We’re moving from shame-based “sexual purity” to sexual integrity—the day-by-day journey of aligning your sexual choices with God’s truth. Whether you’re single, married, or just asking hard questions, you’ll find hope in this episode.
Prefer to listen? Listen to the full episode here.
Juli (00:00.076)
Hey friend, it’s Juli. If you are a regular here at Java with Juli, I know that means you care about seeing lives change through the hope and healing of Jesus. Boy, so many people feel stuck in shame or alone. Maybe you can relate to that because they haven’t been able to make sense of God and sexuality. Well, at Authentic intimacy, we want to come alongside them with biblically grounded resources like this podcast to help people reclaim God’s design for sexuality in their lives, but we cannot do this without you. So this month, we are asking God to bring 200 new monthly donors to help us continue this work at Authentic Intimacy. And I wanna ask you, would you become one of them? As a thank you, I wanna send you a copy of my new book, Surrender Sexuality. Just visit Authenticintimacy.com/give to become part of the work that God is doing through Java with Juli and Authentic Intimacy.
All right, let’s head to the coffee shop.
Juli
So when I say brokenness, mean emotional, sexual, physical abuse growing up, abandonment, unhealthy family dynamics and attachment dynamics. Like the research overwhelmingly shows that those kinds of things will set a person up for unwanted sexual behavior. And so instead of just saying fix the behavior, when we read all of the gospel, what Jesus really wants to do is step into the brokenness.
Juli
Hey friend, welcome to another episode of Java with Juli. My name is Juli Slattery, I’m your host and this podcast is an outreach of a ministry called Authentic Intimacy and our mission is to help people make sense of God and sexuality. Well, as you’re joining us, you’re jumping into a series that we’ve been exploring what it looks like to surrender your sexuality to the Lord if you are a follower of Jesus. And over the last several weeks, we have talked about some foundational aspects of why surrender, why God cares about our sexuality. And today we’re gonna be talking about how knowing Jesus changes how we steward our sexuality. Now, if you haven’t listened to the episodes up until now, I’d encourage you to go back a few weeks and listen to some of those episodes because it really does lay some important groundwork of where we’re headed today.
Now, joining me for this conversation is Joe Caruso. Joe is the executive pastor of Grace Church in Akron, And Joe, thanks so much for joining me for another conversation around this topic.
Joe
Well I’m glad to be back and I’m very quickly learning there’s no surface level conversations when it’s coming to Java with Juli. I don’t think today is going to be any exception. And so I love that we’re getting this behavior conversation. I think this is probably the conversation a lot of folks expected to hear regarding your new book, Surrendered Sexuality. And so here’s the plug. If you’ve not picked up your copy yet, go get it wherever you get a book. But what we’re talking about today is how knowing Jesus is what changes our behavior and how foundational that is. And what I’m hoping is that people don’t skip past that if Christianity is familiar, that that’s not a cliche. And if it’s not familiar, to realize there’s so much power in the fact that knowing Jesus is what will change our behaviors is so fun. And I’m glad that you asked us to go back and listen to the previous episodes. There’s so much there and it’s knowing that we can’t preach a Christian sexual ethic without really engaging the gospel first. And so I just think that’s gonna be so, so helpful for our listeners to really realize that’s the foundation. That’s what I think it’d be great to dive into right away, Juli. Is how do we do that?
Juli (03:39.022)
Right, yeah, I think even though we have conversations that we’re encouraging you to listen to, just to do a quick flyover of some of the things we covered. You know, so often I think when people go into church or they hear about Christians and sexuality, they are ready for a conversation just about what they need to do differently. Like stop doing this, this is wrong, this is sin. And often we don’t lay that foundation of, hey, God cares about every aspect of our lives.
And when we come to know Him, He literally transforms us into new people. And like we are justified by Him. And then we begin this ongoing process of discipleship that is a long journey. And it’s a process of surrender. None of us would say the moment we gave our lives to Christ, everything was clean, that we completely surrendered. It’s a progressive journey. And at some level we get to the place where like, okay God, you’re calling me to pay attention to lust to pornography to the ways that I’m thinking about other people, the way I’m even stewarding sex in my marriage. Would you help me change?
And change isn’t just about making a decision one day, it is a progressive journey of discipleship .
Joe
I think that hopefully resonates with everyone because if we’re honest with ourselves, if it was just about behavior modification, we would do all kinds of things in our life differently. We wouldn’t go to the drive-through as much or we wouldn’t watch that TV show as much or we would change our habits and our routines and that room that no one knows about in our house that’s a complete mess, no one would know that it exists and it would be fine and fixed. We would just change our behavior. If it was that simple, it’s obviously not. And especially when it comes to something that pulls at us, like our sexuality, it cannot just be altered that way. So we have to dig in to Jesus. Now that kind of leads into a common phrase in kind of the Christian circles of like sexual purity. And so you don’t love that phrase. So why not? And what should we use instead?
Juli (05:42.54)
Yeah, the phrase sexual purity, think for most people has felt like a pass fail test. I think that’s true for individuals. I also think it’s true for parents. Like you have a goal of I want to protect my kids from these things or I don’t want them to engage in this behavior. Or as an individual, when you hear the term sexual purity, you’re like, I don’t know if I’m pure or I’m definitely not because of something I did two years ago.
We really don’t understand that what Jesus said is that he makes us pure, that when we come to Christ, when we give our lives to Christ, we literally take on his righteousness. So we are pure, regardless of the things that have happened in the past, and even regardless of the things that we’re currently struggling with, and that Jesus says your sin is wiped away, that the Father sees us through the purity of Jesus.
But now we’re called, because of that, to begin living a different kind of life. And the scripture calls that our sanctification, which is kind of a big theological word, but essentially it means we’re in a process of becoming more like Christ. And so instead of sexual purity, I like the phrase sexual integrity, because integrity has this concept of my whole life is consistent with who I say I am.
And so everything about me, what I think about, what I do, even do I believe that Christ’s forgiveness is real? How do I treat people? Like it all needs to be aligned with who I say I am as a follower of Jesus. And when we understand integrity as a Christian, we all confess that we fall short. That every day I do things and think things and react in ways that are not consistent with Jesus, but I’m becoming more more dependent on the Holy Spirit to become more of a person of integrity as I follow Jesus. And so when we use that framework related to sexuality, levels of playing field, like we are all on a journey of learning how to surrender our thoughts, our shame, our sin to the Lordship of Christ, and He’s the one that helps us.
Juli (08:04.012)
And so it’s not just about stop doing this or, you’re in a different category because you struggle with this or because of what you’ve done in the past. We all have righteousness in Christ and now we’re on journey of learning how to live based on that righteousness.
Joe
It almost seems like you’re talking about a difference of stressing out that I need to fix all of this stuff in my life because God asked me to versus almost resting in what Jesus has already done and then what He’s doing in me. Does that like reflect a lot of what you’re talking about?
Juli
Yeah, as you’re saying, it’s less of our effort and more of a dependence on Christ, but it’s also not reacting like it’s a pass fail test. Even on a day to day basis, if it’s like, today I did great, I feel proud about that and I feel like God finally loves me because I’m getting ahold of the sin or if I struggle or if I fall, it’s like God must hate me, I failed. That’s very much a performance-based Christianity. It’s not settling into the fact that I am loved, I am accepted, and God wants to be my help on this journey. So it’s a completely different framework.
Joe
Yeah, I’ve had the wrestle through that so much personally in my life, so I love that that’s where this message is landing. Now, there’s obviously a lot of cultural messaging about what sex is and what it should be and how important it is. How does the cultural messaging about sex clash with the biblical teaching that you’re talking about?
Juli (09:37.518)
Boy, it’s very, very different. The cultural messaging, and we’ve covered some of this in previous podcast episodes, but it really is based on humanism and postmodernism, where sex is about expressing myself, about who I am. And actually what we see in scripture that sex and sexuality are actually about revealing who God is, which is, I think for a lot of people, a real paradigm flip, like, how does that express who God is? But if you’ve been listening to Java with Juli for a while, you know that this is really central to our message that God created sexuality and male and female marriage, all of it, to be a living metaphor of the kind of covenant love that he has for his people. And so when we switch that paradigm and we really begin to ask, what does my sexuality show me about the nature of God, instead of what is my sexuality? Show me about myself. We begin to live differently.
And again, that’s a piece of it, that foundational piece we’ve already covered, that’s so important. You can’t just jump to behavior change. Because there are a lot of Christians who read what the Bible says about sex and how they’re supposed to be behaving, but they’re still thinking like the world. And then the only conclusion is that God must be cruel, because he doesn’t want me to have something good.
Or at least he’s very outdated. Like the Bible doesn’t apply today in my here and now. But when you change your thinking and you realize that our culture’s understanding of sex is really built on lies, then you begin to have context for what the Bible says about sexual sin and what God calls us to.
Joe
That is so helpful. I just think of, as you mentioned, I’m a pastor and the amount of conversations I’ve had with people that they’re looking for sex to fulfill everything. And that’s the lie, right? And there’s so much more to that. What is God showing us? And the fact that he has a vision for us in our sexuality, I think can be incredibly encouraging.
Joe (11:47.534)
You’ve come up with some categories because we all think about sexuality kind of the same and different all at the same time and a lot of us especially if we have a Christian background we tend to understand the idea of sexual sin. You’ve kind of come up with some categories for that. So walk us through what that looks like.
Juli
Yeah, so from a 30,000 foot view, sexual sin is when we use sex for our purposes instead of God’s purposes. know, like one way to think of this is I’m sure you’ve had people ask you this as a pastor, why is there an issue with two consenting adults having sex? I mean, we’re not hurting anyone. Like, shouldn’t I be able to do what I want with my body? And I would say the scripture would say, yes, consent really matters, but it takes into account what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 6 that don’t you know that your body doesn’t belong to you, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And so glorify God in your body. And it’s specifically talking about sexuality in that passage.
And so God is saying, do the things with your body and your sexuality that I consent to. It’s not just your decision to make. And so when you look at sexual sin, any form of sexual sin is essentially saying, I want to do with my sexuality what I want, regardless of whether God gives His consent for that, because I belong to Him.
And so the four categories that roughly help us understand sexual sin, one is when we engage in sex outside of covenant. So we’ve covered on this podcast before that God created the act of sex to be something that signifies and seals the covenant promise that we make in marriage, that it’s like a sacrament. It’s a physical thing that we do to say, we’ve promised our lives to each other. So one form of sexual sin is anytime I have sex outside of a covenant.
Juli (13:56.054)
That can be premarital sex, that can be adultery, it can be pornography, because Jesus expanded that, not just to what we do, but our thoughts and the lust that we nurture. So that’s the first category.
The second one is when we objectify people with sex. And this is a little bit overlapped but also different in that this can happen in marriage. Like a husband and wife would say, we’re married, it’s okay to have sex, but even within their marriage it becomes, you have to give me what I want. Or let’s say for example, a guy struggles with pornography. He gets married. And he says, okay, now my wife is the acceptable outlet for my lust. But he continues in his mind to be nurturing lustful thoughts instead of focusing on loving his wife. And so God does not want us to use our sexuality just for selfish purposes. Even within marriage, it’s meant to be mutual, it’s meant to be loving, it’s meant to be giving to one another. So that’s the second category.
The third category, and this is one that’s very hotly in debate today, is when we ignore the gender aspect of sexuality. When we say, okay, what if two men have a covenant in marriage? What’s the big deal about that? And of course there’s scriptures that talk specifically about that, but I think people don’t know why. Like, why does God have an issue with that? And we have to understand that what God is revealing through marriage and sexuality, is this picture of Christ in the church. And that picture is always gendered. So Jesus, when he was asked about marriage, he referred back to what Moses said in Genesis. And he said, for this reason, a man will leave his mother and father and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. Now think about how gendered that statement is. You know, a man leaves his mother and his father and becomes united to his wife.
And Jesus said this is the way it was from the beginning. And so everywhere we see in scripture part of God’s revelation through sexuality is the differences between men and women. And so that’s another way we can sin sexually is when we ignore that.
And then the fourth way I think will also surprise some people, it’s when we don’t honor the permanence of marriage. we’ve had podcasts before talking about divorce and that God allows for divorce under certain circumstances.
Juli (16:18.796)
There’s a reason for divorce. There are biblical divorces. But when you enter into marriage lightly and you break marriage lightly and you don’t reverence the fact that marriage is a covenant, it’s sinful. So there are people who go from marriage to marriage kind of finding the person that could make them happy. They divorce because they fell out of love. And the scripture would say that that is not using your sexuality the way that reflects God’s design.
Joe
I can’t imagine anyone listening right now, especially with a Christian perspective, that doesn’t feel like, I have some sexual sin to confess. Something that’s inside, something that’s from the past, maybe it’s from today. There’s a real, I think this is where some of the momentum hits when it’s like, okay, I have behavior to modify. I have things to change. But really it kind of starts with this idea of confession. And so how does our tendency to not want to confess; I think a lot of us, want to hide it, we want to minimize it, or we want to excuse even our sexual sin maybe as normal instead of confessing it. Like, why is that so important to actually confess it as opposed to just kind of excuse it away or kind of hide it back?
Juli
Yeah, I think particularly with sexual sin, it’s really hard to confess, like to God and then certainly to other people. And I think part of it is because we associate sexual sin with so much shame. Like it’s just, we can barely handle it. And I like that you said we all have sexual sin to confess. One of the things that I guess I’m known as saying is that we are all sexually broken. I was thinking that.
Juli (18:08.032)
Yeah, it’s somehow that’s gotten attributed to kind of what I teach and that’s true. You know, some of it’s more subtle than overt, but we’re all sexually broken. We all struggle with sexual sin at some level. Confession is so important. I mean, the scripture says it outright in 1 John. It says, if you’re not honest about your sin, if you lie and say you have no sin, then you don’t have fellowship with God and you don’t have fellowship with other people. And boy, is that true of people who are harboring shame and sexual sin and they’re afraid to say it out loud or confess it. They feel isolated. They feel like no one really knows me. They feel stifled in their intimacy with God. But then the next verse says that if you confess your sin, God is faithful and just and will forgive your sin and cleanse you from all unrighteousness that you now have fellowship with God and with other people. And so it’s such an important first step. It also breaks the enemy’s lies.
Because I think one of the reasons we don’t want to confess sin of any kind, but even more so sexual sin, is because we feel damaged. We feel like if people knew, they wouldn’t love us, they wouldn’t accept us. And the enemy keeps us isolated with that lie. Like if you tell this person, they’re gonna reject you. If people know about this, they’re not gonna let you serve at church anymore. When in reality, everyone has things they’re struggling with.
Juli
And so when we confess, when we say it out loud, when we’re honest even with the Lord, something breaks of the stronghold, the deception that Satan has over us.
Joe
I can picture the times of my life when I’ve done that kind of confession. And like you said, the times that I’ve even held back for a season because I’m completely ashamed. And I think that’s what Satan is trying to do. He’s trying to isolate us. We’re the only ones that struggle with that. So how could you possibly confess this? No one will understand. Somehow the grace of Jesus and the cross does not cover what I’ve done. And we start to buy into those lies.
Joe (20:14.624)
And it’s so, I just can’t emphasize enough how powerful what you’re helping us realize is because we have to put that out there. We can’t, I have, when I was in those seasons, I remember feeling distant from people because all I have this thing that I can’t slip up, I can’t accidentally say something, I can’t, and that’s what God’s trying to free us from. I love that you brought up that 1 John 1:9 verse because it says, if you confess, he is faithful and just to forgive.
Not if you confess and get everything right and figure it all out and make sure that you’re perfect, then he’ll forgive you. It says no, if you confess, he forgives and then he begins to cleanse that stuff out of you. It’s all the way back to the beginning of the podcast. That relationship with Jesus is what starts to alter any type of behavior.
Juli
Yeah, I remember really struggling with a sin pattern that I just couldn’t get rid of. And I was so discouraged because I would like confess it, say I’m not gonna do this anymore, and I fall back into doing it again. And I remember reading the benediction of the book of Jude, and it says, to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you as pure and spotless before the Lord.
And it was like, I grabbed onto that. I’m like, you are able to keep me from falling. Like I can’t keep me from falling. But I believe that you’re going to work this sin out of my life. And I think what people need to hear is for most of us, it is not a one-time decision. Like rarely, if ever, do you hear somebody say, I confess that sin, I determined never to do that again and I haven’t.
Like it is a stumbling journey towards dependence and towards growing in maturity and having strongholds released by the Lord. Sometimes it takes years. And I’ve talked to so many people who are so discouraged that it’s been three months, it’s been six months, it’s been a year and I’m still struggling, what’s wrong with me? And I think we need to know that this is the progressive work that God is doing in us.
Joe (22:22.318)
Yeah, that’s so good. I’m picturing like a toddler when they finally, or I guess more an infant, when they finally decide I’m gonna walk. It takes them a long time to start walking and certainly with any grace. And so yeah, the decision, the confession is not, it’s the beginning of the journey. Yeah, that’s so good. But knowing that now, so if that’s the beginning of the journey and knowing that we should know that we can come to the Lord to be able to confess that he’s faithful, why do so many of us decide to stay stuck?
Juli
Yeah. I don’t know if we decide to stay stuck. I think we don’t know how to get unstuck. One thing that’s helped me is to understand that sin is an illegitimate way to address legitimate needs. Okay, so let’s say the person who is single and finds themselves going from relationship to relationship hooking up. They know it’s wrong, they don’t wanna do it, but there’s something underneath that’s prompting that. There’s a sense of loneliness for even 10 minutes I feel like I’m connected to another human being. I feel seen, I feel beautiful. And so what they’re doing is wrong, but the need underneath, the longing underneath is not wrong. Or another example, a lot of people who engage in pornography learn to use pornography at young ages as a way to deal with loneliness or depression or negative feelings in general.
And if they don’t have another way to deal with those feelings, and they just say, I’m gonna take this thing away that’s helped me cope with life, they can’t get unstuck. And that’s why counseling is so critical to this, why support groups are critical to this, why the journey of asking deeper questions of what am I using this for? Like, what need is this filling in my life is so important in terms of uncovering like why I keep staying stuck in this.
Joe (24:20.182)
You’re alluding to the fact that God has this longing in us, and I can’t help but wonder if there’s a danger to like, okay, I’m going to shut these things down. I’m going to not do this anymore. I’m going to not run after these desires without turning to God first to satisfy them. like, how do we, I mean, that just feels so foreign, but yet so simple. How do we navigate that?
Juli
Yeah, mean, I think, I remember interviewing this author several years ago and she wrote a book called My Last Addiction. And the book was about how throughout her life she went from addiction to addiction to addiction and they were healthier addictions. Like I started with drugs and alcohol and then I went to rom com movies and then I went, I’m making this up, but then I went to shopping and then I went to exercise.
But, you’re always looking for something to scratch that itch, to make you feel okay, to kind of even regulate your nervous system. And where God ultimately wants us to get is where this woman concluded, like, became addicted to the presence of God. Like, I became so that I couldn’t go through the day without spending time in prayer, meditating on his word, knowing that he delights in me, being around his people.
Juli
And ultimately, God created us to be addicted to Him. But we have all these other things that fill that gap, and some of them are very destructive, like sexual acting out, or like pornography, or breaking the vows of your marriage. But all of them, even if they’re good addictions, like my addiction to coffee, or my addiction to exercise, or work, things that don’t seem as destructive, ultimately, they’re what I’m relying on to get through the day and to be okay, instead of learning that God wants me to learn what it is to be fully okay in His presence, fully alive, engaging with Him.
Joe (26:17.358)
It can sound, I mean, the borderline sounds blasphemous, Juli, when you say that we should be addicted to God, because we just have such a negative connotation of the word addicted. But when you think about what that usually plays out, I can’t get enough of this thing, I have to go back to it over and over again, I must have this in my life, I just wish I had some more. You’re starting to describe worship. Yeah. You know, and I think that that is exactly what God’s looking for.
Juli
Yeah, I mean, yeah, and you read that in the Psalms, like, you know, one day in your presence is better than a thousand elsewhere. You know, I pant for you, I long for you, I’m gonna die if I’m not with you. And so it does have that sense of desperation that we associate with addiction.
Joe
Yeah. Now, not only our sin, but like our sexual brokenness, like you were mentioning earlier, also keeps us from experiencing the love that God wants to show us, the freedom that God wants to offer us. Why do we tend to just skip right past those things and go to behavior before we encourage, you know, going to God about, I don’t know, what’s hurt us, what’s wounded us? Like, we just always want to go to behavior first.
Juli
Yeah. I don’t know, maybe you can tell me as a pastor. I don’t know, I love your thoughts on that. You my thoughts initially are I think behavior is easier to measure and honestly it seems like it’s easier to talk about, but I don’t know.
Joe
I think you’re right. I do think we like measurable things. think that, so for instance, I’m a list person. I love lists and I love checking them off. And behavior is listable. And so wake up at this time, okay, cool, I did it. know, start my day with some Bible reading, check. Have only one cup of coffee or two, you know, like check. But if the list is grow closer to God,
Joe (28:09.966)
How do I know if I did that today? Grow closer to your spouse if you have one. Give yourself over to the freedom that Jesus is offering to you. It starts to feel so unattainable that I think people are looking for almost like a cheap counterfeit. Well, as long as I can mask with behaviors, then at least I know I’m making some progress. And I think that’s why we cheapen even some relationships because I don’t want to do the work of growing intimacy in this friendship or this dating relationship or this marriage, I would rather just kind of go through the motions and make sure we’re doing the quote unquote right things. And so there’s something about the human condition that I don’t know if it’s not wanting to do hard things or just not knowing how to quantify them, but I think that’s why we tend to go to behavior so much.
Juli
Behavior feels more controllable. But yeah, we’re starting to see more more research that is saying there is such a high correlation between brokenness and sexual struggles. So when I say brokenness, mean emotional, sexual, physical abuse growing up, abandonment, unhealthy family dynamics and attachment dynamics.
Like the research overwhelmingly shows that those kinds of things will set a person up for unwanted sexual behavior. And so instead of just saying fix the behavior, when we read all of the gospel, what Jesus really wants to do is step into the brokenness and begin unveiling the lies that we’ve believed because of that brokenness, being fully able to experience his presence. And that’s what then begins to free us from the compulsive desires we might experience, the struggles we have, the unwanted sexual longings that we have, and it helps us have healthier appetites.
Joe (30:02.478)
Yeah, it’s fascinating to me that we can read over certain passages in the scripture, like for instance, Psalm 51, where David is confessing this heinous sexual sin where he’s destroyed lives and all the rest. But then he says it’s brokenness and a contrite spirit that you long for. And that’s great poetry, but very difficult to live in. But at the same time, think what God is expressing there is until you realize that you can’t fix this on your own, you’re not like releasing the opportunity for me to do so. You keep pulling back, you keep holding on, you keep hanging on to that temptation or that other thing you’re addicted to. And I can’t, you’re not allowing me to work, you’re pulling back as if you’re fearful for me. So to understand our brokenness and say, God, I come before you desperately needing you to help me.
Otherwise, we’re in rough shape.
Juli
We are, I think metaphorically, we wanna fix ourselves and present ourselves to God instead of inviting God into the places that are broken. And all the places, he’s not waiting for us to fix ourselves or to clean up our behavior.
Joe
And what’s beautiful about that, if we’ll allow ourselves to think this way, is that’s a-whole-nother depth of love. Because when someone does something exactly the way I want them to do it, and then I say, love you, I mean, that’s easy. Like you’ve done the things I want you to do, you’ve pleased me, you’ve whatever. But when someone is suffering, when someone is struggling, or when someone has hurt me, for me to come back around and say, you know what, I still love you.
Joe (31:46.498)
That’s when I realize and hopefully that person realize, there’s a depth of love there that’s way past my performance. And so when we know that we’re sexually broken, when we know we can’t perform at a certain level and God still comes to us, God still offers his life for us. God still says, I am right here to be invited in. What’s happening is God is proving this unmatchable love that he would have for us.
Juli
Yeah, it’s powerful.
Joe
There’s this quote that Satan’s aim is not to destroy your sex life, but to actually keep you from the goodness of God. Surrendering your brokenness is not just about asking God to take away the problems in your life, but for Him to show up in the midst of them. Talk to us more about that. How do we let ourselves into the presence of God?
Juli
Yeah, again, I think most of us think my sexual sin is keeping me from God, my sexual brokenness is keeping me from God. But really that’s a lie of Satan because what’s keeping us from God is the belief that he can’t help us or that he won’t love us until we got it all worked out. And so, you know, I like to think about my life in terms of almost like a physical field, you know, what percentage of it has really been surrendered to the Lord and what percentage of it represents strongholds. And a sin can represent stronghold, but so can brokenness. So can the wounds of my past, the lies that I grew up believing that I’ve never exposed to God’s truth. And so really pursuing the presence of God involves some of the things that we’ve talked about, some of the practices that we’ve mentioned over the weeks, but it begins with this belief that God is everywhere, He sees everything,
He loves us in spite of it, and He has the power to set us free. And really meditating on those truths and doing the things that remind us of that, doing the confession, doing the thanksgiving, doing the prayer, being in the word of God, being around brothers and sisters who are gonna call us on things and not just give us a pass.
And all this conversation, I don’t wanna ever downplay sin. Sin is a serious deal. And when we stay in sin without aggressively bringing it before God and dealing with it, it will separate us from that fellowship with God. God is always there, but it breaks our fellowship. And so it’s this practice of believing the things that God says and taking the steps that we need to take in order to pursue that intimacy with him on a daily basis.
Joe
How do we navigate the concept of our journeys of healing in all of this? Sometimes it feels so simple, sometimes it feels complicated. Just how do we start to take those steps toward the healing that God’s offering in the entire field of our life?
Juli
Yeah, you know, Joe, I like you, like have been in so many church services where you have somebody get up and give a testimony about the freedom that they’ve experienced in the Lord and testimonies are very powerful, but how long are they usually? Like 10-20 minutes. And the testimony is like, I experienced this horrific thing or I did this terrible thing or I had this sin pattern and then I encountered God and now, you know, now things are great.
Juli (35:23.086)
And the reality is those of us who are in the business of walking with people know that this is a long, windy journey of healing. That it sometimes feels very cyclical, man, I thought I dealt with this part. Like, why is this coming up again? And so it’s a long process, but I think it involves a few things.
Let me just hit on some core things that I think all of us need for healing.
The first one is we need a safe place to tell the truth. Like that is so key, whether a lot of us will start with a counselor because they have to be safe. They can’t judge us, they can’t tell our stories to other people. But even more so to have like a mentor or really good brother or sister in Christ where you can tell your story, where you can not just do the flyover version of it, but this is what happened to me. This is what it was like growing up in my home. This is a thing I’m currently struggling with. We need that safe place to tell the honest truth about things. And even the research shows the importance of being able to process things in terms of our healing journey.
The second thing we need is we need somewhere to find truth. In our brokenness and our struggles, we get disoriented. Like I remember going through a season where I was really struggling with some things and I could not discern what was true, what wasn’t, like I felt like I was in a whirlwind. And when you’re dealing with sexual brokenness, sexual struggles, you can’t find true north. And so it’s really key that you are in a community or with a mentor who brings you back to the truth of what the scripture says and begins to gently call out the lies that you’re believing and re-orients you to what is right and what is true, and that’s a process.
And the third thing we need, and this is so critical, is we need to encounter the truth himself. know, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. He didn’t say, I can lead you to the truth. He said, I am the truth.
Juli (37:45.176)
And I believe it’s the job of every good friend, of every counselor, of every pastor not to become your source of truth, but to point you to the one who is to get to the place where we really one-on-one are engaging with God and asking Him the hard questions and asking Him to help us and learning to rely on the Holy Spirit. The people that I’ve seen walk through tremendous healing have those three elements involved and I think when we are lacking one of them, we tend to really struggle.
Joe
As we, if we circle back to one of the things we talked about earlier with just this whole idea that we’re sexually broken and we’ve all walked through one of those categories of sexual sin, I hope that as you walk through those elements of healing, we’re starting to piece the puzzle together. That regardless of where we think we find ourselves, whether it’s the pornography or the extramarital relationships or wherever we find ourselves, that that pathway of healing, and I love how you said, or the truth himself, is available for us. And so, my goodness, if people would just grab a hold of Jesus and start walking this journey openly with him, it would change lives. That’s an understatement.
Juli
Yeah, that’s what we’ve experienced in our own journey. That’s what I need to continue to experience. It’s not a one-time thing. It’s an ongoing journey with the Lord. And that’s what we hope for as you’re watching and listening is that you encounter Jesus in such a way that it really does change everything. And we have lots of resources that we’d love to point you to if this particular conversation has been meaningful to you, like ministries that can help you walk through a sexual struggle, a struggle with with shame or sin or brokenness, but our heart for you is that you continue to pursue Jesus in what it looks like to surrender your sexuality to God.
And that’s it for today. Joe, thanks so much for joining me. And we’ll be here next week for more Java with Juli.