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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
God's Presence is Greater than Your Sexual Struggles
Can you imagine a life where the constant struggle with unwanted sexual behaviors is met with the comfort of God's presence? We all carry a deep human longing to be seen, known, and loved, but sometimes these desires manifest in harmful ways. While our needs can be loud and demanding, God's presence offers a subtler yet far more profound fulfillment.
We also tackle the challenge of sustaining spiritual practices like prayer and journaling in a world filled with anxiety and intrusive thoughts. Emotions are not just in our minds—they are felt in our bodies, and God's presence is there with them.
Join us as we discuss how cultivating this awareness can address the root causes of unwanted behaviors and lead you toward a path of healing and wholeness.
👉Men's Overcoming Lust & Temptation Devotional
👉Women 21-Day Prayer Journal & Devotional - (Women overcoming unwanted sexual Behavior)
👉Compass 21-Day Prayer Journal & Devotional - (Wives who are or have been impacted by partner betrayal)
Hey everybody, welcome back. Today. I wanna talk about how practicing God's presence is more powerful than your struggle. Practicing God's presence is more powerful than your struggle. If you are dealing with unwanted sexual behaviors or you have a loved one who is, then begin to practice God's presence and just watch what can happen. What do I mean by practicing God's presence? I'm going to get into that in a minute, but I want to start with just this baseline reality.
Speaker 1:In my 25 years working at Regeneration, I have found there is a common denominator for people who are wrestling with unwanted sexual behaviors. There are nuances and differences for people, but many people, when they kind of dig under the surface, what they're looking for is someone who sees them, knows them, hears them, attunes to them, really gets them and loves them, delights in them, takes joy in being in their presence. I think that is underneath so much of what we're looking for when we pursue our unwanted sexual behaviors, our sexual sins. We're looking for someone who sees us, knows us, hears us, attunes to us, gets us, senses us, feels us, wants to be with us, delights in us, loves us. That's the things that was always attractive about pornography is that the images of the men and women in porn were always available to him, always available Anytime he wanted company. There they were, and not just where they were just quote unquote there, but they were also giving themselves fully to him. That was the illusion. The nakedness of their bodies, the acts they were willing to perform gave the sense of they're giving themselves completely to him. He was. As he was explaining this, he's getting in touch with a deeper desire of his heart. He's looking for someone to see, hear, sense, get know and love him and to give themselves fully to him. It's one of the most fundamental human desires is that we would be seen and known and loved, that someone would want to be with us. Okay, why do I bring that up? Because this is the reason that practicing God's presence is such an important and powerful tool in our journey away from unwanted sexual behavior. There are other tools, yes, other important things to do, yes, but practicing God's presence can be a huge, huge help in this journey.
Speaker 1:I want to read a quote from Eugene Peterson in one of his books. He says Human need is always more apparent than God's presence. Human need is always more apparent than God's presence, for the same reason that the earth always looks flat. Why does the earth always look flat to us? We know the earth isn't flat, we know it's a big round globe, right? Why does it always look flat to us? Because of our perspective. Our perspective Same principle is true, he says, for why human need is always more apparent to us.
Speaker 1:So what does that have to do with us? Well, when we are tempted, there's usually some legitimate need that we are tempted to bring to the illegitimate source of our sexual sin. On top of that, dealing with temptation rightly dealing with temptation in a good way is a need we have. And so when we're experiencing temptation or experience some kind of pain point that needs attention, that need is going to be in our face. It's going to be throwing itself at us left and right.
Speaker 1:But Eugene Peterson says he's pointing out here God's presence is not that apparent to us. God's presence is invisible to us much of the time. But the needs of the human world, the things that we're busy with, the things that worry us, the things that we're angry about, the person who's cutting us off in traffic, the temptations that are all around us, the people putting stuff in front of us that they say we need, that we can't afford, all of that stuff is in our face nearly 24-7, and more so in the digital age than maybe ever before in the history of the world. But God's presence to us, his availability to us, is not so apparent. This is why practicing God's presence is important. We can believe, kind of intellectually, that God is with us wherever we go, but our experience, our felt sense of what reality is, can disagree with that most of the time.
Speaker 1:It's obvious that other cars are with me while I'm driving on the beltway. It's obvious to me that temptation is with me when it's raging inside of me and my brain is coming up with pornographic images. It's obvious that there's pain in my marriage when my wife is crying or when we're separated or divorced. Those things are obvious. They're shoving themselves into our kind of attention window, and God doesn't shove himself on us. He doesn't force himself upon us. He loves us and he wants us to love him in response, and love does not force itself on another person.
Speaker 1:So practicing God's presence is something that we have to be intentional about, and what I mean by practicing God's presence is, in case it needs explanation by practicing God's presence I mean we are practicing what is real, that God is more present to us than anything else around us, that all that is visible, all that is heard, all that is felt around us. Although those things are real, they are less present with us than God. God is eternal, he is omnipotent, he's omniscient, he's omnipresent, he's everywhere, all the time. All that God is is with us all the time. All the time, as you're listening to this podcast, he is here with you right now and he is closer than your breath. But we don't often live like that, is true, we don't often experience that, and so we are. By practicing God's presence, we are practicing that reality.
Speaker 1:I remember the first girl who ever liked me in junior high school, who I liked also. She wrote me a note, an old fashioned note on a piece of paper, and I remember just. I cherish that note. I kept it with me, I read it multiple times. I was practicing this affection that she had for me because it was feeding my soul in a way that I just had not been experienced before. It's not unlike that.
Speaker 1:We want to practice the presence of the God who loves us, who made us, who made us because he delighted in his plan for us, who sought us out through Christ, who died for us, who gave himself completely for us, who rose from the dead and who is with us and preparing a place for us for all eternity to be with him forever. We want to practice the presence of this good and loving God. Now a couple pitfalls we can fall into that are worth mentioning. At least they're pitfalls I've fallen into. One is we practice certain spiritual disciplines in a way that kind of pushes God out of our experience. We kind of turn up the volume on the spiritual practices so much so that we lose our attentiveness to God himself.
Speaker 1:I think about worship, for example. I love to worship, but there are times where the distractions that are in my head, or the busyness of the day or the pain that I'm experiencing inside can feel so distracting that I kind of just I want to turn the volume on the worship, but in that way I'm practicing the presence of worship instead of practicing the presence of God. Now, worship can be one way to practice God's presence, but it can also be a distraction from God's presence, much like so much else in life can. So we just want to be aware of that. I want to be sensitive there because I don't want you to hear that I'm thinking that worship is a bad thing, but there are ways to read scripture or to meditate on scripture, or to worship, or to enjoy nature, or to fellowship with other believers or to even pray that actually distract our attention away from God with us right here, right now. Now, all those things are really important to do. So please don't misunderstand me. My point is simply to say that as we're doing those things, we still need to practice God's presence. Just because you're standing in the sanctuary around other believers singing songs to Jesus does not mean that you are practicing the reality that he is actually there with you right now. I think oftentimes we can actually just go through emotions as though God's going to hear us worshiping sometime at a later date, but he's right with us right there. So, practicing God's presence we don't want to confuse that with practicing spiritual practices.
Speaker 1:The other pitfall I think we can fall into is an attempt to focus on our problems in God's presence. Now, this is something I fell into literally for years. I made this mistake because I used to have the practice and I still do. Actually, I have the practice of daily, or almost daily, journaling prayers to God, just pouring my heart out to the Father. This is what's going on for me. This is my heart, here are my questions, here are my concerns. Here's why I love you. But what I inadvertently did and I didn't realize I did was I began to just focus all my energy in those prayers on the things that I needed help with, things I felt anxious about things, I was angry about things that were troubling me, and what I ended up doing, without meaning to, was practicing the presence of my fears and anger and problems, more than I was practicing God's presence. I thought what I was doing was just bringing these things to God, but over time I began to realize that my quiet times, my times with the Lord, were stretching me out. Why? Because I had mixed up what I was doing and instead of making my priority focusing on God, instead I prioritized focusing on my problems. So that's another pitfall to fall into, and there are probably others as well. But just be aware of those things as we begin to move into practicing God's presence.
Speaker 1:Now, brother Lawrence was a 17th century Carmelite monk, and he's actually the really deserves the credit for this idea of practicing God's presence. Not that it originated with him, but he wrote a book called Practicing the Presence of God, and he said out of all the spiritual disciplines, practicing God's presence is the holiest and most important one of them all. And I think you can understand that, based on even what I was sharing before about how our spiritual practices themselves are meant to be a means to be in God's presence, to open us to God's presence. But they themselves too, if we are not practicing God's presence, can distract us from God. Strangely enough, he said, practicing God's presence is the holiest and most important practice of all our spiritual disciplines, and I am growing to believe that he's right. So I want to offer you just a few ways that you can, if you've not practiced God's presence, that you can begin practicing his presence.
Speaker 1:One is the simple act of drawing your attention toward God. Now, god is invisible, so there's a challenge here because there's so much in our visual world. That's why I think traditionally, so many people have closed their eyes in prayer. But you can lift your eyes to the heavens. You can be out in nature and see the things that God has made, drawing your attention to the reality that all life comes from God. All that is made has come from God, as you look upon people at the grocery store you can draw your attention to. They were created, designed intentionally by a loving, caring, close God, and their life is sustained by God. If God were to withdraw himself, they would cease to be. They are sustained by God's loving presence, even if they're not aware of it. So we can draw our attention to God's presence through what he has made.
Speaker 1:This is what Paul's writing in Romans 1. He says in Romans 1 that all creation is made visible. It's made evident the fact that there is a creator and it's intended to draw our attention to the fact that there's a creator. But he said we can fall into the pitfall of exchanging the glory of our creator, god, for that which he has created. It's my paraphrase but nonetheless that's Paul's the gist of what Paul's writing in Romans 1. So one way is by looking at what he's created and just being mindful, drawing our attention to God created this, or he created this, this, this person. He created the life in this tree. I found that incredibly powerful to focus on that.
Speaker 1:We can also draw our attention to an image of God. Specifically, we can draw our attention to an image of Christ. We can use our heart's eye, our mind's eye, to imagine the reality of Jesus Christ. Imagine Christ walking with us on the road. Imagine Jesus on the cross, dying for your sins, bearing the burdens that you are carrying in your body today into his body. Imagining him at the garden of Gethsemane, risen sorry, the garden tomb risen from the dead. You can imagine him there. You can imagine him in his glory as revealed in Revelation 1. And by imagine I don't mean that we are conjuring up something that's imaginary. Jesus is an imaginary. He's real. We're using our imagination as a tool of faith to help us conceive of God who is with us.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, even if I'm home alone, I might empty a chair and imagine Jesus in the chair and talk to him as though he is sitting right there, because he is in fact present. If you're driving in your car, clear off the seat next to you and have a conversation with Jesus, who is riding in the car with you. Just toy with those, play with those things. Make it something you explore with God. Like God. How do I practice your presence? These are things that have helped me. He may have other means for you.
Speaker 1:Some people find it helpful to focus on holy art, so art that is specifically trying to draw our attention to God. A cross, a crucifix, an icon, some other art that can just be helpful, that people have depicted, where they're depicting scenes from Jesus's life. These can be helpful for you, too. Last thing I want, last idea I want to give you, and this is a new one for me, but I was practicing this this summer and I found it to be really, really helpful.
Speaker 1:I mentioned earlier that sometimes I would get kind of lost in my, in my journaling, and I get distracted by my anxiety. So I'm trying to pray, trying to be with God, but I'm instead distracted by the troubles that I'm bringing him. Well, one of the things that I learned several years ago was that we experience all of our feelings, all of our emotions, bodily. I often thought that we feel our emotions in our heart and our bodies, separate from that, but think about it. Every time you feel anxiety or anger or joy, where do you experience it? You experience it in your body. That's because you are your body and God designed your body to feel so.
Speaker 1:When you're feeling anxiety or feeling temptation, or you're feeling angry, instead of trying to get rid of those things so that you can practice God's presence, practice being with God, as those things are in your body. So here's what I mean by that. If you are a believer in Jesus, his Holy Spirit is in you. You are made one with him. That means that he is in that space that you feel fear in that space, where you feel temptation, in that space, wherever it is in your body that you're experiencing those feelings. God is present. There Doesn't mean he's creating the feeling, but he is in the midst of the feeling. He's very well acquainted with it, probably more than you are.
Speaker 1:You might even place your hand on whatever part of your body is experiencing that difficult emotion or feeling and just say the words over and over again to God you are here, you are here, you are here. Just meditate on the reality that God is present in you, even in those spaces. Don't do it with the intention of getting rid of those feelings or trumping those feelings or distracting yourself with those feelings. Just view the feelings without judgment. They're there, they're in you right now and just practice that God is with you in that space as well. If you have thoughts, obtrusive thoughts, intrusive thoughts that are coming into your mind, you can actually place your hand on your temples or on the top of your head, because God is present in your head too. He is present all throughout your body because he is everywhere. It is in you, in him, that you live and move and have your being. So you can practice. Lord, you are here. You are here Again, without judgment of the things that are coming into your brain, if they're distracting you, to set them aside as you practice God's presence.
Speaker 1:This is difficult to do. I'm not suggesting you go from zero to 60 and suddenly you're, like always, aware of God's presence. Brother Lawrence said it was his objective and he encouraged all of us to make it our objective to be always aware that God is with us, that we are in God's presence. I am far, far from that. So I actually set a timer on my watch and multiple times throughout the day I've begun just stopping to practice God's presence, with the hope that I get better and better at always practicing the reality that God is present with me. And as we do this, it's going to be a help to you in whatever you're struggling with, and it can be a help to you in your journey away from unwanted sexual behavior. God loves you, he is with you and he is the answer to the sin that you struggle with and the struggles you have in your life. No-transcript.
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