What’s the most important thing about you? Get ready—this episode might challenge what you’ve always believed about yourself. Read how Juli shares why our identity must be rooted in who God is—not in our past, our “purity,” or our pain.
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Juli (00:00.11)
Jesus Christ did not come and die first and foremost to change our opinion of marriage and sexuality. He came first and foremost to change who we are in Him, to change everything about who we are.
Juli
Welcome to Java with Juli. Well, we live in a culture where so many of us define ourselves by our sexuality. We have questions like, are you straight? Are you gay? What are your personal pronouns? And I think in church culture, sometimes we subtly ask questions like, are you sexually pure? But today we’re gonna head into a territory where I hope to challenge you to consider that the most important question about your sexuality is a question of, are you a new creation in Christ Jesus? And joining me to talk about this is a new friend to Java with Juli, Joe Caruso. Joe, thanks for joining me.
Joe
Absolutely, it is so good to be here. I have been a fan and a learner and a user of the ministry for quite a few years now, so I’m really glad to be here.
Juli
Yeah, well glad to have you here. And you are a pastor here in Akron, Ohio at Grace Church. And I feel like we’ve known each other for several years. Our ministry paths have crossed. I’ve been on your podcast a few times. So now we get to switch the tables. That’s right.
Joe
As we were prepping, think you said, yeah, it’s like Java with Joe and yeah, this one can be mixed messages with Juli Slattery.
Juli (01:24.398)
Cause that’s the name of your podcast.
Joe
It’s actually mixed messages with Jeff Bogue, who’s our senior pastor. But yeah, we dive into lots of different things. It’s fun. Yeah.
Juli
Well, I’m so thankful that you’re here to join me for this conversation. You’re gonna be here with me off and on for the next few months as we dive into some content around my new book, Surrender Sexuality. And we’re sort of just intro-ing it at this point. Today we’re actually going to be sharing an audio and video from a talk that I did a few years ago. But one of the reasons that we thought it’d be so fun for you to be part of this series, is I think our listeners are used to Hannah Nitz being sort of a co-host with me and we love Hannah. You’ll hear Hannah’s voice, she’s coming back. But we also are aware that there are so many men who love our ministry, who are listening to Java with Juli, and we have a lot of Christian leaders and pastors. And so I thought it’d be great to have you kind of voice some of the questions and thoughts from the diversity of our audience. So thanks for being willing to do that.
Joe
Absolutely, I would echo just how important that can be. have, I think sometimes I probably just straight up plagiarize your guys’ stuff, you know, when I’m like helping people walk through things. I’m like, no, the stuff I read or what I heard, but for some reason we do tend to hear it differently when different voices say it. And so when you pitch the idea of at least from time to time having a male voice on here, that’s insightful. I think it could be helpful. And with all the people that are in our circles that desperately need this kind of content, I’m glad I can help be a help for other people.
Juli
Yeah, and I’m sure in your role at Pastor, I know this, because we have conversations, but almost on a daily basis, you’re talking to people who are experiencing a lot of brokenness related to sexuality.
Joe
It’s the afternoon right now. I had two of those conversations today. I mean, it’s constant all over the place. Doesn’t matter the age, doesn’t seem to matter marital status, doesn’t matter what you think that person’s scenario life position is. These conversations come up all the time when they’re willing to have them. And so to be able to be a place where they can safely process and start figuring out the healing that God has available for them, it’s powerful.
Juli
Yeah, yeah. And Joe, as you know, a lot of times in Christian circles and in your training, there’s an emphasis placed on this is the behavior we want to see out of you. Like this is a sin you need to get rid of. Like talk to me for a little bit about why that’s not effective. And, you know, I mean, this is my heartbeat, why we need to go deeper with conversations about sexuality.
Joe
Yeah, I think one of the places my mind always goes with that question is like when Jesus tells the Pharisees, you’re like a whitewashed tomb. And that’s so over the top. But what he’s getting at is you’re trying to fix your behaviors while the inside of you is still what’s broken. You’re just masking over the cause of why these things are showing up in your life. And if we’re just walking through behavioral adjustments, then we’re not getting to the root issues.
Joe (04:23.576)
The desires are there, the longings are still there, the hurt is still there, the trauma is still there, and nothing’s actually being processed, but we’re just putting a mask on our face. And Jesus is like, no, I wanna get to the core of the issue. I wanna transform your life, I wanna renew your mind, I wanna bring you to life, I don’t want you just to pretend like it’s all okay. And so there’s so much life available in Christ that I love it when people finally get into real conversation. And they’re really willing to peel back the curtain and say, let’s dive into why I tend to have these habitual behaviors or why I tend to keep doing these destructive things or why I can’t seem to help but want x, and z. And so I think this is where the real powerful work begins.
Juli
Yeah, it’s an identity. so we’re gonna spend a couple weeks talking about identity. And as I mentioned, this week we’re gonna share a talk that I gave about kind of identity and sexuality a few years ago at my alma mater, Wheaton College. So in front of their student body, which was fun for me to be part of. So listeners are gonna hear a little bit of that. And then next week we’re going to have a further conversation about sexuality and identity. Yeah, sound good?
Joe
Yeah, I love it.
Juli (05:38.424)
Boy, I never dreamed I would be back at Wheaton speaking in chapel, and I particularly never dreamed that I’d be here speaking on biblical sexuality. Did you know that’s what this series is about, about God and sex? How many of you knew that? They’re like, okay. The rest of you are like, I might not have come if I’d known that. But, you know, I have a strange job. 10 years ago, the Lord dramatically called me to speak on God and sex, to speak on biblical sexuality.
And before that, my job was I pretty much did more generalist type teaching and work in the field of marriage and family and women’s issues. So of course, talked about sexuality at times, but God called me to speak into the sexual pain and brokenness that I was seeing all around me and that the church seemed so silent on. And it’s not because I’m the most courageous person in the world. It’s not because I’m an aid on the enneagram and I love to challenge people. That’s not me at all.
I’m a peacemaker and so this is a little bit out of my comfort zone, but often God calls us out of our comfort zones. And so my job is to write and speak and podcast and teach and counsel on sexual issues of all different types from a biblical perspective. And if I ever feel bad for myself, like I have a tough job, I just think about my children. I have three sons, they are about your age. They’re 18, 22 and 24.
Two of them are in college and one has graduated. They don’t go here because we have an agreement that I never speak at a school where they’re attending. You can understand why. But if you go back 10 years, imagine what it was like for them to be in junior high and their mom is known for speaking on God and sex. So they’d come from a school and they’d say, mom, one of my teachers said that she heard you talking about sex on the radio again. Not like being a teenager is hard enough. You know, why do you have to make it so much more difficult?
And so we have a lot of jokes around our home about what mom does. And let me just be really candid with you. I’m not brave enough to tell people what I do when I meet strangers. If they ask me, what do you do for work? I usually cop out and I say, well, I’m a psychologist or I run a nonprofit because who wants to get in a conversation with a stranger about God and sex? Sex brings up for us all kinds of feelings.
Juli (07:58.484)
Even as you heard that this daily lecture series is about biblical sexuality, some of you were excited about that and you thought, wow, great, it’s about time we talk more openly about sexuality. It’s such a pressing issue in our day and age. But for some of you, you didn’t have that reaction. You’re actually here with some anxiety. What if she brings up something that brings pain back from my past? Sexuality is a very painful topic for many of you.
And some of you honestly are here kind of braced and waiting for me to say something that might be very offensive to you. And sexuality represents pain that leads to anger, that leads to controversy. And so I understand that talking about sexual issues is sensitive. Sex is powerful. You know, think about it this way. Why do pretty much any series you stream through Netflix, why is it clouded with sexual themes? Why is any music you listen to on Spotify against sexual themes. Why in every state capital today are we talking about things like what we should teach kindergartners about sex and gender? And even more personally, why is it that when you sin sexually, there’s so much shame associated with that? If you told a lie about a year ago or you gossiped, you probably don’t even remember it. But if you sin sexually, it seems to follow you, there seems to be so much pain associated with it. And why is it that a sexual assault that maybe lasted 30 seconds has the potential to follow you with pain throughout your lifetime?
When we talk about sex, we’re never just talking about sex, because God created our sexuality in such a way that it taps into some of the deeper aspects of who we are, how we understand ourselves, how we understand Him, what it means to be loved and what it means to be accepted. And so I’ve learned over the past 10 years that sexual questions are always also spiritual questions. Sexual pain makes you ask the question, where is God? Can I trust Him? Sexual shame makes you ask the question, does God really love me? Could He ever forgive my sin?
Juli (10:19.586)
And sexual confusion? When sex is confusing, know what? God becomes very confusing. And friends, you are growing up and becoming adults and leaders in a time where sex is very confusing, particularly within the church. You hear from the larger culture that to be free and to be fulfilled and to be a whole, complete human being, you need to have the ability to experiment sexually and live out of your true self.
And then you hear from the church that the Bible has some other things to say about sex and there’s all these rules that don’t seem to connect with your personal experience and don’t seem to be relevant to our day and age. That’s confusing. And then you add onto it what research would tell me is that pretty much all of you have been exposed to pornography before you even turn 12. And that shapes how you view sexuality. It even impacts the way your brain responds to sexual topics. And research would also tell me that about one in every four of you women, one in every six men sitting in this auditorium have experienced the trauma of sexual abuse or sexual assault. That’s heavy. I know that to be true of every room that I walk into because that’s the world we live in.
And so as we talk about God and sex, I recognize that sex is a very confusing and painful topic for many of you, but it’s a topic worthy of talking about because I don’t want you to lose sight of who God is as you’re working through some very painful and difficult topics around sexuality. I really believe that every sexual issue is rooted in spiritual issues, and we have to address those instead of just talking about what does the Bible say is right or wrong.
And so we’re going to look at four spiritual questions that underline sexual issues that you might be struggling with today. And not only you, but as you minister to others and as you prepare to go into this world and speak winsomely about the gospel of Jesus Christ as it impacts our sexuality, where do we even start? So this morning I want to tackle this first question. And the first question is this. What is the most important thing about you?
Juli (12:34.446)
Now there are a lot of things about you that make up your identity. If I were to meet you, I’d immediately see some of those things. I could probably guess at your age. I could see what gender you are. I could guess at your ethnicity. Those are things that make up part of your identity. But then as I got to know you, you’d tell me other things that define who you are. You might tell me what your major is and what your passion is and the call that you feel like God has on your life. You might tell me your relationship status, whether you hope to be married or not or hope to be a parent or not. Those are all things that make up who you are. So there are all these different labels that we take on in our life that define our identity. But what is the most important thing about us? There are some things about our identity that flavor how we see the world. So let me give you an example. I grew up in the Akron, Ohio area, not far from Cleveland.
Do I have any Akron? You all stand in the same spot. Is this the Akron area over here? All right, here we go. Yeah, any CVCA grads? We got a few. All right, super. So because I was born and raised in Akron, Ohio, I have a dad that was very faithful to teach me about Cleveland sports. You can feel sorry for me, yes. But we know growing up in the Akron and Cleveland area that when we go to a football game on Sunday, this is kind of what we look like. If you put up that slide. Amen, right?
We would never show up at a football game looking like this. That is the Baltimore Ravens for those of you who do. Do we have Ravens? I will pray for you. I’m so sorry.
Juli (14:15.138)
The Akron Cleveland area is a part of my identity, but it’s a part of my identity that has shaped how I view all of athletics. It determines whether or not I’m happy or sad on any given fall Sunday. It shapes my affections for teams and for people. I can never see myself cheering for the New York Yankees. I’m sorry, I just can’t. It’s in my blood because it shapes how I see the sporting world. And in the same way, we have identities that shape how we view the world. A.W. Tozer, well, actually before you get to Tozer, I’ve got to give the Ohio State Buckeyes a shout out. Any Buckeye fans? All right. So anyway, getting on to more serious matters, A.W. Tozer didn’t really talk about the Buckeyes, although he did live in Akron for a while, just so you know, a piece of history there. But he wrote this. He said, the most important thing about you is what comes into your mind when you think about God. Now, why would he say that?
A.W. Tozer taught that because what he believed and what I have come to believe that what we believe about God, our relationship with God, is the formational piece of our identity that is meant to shape everything else and does shape everything else. So what you believe about God impacts what you believe about sex. It impacts whether or not you believe that God is the creator of humanity, whether or not we can understand his word as he expressed his intention for sexuality. It impacts how you define sexual wholeness and sexual brokenness. It defines what it looks like for you to walk towards wholeness. Like all of that is in the scripture and our view of God impacts our view of sexuality.
Juli
But our view of God is not primarily meant to impact our view of sexuality. And this is where I think we’ve gotten it really wrong in talking about sex over the last several decades of church culture. We talk about sex in such a way that all we talk about is what does God say about your sexuality. But there are more foundational things that knowing God are meant to impact.
Knowing God and our view of God, first and foremost, is meant to impact your view of yourself. How do you see yourself? What is the most important thing about you? And there are a lot of people, a lot of Christians that are walking around with sexual issues that impact their identity, that become defining for them. And I’m not just talking about an LGBT conversation here. This is way broader. This impacts all of us. We walk around with identities based on sexual shame and sexual sin. We feel like we can never get past.
We walk around feeling like man, if God is who he is, why am I so embedded in this struggle that I can’t stop? We walk around even with the identity of being sexually pure and feeling self-righteous as we interact with other people because we don’t have the particular struggle that they might experience. And so there’s a lot about our identity, even in being in a relationship. know, some of you, your identity is impacted because you’re not in a serious dating relationship.
And I’m sure there’s the joke around Wheaton College, like there is all the Christian colleges that you come here to get the MRS degree. Do you guys have that kind of spring by spring sort of thing? Yep. So it impacts. Why am I not chosen? Or why did that person not like me? Or why am I graduating without being married? And in the Christian culture, we can put a lot of identity on these sort of things. But Jesus Christ did not come and die, first and foremost to change our opinion of marriage and sexuality. He came first and foremost to change who we are in him, to change everything about who we are. Christianity is not first and foremost a list of rules related to sexuality. It’s not even a list of creeds, although we do have creeds that we agree in.
First and foremost, Christianity is the invitation to join our life with Jesus Christ in such a way that we begin to see all things through His eyes, changing how we see everything, changing our affections, changing how we see our past sin and our current struggles, changing what it means to grow into wholeness. When we look at the Great Commission that Jesus told His disciples, He said to them, go into all the world. He didn’t say go into all the world and make virgins and heterosexuals, right?
Juli (18:54.178)
He said, go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded. So let’s break that down. He said, go into all the world and he said, preach the gospel, make disciples and baptize them. What does baptism mean? It’s not just some religious symbol that we do. It’s a very sacred symbol that shows us that we are dead to our own life.
And we are raised to new life in Christ. And then everything becomes new. As we heard about in 2 Corinthians 5 today, everything becomes new. And only then are we able to walk in what it means to obey everything that Jesus has commanded us.
And so knowing God, what we believe about God changes our view of sex, it changes our view of self, and it changes our view of others. What did Jesus say would be the marker of his disciples? He didn’t say all people know who I am by your sexual theology. He said all people will know who I am by your love for each other. And so our view of God impacts how we interact with one another as we are vulnerable, as we share, as we talk through and deal with difficult issues like those related to sexuality. It impacts how we’re winsome with other people and sharing the gospel.
What defines you? You know, being in college for four years, you’re learning a lot of things, but the real battle is answering this question, what defines you? You can take on a lot of identities, some good and some bad, that compete with a primary identity that you are created in God’s image, called for His glory, washed in His blood, given new life through the Holy Spirit to honor Him in everything. And I pray that that truly becomes the most important thing about you.
Joe (20:57.038)
Juli, I can’t imagine what an honest conversation like that does to a crowd on a college campus. I’m really curious, like, how did that land with them?
Juli
Yeah, boy, I was so nervous. I Yeah, I do a lot of speaking and there are some events where I’m excited, I feel confident just going in and sharing a message. I know what God’s put on my heart and there’s other times where I walk into a room and I’m like very, very aware, as I always should be, that I’m totally dependent on the Lord and I was scared, I was nervous.
You never really know, you know this as a pastor, you don’t really know how a message lands until you’re done. And people will come up and start talking to you. And you know, was probably in front of 2,000 students, so I don’t know what all of them thought, but I definitely had several come up to me and just talk about how meaningful it was and just how needed it is to have honest conversations about sexuality that get to the root of who we are as people, not just again, debating behaviors or sexual codes or ethics, which I think is where we usually start. So hopefully God is still using some of those conversations in people’s lives because it really is a lifelong journey.
Joe (22:15.734)
Now, were they able to press in with you any questions like, how does identity impact all of this? Because I know sometimes when you speak it’s like, wow, thank you. And you don’t know exactly what they’re thankful for. But then other times they’re asking you like real questions like why is identity so important in this? And you just explained it but you just hook them. And so how did that become a part of any of the follow-up conversation for you?
Juli
Yeah, so this was actually the first of a four part series that I did while I was there at Wheaton and one of them was 100 % Q &A. So that was interesting to have them text in their questions and some of them were about identity but a lot of them were also like, how far can I go in a dating relationship or what constitutes being a virgin or what do we do in a dating relationship when we’ve already gone too far or what do I do with my same sex desire? So I think even after you hear a message like that, most of us still wanna go back to behavior. Yeah, it’s so interesting. There’s a part of us that resonates with, I’m new creation in Christ, but it doesn’t hit the same way as I broke the standard again, and I don’t know what to do with that. And I’m sure you experienced that as a pastor. I remember really studying the book of Ephesians, and the first three chapters of the book of Ephesians are all on identity. And then the last three chapters are on really behavior and how we should live differently. And it’s probably so much easier to preach on those last chapters, because this is what you should do.
Joe
Yeah. Yeah. That actually is a wrestling moment all the time because I think a lot of times, we know we want to help people adjust their identity. We want them to understand who they are, who they can be, and how that changes. But then the question always comes back to, well, how do I do that? How do I do different identity? And we almost don’t have a language for how do we make that shift. Because we can’t just sit there still and go, okay, different identity, different identity, different identity. So the questions naturally go to how, but then they have to keep coming back to the things you’re discussing.
Juli
Right, yeah. And so some of it is working to give people handles to how am I living in a false identity? Like you can say to somebody, to your blue in the face, you’re a new creation in Christ Jesus, Jesus loves you, he forgives you, and the other person is sort of nodding their head, intellectually assenting to it. But until we get into being honest about what other identities are more powerful, we don’t really begin to do the work of, wow, I just, don’t know Jesus well enough for it to overcome my shame or for it to overcome my identification with a certain group of people around me. And so actually we’re gonna be going in that direction next week as we dive more deeply into some identity traps that people often find themselves related to sexuality and then how knowing Jesus really does change that and set us free from those identities that can be so powerful.
Joe (25:24.044)
That’s what I’m so excited for, because I really do think this is where people get stuck. And this is where people are clamoring for like, Juli, help me figure out how to move from these traps to something that’s freeing the things that Jesus promised. So I’m excited for our listeners to come back and start to unpack how this all works.
Juli
Yeah, well thank you for joining me today and for being willing to be with us again next week. And I hope you will join us again next week as we begin to dive more deeply into identity and identity traps and how Jesus can set you free. I’ll see you next time for more Java with Juli.
