.jpg)
Becoming Whole
Relationships and sexuality are areas of life that can be beautiful or confusing, life-giving, or painful. Becoming Whole is a conversational podcast for men, women, and families seeking to draw nearer to Jesus as they navigate topics like sexual integrity, relational healing, spiritual health, and so much more.
Becoming Whole
Streams of Healing
What happens when you confront a decade-long struggle with pornography and turn it into a pathway for transformation? Join us as James Craig, spiritual coach and member of our team, courageously shares his journey to healing.
This episode explores the delicate balance between biblical teachings and therapeutic practices, stressing the importance of historical and communal insights and biblical foundation when tackling habitual unwanted sexual behavior. From soul care within the church to the transformative power of spirit-led activities, this episode is packed with wisdom and practical advice.
Awaken Mens' Retreat - Are you ready to take your recovery to the next level? Regeneration is Excited to announce our First-Ever Awaken Men’s Retreat. We have crafted a two-day retreat at the beautiful Bon Secours Retreat and Conference Center in Marriottsville, Maryland from Saturday, September 28 to Sunday, September 29. Secure your spot today! We are currently offering an early-bird sale price and this event is open to just 20 attendees. For more information and to register click here.
Wives Betrayal Basics Webinar - For more information and to register.
Sacred By Design Women's Retreat - Are you a woman who loves Jesus & and you're doing the hard work to break free from unwanted sexual behaviors?
We would be honored for you to join us for our first Sacred by Design Retreat to be held on Saturday, November 2, 2024. This special time has been crafted for you to receive and relax, to create and connect. We pray you’ll join us as we slow down long enough to be caught up by our Creator.
Only 10 spots are available. For more information and to register click here.
Everybody welcome. Welcome back to the Becoming World podcast. I'm excited because we are entering into a new season. We've had a bit of a hiatus and we are diving back into doing the podcast again with a little bit of a twist. We're gonna have longer form podcasts, we're gonna have guests, we're gonna have Regen staff people talking to Regen staff people, including today I'm talking with the illustrious James Craig, who's one of our men's coaches. He leads our awaken initiative here at regen and he's our project manager, so wears lots of different hats, james. Oh, and you started.
Speaker 2:you're the guy who started the podcast way back when yeah, so if anyone goes back and listens to those first like 100 episodes or 50 episodes you can hear the difference in audio quality. Hopefully it's gotten a lot better.
Speaker 1:We had a recent college grad putting during our podcast versus now, but but we we owe a debt of gratitude to you. You're the guy who got this role. So James is, we're talking across the country. I'm in Maryland and you're in sunny California with parrots.
Speaker 2:Cloudy California, the last like three weeks.
Speaker 1:Fair enough. What else should people know about you besides what you do here? Who are you? What do you love?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah Well, so I came out here following my now wife to film school. She came to film school out here in LA and now she works out here in the film industry, so that keeps us out here. But I get to visit our team in Maryland like four times a year and a lot of my friends are still in Maryland, so super fun to visit. But yeah, I'm out here. I have a great church I'm a part of, I help lead different things like our discipleship school life group, different things like our discipleship school life group, different things like that.
Speaker 2:So I had 10 years of unwanted pornography, struggle and masturbation and that was all throughout my teens. I was exposed to porn man when I must've been like eight or nine years old the first time, got into it around age 12, habitually. But around my senior year of college I had a mentor who graciously said hey, you should check out regen, and he described the awakened program that I now have the privilege of leading. And I just pictured, you know, you know, I pictured like one of those skyscrapers in Towson and I pictured like men looking around with trench coats on and a big hat and like kind of looking around walking into the building. That's what I thought I was getting into as a senior in college, just joining up.
Speaker 1:Exactly that's what we do. What is it? When I first came to Reed Jameson way back, I imagined guys in trench coats too. What is it about the idea of guys in trench coats?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, it turned out to be nothing like that. It was a bunch of very normal men, christian men, seeking Jesus and trying to overcome their sinful behavior, their unwanted sinful behavior, and it was at a church. It was a had a beautiful church in Towson. It was nothing like what I had pictured, but it was super transformative, just like my mentor had promised. Yeah, love it, awesome. So it got me to kind of stick around. As I went through a full year and came into graduation I was like, hey, josh and team, I'd love to work with you guys and I think you guys should do a podcast. This is great stuff. You should get it out there and all kinds of stuff like that. Here we are.
Speaker 1:Here we stuff you should get it out there, and all kinds of stuff like that. Here we are here. We are here. We are many years, many years later. All right, so without further ado, we want to dive into the topic for today. So, listeners, here, here's where we're going.
Speaker 1:We, over the many, many years 45 years really of ministry at regen, have have recognized several different components that are important to growing in sexual wholeness, growing in sexual integrity, and we're going to do our best today to talk about each of those different. I like to call them streams because they are not blocks, they are not foundation pieces, because they do overlap, they move within each other and they move very sweetly together. But we often find that for men and women who are coming to regeneration, there can be a tendency either to just pick one of these four streams four or five streams We'll understand why I'm saying four or five or they've got like an emphasis in one area and kind of blind to other areas that would be helpful to focus on. So we don't want that for you. We want you to to, to have full access to the these four streams and to be embracing so, as you're listening and you're if you're pursuing sexual wholeness, sexual integrity in your own life. Just be listening for, like, oh, is this an area that I? If it's an area that you're like, hey, I'm, I am firing in that area, like, yes, I am fully engaging that stream, then rejoice, praise god. If there's a, if there's a stream that we talk about today that you're like, actually I don't really dig into that much, just make note of it and and we'll give enough today that you can kind of take it and say, okay, here's a step I can make, here's a, here's something I can. I can not, I'm not going to add a hundred different. Okay, here's a step I can make, here's something I can. I'm not going to add a hundred different things, but here's one thing I can do to kind of walk into, enter into, step into that stream too and watch what it does to the other streams and to your own journey of recovery and wholeness. All right, so, without further ado, actually, let me say one other thing about the streams, and this is this kind of comes into why it's the fifth stream. We're going to come back to it.
Speaker 1:It is our firm belief that each of these streams, when rightly understood, when rightly positioned, when we're walking in the streams that they all point to Jesus. Now, jesus is not the fifth stream, he is. He is the stream, he is the living waters. He's the river, yes, the river of life. So our hope is that all of these things are feeding into your relationship with Jesus. He is the center point. There is no other salvation that you need besides the salvation offered through Jesus Christ. There is no other union you need besides a union with Christ. So all these things, from our vantage point and the way that we seek to approach them, feed into that.
Speaker 1:I like that, james. Yeah, so these are streams. He is the river. They all feed into him. Dude, write that down. We got it. Glad this is being recorded. Keep that one. Okay, all right. Illustration James is our like like this is one of his unofficial titles is like construct engineer. Like he has these different spiritual engineer. Yeah, there you go. Help us to conceive of what we do in ways that become tangible and practical and visible. So, so, so I've been talking for five minutes, james. Like why don't you walk us through? What are, what are the four streams that we're talking about that all flow into jesus?
Speaker 2:absolutely so. Our four streams are the biblical, the therapeutic, the formational and the spirit-led streams biblical, the therapeutic, the formational and the spirit-led streams and so a lot of times, these streams are actually in tension with each other but, like what do you mean for sure Intention?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So when we think about a lot of the people who are really great at focused on what the Bible talks about when it comes to, you know, moving forward and moving past sin and repentance and things like that death to self, you don't often find that in the therapy office and I've received a lot of good Christian therapy I know a lot of people on our team have but the therapist is going to emphasize things like dealing with shame or boundaries or other things like that, and so there's kind of this not natural tension but a surface level tension between the therapeutic and biblical, for example.
Speaker 2:Same with the spirit-led and the formational. Formational people are all about suffering and contemplating in the spiritual disciplines, but then people who are kind of in the spirit-led stream are like victory and god heals and let's worship him and praise. So it's like how do these things go together? So I really think that, you know, maybe the biblical and and spirit led sometimes go together pretty well, maybe the formational people and the therapeutic people often get along. But I'd say in all the other combinations there's a lot of tension in our culture, maybe even in the church, between these streams, seeming tension at least surface tension.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. Yeah, and it's okay. So when I think about tension, what comes to mind for me, I think this is this fits with the we're going to mix metaphors here a little bit. Fits with the, the four streams, in the way that they are in tension, or some of them are in tension with the others, that our bodies work together as a unified whole. And yet there are parts of our bodies that are designed to be intentioned. In fact, the tension that God has designed in them are necessary for them to work the way they're intended to work.
Speaker 1:Easiest example of that is your bicep and your tricep. One is designed to pull your arm up, the other is designed to push your arm away. So one is pull, one is push. If you were to get rid of your tricep, your bicep wouldn't work. You'd just be stuck in the from the up. You know your arm would be like, but your hand would be by your shoulder your whole life. If you were to get rid of your bicep, your, your tricep wouldn't work, it would just be out as a matter of fact. I think, if I'm right about this I'm not, I'm not, I don't know anatomy as well, but I think if you were to get rid of your bicep, your tricep would never even be put to use because your arm wouldn't be able to go the other direction to push back. So I could be wrong about that, but something like that.
Speaker 1:So, in any way, god has designed different parts of the body to work in tension and their tension actually makes the opposite, or the thing they're in tension with, work better, and I think what you're getting after here. The tension is not a mistake. It doesn't indicate that we're doing one wrong. You mentioned formational and spirit-led, so those who recognize there is actually value and human life doesn't include suffering and there's value in suffering and god uses suffering. There's a tension between that and those who who are more prone to walk in victory. Like you know, we have victory now. God's spirit is with us now, like god's desires are our happiness and our best. Now, like those are definitely intention.
Speaker 1:I probably phrased the second one a little bit incorrectly, because victory does not mean everything now, um, but in any case, the tension between those two can actually make the other even more powerful. Yeah, and so all right, yeah, so, with that said, let's, let's walk through each of them. So, as you're listening, listener, think about this Like, where are you with these four streams? We're going to talk a little about what they are and where they're active in your life. Think about it. So you know, do you have a? You know one stream is stronger than the other, and and and and also notice, as as we're going through, notice, are there ways that the tension feels like too much for you, like it feels like it keeps them, like incompatible with one another, because, because that would be worth pressing into, worth paying attention to as you're moving forward to. So let's start with with biblical.
Speaker 1:That's the easiest place yeah start and that was the most important place for us to start.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, it feels like a great starting point because I mean, at the end of the day, we're a christian ministry. We're not, we're not clinical therapists here, we're not spiritual directors, we're not like inner healing prayer, you know, purely ministry. We're a christian ministry and we want to be based on the Bible and so a lot of guys come in. So maybe we'll think about like a fictional guy, joe. Like Joe comes in to my coaching office virtually typically and more often than not the stream that guys are most comfortable with that come in, and Joe included, is the biblical stream. He has a real clear conviction that his habitual pornography use is sinful and he wants to get over it. He wants to see his identity be in Jesus. He wants to fully repent and often people think of repentance as kind of like I just need to say sorry to God. That can be part of it. But he has this intuition of like something really needs to turn in my mind and in my heart. So that's actually the most typical a guy who comes in. Joe comes in, he's really kind of maybe even beating himself up over his habitual behavior. Maybe he's even questioning does God love me? Do I love God? What's going on in this area, but he might have a foundation in in the biblical side.
Speaker 2:Another side of things is people we work with who have been betrayed, and I actually work with some people who have experienced betrayal, betrayal trauma, and if they come in with specifically like their, their spouse is unfaithful, exactly yeah. So in this case it would be an unfaithful spouse, and because they have a really good biblical foundation, some of them actually have an easier time forgiving because they are convinced of all their sin and that they needed forgiveness themselves, and so sometimes the biblical foundation can set a great foundation for things like forgiveness. The need to forgive can set a great foundation for things like forgiveness, the need to forgive, the understanding that we all have sin patterns we all need to overcome. We all are called to repentance. So it can be a huge value for people to come in with this clear sense here, and it's often at least in the way people hold it. It's often limited and that's why we need the other streams.
Speaker 1:So, and James, one of the things I would want to say from our perspective of regeneration is different than I think what a lot of Protestant evangelicals tend to think about when they think about being biblical. We are not of the school here that Sola Scriptura allows us. Then I mean the idea that all we need is the Bible. We actually don't believe that all we need is the Bible. We recognize that the Bible is God's inherent word, that it is reliable, that it is inerrant, and we recognize that an individual in 2024 actually does not have what he or she needs to rightly interpret scripture, that we need the body of christ. We need the traditional. We need to understand what the traditional understanding of scripture has meant. We need to understand historical context. We need to understand the original language.
Speaker 1:I've spent enough time in seminary to know that that that the, the best academics, the best hebrew scholars, the best systematic theologies, the best greek scholars, are open to learning from other people all the time. Like we, we need the body. So we need the, the capital c church throughout time and place, to help us understand. What does this, this library of books that we call the bible, what that? What does this mean?
Speaker 2:so and let me even add into that for a second.
Speaker 2:So if we pull in just for a moment the therapeutic stream, if you have a good Christian therapist, like a licensed Christian therapist, and they have a good biblical understanding, they can even see ways in which the psychology they've learned right study of the mind and the body as related to the mind, the nervous system, like that god created as a boon to understanding things in the bible.
Speaker 2:So, for example, I might overlook codependence as a fundamentally, you know, something that needs to be kind of turned away from, repented of because I think, oh, it's just codependence, it's kind of a psychological term, whatever, but actually the core of codependence is both pride the person who is helping the other person has a lot of pride and idolatry the person who is relying more heavily on the other person is idolizing them.
Speaker 2:So those are two of the most fundamentally biblical concepts and so even in our psychological, our therapeutic stream, you can immediately see how that kind of concept can be a boon and help us to not actually be blind, maybe, to ways that we're like we think our only sin, struggle is lust, but actually there's all this other stuff going on in the background and God wants to bring his redemption and that is actually the core of the image that we have is the cross, these streams coming out of the cross, and it's like when we go back to that biblical climax. We need redemption in more places than we've often realized. It's not just that Jesus wants us to be no longer lusting, no longer looking at porn or having an affair or whatever. He actually wants all of us. He wants to redeem us.
Speaker 1:I love that. I mean, when I first came to regeneration, I was very wary of the other streams outside the biblical stream. I just did not. I was not familiar with these other streams and I questioned. I remember even questioning at one point like, am I just becoming a humanist? Is this what this is like? Because I was going to therapy at the time I had a christian therapist. He would refer to scripture, but he'd also say some other things that I I would not find in scripture and I was like, is that, you know? And I was, I'm grateful, like I was always testing what he said against what scripture teaches.
Speaker 1:I love in the book of acts they're the the bereans that paul speaks to. They took what they heard and they went back to the scriptures to see is it is like what? Let's weigh it against what the scripture seat. So yes and amen, always um, but that's what you're describing exactly. What happened to me, like, like, suddenly the scriptures actually became more alive and I became they, they. I was really testing them, sorry, testing my, my experiences against scripture, but but I was able to dig into scripture in some ways that I couldn't before, because I I was limited in my own understanding of what it was to be a human person and what emotions are and those kinds of things. So right, all right. So I hope I haven't gotten ourselves into a huge like muddy bog with that conversation.
Speaker 1:Conversation, please, please, don't hear us in any way suggesting that scripture is co-equal with these other streams or that scripture is not a solid foundation for us or that we don't hold to the traditional view of scripture, just the opposite.
Speaker 1:But we also recognize that that as individuals, we need the church at large and the church historic and the church's traditional understanding of scripture to interpret it and just as a counterbalance to it. One of the proofs I would point to, or piece of evidence I would point to, to the importance of this is what many people are doing today, especially in the area of sexuality, in offering a reinterpretation of scriptures that the church has been unified on for nearly 2,000 years. And now folks are looking back at some passages and saying, well, no, it didn't really mean what you think it meant all this time. So they are kind of throwing a trump card saying my interpretation today. They are kind of throwing a trump card saying my interpretation today, after almost 2,000 years, is the correct one. And the church and the church fathers and other Christians throughout the ages have been wrong all this time and we'd say that's grossly prideful, and it's what CS Lewis calls. What does he call it Something pride.
Speaker 2:Generational pride.
Speaker 1:Is it chronological snobbery?
Speaker 2:or something.
Speaker 1:Chronological snobbery, yes, chronological snobbery. It's like somehow we today, in the 21st century, know something that all those Christians who went before us didn't know, don't know, and we can trust ourselves more than we trust them, and we think that is a gross mischaracterization of holding scripture improperly, so all right we. Of holding scripture in proper light, so all right, we're going to get. We might get some emails about that one, but hopefully people are tracking this. So let's go into the therapeutic. James, you jumped in there already a little bit. Let me say right from the get-go our team at Regen, we are not licensed therapists. We do have, we have and do employ licensed therapists, but they do not serve with us in that capacity except internally to help us do what we do well, but we do nonetheless believe and bring what we bring, seeking to be therapeutic. So we're not licensed therapists, but what we do is therapeutic. James, what else would you say about therapeutic? What do we mean by therapeutic?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, therapeutic. We're just kind of pulling from this stream that's been around now for probably I don't know 100, 150 years of trying to understand the human person in its modern form. But here's what I want to actually point out the best Christian thinkers of all time, people like St Augustine, people like you know, some of the church fathers I mean even someone like CS Lewis he just referenced the greatest Christian thinkers actually don't have as much trouble being integrative between the biblical and the quote-unquote therapeutic, the way we're talking about it. Actually, augustine was known in all of his medieval statuary I get this from Dr Peter Kreeft All of his medieval statuary had him with an open Bible and a burning heart. Open Bible in one hand, a burning heart in another, because he has such a deep and rich understanding of the human heart, including the emotions but even deeper, the affections, the will, the loves, right. So the best of the therapeutic stream isn't like utterly new and actually a really deep reading of scripture. The way St Augustine would have done it, the way Paul did it, the way Jesus would have understood, doesn't negate anything from what we're kind of thinking about in this stream.
Speaker 2:So things like dealing with shame Jesus despised the shame on the cross. He actually engaged people who felt overcome by shame. He had connection with them. He helped break shame. Things like betrayal, trauma we mentioned that a little bit but the effects of the way someone's sin can affect a person in close relationship with him, with him or her, things like boundaries. Where do I start? Where do I stop? You know, we mentioned identity and Jesus as part of our kind of biblical stream idea, mentioned identity and Jesus as part of our kind of biblical stream idea. But a deep compliment are things like boundaries, like how do I actually understand who I am so I can give myself and self love and not be walked over but actually willfully choose into things like love. And we also do things like story work. We get into our past and and unpack things at regen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I love, I love that and I actually I. I wanted to jump in several times as you're talking, with a yes and amen. Thera, therapeutic, the therapeutic stream rightly understood, rightly executed. We'll find so much evidence of these same things in the life of the saints, in scripture, and I mean Jesus was therapeutic, like the very fact that he came in the flesh. God with us, like so much of what a licensed therapist does is to be with someone and to help them to open up parts of their story, parts of their life that have lacked someone. Being with them in that space. This is whatesus did for us. He entered into the full scope of our humanity, to be with us, and what a difference it makes when we begin to encounter him there.
Speaker 1:So I also want to go back to what you're saying about the early church fathers. This comes from a book called modern psychopathologies comprehensive christian appraisal, second edition. This is right in there in their, in their chapter one, they say the early church fathers taught about the need for quote-unquote physicians of the soul skilled in the care of those whose woundedness hindered their faithful obedience to christ or deprived them of fullness of life in the community of faith. It's enough to chew on right there. For example, origen wrote in the third century the Christians should look carefully for a quote physician of souls to whom they could confess their sin, lay bare the cause of their ailment, one who knows how to be infirm with the infirm. And then this is that's the end of that quote. But similarly, in the fourth century, john Christostom wrote, quote so the shepherds need great wisdom and a thousand eyes to examine the soul's condition from every angle and must not overlook any of these considerations but examine them all with care and apply all his remedies appropriately, for fear his care should be in vain.
Speaker 1:Throughout the history of the church, this ministry of soul care has been central to its life and mission. I love, I love that. So I mean these. This is origin christian. I'm talking about just the importance of shepherds being very careful and considerate of the individual stories and the individual kind of experiences of those they're caring for. There's not a one-size-fits-all do this bible study and you're all well. But like we're going to individualize our care for individuals, recognizing they may have things that keep them from fully knowing themselves, fully engaging the community of believers, fully walking even in obedience yeah, so much of what happens in our story I mean there's a lot of good that god builds in his graces is evident in our stories if we look carefully.
Speaker 2:But so much of the harm we've experienced, so much of the sin done against us, especially when we're young, has a deep impact on the way our heart approaches things like desire. Even we no longer are seeking god as our deepest desires or healthy relationships with people, but things get distorted through our story. So a really good, you know, therapeutically oriented christian, like what we hope to be as spiritual coaches here, or even if you do see a christian therapist outside of regen, can help you. Like those great church fathers said, be that kind of eyes on your soul, looking carefully what has happened in this soul and by soul we mean kind of the whole person, what's happened in their story and how is that actually blocking some of their walk with God, some of their identity, their relationships and things like that.
Speaker 1:Awesome, awesome. Yeah, this was probably the scariest part of the scariest dream for me to enter in, because I on the surface, because I I wasn't, I didn't know the things that we're talking about now, and also because it did open parts of my life and parts of my story that were were pretty significant and that were hard, because it meant facing things about my life, about my past, that were not fun to think about.
Speaker 2:I think that's such a good opportunity. Just real quick, just to say to the listeners who are, you know, thinking about their own journey with sexual integrity or their loved ones. It's like sometimes why we are so avoidant of the therapeutic stream is because it is so hard. And this is not I mean especially thinking of men, who, you know, I primarily work with men. This is really hard for us as men, because there's maybe even I work with men who are soldiers and great men of honor in their fields, but this is actually some of the scarier stuff than getting out on a battlefield. This is the stuff of our deepest places, this is the stuff that feels most tender and vulnerable, and so I just want to encourage you. If you're wrestling with this dream, or maybe even have discounted, like, the idea of needing to unpack your story, your childhood, your wounds, there might actually be an invitation. There is an invitation to courage to face those things with wise loved ones, wise counsel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did hear one objection once. Somebody said what are you guys doing? Like you're you're looking at there's actually somebody else's ministry that did story work too. They said what about you guys? It sounds like you're blaming your families, you're blaming, blaming your past for your sins. Like I need a place that's going to hold me responsible for my actions. And I got a chance to respond to this guy. I said I said what is it? What is it about? What is it about our ability to kind of recognize our own responsibility for sins and how our sins can harm us and harm other people. But we miss and we dismiss that other people's sins have harmed us and we need to be willing to look at our own sin and the way it's impacting our lives and people around us and we need to be willing to look at other people's sins either sins of omission or commission, accidental or on purpose and how it's impacted us, how it shaped us. So which brings us talking about shaping to the formational stream. Yeah, what are we talking about with formational stream?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I mean classically spiritual disciplines, right? So no-transcript Prayer celebration, I mean there's just all kinds of disciplines, and if we want to grow into maturity in Christ, we do well to consider these things, including the things that we don't want to talk about, things like suffering, things like even our limits or places that we need rest in our lives yeah, one of the things that I think we've been discovering kind of in this after how many hundreds of years post-enlightenment?
Speaker 1:the enlightenment gave us the idea that that we can be formed just by what we think, and certainly what we think has tremendous impact on what we believe, how we live, on and on and on. But so much of what we think is not what we think and so much how our thoughts are shaped are not by how we think. There's so much that comes in on different levels and, like one example, cs Lewis in his book Screwtape Letters addressed the topic that Christians often think it doesn't matter the posture, the position of their bodies when they pray, and what he was getting after there is. We don't realize even that. How we posture ourselves, whether we sit in a chair and pray, fold our hands and bow our head, stand up and raise our hands to the heavens and look up, prostrate our shells on the ground, like all these actually are part of how we pray. They're a part of how we are formed and they they actually impact the formulation of our prayers because we are not just as james k smith put it, put it, we are not just brains on a stick. We are full-bodied creatures and so what we do with our bodies matter, and so much of the spiritual disciplines are about doing something with our bodies. That's not all they're about, but it is a significant part of what they're about. So when I fast, I am incorporating my body on a most basic level, my most basic needs and hungers with my spiritual life. When I meditate on scripture, I have the choice to either kind of just let those, let you know, the meditation be just kind of my, the thoughts of my brain, or I can actually incorporate my meditation with or incorporate into my meditation something that I'm doing with my body, practicing the presence of god, brother lawrence's, and maybe there are probably different ways to different kind of official spiritual disciplines to to incorporate there, but but practicing, practicing presence of god is about presence. It includes our bodies. There is no way to practice god's presence outside of our body because we are only present in and through our bodies and, formally speaking, we don't have bodies. We are bodies.
Speaker 1:And if you listen to podcasts for anything at the time, you've heard me say that that's just the true. True christian anthropology is that we don't have bodies, we are bodies. We are a combination of spirit and body. We go together all the time and certainly when we're talking about sexual integrity, we have to talk about our bodies. And so, as a guy I heard years and years ago said, he said we sin with our bodies. Why can't we pray with our body? We sin with our bodies, why can't we worship with our bodies? And he was just pointing to the reality that there's this false dichotomy. If we kind of think, my you know, my body is what I do bad things with. My spirit is what I do good things with, yeah, and and somehow doing something with my spirit can be separate, but it just can't be, can't be. So. The spiritual disciplines, spiritual practices, are a way of bringing our full selves together and watching what God unfolds.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and one of the coolest ways that the formational stream and the therapeutic stream have been combined in the last couple of decades.
Speaker 2:A guy named Jim Wilder, a disciple of Dallas Willard and Jane Willard, dallas's wife, has studied a lot of neuroscience and has seen that the way our brains are wired and rewired I mean this is a huge thing in addiction work in general, and we're familiar with some of this that we've habitualized pathways in our brains towards certain behaviors right, and so in some ways, the old man, the flesh on a spiritual level, but even some of our brain's pathways on a neurological level have been formed and therefore need to be reformed. We used to say at Awaken I remember this kind of shocking admonition that in some ways, if I got into pornography at age 12, I stunted a lot of my emotional and therefore spiritual development. So it's not that surprising. I'm not sure if I had 10 years to gain back that I had been stunted in or not, but the point is like I needed new neural pathways. Jesus designed us to be creatures of habit, and habits are a lot of what reform our thinking and then therefore our behavior as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that and I think that concept of we are creatures of habit play into why spiritual practices, spiritual disciplines are so important. And for those who get kind of mixed up here, Richard Foster does a great job at his book. Is he Spirit of the Disciplines?
Speaker 2:Willard is Spirit of the Disciplines. He's Celebration of Discipline, celebration of.
Speaker 1:Disciplines okay, I think it's even his introduction that book he talks about and clarifies like spiritual practices, spiritual disciplines are not about earning something from god. They're not about gaining his favor. You have his favor, you are, you're received by his grace, but they are participation in his grace, they are participation in what he's doing and and they're bodily participation. They are a mental participation, they are an emotional participation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of my favorite images from Dallas Willard. I think they were good friends. Foster and Willard were good friends, but Willard has this illustration of like if you want to be a great hitter in baseball, you want to hit the ball out of the park the way your favorite baseball player does. And you watch them, you observe all their tape, you see exactly how they kind of line up, how they hit the ball right, and you get on home plate and you're trying to emulate exactly what they did. You're not going to be able to hit the ball out of the park. Why? Because they actually do a lot behind the scenes. They work out a lot. They do other things that I'm I'm unaware of as someone who doesn't know baseball that well, but they're working. They're working on a lot behind the scenes as a way so that when they do step up to the plate they're able to hit the ball out of the park. They have got the strength and the ability, not just like the posture or the form.
Speaker 1:If that makes that's awesome, yeah, okay. That leads us to the final stream, which is intention, with what we just described, which is being spirit led, and so, both as a ministry, but also for you, listening if you're, if you're seeking to grow in sexual wellness and sexual integrity, to grow in the, in the whole arena of the, of becoming a man or woman who is led by the holy spirit, filled, led, spoken to, speaking to the spirit of the present and living god.
Speaker 1:So, james, what, what comes to mind for you when you, which is the, you know even the, the phrase spirit led yeah and maybe when I only ask this question, like thinking about our listeners, like what are some of the things that you go like, yeah, this comes to mind and I'm not very comfortable with that, or that's a little bit, you know, weird.
Speaker 2:or someone might say yeah, yeah, well, I mean, yeah, I mean, people have used this to go all kinds of directions A regen. We believe that the Holy Spirit is never going to lead us contrary to scripture. We believe that the Holy Spirit is never going to lead us contrary to scripture. So, like what's revealed about God and people are called to scripture, the Holy Spirit when he's active and when he's speaking or leading, never going to be contrary. I mean, that's just how scripture worked as well. I mean the Holy Spirit's leading all throughout scripture and it's it's in line with this amazing, you know canon that we've been given of scripture. So whenever we're listening to God's voice at awaken, sometimes we'll pause and say Lord, what do you think of me? I've seen myself as shameful. I've seen myself as primarily addicted or sinful. How do you see me? And it might look like literally just pausing listening.
Speaker 2:Words might come to mind. You know, god has access to our minds. He created them, not very hard to get there. So he, he will sometimes put thoughts in our mind. He might say things like you're beloved. He might say that you are actually victorious, even though you're not seeing yourself as victorious, or other things along those lines. He might give words of identity, uh, especially for the men I walk with, you know, words of sonship or the goodness of their manhood or whatever. And so I always say to guys yeah, it always needs to align with scripture.
Speaker 2:Paul says that in 1 Thessalonians 5, don't treat any prophecy with contempt. Prophecy is literally just God's words being spoken out through humans. So we never, you know, treat those with contempt, and yet we test them all. So as simple as that. We always can test them.
Speaker 2:But more often than not, god is so eager to speak to us outside of scripture and through scripture that when we actually pause to listen, verses or images or words come to mind that are deeply aligned with what we see in scripture. So that's often what we're talking about. We're also talking about spiritual warfare, because we live in a spiritual battle. The enlightenment has made us think that we don't. We're primarily just these, you know, rational creatures. There's no spiritual realm. That's just not the biblical worldview. So we're operating, or we're doing our best to operate, in that biblical worldview that says look, you can't blame the devil for your sin, but you really do need to acknowledge that he's there trying to get you to sin at the same time. And if you don't contend to some degree with the armor and prayer and other means, you're missing out on a significant portion of yeah the potential for victory or help in this area.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting. One of the often cited passages, kind of right in that zone that you're talking about, is in Ephesians 6, when Paul writes that one of the pieces of our armor, one of the pieces of our weaponry, is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and that is nine times out of ten. When people are talking about that, they're referring to the Word of God, and that is nine times out of 10, when people are talking about that, they were referring to the word of God meaning and they take it to mean scripture. However, there is a word for scripture in the greek and that is not the word that is used there, and so when paul, for example, writes that all scripture is god breathed, he's using the word scripture, scriptura. When he says that the sword of the spirit is the word of god, he is using a different word, I believe right, which is usually discussing kind of a word being spoken for this moment, in this moment, and so that's pretty. Those are, those are aligned and it makes sense, and certainly scripture is the word of god and yet, interestingly, scripture never refers to itself as the word of god. It refers to jesus as the word of god. So, in any case, I that's a whole, nother theological topic, but what we're getting after with Spirit-led is that God is active and present right now, right here in this space, and he knows you and he knows your story and he has woven you together. He knows the language of your heart, he knows what makes you sing, he knows what makes you weep and he can meet you in those particulars in a very personal and specific way to you. It will align with, as James said, it will align with God's character and who he is, as revealed in scripture, through the page of scripture, but it will also be him speaking specifically to you, because he made you to be a unique creature. He didn't make us as widgets and everything belongs to everybody, yeah, so anyway, too, was it was new for me.
Speaker 1:When I first came here, I I found myself kind of feeling two things, and as you're listening, you might find yourself one feeling these two things too. On the one hand, it was uncomfortable because, like, what if I'm wrong? What if I think it's god talking? It's not god. What I think this is god moving? It's not god, it's the enemy, which again, is one of the reasons it's important to weigh all this against scripture. I would also add weigh it against like talk to wise people in your life who know Jesus, who walk closely with him, ask what they think. Does this sound like God to you? That was tremendously helpful for me.
Speaker 1:So there's part of me that was kind of like suspicious and concerned about kind of being led astray by trying to walk with and abide with and sense the Holy Spirit. And there was also part of me that found, when I was honest, that I was longing for this because we are made to be with God, we are made to commune with God, we are made to be united with him and I simply found within myself a longing for God. We were made to be united with him and I simply found within myself a longing for God.
Speaker 1:And I think most of the men and women who come here, who spend any time at Regen, at some point kind of begin to recognize that even they're pursuing pornography, even they're pursuing sexual hookups, even their inability to forgive, whatever their struggles, are that, at the end of the day, what they're really most longing for. Yes, they're longing for real relationships. Yes, they're longing for healthy living and under all that we are longing for God. It's a quote by Chesterton I don't think it was really Chesterton. Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is actually really looking for God, and we believe that's true and we believe we can experience God, find God, walk with God through his presence with us today in the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my favorite way to see this stream come alive, especially in coaching, is healing prayer or inner healing prayer. So let's say we're going into someone's story and we're trying to unpack like man. This fantasy is so bizarre and we ask the Lord Lord, where does this come from? He often brings us back to memories where that fantasy kind of had its origin and often it's a traumatic or painful or wounding memory and we invite Jesus into that memory and see how he wants to interact. And so often I mean just the way we're using our sanctified imagination, right, but we believe like he's actually working, because often we see like real healing happen. We see transformation happen in the countenance or the posture, where even the person no longer feeling is drawn to this fantasy, for example. So I just love that God still wants to do that kind of work.
Speaker 2:And for me, just like I've seen Christian therapists, just like I get mentored by my pastors, just like I see a spiritual director, I need a lot of help. What can I say? I often probably about once a year, when enough stuff comes up I seek out inner healing prayer, even just on its own. You know, like whatever format that might look like. There's a lot of formats out there, but I often will seek this out at least once a year because I need kind of that encounter, that specific space where I'm bringing my stuff to God and allowing him to do what he wants there, and he wants to do a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And beyond just the healing of what's broken, there is just simply, he is life, he, he is love. We desire him, and so the healthiest of Christians never outgrows their desire for need, for deep longing for the presence of God. Ultimately, it's, it's, it's what we're made for. He made us for himself and, as Augustine said, we are, we are restless until we find our rest in him.
Speaker 1:All of these, as we said at the beginning, if you think of them as kind of triangles pointing inward, they point and and create an image, and we have an image of this, actually of the cross, like we want, them all pointing towards jesus. So, so, all these, as we said at the outset, are, are streams that that flow in jesus and, or, better understood, there, as we, as we experience jesus, we walk with jesus. All these things are active. Jesus is biblical, the bible points to jesus. Jesus is therapeutic, and good therapeutic care points to jesus. Jesus is formational. He forms us and transforms us, and good spiritual formation points us to jesus.
Speaker 1:And jesus is spirit-led. We see him exemplify this in his life as representing the gospels, and when we were being spirit-led, we were both being pointed to and flowing from what jesus has done so as you're listening to your own, on your own journey, with wherever you are in your spiritual um, there's your journey towards sexual integrity. Are these things active? Are they a part of your journey towards sexual integrity? Are they a part of your kind of the program whatever the program is that you're walking in and where one or more is kind of missing or light, what might you add to that to help you kind of continue to grow? I think these are, these are just valuable questions and I hope I hope, as you're listening, they're exciting to you that they're opening some doors for you and some windows for you that will illumine and propel you forward in your walking with Jesus and your experience of him in your life.
Speaker 2:So, james, anything you'd add to that to wrap us up, yeah, if you've been stuck, I mean mean find the place that maybe has been lacking. Like Josh was saying, I have an amazing awakened volunteer who is super strong in the biblical formation. He's gotten a lot of good therapy but he's never engaged in spirit-led and recently he went to get some inner healing prayer and it was so transformational I mean I could see the shift in his countenance and God just did so much through that and he's still reflecting on that and so whatever the area you feel more lacking in, we want to bring that in our coaching. So if you want to reach out for coaching here, we bring that in our groups to the extent we're able to awaken in the other programs we have. But just want to encourage you, ask Jesus even right now Lord, where do I need help in this moment, in this season?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let me. Why don't I close in prayer just that way? So, jesus, thank you. Thank you for thank you for all the ways, all the many ways, lord, these and more, that you minister to us, reach to us and move in our lives. Lord, for each one listening right now, what are you saying? Maybe it's a well done. Keep going. You're doing all I want you to do right now. Maybe, for some Lord, there's just one aspect here that you're inviting them into, and it's not a burden you're adding to them. It's an invitation towards more the more you have for them. Thank you that you care for us, each Lord, that you know each person. We honor you, we love you, we pray all these things in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
.png)
