If loving God (or others) has felt hard or risky, this episode is for you. Join Juli and Hannah to discover why surrendering to love is not weakness—it’s the first step toward knowing the One whose love sets you free.
Drawing from scripture and real-life tension in the Church today, they unpack how Christians are called to love in three radical ways: our neighbors, the family of God, and even our enemies.
Prefer to listen? Listen to the full episode here.
Juli (00:00.11)
It’s not like, we can just love everybody and forget about right and wrong or ignore sin in our lives or other people’s lives. But if we get everything else right and we fall short on love, Paul said it. He said, you’re like a clinging gong. You’re really not showing the power of God.
Juli (00:24.674)
Welcome to Java with Juli. Well, we have a special episode for you today. We’re continuing on the series of surrender sexuality in a haven studio. Hannah Knits who many of you know is a popular favorite on Java with Juli and certainly one of my favorites. Wow.
Hannah
What a title to be given. Juli, I just had this moment in my neighborhood recently where a friend, someone I actually don’t know that well, asked me if I would play cards with like her friends. And when she walked away, I said to Caleb, that felt like high school. It felt so encouraging. Like someone wants to hang out with me and here you are using, know, this is better.
Juli
This is even better than cards! Yeah!
Hannah
Where else would I want to be than sitting with Juli?
Juli
Yeah, talking about surrender sexuality.
Hannah
I know. Well, the people know one of my favorite things to talk about is when you have a new book. Yes. So I always love being on Java with Juli, but new book Java with Juli is even more exciting. And yeah, you’ve been talking all about surrendered sexuality. It’s kind of your been your theme for the year. Yes. Conference, the book. And today we’re going to continue, I think probably close to wrapping that up with your last chapter of the book from surrendered sexuality.
Juli (01:38.87)
Yeah, it is called Surrendered to Love.
Hannah
Are you excited to talk about that? Are you tired of having this conversation yet? Like, how are you feeling?
Juli
I’m not tired of it.
Hannah
Great, she’s ready. I’m ready.
Juli
It’s been a good theme for the year. Yeah. Great. So the conference you talked about, Surrendered Sexuality, and that was beautiful. Being at Reclaim this year and just getting to hear so many stories coming out of that was awesome.
Hannah
The Reclaim Conference, which we had, for those of who couldn’t join us, was in, I believe, October of 2024. And that was sort of the outline or the heart behind the book that I just finished writing and now it’s released. So we’ve had a lot of episodes lately talking about different aspects of what it looks like to surrender sexuality. And as I did with the book, we’re wrapping it up with this concept of surrendered to love, how important love is in terms of our understanding of biblical sexuality.
Hannah
So the last chapter of a book feels important. I feel like you got the first chapter is really important, the last chapter is really important. That’s my opinion. Maybe they’re all important, but the first chapter, you’re kind of getting the lay of the land. And the last chapter, you’re kind of like bringing your readers here. You’re like, I’ve walked you through all of this. Like, here’s where we’re landing. So why surrender to love as the landing place for this conversation?
Juli
Yeah, boy I would have liked to move this one up in the book.
Hannah
You don’t want it to be the last?
Juli
Well, and part of the reason, mean, part of the reason why is because I think a lot of people don’t get to the last chapter of a book. And so actually when you write a book, like the third chapter is kind of the power chapter.
Hannah (03:20.428)
Don’t listen to me. Okay, I’ve never written a book. Juli’s written a couple of them.
Juli
But it just seems like this idea of surrender to love is kind of the final stage of our spiritual formation. Like when you read books on spiritual formation and my own journey with the Lord, it’s like you get the rules down, you you deal with your sin issues, you’re starting to just know how to live a more godly life. And even when we look at this scripture, it’s the surrender to love where we really become people of love, where we really become people that show God’s love to others is when it’s like, yeah, that is the last chapter. And we’re working on that one for a long time. It’s not a one and done, it’s kind of like a lifelong, I got the rules down, I’m dealing with my sin issues, but having a heart of love is a-whole-nother level.
Hannah
Yeah, in the chapter, Juli, you have this quote that’s kind of saying along the lines of why it couldn’t be the third chapter. You had to it until the end. Surrendered sexuality falls short if we do not ultimately become people of love.
Juli
Yeah.
Hannah
I don’t know why, but for some reason, that’s just not how I expected the book to end. As the landing point. it’s like, oh, yeah, this is kind of the basic principle that Jesus himself left us with.
Juli
Yeah. Yeah. mean, it’s a pinnacle.
Hannah
Yeah, tied to sexuality even.
Juli
Yeah. just even think about people that I know or in my own journey, like I can think of people, for example, who have had a sexual sin struggle, like a pornography struggle, or maybe they’ve betrayed somebody in their marriage and they go through the healing. They go through understanding why this is wrong. They go through confession and they even get the skills to say, okay, I’m not going to fall like that again.
Juli (05:12.568)
But their heart can still be guarded, it can still be judgmental, it can be even self-righteous. And I think we see this a lot in our world today where people have the right theology of sex and maybe even the right behavior, but their posture towards the world, their posture towards one another is prickly, it’s abrasive, it’s maybe haughty or self-righteous, and it doesn’t represent the fullness of what God wants to do in our hearts.
The scripture tells us to become perfect in love the way that our Father loves us perfectly. So it really is kind of the final frontier of what God wants to do in our lives.
Hannah
Man, that is such a sad but like true reality though of how many of us in sexuality and just everything in our relationship with God, that’s true, where somehow we lean into this like religious piece of the following and the rule. And when you said like having the right theology, that’s like, you know, one of the core tenants of that in some way. And then missing this like most important piece.
Juli
Yeah.
Hannah
So you see this with sexuality.
Juli
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s not that the other parts of surrender aren’t important. I mean, obviously I wrote seven other chapters about surrender sexuality. So it’s not like, we can just love everybody and forget about right and wrong or ignore sin in our lives or other people’s lives. But if we get everything else right and we fall short on love, Paul said it. He said, you’re like a clinging gong. You’re really not showing the power of God.
And I think so often when we talk about biblical sexuality, whether we’re talking about it in terms of culture or we’re talking about it in terms of the things that we want to address in our own life, we often fall short and don’t push into the fact that the final maturity that God wants to bring us into is to become people that are completely surrendered to His love and then actually become people who can embody that for the people we love or for our neighbors or for our world.
Hannah
I wonder if there’s sometimes a disconnect because we throw that word around a lot. Juli, I remember having a lunch with you or hanging out with you at some point and you being like, how’s it going with Caleb and your marriage? And I said, great. I’m just so obsessed with him. And you said, what does that actually mean when you say you’re obsessed?
Juli
That sounds like something I would ask.
Hannah
And I was like, how dare you? I gave a great answer. I don’t want to think about what it means. And I was a little caught off guard and didn’t even know how to answer it because it was just this word I would throw around whenever I talked about Caleb. I’m obsessed with them. And sometimes I’m thinking, do we do that with this idea of loving people? Well, like, yeah, I love them. love, know.
Juli
Yeah. So what I wrote about is that God actually calls believers to three very different kinds of love to three different populations.
Hannah
Oh, I can’t wait to hear this.
Juli
And often we don’t discern what does it look like to love my neighbor versus, for example, love my husband or love people in the family of God. So I’ll give you sort of the overview. The three are, first of all, Jesus said, your neighbor as you love yourself, and he gave the story of the good Samaritan in explaining what he meant by that.
And then he tells us all over the gospels, but particularly when Jesus was getting ready to die, in his last words to his disciples, it was about loving each other in such a way that we’re actually unified, we become one. And the apostle Paul talks about that over and over and over again, that there’s a unique kind of love within the body of Christ where it’s not just being kind to each other, it’s actually working towards becoming one.
Juli
And the third kind of love that Jesus said is love your enemies. And he said, if anybody can love their friends or people that are nice to them, but if you can love your enemies, you actually have become perfect like my father’s perfect. And so I think we don’t always parse out how those three loves look different related to issues like sexuality, but they’re actually three very different kinds of teaching.
And we all have those three categories in our lives. We have those that we’re just supposed to love because we’re supposed to be good neighbors. If we are in the family of God or even in our marriages or families, there’s a kind of love that’s unifying. And then we all have people that we might consider our enemies, those who are against us. And so in that chapter, I kind of break down practically what do those three kinds of love look like.
Hannah
It’s neat thinking about him in those different pieces. And at first I was going to say the word silos, but I don’t think it’s silos. I mean, it’s like, it feels as though as I’m pursuing and working on loving my neighbor, it’s going to overflow into these other areas of, also wanting to love, like you were saying, like the body, loving the enemies. Same word, different categories.
Juli
And the reason it’s not siloed, Hannah, too, is because they all come from the heart of Jesus. They all come from the Spirit of God in us. That when we’ve received His love, when we’re surrendered enough to His love, we don’t even have to manufacture these things. They start to become part of our nature.
Hannah (10:44.63)
Yeah. So how can we receive this amazing gift from God? I mean, and just experience like the joy of the salvation, the love of Jesus, and then somehow we miss this. Do know what I mean? Like really, like how is that such a common thing for us?
Juli (11:03.948)
I remember the book, Crazy Love. Do remember when that came out? It like Francis Chan. It was, I think it was your 2008. And I remember seeing it and I actually have never even read the book, Crazy Love, even though I’m talking about it right here.
Hannah
Francis Chan I hope you’re not listening.
Juli
I’ve read some of his other books, but I remember when that book came out, I immediately thought, really, why is this a best seller? Jesus loves me this I know. That’s the first thing I learned growing up as a Christian.
Hannah
You’re like, is he writing the whole book about this and why is everyone buying it?
Juli
I know, like, what’s the deal? Like, how easy is it for us to understand that Jesus loves us?
Hannah (11:46.04)
Wow guys behind the scenes with Juli. Here’s what she’s thinking.
Juli
Okay, you fast forward to several years ago, and I’ve talked about this on this podcast before, but me getting to the place where I started to realize that I didn’t really know Jesus’s love for me. And just being confronted with that stark reality of, yeah, I believe Jesus died, He loves the whole world. But really being kind of self-conscious about, I don’t really know that He loves me. And I actually think Hannah, we don’t push each other, like even a lot of the teaching in the church nowadays doesn’t really push us to enter into the reality of what it is to know God’s love, to receive God’s love in a personal way. We’re so much more focused on behave this way or memorize the scripture or God’s love is just kind of there and we are just kind of swimming in it.
Hannah
That once you receive it like you don’t have to worry.
Juli
Yeah, like you don’t, there’s nothing more for you to do. The only way you can know that love is through intimate connection with God. Nobody can tell you about it. I mean, they can tell you, but that doesn’t make a difference. You have to experience it. And I think a lot of our church activity actually keeps us out of what it is to experience it in such a way that it transforms us.
Hannah (13:07.982)
Yeah, you and I could talk about this. It’s like one of our favorite things to talk about.
Juli
Yeah, we could. Yeah, I know.
Hannah
Juli, the word surrender in itself, I literally picture a letting go. Even in the word, like I would be interested to look up the definition, but I literally picture open hand and this giving, you know, what am I surrendered? What have I been holding onto that I am now letting go of? And this just small idea, that it’s not just this letting go of, but actually this receiving and embracing connected to the word surrender is deep. It’s good.
Juli
Yeah, and I really don’t know like what comes first, receiving or letting go. Because it’s like when we receive more of God, we feel free to let go of the things we’re looking to, to satisfy us. But also it requires us letting go of something often for us to really believe and trust that God is enough. And through the journey of surrendered sexuality, you know, we’ve talked about a lot about, you know, how sexual sin can be hard to let go because of what it serves in us or how our wounds keep us from receiving love. We’ve covered a lot of that ground, but ultimately the reason we surrender all those things is so that we really can embody what it is for Christ to be all. And then once he becomes all to us, it transforms how we love each other.
Hannah
And it’s such an ongoing piece, like that embracing and receiving, which you and I have talked about before, just my understanding that that was a one-time event at salvation. So it was like, if you were to even ask me that question, I would respond with, of course I’ve embraced God’s love for me. I’m a Christian, without really understanding this ongoing invitation to it.
Hannah (15:06.67)
I know that you and I both have such a sweet example with Linda Dillow of someone who really taught us this surrender through receiving God’s love. But as you’re talking, I keep picturing one of my friends who, man, she’s one of those people that when you are around her, she just radiates that God loves her. I don’t even know how to describe it. But she’s one of those people that when I spend time with her, I feel so reminded of God’s love for me. And I just think that is just the most beautiful ministry you can have as a friend. Like it’s not because she’s physically doing anything for me. It’s not, she always drops off meals and is always just the way she even talks about God’s love for me feels so real and tangible when she talks about it. And I picture that in how you’re talking about how we love others. that also, I kind of visualize that as a piece of that story too, you know?
Juli
Yeah, sort of a cup that’s overflowing.
Hannah
How does an agenda get in the way of this love that we’re talking about?
Juli (16:21.154)
Yeah, so this is really how we love our neighbors. And I think most people, when they think about the Christians in their lives, particularly related to issues of sexuality, like they wouldn’t describe us as people of love. And there’s some reasons why that it’s like, okay, they just are coming from a different definition of love. But also, Christians generally nowadays are not known to be people who are serving their community well or their friends well, or the people around them well. I think in history we could say, know, Christians were some of main people who would move into the pain of a community, the poverty, you know, just the tragedy that a community is facing, but we’re not often seen that way today. And I think one of the reasons why is because we have other agendas that make us feel like we can’t be people of love. And I guess one of the ways I started thinking of this is when Jesus told us to love our neighbors, he told the story of the Good Samaritan. And if you’re familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan, you had a guy who was beaten on the side of the road, kind of left for dead, and two religious leaders walked past that guy and don’t do anything.
Hannah
It’s a crazy part of that story, it?
Juli
It is.
Hannah
We don’t think about that part as…
Juli
Right. So we call it the story of the good Samaritan, but it could also be the story of the two religious leaders who did nothing.
Hannah
That one’s not as catchy.
Juli
But when you think about it, Jesus is talking to religious leaders and he’s using what they would consider to be a pagan as a lesson to them that like even this person who doesn’t know God had enough compassion to go out of his way to help somebody who was hurting and take him to hospital and pay his bills. And you think about why did those two religious leaders not stop? And we’re not told why we have to sort of imply, but there two ideas that I had of why that I think directly relate to why Christians often aren’t the people who stop to help somebody who’s really hurting. The first one is I imagine that one of these religious leaders had somewhere he had to go.
Hannah
Literally that was my first thought. Yeah. He was late for a prayer meeting.
Juli
Yes, I know, and you know how often does caring for somebody around us take us off our schedule?
Hannah
Yeah, it’s never convenient.
Juli
It’s like I had all these things I need to do and many of them are good things or church things you know like you’re messing up my schedule and walking with somebody who’s hurting Spending time like talking to a neighbor like those sort of things they take you out of what you think is important to get done. So that’s the first reason.
Juli
And the second reason is I imagine that a Jewish religious leader would have had a fear of being unclean if they had stopped. Because the Jewish law had like serious statements about don’t touch anything that’s dead or you’d be unclean, you can’t worship in the tabernacle. And this was a pagan. So they had these laws that kept them separate from people that are hurting.
And I so often hear that in the Christian world, like people who are very concerned about the truth of God, which we should be, but they’ll say things like, well, you know, my neighbor’s gay and I don’t want to ask about her wife because I feel like that’s kind of condoning it. Or you talk about something like prostitution or people who are engaging with pornography. It’s almost like I don’t want to get too close because I become unclean.
Hannah
Wow, that is an incredible parallel. I could definitely see that.
Juli
Yeah, and so I think, and I’ve had people say things like that to me, I’m afraid to get too close to the world, the people in the world, because it’ll make me unclean. Whereas scripture is telling us like Jesus went to the sinner. It doesn’t mean that you engage in sin, but there’s a sense to which we have to be willing to get our hands dirty and have our schedules disrupted in order to love well, just love our neighbors well, love our culture well, and the people who live around us.
Hannah (20:40.268)
So do some of those pieces look similar than when we’re applying it to loving the family of God?
Juli
Yeah. So loving the family of God is that and then some. So loving the family of God includes treating people like your neighbor where you’re willing to be kind of out of your schedule or interrupted. You’re willing to walk when it’s messy, but we’re told even to go a huge level above that and to actually become one with the family of God. So we’re told to weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice. God never told me to be united to my neighbor. Like there’s a sense to which they believe one thing, I believe something else, and I actually need to be somewhat separate. But united is I’m gonna treat you in kindness, but I’m also going to work to meet you and to work through all disagreements.
Whereas with the world, we wanna be kind, we wanna be compassionate, but we’re never trying to become one with them.
Hannah
Love is like fully being poured out, but not the unity.
Juli (21:49.382)
Right, like we’re just never going to agree and that’s okay. We’re not supposed to agree. But within the family of God, Paul tells us to make every effort to keep the unity and that we go the extra mile to not just be kind to each other, but to say, hey, we’re going to be worshiping Jesus in eternity. And our differences, we have to stay in tension where we disagree instead of dividing.
Hannah
Man, I even think of Jesus praying that in John 17, which is right before we are gonna watch Jesus be arrested and his walk to the cross begins. And in this prayer, he is praying for believers. He’s asking God that they would be one as we are one. And just that whole couple of verses there, it just highlighted so much to me, this is so important and crucial to the heart of Christ.
Juli
Yeah, it truly is.
Hannah
So how do we do that? Does mean if someone’s a believer, no matter what, I’m just glossing over any problems and I’m like…unity is all time!
Juli
No, yeah, I mean, I think we can take this at a couple of different levels, Hannah. You know, there’s the family of God level, which is the large “C” church. And then there’s our personal lives, like how does this work out in marriage or, you know, like in deep friendships where you share a relationship with a believer. And I think it helps me a lot to see in scripture that there’s always been tension with unity, that in the New Testament church, even though they were just off the heels of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and they had the Holy Spirit fall upon them, they still struggled with issues of their day. And we kind of see the issues that we deal with as an anomaly. We have unique issues in our day that we argue over, but if you look at church history, there’s always been something.
Hannah
And you said that you find that encouraging?
Juli
Yeah, I do. Because it’s like, we’re not unique. know, like in Jesus’s day, you even read about like Peter and Paul having sharp disagreement over things like whether new believers need to be circumcised or whether they could eat with Gentile believers. Like so much so that, you know, Paul says that he rebuked Peter, you know, this is Peter who was leading the church and was filled with the Holy Spirit. And they’re arguing over things like: Can you eat meat that’s sacrificed to idols? And legalism versus license. And so when it comes to sexual issues, we are sharply disagreeing about some things. Like: should you use somebody’s preferred names and pronouns? Or is it ever okay to go to a gay wedding? Or divorce? Like, when are you free to divorce and remarry? And we have sharp disagreements over these issues.
But we have a pattern in scripture of what we do when we as a people of God disagree. And one of the things that I think we’ve lost is we have to return to the thought and the statement that what unites us is always greater than what divides us. And so I see even within the family of God, people very committed to the Word of God who love Jesus, they’re dividing over some of these nuances of how we walk out issues of sexuality instead of beginning with tell me about what Jesus has done in your life.
Juli (25:19.694)
Who is he to you? Tell me about how Jesus is Lord to you. How does the scripture speak to you? Let’s take communion together. Let’s pray together. Let’s worship together. And now we’re in a place where we can start respecting each other and talking through where we’re going to see some things differently. And instead of doing that, we’ve just kind of splintered into camps, denominations, like these people will never get in the same room. And so that plays into the larger “C” church, but again, it also plays into our intimate relationships is what is dividing us greater than what unites us. And the only thing that should ever divide us is if we really are going after something that’s a front to the Gospel, because the Gospel is what unites us.
Hannah
So then if we’re walking out this how to love in this setting and this unified body of Christ, is that then the answer when someone’s theology starts to go off the rails?
Juli
Yeah, boy, that’s a really good question. You know, we see even in the book of Jude, know, Jude saying, I’m writing and encouraging you to contend for the faith that you’ve received. And so there is a time to contend. And we are told that there will be false teachers in the church. The Scripture says we’ll know them by their fruits. Did they have the fruit of the Holy Spirit in their life? But I think Paul gives really great advice to Timothy that we can take to heart and follow where he talks to Timothy and he says, if somebody’s going astray, then you need to gently correct them. And notice that word gently, not just blast on them or gossip about them, but go to them and gently correct them. And then it talks about with the hope that God will lead them to repentance. And I think what’s significant about that is it’s not my job to lead somebody to repentance.
Juli (27:23.096)
It’s my job to bring gentleness and correction with the hope that God will change their heart. And so there are things, there are places where we divide and that division is over, it’s Jesus Christ, Lord of your life. And is that evidenced in how you live and how you worship and how you honor Him? Or are we taking people astray to where they may say the name of Jesus, but really they’re worshiping other gods?
Hannah
Man, so many levels of application of this. I’m just like thinking of them as you’re talking about all that. So as we look at loving our neighbors, loving, what was the second category you’d say?
Juli
Loving the body of Christ.
Hannah
The third one you mentioned is loving our enemies. Yeah. It’s a strong word. Yeah. How do you picture some of that application, like in context of this whole surrendered sexuality?
Juli (28:12.994)
Yeah, again, I think there’s different applications. Sometimes our enemies are the people within the family of God.
Juli (28:23.49)
Yeah, or even people in our family. Particularly when we’re talking about sexual wounds, those so often happen in intimate setting like a marriage or with family members that might be abusive or church leaders. And so this is where it gets confusing. And whenever there has been any kind of sexual harm or somebody’s not safe, you’re not going to say unite in that. You’re going to say, we need to call that sin out and it needs to be dealt with. We need to bring the authorities in, whether that’s spiritual authority or civic authorities. They’re there for a reason. Scripture says that they’re there to uphold the law of God. But then Jesus says, I’m calling you to love. So what does love look like when it’s somebody who is hurting us?
The Bible also is really clear about this. It gives us instruction on don’t take revenge. So the first thing we want to do is not say, hurt me, therefore I’m going to hurt you.
Hannah
Even though it is tempting.
Juli
Yes, it is.
Hannah
Don’t do it. Yeah.
Juli
And God says not just don’t take revenge, He says, because vengeance is mine. You got to trust me that I am going to bring justice in my time. And it’s not your job to determine or mete out justice. Like as soon as we begin to take on revenge, it ends up hurting us even more than it hurts the people that might have hurt us initially. And the scripture says, don’t return curse for a curse, but a blessing for a curse.
Juli (29:58.486)
So how do I bless someone who’s hurt me? It doesn’t mean I have to stay in that relationship or not have boundaries. Like boundaries are really healthy, but where do I get to the place where instead of cursing the person, I can pray for them? Like I can bless them and pray that God brings goodness into their life.
Hannah
Yeah, that’s a big difference from a curse. It’s not just neutral.
Juli
Yeah it really is. Yeah. for a lot of people in a lot of situations, loving our enemies is having the right heart towards somebody, but loving from a distance.
Juli (30:28.886)
I really love the example we have in David’s life where Saul was abusive towards David. I mean, he wanted to kill him. He was chasing him around trying to kill him. And then David has an act of kindness towards Saul where he doesn’t seek revenge when he had the opportunity to do it. And Saul is convicted and he says to David, like, you’re a better man than I, I’ve sinned against you. Come back home with me, David. And he’s weeping. He calls him my son.
Like he shows him respect and David says, I’m not going to hurt you. The Lord is going to judge between you and me, but he leaves. He doesn’t go home with Saul. And so I think we have an example there of how we don’t take vengeance. Like we leave it in God’s hands, but it’s okay to have boundaries where boundaries are needed.
Hannah
Yeah, that’s just, it’s like a funny marriage of these words of like, loving, enemy, boundary, surrendered. It’s like so many words that feel opposite, you know, mixed in there.
Juli
Yeah, they do, but at the heart of it is just surrendering, like even your heart to God. know, surrendering that anger, surrendering that bitterness, and it takes time. You know, this doesn’t happen overnight. Like you have to take time to acknowledge what’s gone wrong, to grieve, to get the help you need. But ultimately, where God wants to bring us is to a place where we are not harboring anger and bitterness in our heart towards anyone, and that we really can leave them to the Lord and have a heart towards, if God brings restoration, like, I just want Him to bless you and not curse you.
Hannah (32:14.296)
So, Juli, I mean, you’ve worked through this whole concept of the surrender sexuality and again, this beautiful crescendo, can I use that word?
Juli
Yeah, sure.
Hannah
With this word love and how beautifully it’s tied in to this idea of surrender. You you talk about it in the book as like this ultimate expression of surrender. It’s just, it’s a powerful one.
Juli (32:39.384)
Yeah, it’s where I want to be. It’s where I want God to take me. We can get to the place where we’ve surrendered our sin struggles, you know, we’re doing the right thing. Everything looks good on the outside, but our heart still is driven by the flesh. And what God wants to take us all to is where it’s not just our behavior, but like He embodies us so much and His love has transformed us so much. You use the word crescendo. It’s ultimately what it is to become like Christ and the work He wants to do in us.
Hannah
Yeah, literally there’s a reason he said it’s the first and greatest commandment. It’s like that love is just, it’s the story.
Juli
Yeah. And Hannah, I am so passionate about contending for biblical sexuality. And at the same time, I am so passionate about contending for the unity of the body of Christ and us having a spirit of Christ towards each other and towards the world. And really, only God can show us how those two are not incompatible. They actually go hand in hand as we surrender more to Him.
Hannah
Well, friends, if any part of this conversation has gotten you excited to continue to learn about this, you are going to love Juli’s book, Surrendered Sexuality, and you can get it now. So grab your copy, pick it up. And if you want to skip to the end, to chapter seven, you already got a little bit of a preview and it’s a good one. And Juli, even in the end of each of the chapters, you put little discussion questions and those are, could do them like your own reflection questions or in a small group which is beautiful because kind of like this conversation, sometimes you can read something and then just set it down and move away. But you and I sitting here getting to talk it out, think it out more. I love that you’ve invited people to do that in their own groups and their own friends and really just like pursuing the goodness of what God has as we surrender sexuality.
Juli
Amen. And Hannah, thanks for joining me. Anytime. Yeah. And we do have links to the book and our show notes as well as links to different ways that you can interact with our ministry with other people who are going through this content. I just want to thank you for listening, watching Java with Juli, and I look forward to next time we get to have more conversations like this one.