SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: The Church of the Lookout is an old of Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love.
SPEAKER_00: Visit us online at thelookout.church.
SPEAKER_01: Good for you guys.
SPEAKER_01: Curious how many people saw the traffic, alright, I'm going home.
SPEAKER_01: This morning, this last 24 hours, we uh we learned that uh the nation of Israel declared war for the first time in 50 years since 1973.
SPEAKER_01: And uh and they were attacked in the last 24 hours, um, a pretty brutal attack by Hamas.
SPEAKER_01: And uh and and it's important that we know we're on the other side of the globe, but all of us, our spiritual story, our spiritual genetic comes through the the work of God, through the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And the scripture is very clear to pray for Israel, pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: And the scripture is clear that that God's promise has never changed for his people, they are still his precious chosen people.
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and this morning, before we move on to anything else, can we just be reminded that we have been adopted and we've been grafted in to the family of God through the work of Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: And uh and this morning, let's join our faith with believers all across the world, not just for the nation of Israel, but also for the lives of the Arabs that have been lost.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of hurting people, not just for the Jews in Israel, but the entire region is devastated right now.
SPEAKER_01: And you guys know how important and significant it is when uh this kind of um uh stuff erupts in the Middle East.
SPEAKER_01: And so would you join me today?
SPEAKER_01: Father, we we lift up, we lift up our brothers and sisters in the nation of Israel, in the nation of Palestine, in the entire region of the Middle East.
SPEAKER_01: And God, right now, we pray that you would de-escalate this war, that you would de-escalate this war, Lord God.
SPEAKER_01: We pray for peace over the land, Lord Jesus, that you would pay, we pray that you would dismantle the works of the enemy that would take human lives, that would rob families from children and the elderly and all of the people, Lord God, who are reeling right now.
SPEAKER_01: We just ask right now, Lord Jesus, for your mercy, mercy over the land of Israel, God.
SPEAKER_01: We pray for blessing over them, Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: We bless them in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And God, we we hold them before you in your presence, Lord God.
SPEAKER_01: We say, have mercy and have your will, have your way, Lord Jesus, spare their lives and let this war cease in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Um also, also, also, uh this morning I want to draw attention to something cool happening in this community that has been happening this last year.
SPEAKER_01: So many of you guys are familiar with the work of one of our ministries, amigos of Mexico, um, which is you know is Friends of Mexico, and uh led by our fearless leaders, Mike and Nancy Jeanette, for over 30 years.
SPEAKER_01: Over 30 years they've been leading.
SPEAKER_01: And uh and and and we've we've we've been stationed in several uh different areas of Mexico for in particular this last year, uh a lot of work with Reto Alu Juventude, which is the Teen Challenge Youth Center, but then also a lot of work with the Tar Hamaro Indians and um in Chihuahua and the Guacho uh in Guachochi and the Copper Canyon.
SPEAKER_01: And uh I I just as a little update, I want you guys to know that since December of last year, um this church has given over$26,000 towards the work of missions in Mexico.
SPEAKER_01: It's really stunning.
SPEAKER_01: And um and one of the one of the places in particular I want to highlight is I want to uh shine a spotlight on Eagle Church, which is in Guachochi.
SPEAKER_01: Um Eagle Church and they Eagle Church and School in Guachoche.
SPEAKER_01: The school actually has space for about 240 students, um uh, but currently they're only 130 students, and they had had this vision to build an amazing soccer field in the school, not only to grow the school, but to teach sports with biblical values in their community.
SPEAKER_01: And so great news this year, donations from members of the Lookout here have enabled them to meet their remaining financial goal, to build the soccer field.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to show you some of these, they're actually laying turf, and this is a huge deal.
SPEAKER_01: Um, the soccer field, it's good for the community.
SPEAKER_01: It's good for their community.
SPEAKER_01: And Pastor Antonio, who's actually been here, he was actually here, he came up to our prayer room event this last year, he made he made a commitment that to make sure that at every soccer match the gospel is preached one way or another to the people who come.
SPEAKER_01: And so, and they're praying that this field is not only a blessing community, but allows them to bring more students in that they can build into and invest in the lives of these kids.
SPEAKER_01: So continue to pray that more students come into the school, continue to pray that the gospel is preached and good news goes out.
SPEAKER_01: And it's really important, you know, there's a lot of hostility and volatility in the world, and yet the kingdom of God is advancing, even one soccer field at a time.
SPEAKER_01: So come on, one more hand for so good.
SPEAKER_01: So good.
SPEAKER_01: And you can talk to Mike and Nancy Jeanette for more of that.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, welcome to church, everybody.
SPEAKER_01: If you were a visitor here, this is an interesting Sunday to come.
SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna jump right in this morning.
SPEAKER_01: If you have your Bibles, um, open up to 1 Corinthians chapter 6, okay?
SPEAKER_01: You can just kind of um open that up.
SPEAKER_01: It's the first letter Paul wrote to the Corinthians.
SPEAKER_01: And we're starting a new series called Sex, Love, and Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Corinthians 6, we're gonna start reading in verse 9.
SPEAKER_01: It says, Do not be seed, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: And such were some of you.
SPEAKER_01: But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God.
SPEAKER_01: Pray with me, Father, we thank you that we have been washed and sanctified.
SPEAKER_01: We thank you for this morning as we open up your word, we ask that you would speak to us, speak to hearts.
SPEAKER_01: We thank you the gospel is good news for all men.
SPEAKER_01: And this morning, Jesus, we submit ourselves to you and surrender to your voice here today.
SPEAKER_01: Would you speak clearly, God?
SPEAKER_01: Even through my words this morning.
SPEAKER_01: God, let the any fluff fall to the ground.
SPEAKER_01: God, only let your voice be heard.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: So there's this article in NPR over the last several years about this crisis in Western Australia involving the Australian jewel beetle.
SPEAKER_01: And across the landscape, these small beetles they would fly, you know, around 15, 20 feet in the air across the landscape, and the male beetles would look for female beetles who were shiny and had a certain texture to them, and they would find them and they would go in and mate with these beetles.
SPEAKER_01: But what was happening, what they found was happening in Western Australia was uh a lot of surly Australians were throwing uh beer bottles out the window and just leaving a lot of litter and trash, and there's a particular kind of beer bottle, which is just short, stubby brown bottle that was uh left on the Australian landscape.
SPEAKER_01: And these a lot of these beer bottles are the same color and texture as the female beetles.
SPEAKER_01: And so the male beetles uh they found were trying to mate with the beer bottles, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and you'll see in Exhibit A.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh it you know when the story first came out, it was actually pretty funny as as you guys are laughing now.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but it actually ended up uh creating somewhat of a crisis.
SPEAKER_01: Uh in fact, biologists Daryl Gwen and David Rentz, who who would end up winning a Nobel Prize for their work on this particular topic, noted that uh this human interference in the species mating habits could impact the survival of the species.
SPEAKER_01: And while the males were occupied with their beer bottles, the females were ignored.
SPEAKER_01: And so from NPR quote this is what biologists call biologists call an evolutionary trap.
SPEAKER_01: It's what happens when birds, turtles, moths, beetles, and all kinds of animals wired to respond to certain cues in nature bump instead into human inventions and get confused.
SPEAKER_01: So I open with this really bizarre sermon illustration.
SPEAKER_01: Because we're living in a time where I would say there are a lot of bottles in the landscape, so to speak.
SPEAKER_01: And there's a great confusion around the purpose of sexuality to the degree that we have been lured away, many of us have been lured away from the act, the real thing, according to God's design.
SPEAKER_01: It has led to a great disintegration, literally a separation of our bodies from our souls.
SPEAKER_01: And as we take a moment, and what we're gonna do over the next several weeks, take a moment and look at this, that the reality is there's several counterfeits to God's beautiful design for sex, marriage, and singleness that are not all necessarily new to our generation, but have rapidly accelerated, have become normalized, and for that I would argue that we're paying a great price.
SPEAKER_01: And uh the truth is we are healthier and wealthier than any generation, but many would say we have we have no idea who we are.
SPEAKER_01: We have lost the sense of who we are in our way forward.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I am about to open not just one, but several cans, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And I just want to set a little bit of you know foundation for the room.
SPEAKER_01: Again, if you're first time to church in a while, welcome to church.
SPEAKER_01: All right, we're getting right at it.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Um, these types of things that we're gonna be talking about are both deeply personal and deeply emotional.
SPEAKER_01: And they they can often, when we start talking about matters of sexuality and spirituality, all these things, it can stir a lot of emotions as it relates to uh to shame, pain, even triggers of anger and grief, maybe even pulls up really bad church experiences, and and you are maybe even feeling uneasy right now, even the thought of talking about this.
SPEAKER_01: And listen, I get it, I get it.
SPEAKER_01: In some ways, I've I've walked with trepidation uh in the same way of even approaching this topic, okay?
SPEAKER_01: So why are we talking about sex in church, right?
SPEAKER_01: Um, because these conversations affect us all single, married, parents, neighbors, friendships.
SPEAKER_01: This affects everybody in the room and affects everybody we know, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Um the church, I believe though, the church must be a safe place to talk through these things in a way where hiddenness and shame cannot rule over us.
SPEAKER_01: We must recover a place in the church where we can talk about these things without fear of being kicked out, or why did you even bring up that question, or why do you even have that desire?
SPEAKER_01: We cannot, we can no longer do that because we have to become a safe place to be, um to be able to talk through things that matter deeply to us.
SPEAKER_01: These are not just topics, this is about people and bodies made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: The Bible has a lot to say about sex, and so sex cannot be just separated into public life and private life.
SPEAKER_01: Some people would think, well, why are we talking about that?
SPEAKER_01: What I do with my private life, it's different than let's just preach the gospel and go for that.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, God doesn't make any such distinction.
SPEAKER_01: We only live one life before God.
SPEAKER_01: He's not just looking for your spiritual life, he's looking for your life.
SPEAKER_01: And that means all parts of our life actually matter to God.
SPEAKER_01: And that's really the good news here this morning.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to know.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to be rooted in this.
SPEAKER_01: God cares about sex because he cares about you.
SPEAKER_01: And he cares about every part of our lives.
SPEAKER_01: It's not inconsequential, okay?
SPEAKER_01: So, on with the preamble, okay?
SPEAKER_01: In the series, I'm not attempting to say everything that could be said about these topics, that'd be impossible.
SPEAKER_01: I and in fact, I don't have time for that, and I'm not even necessarily the most qualified person to address every single thing that will be addressed, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Um, but as the pastor here, I believe it's my responsibility that over the next several weeks to at least be able to introduce a conversation and set a tone for us, and to be able to just talk about the tone through which we can actually engage some of these conversations with it, which I believe should be full of grace and should be full of truth.
SPEAKER_01: Those are our main objectives, right?
SPEAKER_01: And so um I'll continue with today's topic today, but just to kind of make sure you have a roadmap over the next several weeks.
SPEAKER_01: Next week we're gonna double-click a little bit more on same-sex relationships and our relationship with the gay community.
SPEAKER_01: And I feel like we have a lot of work to do to name some of the dynamics there.
SPEAKER_01: Um, all of us want to build bridges, I believe, and we want to find a way forward, and there's a lot of big questions that we have to ask, okay?
SPEAKER_01: The week after that, we're gonna highlight uh more having to do with the trans community and our friends in the trans community.
SPEAKER_01: Um, from there, we'll talk about singleness, an entire week just on singleness and celibacy and those types of topics, and then we'll finish out talking about marriage, and I'm gonna pull my wife up and we're gonna we're gonna talk about marriage uh together.
SPEAKER_01: So, does that sound like a good plan?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_01: So I want to share a little bit about my personal story uh to kick us off.
SPEAKER_01: Now, um I want to be clear here, this is not to boast.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, this is kind of the opposite.
SPEAKER_01: So sometimes when I share my story, people wonder if I'm out of touch with quote the real world.
SPEAKER_01: I'm out of touch where most people are actually at.
SPEAKER_01: Because the truth is, uh just just to throw this out there, I have been sexually intimate with the grand total of exactly one woman in my entire life.
SPEAKER_01: Uh that is my wife.
SPEAKER_01: That is my wife of 17 years, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Um and uh and of course, you know, this is what we looked like when we were married together.
SPEAKER_01: Um because I mean, I mean, because who wouldn't go for just rich, beautiful locks of hair like that?
SPEAKER_01: And she looks pretty good too, right?
SPEAKER_01: It was the glory days, they called them.
SPEAKER_01: And uh and it was good.
SPEAKER_01: And we we actually waited until we were married to be together in that way.
SPEAKER_01: And so we do celebrate that.
SPEAKER_01: I realize that's that's not normal, right?
SPEAKER_01: And that's it in our in our day and age, that's kind of an unlikely story.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but that doesn't mean that it has all been easy, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And so, like many of you, I grew up in a home where sex wasn't really the topic of conversation around the dinner table every night, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's just kind of something that happens that you you just have to figure out somehow.
SPEAKER_01: And grew up um in church, uh I was kind of in the middle of you know, my youth group days and a time of the church in the 80s and 90s that is now known as purity culture.
SPEAKER_01: We got a boo down here.
SPEAKER_01: And in the evangelical church, the main message is do not have sex until you're married.
SPEAKER_01: That's the only thing that was said.
SPEAKER_01: Um, it was helpful in the sense of saving myself for marriage, and it was actually, you know, it helped lay some foundation for me.
SPEAKER_01: But the the core of the message, um, nobody ever actually explained the larger, beautiful picture of what sex was actually for, besides the reward of a wedding night.
SPEAKER_01: And so it was just this thing of don't do this or you should be ashamed.
SPEAKER_01: And so it kind of embedded this message of sex is shameful, sex is gross.
SPEAKER_01: And so, not a lot about a vision for sexuality beyond that goes beyond the act of sexuality, okay?
SPEAKER_01: I'll also uh just let you know, just for full disclosure, um I I was when I was just a toddler, when I was two years old, I was uh sexually abused by a male babysitter.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't have a lot of memories of that, but I know that um I was affected by that.
SPEAKER_01: Um I saw porn for the first time in junior high, and many times after that, it affected me deeply, right?
SPEAKER_01: Um, just like you, just grew up in an age where there was a lot of magazines, and then it transitioned to the internet and the whole thing.
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and and I know across this room I'm not the only one.
SPEAKER_01: So I come today with deep humility.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not coming as an expert but a fellow learner, and I just want you to know that, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Um I know there's a lot of tension around the stuff that we're about to talk about.
SPEAKER_01: So before we start, let me just cut through some of that tension and just level set the room.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we've already read kind of the the you know, like the hammer of Bible passages about sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_01: And I just want to be really clear up front.
SPEAKER_01: Practically, sexual immorality is abstaining from all sexual relations.
SPEAKER_01: What I mean is that the invitation here is to abstain from all sexual relationships outside of the historic Christian vision of marriage expressed in Genesis 2, which is a whole life covenant union between a man and woman.
SPEAKER_01: So, what what do I mean by sexual immorality, or what does the Bible mean by sexual immorality?
SPEAKER_01: It would be any kind of sex outside of marriage, oral sex outside of marriage, pornography, polygamy, polyamory.
SPEAKER_01: You can go look that up if you don't know what that is.
SPEAKER_01: Same-sex relationships, adultery, emotional fantasizing, and lustful thoughts.
SPEAKER_01: Again, welcome to church this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if we went across the room, every one of us has at one point in time stepped outside of God's design for sexuality.
SPEAKER_01: I was tempted to have everybody raise their hands, but I realize that's a risk.
SPEAKER_01: And I just I just want to be really clear here.
SPEAKER_01: We have all experienced sexual brokenness.
SPEAKER_01: So there is a level playing field here.
SPEAKER_01: This, and this is very important.
SPEAKER_01: This this sermon in the series is not about good people trying to get bad people to be good.
SPEAKER_01: This room is full of forgiven people coming around the only good person, Jesus Christ, and surrendering to ourselves to Him for healing and restoration.
SPEAKER_01: If you're thankful that you are forgiven for any kind of brokenness in your life, could you just raise your hand across the room?
SPEAKER_01: Now let's just do that.
SPEAKER_01: If you look around the room, none of us are saying we have it together.
SPEAKER_01: None of us are perfect, and none of us will listen to a message and never mess up again on any of these levels.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's not what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_01: What we're trying to do is hold in front of us a picture of what God is trying to say to us and inviting us into, and then receive his mercy and grace along the way.
SPEAKER_01: This is a messy journey, but it is a journey with Jesus nonetheless.
SPEAKER_01: Amen?
SPEAKER_01: So, back to beetles and bottles.
SPEAKER_01: How about that for a transition?
SPEAKER_01: There are several counterfeits to God's good original intention for sex.
SPEAKER_01: These counterfeits actually, they all actually divide and separate us both from God and each other.
SPEAKER_01: I can't address all of them, but just to name a few: hookup culture, porn, and masturbation, cohabiting, and many ideologies that stemmed out of the sexual revolution.
SPEAKER_01: Now, before I get into some of these things, um, to be clear, as we're talking about some of these things, our main prerogative is to love people, to love people.
SPEAKER_01: At the same time, biblically, there is a command that we tear down ideologies.
SPEAKER_01: We love people, but we examine ideologies.
SPEAKER_01: It's part of the work of following Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: In every culture, in every time and period, we have to love people fiercely, but not be afraid of examining ideologies that lead us to become a certain kind of people.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes those two are confused, and I just want to say our anytime that we preach a truth and it's actually used to clobber something, somebody versus love them, it is therefore at that point it becomes an untruth because it doesn't fully reflect the heart of God.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: Our job is to love.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, that being said, I'm gonna examine a few of these beer bottles, these shiny textured beer bottles, and I'm gonna really highlight one in particular on the sexual revolutions, but first of a few of them.
SPEAKER_01: Number one, let's talk about hookup culture.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is kind of a new phenomenon with the dawn of the internet.
SPEAKER_01: The advent of the internet and dating apps has made meeting with others more efficient, which is not bad, right?
SPEAKER_01: In fact, a lot of us have maybe even met a partner through uh through dating apps.
SPEAKER_01: And um and that's a good thing, and some of you that's why you're in the room.
SPEAKER_01: Um but efficiency has also eliminated much of the long and slow process of forming a relationship.
SPEAKER_01: And so there's many apps such as Tinder.
SPEAKER_01: That exists primarily for the sake of meeting somebody for sex.
SPEAKER_01: And many people see it as convenient because it takes the guesswork out and it gets straight to the point.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: What are we here for?
SPEAKER_01: Problem is, as you know, when you when you really when that starts to form us as a people and as a technology, it starts to separate sex from commitment.
SPEAKER_01: I can get what I want without having to give my life away to get it.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: And it's part of the reason I believe that there's an epidemic of young men who fear commitment, as comedian Aziz Anzari commented, he said through dating apps, it's like we're walking down a hallway with 10,000 doors, always one swipe away from another option that could be better than the previous.
SPEAKER_01: And so men have been formed by our culture to evaluate women based on how hot they are, not necessarily their capacity for deep love.
SPEAKER_01: Single women, and I know many, um, have had a difficult time also finding good men who are willing to commit to anything.
SPEAKER_01: So I've had this conversation in this community with single women I care deeply about, and they feel they felt this need to actually over time lower their standard just to find a man that is available.
SPEAKER_01: And this is happening.
SPEAKER_01: This is happening like crazy.
SPEAKER_01: And I believe that part of what we have to examine, and this is something that's happening as a culture, we need more young men who know who they are and committed and founded in their sonship, have a vision for healthy sexuality, and young women too, but young men who know how to enter in and have a vision for deep life commitment.
SPEAKER_01: See, because hookup culture promises the benefits of a deep relationship relationship in the most efficient way, but actually leads to a deterioration of mental and emotional health.
SPEAKER_01: And the stats are out there.
SPEAKER_01: And what I want you to remember in this little point here is sex is intended to come with commitment.
SPEAKER_01: That's what it's intended for.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Beer bottle number two.
SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about porn for a minute.
SPEAKER_01: And uh again, this is in the internet age that uh that has made virtual sex even possible.
SPEAKER_01: And this it's it's a it's a problem, as you guys know, on a lot of levels, it's deeply connected to sex trafficking.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but porn is a struggle for men and women.
SPEAKER_01: Porn is also accompanied by excessive masturbation.
SPEAKER_01: And uh masturbation is kind of this it's a it's a different topic, um, and I would say kind of a gray area is how to handle that.
SPEAKER_01: But I would say porn use often leads to an excess of masturbation.
SPEAKER_01: It rewires the neurological pathways in your brain.
SPEAKER_01: And here's part of the reason why it's a problem.
SPEAKER_01: Um, where where hookup culture separated sex from commitment, porn separates sex having to be with another person.
SPEAKER_01: Why bother bringing somebody else into this when I can just do it myself?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so in a self-indulgent culture, it's just made all of sex actually about me at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_01: And so 50%, 57% of teens search out porn at least monthly, 51% of male students, 32% of male female students first viewed porn before their teenage years.
SPEAKER_01: The first exposure to porn among men is 12 years old on average.
SPEAKER_01: And listen, I get it.
SPEAKER_01: I was there.
SPEAKER_01: Um, this uh a quote from uh a book I highly recommend called Strange New World by Carl Truman.
SPEAKER_01: He's actually quoting Roger Scruton.
SPEAKER_01: He says this according to philosopher Roger Scruton, pornography is about bodies, not faces.
SPEAKER_01: If sex is just about my pleasure, anybody will do as a partner.
SPEAKER_01: But in a marriage, the specific identity of the sexual partners is critical.
SPEAKER_01: The purpose of sex is not to have sex, but to make love, to reinforce a relationship with a particular person, or to use Scruton's terminology, with a face, not just with a body.
SPEAKER_01: So this is something it affects us deeply, affects us in this room deeply, right?
SPEAKER_01: And if that's true, I just want you to know you're not alone.
SPEAKER_01: Um, I just do not want this to be a place where shame and hiddenness win the day.
SPEAKER_01: It's guys, you're not alone if this is something that affects you, it affects all of us.
SPEAKER_01: But the the invitation here though, I believe in our day and age, is sex is intended to unite two people together, not just to have two people in separate rooms.
SPEAKER_01: The third thing I want to look at though, the third beer bottle, is this idea of cohabitation and living with each other before marriage, um even sex before marriage.
SPEAKER_01: And I get that cohabitation is now it's the new national norm.
SPEAKER_01: People don't even blink an eye anymore because it's it appears to be more economical, it's a little, it's more convenience if you're dating somebody who's to live with them.
SPEAKER_01: But you just have to understand that um it actually increases your likelihood of divorce by 50% when you're cohabitating.
SPEAKER_01: You're not practicing for marriage, you're actually practicing for divorce.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: And some people will say, well, geez, but I wouldn't buy a car without test driving at first, right?
SPEAKER_01: Or I wouldn't buy a pair of shoes without trying them on first.
SPEAKER_01: But listen, let me tell you, she's not a car or a pair of shoes, she's a soul made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about souls of human beings.
SPEAKER_01: We're not talking about consuming something else, we're talking about covenant, and other people are like, well, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, can I really do that?
SPEAKER_01: What if we're not compatible?
SPEAKER_01: What if what if we find out we're not compatible?
SPEAKER_01: Listen, you're compatible.
SPEAKER_01: The parts work, all right?
SPEAKER_01: They fit with each other, all right?
SPEAKER_01: You're compatible.
SPEAKER_01: That's not the issue, okay?
SPEAKER_01: We have to recover a vision of sex that allows it to be powerful as it is without destroying our lives and without setting us up for divorce or destructive relationships.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Now, all of that said, I believe all of the things I just mentioned actually are seated in a bigger, a bigger movement that is very actually unique in this in human history, and that all comes back to the sexual revolution.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're young in the room, and you might have never heard that term before, um, but the sexual revolution, as many of you know, began in the 1960s.
SPEAKER_01: It was a time of disillusionment with the status quo traditions of the former generations, um, which then it just translated into a time of free love.
SPEAKER_01: And the idea was if we can eliminate restraint and follow our instincts and our kind of natural desires, throw off hindrances, will actually, that will actually lead to happy and free lives.
SPEAKER_01: And some even argue that the most significant revolution of our day was not the American Revolution or the Industrial Revolution, but the sexual revolution because of the way it shaped the way we think in our day and age, specifically in the West.
SPEAKER_01: Interestingly, the sexual revolution came at the same time as the Jesus Revolution.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: And one thing I would point out is that every time God does a certain work, the enemy counterfeits his work.
SPEAKER_01: And it's hard to say whether which one came first and which one was response to others, but I will tell you this the enemy loves to counterfeit the work of God and to create a version of it that has less of a buy-in and demands less of you and and is it but at the end of the day leads to destruction.
SPEAKER_01: Pastor Josh Howerton said this once we stop worshiping God, we start to worship the next closest thing, which is human bodies created in the image of God.
SPEAKER_01: So there's several ideas that came out of the sexual revolution that we're actually still contending with today.
SPEAKER_01: Two in particular, I'll just highlight here for a moment, is this that your desires are the most important thing about you.
SPEAKER_01: You have these desires that are the most important thing about you and your identity.
SPEAKER_01: And number two, your body is disconnected from your soul.
SPEAKER_01: That you can do whatever you want with your body.
SPEAKER_01: You own your body, it's disconnected from your soul, which means that do whatever you want as long as it's consenting.
SPEAKER_01: Now, just gonna just follow me on the thread here.
SPEAKER_01: Uh Mary Aberset uh said this the sexual revolution was the destigmatization and demystification of non-marital sex and this and the reduction of sexual relations in general to a kind of hygienic recreation in which anything goes so long as those involved are consenting adults.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: And so the big idea of the sexual revolution could be summed up like this desire plus consent equals freedom, your best life ever.
SPEAKER_01: Just if if you have your desire, that's awesome.
SPEAKER_01: Let's go all in on the desire.
SPEAKER_01: And as long as you're done, that's done with a consenting adult, um, then what are we even arguing about?
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: And so, but but here's the deal: 60 years into this experiment, we do not see this in the stats.
SPEAKER_01: So, what has actually resulted since the 1960s, what who we've become is the angriest, loneliest, most depressed, least parented generation in our nation's history.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: So, just a few quick graphs.
SPEAKER_01: Divorce rates have doubled since the 1960s.
SPEAKER_01: And as divorce rates have doubled, that has actually shrunk at any reflection of a nuclear family, so single-parent homes have increased since the 1960s, uh, which has all created an epidemic of fatherlessness since the 1960s that affects a lot of people, uh, uh, namely the back the black community, the Hispanic community, and the white community as well.
SPEAKER_01: It affects us all a little bit different.
SPEAKER_01: But the uh but fatherlessness is a massive epidemic because fatherlessness affects everything, including the top five criminal activities in our nation.
SPEAKER_01: All of these things are connected, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And to the point where many secular voices, this isn't just even an evangelical, kind of a white suburban evangelical thing.
SPEAKER_01: Let me just cut through that for a second.
SPEAKER_01: Many secular voices are acknowledging that the secular the sexual revolution has failed.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: Photo from the Wall Street Journal, just an article recently, how the sexual revolution has actually hurt women.
SPEAKER_01: This whole article is about how the promise of liberation for women has actually over time led to an increase of violence, and especially as it relates to porn and a lot of uh other factors.
SPEAKER_01: The ones who lose at the end of the day are actually women.
SPEAKER_01: Another author, Louise Perry, wrote this book called The Case Against the Sexual Revolution.
SPEAKER_01: Now, she is not a Christian, she's a staunch feminist.
SPEAKER_01: You're not going to agree with everything in this book.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but she argues that we have bought into this lie that we can separate our bodies from our souls.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Now, Dr.
SPEAKER_01: Nancy Pearcy, who has written some fantastic stuff about the theology of the body, and you should read all of her stuff, here's what she says.
SPEAKER_01: She says the same bleak view of sexuality is inculcated even in young children.
SPEAKER_01: A video put out by Children's Television Workshop, widely used in sex education class classes, defines sexual relations as simply something done by two adults to give each other pleasure.
SPEAKER_01: No mention of marriage or family or even love or commitment, no hint that sex has a richer purpose than sheer sensual gratification.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: Now back to Louise Perry.
SPEAKER_01: She concluded that we need a higher sexual ethic.
SPEAKER_01: Again, she's not even Christian.
SPEAKER_01: She says, she concluded we need a higher sexual ethic than consent.
SPEAKER_01: And she makes a passionate case that the new sexual culture, we need a new sexual culture built around dignity and virtue and restraint.
SPEAKER_01: And that is in the face of the sexual revolution, that is a shock to the system that somebody would even suggest restraint?
SPEAKER_01: We need to restrain ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Well, let me just follow that thread for a second.
SPEAKER_01: Washington Post even uh uh published an op-ed about this called Consent Isn't Enough.
SPEAKER_01: We need a new sexual ethic.
SPEAKER_01: So even the most liberal people are saying, hold on a second, let's call a timeout.
SPEAKER_01: No, we consent, just to be clear, it's a good value.
SPEAKER_01: It's actually very important.
SPEAKER_01: Consent is very important.
SPEAKER_01: But it cannot be the highest value.
SPEAKER_01: We've all consented to things that we later regretted, right?
SPEAKER_01: We need an ethic that takes into account the whole person and a larger story that we're living into.
SPEAKER_01: Consent does not touch your soul and your spirit.
SPEAKER_01: So I would say this that sexual revolution, the promise of desire plus consent equals freedom, and the stats actually tell us that desire plus consent actually equal disillusionment, confusion, violence, addiction, and isolation.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Now.
SPEAKER_01: One of the beliefs that has come out of this sexual revolution is this whole idea of you are what you desire.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know how to separate our desires from our identity.
SPEAKER_01: We're taught, and we've talked about this over the last several weeks, that what you feel in desire is the truest thing about you.
SPEAKER_01: And so if you have a same-sex attraction, it's not I have a same-sex attraction, it's I am gay.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: Or if if you have a desire, it's I am this desire.
SPEAKER_01: Um, to the point where there is a search for identity and a growing search for identity.
SPEAKER_01: Um and and to be fair, I just have to put it out there, this this is a human thing, a search for identity.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm not making light of anybody that's searching for a way to describe their desires.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just using as an example, the glossary of terms that I found from the state of Portland indicates that there are now over 60 gender slash sexual affiliations.
SPEAKER_01: Um, that, and they publish this with an expectation that as a society we are to affirm every single one of them as valid identities.
SPEAKER_01: But the reality is we have hundreds of desires all operating at the same time.
SPEAKER_01: You woke up today with a lot of desires inside of you about who, you know, things that your body was saying to you and impulses that were running through your soul and your spirit and your body.
SPEAKER_01: And we work every day to decide what to decide which desires to actually express and to follow through on and which desires to constrain.
SPEAKER_01: And we do that every day.
SPEAKER_01: We're always trying to figure out what to do with our desires.
SPEAKER_01: Just because you have a desire doesn't necessarily mean that it's who you are.
SPEAKER_01: That's the truest thing about you.
SPEAKER_01: But we tend to express parts of ourselves that the culture celebrates and minimize what is not celebrated.
SPEAKER_01: There used to be a time that, you know, if you take an Anglo-Saxon warrior and, you know, year 800, I mean, it was desired that men are these aggressive kind of animals, right?
SPEAKER_01: That just go and just protect the community and the whole thing, and they minimize other parts of their lives that might not reflect that.
SPEAKER_01: And you go down to downtown New York right now in Manhattan, it's like the opposite, like any kind of power or strength or aggression is considered.
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, you've got to minimize that part, and you've got to up these other parts of what it means to be a man.
SPEAKER_01: We're always in every culture trying to figure out what desires to express and what desires to constrain.
SPEAKER_01: And without an outside reference point, then what I feel like or what the culture expects of me, we will always gravitate towards whatever is the dominant theme of what our culture is celebrating at that particular moment.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we need an outside reference point, namely the Word of God, to know what desires should be celebrated and what desires should be restrained.
SPEAKER_01: This is critical for what it means to be a human being.
SPEAKER_01: And we need an outside standard.
SPEAKER_01: That was a plug, Shannon.
SPEAKER_01: You are not what the world says about you.
SPEAKER_01: You are what Jesus says about you.
SPEAKER_01: And even in the passage that we just read that kind of makes all of us cringe, the list of those who will inherit the kingdom of God and those who won't, the list of the revilers and the swindlers, I don't even know what that means, and the you know, the sexually immoral.
SPEAKER_01: Paul ends with this declaration.
SPEAKER_01: He said in 1 Corinthians 6, verse 11, he says, and such were some of you, everybody say were.
SPEAKER_01: Such were some of you, meaning you're not that any longer.
SPEAKER_01: Your identity has changed.
SPEAKER_01: He says, but you were washed and you were sanctified and you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
SPEAKER_01: So I just have to declare to you today, you are not your desires, you are not your mistakes and your failures, you are not your affair, you are not your abortion, you are not your depression, you are washed, you are sanctified, you are justified in the name of the Father and the Son and the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: That is who you are.
SPEAKER_01: The world doesn't get to tell you who you are, Jesus gets to tell you who you are.
SPEAKER_01: And there's very real things that happen in our bodies, and we have to find language to express it.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm telling you, there's a reason why when we come into the waters of baptism, we don't come out as the same person.
SPEAKER_01: We come out in the voice of what God says about us.
SPEAKER_01: And so Paul continues this thought in 1 Corinthians, after this, in chapter 6, verse 12, he says, This all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.
SPEAKER_01: All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything.
SPEAKER_01: Food is meant for the stomach, and the stomach is for food, and God will destroy both one and the other.
SPEAKER_01: The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
SPEAKER_01: And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.
SPEAKER_01: So Paul seems to believe in this passage that we're not to be dominated or mastered by anything, including our desires and impulses.
SPEAKER_01: Our bodies were made to give glory to the God.
SPEAKER_01: And it's this is very important.
SPEAKER_01: The world actually separates your body as insignificant.
SPEAKER_01: The world has a low view of your body, and God has a high view of your body.
SPEAKER_01: This is why Christians, on a lot of different issues, we have a high view of the body.
SPEAKER_01: In this particular passage, he doesn't he didn't just say your spirit was made for God.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just your spiritual life, your body was made for God.
SPEAKER_01: So it begs the question though, what is God's vision?
SPEAKER_01: What is God's idea?
SPEAKER_01: What is sex for?
SPEAKER_01: See, these beer bottles littered across our sexual landscape, we have to ask the question, what is the real thing?
SPEAKER_01: Part of the problem in the church is that we have not actually presented a grand glorious view of sex.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you've read the Bible and you and you, that's the part that you don't like just because it reads as a bunch of rules and regulations, as if God is up there just arbitrarily picking, these are the good things and these are the bad things, and just do as I say, right?
SPEAKER_01: And so many find the Christian view of sexuality to be flat, boring, sometimes even oppressively minimal.
SPEAKER_01: Virtues that have been celebrated in the historic church like chastity, modesty, abstinence, and celibacy, are actually viewed as archaic and oppressive in our culture.
SPEAKER_01: This is why we actually need a compelling vision that roots us in a larger story, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Note Philippiansi said it like this.
SPEAKER_01: He said, I know of no greater failure among Christians than in presenting a persuasive point of view on sexuality.
SPEAKER_01: Outside the church, people think that God, think of God as the great spoil sport of human sexuality, not its inventor.
SPEAKER_01: In a sex saturated society, even, true believers find it hard to accept that traditional Christian morality offers the fullest, most satisfying life.
SPEAKER_01: He continues surveys reveal little difference between church attenders and non-attenders in the rates of premarital intercourse and cohabitation.
SPEAKER_01: Surveys also show that millions of people have left the church in disgust over its hypocrisy about sex, especially when priests and ministers fail to practice what they preach.
SPEAKER_01: He's right.
SPEAKER_01: And we have to own that.
SPEAKER_01: We have to repent of that.
SPEAKER_01: We have not either proclaimed a compelling vision and we haven't lived a compelling vision.
SPEAKER_01: And we need God to heal us in the church.
SPEAKER_01: The church has not had a prominent voice.
SPEAKER_01: We've lost our voice because we actually we've walked in sin as well.
SPEAKER_01: We've walked with a low view of this.
SPEAKER_01: So we actually have to repent and confess for ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: This isn't something about us trying to do something and trying to get everybody else to do something.
SPEAKER_01: Guys, let's just start with us for a bit for a bit.
SPEAKER_01: We need God to heal us.
SPEAKER_01: We need God to cleanse our minds and our spirits so that we can walk in righteousness, so we can actually have a compelling witness in the world.
SPEAKER_01: And in this particular category, that has not been the case.
SPEAKER_01: But the reality is God likes sex.
SPEAKER_01: It's actually a really good idea.
SPEAKER_01: He delights in it.
SPEAKER_01: Sex is an actual gift from God.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, and it's just wild to even think about it.
SPEAKER_01: He could have had us recreate in any number of ways.
SPEAKER_01: You know, when you turn 18, your big toe pops off, you plant it in a garden, and out comes a toddler, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's like it could have happened.
SPEAKER_01: But he created sex for connection and enjoyment, but most apparently union.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to be clear here.
SPEAKER_01: Um, this isn't just sexuality is not just for married people.
SPEAKER_01: Sexuality is not just about general sex.
SPEAKER_01: It is something that even singles that we all have, we all can enter into union with God and in union with community.
SPEAKER_01: I'll talk about that here in a second.
SPEAKER_01: But Paul continues in verse 15.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?
SPEAKER_01: And later he continues, for as it is written, two will become one flesh, but he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with them, with him.
SPEAKER_01: So, big idea.
SPEAKER_01: Sin is about separation.
SPEAKER_01: Sin divides us.
SPEAKER_01: Sex, love, the point is unification and to bring us together.
SPEAKER_01: We separate sex from marriage through cohabitation.
SPEAKER_01: We separate sex from commitment through hookup culture.
SPEAKER_01: We separate sex from another person through pornography.
SPEAKER_01: We separate sex from our souls through a lot of the ideas of the sexual revolution.
SPEAKER_01: We even separate sex from our bodies through a lot of other transgender ideologies that are happening.
SPEAKER_01: But the world says your mind and your body are gloriously, the word says, where the where the world disconnects and the enemy disconnects, the enemy divides.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, you know, Megan and I have talked about this before.
SPEAKER_01: It's like before you're married, all the enemy is trying to do is to get you to have sex, and after you're married, all the enemy is trying to do is to keep you from having sex.
SPEAKER_01: He is trying to do the opposite of whatever God's doing.
SPEAKER_01: But the word says your mind and your body, your heart, your spirit, your soul are all gloriously connected in union.
SPEAKER_01: When you have sex with so many, you are actually coming into union with them and you are mingling your soul with them because it's a picture of union with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And this whole theme is a through line through all of the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just a topic that we just pull out a few scriptures from.
SPEAKER_01: This is from start to finish through the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: In Genesis, we in two, we read about two people becoming one.
SPEAKER_01: God says, be fruitful and multiply, and they're naked and unashamed.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody said, Amen.
SPEAKER_01: And they it was just this way of knowing each other, and it was a beautiful reflection of God bringing men and woman together in union, not just together, but in his love, right?
SPEAKER_01: And then the prophets would come, and one of the most dominant themes is the prophets as the church would start to form and the people of God would form, and they would just stray away from God.
SPEAKER_01: One of the most dominant themes through all of the prophets is coming, not just saying, You're bad, start being good.
SPEAKER_01: It was come back into covenant relationship with your maker.
SPEAKER_01: Come back in.
SPEAKER_01: He has made a covenant to you, have broken your covenant, but he's calling you back in as if to a marriage.
SPEAKER_01: How many then even make the Bible, right?
SPEAKER_01: Kids, go ask your parents about sambung of sumbang sitting on the women hum.
SPEAKER_01: We get this unbelievably poetic but also just romantic picture of the relationship between man and woman in alumnum and a celebration of lemnum.
SPEAKER_01: And it's actually, it should come as you to blush a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: Let me climb your palm tree and take hold of your fruit.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, you gumens are smart.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to interpret that one for you.
SPEAKER_01: This is church.
SPEAKER_01: Let's sit in there.
SPEAKER_01: Let me climb your palm tree and take hold of your fruit.
SPEAKER_01: Even Jesus, when he would come though, when he came, as John the Baptist is preparing the way for him, he said, you know, the bridegroom, he called himself a friend of the bridegroom and said, The bridegroom is coming.
SPEAKER_01: He's coming for his bride.
SPEAKER_01: This glorious picture that he's coming to take back for himself a bride.
SPEAKER_01: And it finally ends in Revelation with the wedding supper of the Lamb.
SPEAKER_01: It ends in a great marriage.
SPEAKER_01: See, God's vision ultimately for all of us, whether married or single, is to come into union with him.
SPEAKER_01: And sex is what happens with another person, the container of marriage.
SPEAKER_01: Where it's not only bodies coming together, but it's not just bodies coming together in unity, but uh coming together in spiritual union, emotional union, economic union, creative union in such a way that life is the outcome.
SPEAKER_01: God's vision for all of us is union.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I want to talk to the singles here for a second.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's very important to know we're going to whole week on this.
SPEAKER_01: It's very important to know this.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, first of all, Jesus wasn't married or engaged in sex as we've been defining it, but he did model what it means to live a deep, intimate friendships, to give and receive affection, and to ultimately love the world through the gift of his body.
SPEAKER_01: Rich Velodus in the deeply formed life.
SPEAKER_01: Here's how he frames this up, and this is this is very important that we know.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the fullness of humanity and divinity.
SPEAKER_01: He shows us what God is like and what humanity is invited into.
SPEAKER_01: He is the model we are called to emulate, which is to say that Jesus' sexuality was not diminished or distorted or deficient.
SPEAKER_01: When some of us think of Jesus, we imagine that he did not have any sexual energy in his body.
SPEAKER_01: For many reasons, we'd like to think of him as asexual.
SPEAKER_01: But if he indeed is fully human, he must be fully sexual as well.
SPEAKER_01: To be sexual doesn't mean to be sexually active, nor does it mean that Jesus lusted after others.
SPEAKER_01: He is the sinless Son of God who fully participated in the human experience.
SPEAKER_01: We tend to believe that unless one is having intercourse with another person, his or her sexuality is not fully manifested.
SPEAKER_01: But that is not true.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus lives the human experience to the full, connecting with others intimately, compassionately, and sacrificially in his death and in the Eucharist, he offers his body as a gift.
SPEAKER_01: This is what Jesus does.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, at the core of sexuality, is a desire for companionship and love and belonging and friendship and creativity.
SPEAKER_01: The covenant of marriage is where one expression of that can find itself.
SPEAKER_01: But if you're not married in this room today, do not give in to the lie that you have to settle for this depraved life.
SPEAKER_01: God desires to know union with you and for you to know union and deep friendships and deep community.
SPEAKER_01: And I believe it's one of the areas, again, I believe that the church, by and large, has failed to have environments that are welcoming to the LGBTQ community, and I would say for the singles community.
SPEAKER_01: And as I've been studying for this, it's it's the it's it's something that to move into the future, we have to course correct and to be able to paint a picture of life in union with God that doesn't just work for married and families, but it works for everyone.
SPEAKER_01: It works for everyone because God's desire is the same for all of us to be in union with Him.
SPEAKER_01: Every other sin a person commits is outside his body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.
SPEAKER_01: It's a sin against your body.
SPEAKER_01: Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?
SPEAKER_01: You are not your own.
SPEAKER_01: You were bought with the price.
SPEAKER_01: So glorify God in your body.
SPEAKER_01: So again, this whole picture it has to be seated in more than bodies colliding together for temporary pleasure, or more than me being able to do what I want with my desires.
SPEAKER_01: The picture that the scriptures are inviting us into is this the image of a temple, and that God is choosing to inhabit us.
SPEAKER_01: And so that means that as opposed to what the sexual revolution would say, your body is not your own.
SPEAKER_01: It's Him who does it.
SPEAKER_01: So that means, as Paul would say in other places, we offer our bodies as living sacrifices, saying, God, I have these desires, I don't know what to do with them, so but I surrender them to you for you to arrange into a picture that reflects the best view of what you're doing, the way you're trying to love the world.
SPEAKER_01: And this is part of this journey that we're in.
SPEAKER_01: Alright?
SPEAKER_01: You guys with me?
SPEAKER_01: So I'm coming to land here.
SPEAKER_01: But here's what I'm advocating for today.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of questions, first of all, you have, I know that you have in this room.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of stuff I'm leaving out or I'm not being clear about just because I can't totally.
SPEAKER_01: But if you have questions, first of all, you can write them out on a piece of paper, put them in those black boxes in the back.
SPEAKER_01: Um, or you can email us questions at the lookout.church.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, questions at the lookout.church.
SPEAKER_01: You can be completely anonymous.
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing off limits, nothing off limits, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And uh and some of this we just we have to be able to talk through.
SPEAKER_01: But all of us is seated in a larger vision that I believe, I believe we're we're due for a new sexual revolution that's marked with the Spirit of God and a vision of God and the power of God.
SPEAKER_01: In the church, we must create a counterculture of awe-inspiring love where we can pursue loving union with God and holy union with each other.
SPEAKER_01: A thriving community of singles and celibates who have given themselves to deep friendships and devotion to the Lord without feeling second rate, a church of healing and restoration and light where shame is not allowed to exist, a community of strong and healthy marriages where husbands and wives are committed to Jesus and building each other up as a prophetic picture of Jesus' love for his church.
SPEAKER_01: A community where friends in the LGBTQ community are not devalued or rejected, but invited to join us in following Jesus, where we are all being transformed into the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And we're all being invited to surrender and to obedience to his lordship.
SPEAKER_01: A community that teaches healthy, God-honoring relationships to our children and model compelling examples of marriages and singles so they have a bar to shoot for.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, I walk through a large list of all kinds of things that are considered sexually immoral, and maybe you're sitting here and you're just feeling the weight of that, maybe about your own life, but things that have happened to you that you didn't decide, things that you did decide that you regret, things that you're confused about or don't know what to do with.
SPEAKER_01: As you call on the name of the Lord, it's not your own righteousness, it's the righteousness of God that purifies you, that makes you clean, and makes you holy before Him.
SPEAKER_01: So I speak peace to your heart.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you have felt fragmented.
SPEAKER_01: You felt the separation inside of you, you felt the separation of your body from your soul or your relationships from your commitments, and you feel the sting of not feeling like you're living one life before God, but just fragmented.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying, the work of God, the work of Jesus Christ is that he sums all things up in himself, everything in heaven and on earth, even everything about us.
SPEAKER_01: And I believe his word to you today is he loves you and he wants to bring wholeness and healing to every part.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to bring you back together where you feel separated.
SPEAKER_01: Be whole and be healed in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Some of us, I believe, that the invitation this morning is that we've we really haven't actually explored what God has to say about any of these things.
SPEAKER_01: We've literally just gone with the flow of what our culture does.
SPEAKER_01: We watch what everybody else watches, we talk like everybody else talks.
SPEAKER_01: You enter the same conversations, and maybe it's coarse language, maybe it's derogatory language towards the LGBTQ community or others.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's um uh you you've just had you just haven't seen sex as holy, you've seen it as just something that happens.
SPEAKER_01: And I believe there's an invitation here today where God wants to show you a better way forward.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to elevate your view so that you can see not just this moment, but you can see the sweeping story of the love of God throughout human history and Him expanding a vision so that you can see your own body, sexuality, marriage, and singleness in light of eternity.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that's for us here today, for all of us.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe you're here today and you feel just stuck where you're at.
SPEAKER_01: You don't know what to do.
SPEAKER_01: You agree with what I'm saying, but you don't know what to do.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, peace be with you.
SPEAKER_01: Our ministry team is here available, and we our pastors are here not to try to talk you out of something or not to try to fix you, but to just open a space to say, what is God saying to us?
SPEAKER_01: And I, after the service today, we're gonna have ministry team members at the front on both sides and around the corner with badges on.
SPEAKER_01: And if you want prayer for anything we've talked about today, they are willing to pray with you.
SPEAKER_01: And certainly it's all confidential.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I just want to let you know that that's available uh here today, that you don't have to do things alone, you don't have to walk through this alone.
SPEAKER_01: So, that being said, let's stand together, let's stand across the room.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody take a deep breath.
SPEAKER_01: God is good.
SPEAKER_01: He's good, he's good.
SPEAKER_01: It's good news that we've been given to.
SPEAKER_01: So let me pray for us this morning.
SPEAKER_01: I just want to pray over each and every one of us here today.
SPEAKER_01: May the Lord bless you and keep you.
SPEAKER_01: May He make His face to shine upon you, may He be gracious to you and give you peace.
SPEAKER_01: I love you.
SPEAKER_01: Look out, family.
SPEAKER_01: Let's go, full of grace, full of truth, full of mercy, full of forgiveness, ready to receive anyone who comes our way that the Lord brings to us, ready to extend the mercy and grace and forgiveness of God.
SPEAKER_01: This is who we are, this is what we do, this is what we'll continue to do.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Love you guys, love you.