not created that way. Why don't you clean glass with a hammer? Because that's not the way that glass is designed. It's designed to be handled with greater tenderness than that. Or don't brush your teeth with a jackhammer. Why not? Because your teeth are not designed to be able to take that kind of force. You don't need that kind of force to remove plaque or tartar and it'll hurt you and your gums and your head and the rest of you.

Josh: 2:48

So when God says no to adultery, no to lust, no to pornography and everything else he says no to in the sexual arena. It's not because he's fickle or prude or doesn't want you to have fun or doesn't want you to fulfill your deepest desires. It's rather that you're not designed for those things. So what are you designed for, then? Well, andrew Kamisky and others. But I got this from Andrew Kamisky.

Josh: 3:16

He writes extensively about how you are created, not for sexual morality, but you are created by God to be a good gift. You're created by God to be a good gift. As a man or a woman, your design is to be a good gift to others. And what does it mean to be a good gift? Well, let's just compare and contrast a little bit between what lust does, what sexual morality does, and what being a good gift does. Sexual morality is about the pleasure that someone else can give me. It's about using their body to give me some type of sexual thrill by using their voice, their physique, their mind, their, whatever their beauty for my own selfish gratification. But when I understand that I'm created to be a good gift to others, then it does two things for me. One, it reveals that the trajectory of my intentions are not meant to be from you to me I'm taking from you for myself but rather that God has designed each of us to be a gift to others, so are the trajectory is meant to be from me to you. And if, as God designed it, every one of us would live that way on the earth, beginning with man and woman giving themselves as gift to the other in marriage Adam and Eve I'm talking about here then everything would be different.

Josh: 4:58

Jesus modeled this for us. Jesus came and gave himself as a good gift for his bride, for all of us. He even said that if you want to be the greatest, you need to become the least. So instead of coming to rule or have others serve you, you come to serve others. And we might look at that and say, well, jesus was setting the bar really high to behave well, to do good, but really he was articulating this is what you're actually designed to be. The early church recognized that Jesus was the prototype of what mankind, what humanity, is designed to be. The way he lived was not just an aberration from humanity, it was actually the blueprint for humanity.

Josh: 5:50

We're meant to look at Jesus' life and say, oh, that's what I'm designed to be. I'm designed to be a good gift for the sake of others. I am designed to give my life away for others. Now, unlike God, we can't just give and give and give. We actually do need others, beginning with God himself. We are not endless fountains in and of ourselves, as God is. We're not infinite, so we need to be poured into as well. But our primary aim, our primary trajectory is not me, me, me, me it is. I am designed to receive from the Lord and to give out of the goodness that he's given me.

Josh: 6:26

And that is certainly true in the area of our sexuality. So our sexual desires that we feel viscerally in our bodies, they're not meant to rule us. We are not meant to be ruled by them and use other people. Rather, we are meant to bear with those desires and to submit them to the greater good of being a good gift to others. And so this might mean, if I'm walking around and tempted to lust after pornography, instead of lusting after pornography, I press through the pain of saying no to my own sexual desires for the sake of giving my body, which feels these desires, giving them up, for the sake of men and women who are portrayed in pornography, for their good, instead of using their bodies, instead of exploiting them, instead of jumping on the bandwagon, being one of millions of people who are consuming them for their own selfish pleasure, I say no. I'm going to feel that pain inside of me instead of inflicting it upon them for their good. And not just for their good. I also do this for the good of other men and women, as I know that what I look at trains me in how I see every other human that I encounter day by day. I also do this for the sake of my spouse and my children, offering my body as a living sacrifice and being transformed by the renewing of my mind that I can be a good gift to them, as Jesus is a good gift to me and to all of us.

Josh: 8:09

What's more is that men and women offer themselves or are a different kind of gift for one another. A husband and wife are not the exact same gift for each other. A woman has a gift to give in her body that is different than the gift a man has in his body to give his wife. This is one of the reasons that homosexual sex is outside of God's design. Debar from Dr Todd White.

Josh: 8:42

Christianity teaches that this is not a matter of bigotry. It's a matter of biology. God has designed our bodies with a specific complementary nature where man does not have what a woman has to give and vice versa. A woman is a unique gift to man and a man is a unique gift to a woman, when properly understood. I know that doesn't resolve all the challenges and struggles that those of the same sex attraction experience, but it does give us a glimpse into the framework of why God says no to what he says no to and yes to what he says yes to. A man already has the sexual parts that a man has. A woman already has the sexual parts that she has, but neither has what the other sex has, and so in order for them to have that complete complementary wholeness, they need the other, the gift of the other.

Josh: 9:39

Sexuality is designed by God to be a profound exchange, a profound self-gift one to the other, and only in that exchange of self-giving love can new life be created on the earth. This is God's design that self-giving love of a husband and self-giving love of a wife results in a new life, and then more new life and more new life. It's actually a beautiful expression of what God himself is like, as Father, son and Holy Spirit, three in one, give themselves in an eternal exchange of love for the others, new life comes to be. This is how we are created. You and I exist because Father, son and Holy Spirit wanted to share their love with us. God wants to share his love with us. We are invited to be a part of this eternal exchange of self-giving love, and not just to be recipients of it, but to mirror it, to embody it, to for our joy to be made full by sharing this love with one another.

Josh: 10:54

And herein lies a part of the pinch for a lot of us who rest with sexual integrity issues and I think part of the reason that we want to resort to or kind of be reductionistic and say well, sexual integrity is just about following the rules, because deep down inside, most of us do not believe that we are a good gift, maybe an okay gift, maybe a tolerated gift, but a good gift, that my presence in another person's life is actually a gift to them. And then, if they receive all of me, the sum total is actually gift for them. And that deep, deep belief, that deep shame, that it's actually not true, that we're not a gift, that we're a curse or that we're a draw and a drain for people, that is part of what sends us to sexually illicit behaviors. That's what sends us into isolation, to masturbation, to fantasy, to sexual affairs where we don't believe that we are and I'm not even talking about always on a conscious level, sometimes on a deep, unconscious level, we fail to believe that we are a good gift, or and or we feel that the other is not a good gift to us. And so this illuminates for us some of the deeper work of becoming men and women of sexual integrity.

Josh: 12:15

It's not just about obeying the rules. It is about becoming people who truly, deeply believe that God has made us, male and female, a good gift, and each of us individually, a good gift that we are designed to give ourselves as a self-gift out of love to others. And so, given that this is who we are, we then begin to live this out in what we do. So when your wife is pregnant and she's up in the middle of the night, you give yourself as a gift to be up with her. When your baby is crying in the middle of the night, you give yourself, you give your very body for the well-being of that baby by holding him or her in the middle of the night.

Josh: 13:02

As I said before, when you feel illicit sexual desire, you bear through the pain of those desires, those unmet desires, for the good of others.

Josh: 13:12

In a million ways, your love is embodied through the good gift you are, as you wash dishes or hold the door or wait up for or listen to or watch for, as you open your home to or set a table for or give money to.

Josh: 13:34

All these are expressions of the self-gift that you and I are designed to be, and the rules become less necessary because we're no longer bound by the law, we are under grace and freed by the power and Spirit of Christ in us to offer ourselves, as we are always intended to.

Josh: 13:56

And this is an ongoing, arduous journey of self-mortification and self-examination and Holy Spirit, conviction and repentance and confession, and all those things as God continues to shape us to become more and more aligned with the image of Christ, the prototypical human being who reveals to us what a human is. So, jesus, would you let these words sink in for us and let us wrestle with this idea that we are designed to be a good gift to others, including the area of our sexuality, that, as a man or as a woman, each of us is designed to be a good gift to embody something of your image and to offer ourselves to the world in a good way, lord, not just avoiding sin, but being a force for good. Being a force for good, being something, someone good on the earth in all of our relationships. I pray these things in the name of the Father, son and the Holy Spirit, with thanks and praise to you, lord, amen.