Embark on a profound journey with us to understand how our deepest physical desires mirror an intrinsic longing for spiritual union. Our latest conversation unravels the mystery behind our sexuality, guiding you to discover how the yearning for intimacy transcends mere human connection and points toward communion with God. Throughout this episode, we discuss the sacredness of our bodies and the divine intention in our design. This isn't just about understanding our physical impulses—it's about aligning them with a higher purpose and walking the path towards sexual integrity and ultimately, a life that glorifies God.
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If you are in the Baltimore Area, Regeneration is happy to invite you to our 2024 Dessert Fundraiser, Spark: One Small Thing Leads to So Much More. This annual gathering is a highlight for so many as we gather for tasty desserts, heartfelt worship, vulnerable and powerful stories, and an opportunity to partner with what Jesus is doing through Regeneration. Click Here for more info or to register.
Embark on a profound journey with us to understand how our deepest physical desires mirror an intrinsic longing for spiritual union. Our latest conversation unravels the mystery behind our sexuality, guiding you to discover how the yearning for intimacy transcends mere human connection and points toward communion with God. Throughout this episode, we discuss the sacredness of our bodies and the divine intention in our design. This isn't just about understanding our physical impulses—it's about aligning them with a higher purpose and walking the path towards sexual integrity and ultimately, a life that glorifies God.
Want us to talk about a specific topic? Change up the format, or just tell us the podcast rocks! We want your feedback on Becoming Whole. You can leave your feedback here
If you are in the Baltimore Area, Regeneration is happy to invite you to our 2024 Dessert Fundraiser, Spark: One Small Thing Leads to So Much More. This annual gathering is a highlight for so many as we gather for tasty desserts, heartfelt worship, vulnerable and powerful stories, and an opportunity to partner with what Jesus is doing through Regeneration. Click Here for more info or to register.
Speaker 1:
Hey friends, so glad you're back here with me again today, because I want to talk about just this reality that we're living in, that most of us miss all the time, and that reality is that our bodies are created for union with God and that our sexual desires, as distorted or twisted or disoriented as they may be, are actually trying to point us to the reality that we are created for union with God. Let me say that again your body is created for union with God and your sexual desires, as disoriented as they may be, as out of control as they may be, as much as they may lead you astray, they are actually trying to point you to this reality that you are made for God. So if we can rightly understand what our sexual desires are trying to tell us, if we can untwist the twisted message they're trying, the garbled message they're trying to send our way, it will do us a whole lot of good in this journey towards sexual integrity. So, jesus, would you come and just anoint my words and anoint listeners' ears to hear what you have to say to them today. That which has been out of control, lord, would increasingly come under your authority and your domain. For your glory and our good. I ask it.
Speaker 1:
So, friends, let me just start with this question Can you see in your own sexual behavior, your unwanted sexual behaviors, whatever it is, whether it's looking at porn, hooking up with other guys, hooking up with women, fancy masturbation, you name it? Whatever the unwanted sexual behavior is that you are trying to move away from, can you at least see in your sexual desire for those things that there is a desire for connection? In there there's the urge to merge. That's somewhat of split it, the urge to merge sexually with another human being. And yeah, even in fantasy and masturbation and what some people call quote, unquote, so low sex, when you're all by yourself, even if you have no desire to actually have physical sex with another person, your pursuit of pornography, your fantasy, your masturbation is trying to emulate that, trying to mimic that in some way. So, underneath even that, can you see that there is inside of you a desire to connect with another person, to sexually connect with another human being? If you can see that, then you are on the path to untwisting what's been twisted.
Speaker 1:
In the beginning, when there was just man, just the first human, and this is before the fall, there had been no corruption, no desire was out of whack, no desire was disoriented. And God said, of that first human being, he said it is not good for man to be alone. And so fast forward a little bit through the story God creates woman and he creates woman out of the side of man. And the scriptures go on to say in Genesis 2, that for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. That is the original Genesis, the archetype, the beginning of the urge to merge. Prior to the fall, we all had this desire for connection because it was not good for man to be alone. Now, looking at the female and male bodies you can see written into our bodies is this fact that we are not designed to be alone. Now, this doesn't mean that every person is going to get married or that every person is going to have sex. That's not what this means at all. But written into our bodies, god has stamped into our bodies, woven into our bodies, designed into our bodies, a clear sign that we are created for union, that we are not created to be in isolation. Every man has genitals that generate the capacity to generate new life, but not on their own. Every woman has genitals that have the capacity to generate new life, but not on her own.
Speaker 1:
Brothers and sisters, you have a heart. That heart pumps in your chest by itself. It does what it needs to do in your chest by itself. That organ works alone, just within you yourself. Your lungs do the same thing. You don't need another person for your lungs to work. Your eyes do the same thing. Your ears too, your taste buds too, your brain also. Every organ in your body works within your body alone. You don't need to plug yourself into somebody else for it to work. There's only one organ in the human body, one organ that needs the other sex, another person of the other sex, in order for it to have its complete fulfillment, in order for it to fully function, and those are the sexual organs, the male and female sexual organs.
Speaker 1:
So my whole point with this is not to get into biology. I'm not a biologist. My whole point in getting into this is that God, in his divine wisdom, chose to design our bodies with a sign that we are not intended to be alone. There's something in us that is actually intended for union with another human person, specifically someone of the other sex. This is that urge to merge, that Genesis urge to merge that is woven in and points us towards marriage between a husband and wife, not any other type of quote unquote marriage, because that urge to merge doesn't actually fit. Those organs don't actually fit. They don't actually, they aren't actually designed for each other. You need one male sexual organ and a woman sexual organ, and then that urge to merge, when consummated, when husband and wife come together in a sexual embrace, there's the opportunity then for new life, and so their one flesh union literally becomes a new flesh, becomes a new child, a new baby. So there's this design in us that we are designed not just to be in isolation but to be a union of husband and wife and from there, the constellation of family. It's woven in your body and it's true for every one of us. Those of us who are single did not come from an isolated human person. We came from a mother and a father. Hard stop. So it's written into all of us. This is a part of our design.
Speaker 1:
Now, why am I saying all this? Well, remember let's go back to the beginning of what I said that your sexual desires are trying, twisted as they may be, disoriented as they may be, are trying to communicate to you that you are designed for union with God. And so, just as God, why, in God's wisdom, did he make it so that your body indicates that you are not made for isolation? In part, to reveal to you that you are actually designed for union, not just with a spouse, not just the husband or wife, but with him, the husband or wife, the marriage connection, that marriage union, marital union, is a sign meant to point to your destiny of being united with God.
Speaker 1:
Christopher West points out that the Bible begins with a wedding, the wedding of the first man and first woman, and ends with a wedding, the wedding of the great bridegroom, jesus and his bride, the church, who has prepared herself for him. Now, the first union is a sexual union. It's that urge to merge, that physical reality that their bodies are pointing to. I'm not made to be alone, it's not good for me to be physically alone. That final union is not a physical sexual union. It is a union between God and his creation, that God, in his goodness, actually desires and designed us to be united with him, not just in proximity, but united with him in some mystical way, spiritual way, married to God.
Speaker 1:
And this is exactly what Paul writes about in Ephesians 5, where he says he's describing the relationship between a husband and a wife. And he says what I'm speaking here is a profound mystery. I'm speaking of Christ and the Church, all right, so what does this do for us in the realm of our own journey towards sexual integrity? Well, I find it interesting that Paul, in 1 Corinthians 6, discusses sexual immorality and he says a couple of things that are pretty profound. The first thing he says that I want to point out is he says that your body is not designed for sexual immorality. Your body is not designed for sexual immorality. That's worth preaching to yourself every day.
Speaker 1:
No matter what it feels like, how natural it feels to you, no matter how drawn you feel and how oh-so-right it feels when you begin to act out sexually, your body's actually not designed for it. Yes, it feels good in your body, yes, you could feel the longing in your body, but your body is not designed for sexual immorality. Paul actually says your body's not designed for sexual immorality. When you sin against, when you sin sexually, you actually sin against your body. That's how significant this is. It might feel right, but you're actually sinning against your body, because your body is not designed for sexual immorality. It is designed, paul says, for the Lord and the Lord for your body.
Speaker 1:
He's talking again about this mystical union, that your body is designed for this mystical spiritual union with the Lord himself. So if you will listen, if you will dare to hold on and listen to the deeper cries underneath your sexual desire, the deeper longing under your sexual desire, you will find there a longing for God and a longing that only God can satisfy. And here you might think about Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well in Samaria who had been through relationship after relationship, marriage after marriage, searching, thirsting for some type of union. Her urge to merge was strong and Jesus called out and pointed out and she lived enough life to know that the water she was drinking was not satisfying and he offered her living water by which she would never thirst again and she said I want this water.
Speaker 1:
You read that passage, meditate on it. It's actually really beautiful, just the interaction. But Jesus is pointing to this that underneath your sexual desire is a desire for something far more and ultimately more satisfying. It also means for us that as blissful, as ecstatic as sexual climax can feel, as sexual experience can feel in the end, it will not compare to the ecstasy, to the joy, to the thrill, to the fire, to the wonder, to the pleasure that we will experience in union with God. Because this, that sexual desire, is pointing to that Sex between husband and wife, even the best sex between husband and wife, which is so, very good, so very good is pointing to a much greater desire. And this is why, in heaven, jesus says we will not be married or be given in marriage any longer, because the sign of marriage will no longer be needed. So, as crazy as it might sound, the next time you feel sexual temptation, the next time you feel that desire welling up in you, even right at the start, see if you might open that desire to the Lord, face him full on, be naked and unashamed with him and let him like Jesus.
Speaker 1:
What I'm recognizing right now is I really want sex in this form or that form, but what I'm really longing for Josh told me I'm having a hard time believing it. I read Paul and I'm having a hard time believing it. Whatever it is for you, lord, I'm having a hard time believing it, but I'm made for union with you. Would you help me. Help me, lord, to wait for you. You are the one. I long to be one with God. That spiritual union with you is somehow going to be better than the sexual experiences I've had. Help me to believe, lord. Help me to believe and help me to wait. Open that part of yourself to the Lord. It will be difficult, but, boy, we have to have faith here that it will be so worth it.
Speaker 1:
Our bridegroom Jesus suffered the cross, which some ancient mystics have called the marriage bed. He has suffered the cross for his bride, the church. He rose from the dead. He ascended to heaven and he promised us that he will come back to get us. So much more to be said there. But, lord, would you let my words land where you want them to land. I'm going to let you, especially your word, find good soil and bear good fruit in us. We pray this in the name of the Father, son and Holy Spirit. Amen.