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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
Faith and Body: The Power of the Incarnation
In this final chapter to our Advent mini-series we discuss the connection between spirituality and sexuality through the lens of the incarnation, emphasizing how Jesus' physical embodiment relates to our lives and struggles with sexual integrity. As we dive into some theology and apply some practical spiritual disciplines, listeners can begin to reconcile their sexual lives with their spiritual journeys, aiming towards wholeness and redemption in Christ.
• Discussion on the importance of Advent and the incarnation as it relates to sexuality
• The intersectionality of sexuality and spirituality
• Examination of Jesus' physicality and its implications
• How to understand sexual sin as a unique challenge to the body
• The role of biology in sexual temptation
• Differentiating between “flesh” and “body” in the New Testament
• The overarching message of hope offered through Christ’s body
• Practical applications of spiritual disciplines for sexual integrity
• The importance of embodying worship in our spiritual life
• Encouragement to engage with community as a remedy to isolation
ReMember: a night full of worship, art, dessert, stories of God’s goodness, and an opportunity to partner with Regeneration. We invite you to join us for our annual dessert Regeneration fundraiser. We’d love for you to join us, It will not be the same without you. RSVP here!
👉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)
confession time as we begin today. One is this that I've grown kind of and I might spoil something for everybody who's listening, so I apologize if I do but one thing that I've noticed in some church settings is that the word excited is used a lot. Like I'm so excited about this morning. I'm so excited about what we're going to talk about today. I'm so excited for this time to gather. We just need some new adjectives to describe how we're feeling, but I am actually truly excited about what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1:This is a topic that jazzes me up big time. It is so pertinent because we're on week number three of our Advent series. So pertinent because we're right in the Christmas season. So, whether you're listening to this right before Christmas or right after Christmas, it's just poignant, right on the mark for what christmas is about, and it is essential. It is so essential for every christian who is seeking sexual integrity and sexual wholeness.
Speaker 1:Um and I think you'll understand as we get into it we're talking about the incarnation. Today we're going to dive right into the incarnation. So james craig on our team and I are going to try to unpack a little bit of christian theology really christ theology 101, but interestingly, not Christian theology. That's talked about a ton in most settings, and maybe especially when it comes to the topic of sexuality, like this, christian theology matters so much for our sexuality. So with that in mind, to kick us off, james, would you just read us a few verses from the book of John John 1, 1 and 2 and John 1, 14, just to get us kind of into the category of what we're going to be talking about today.
Speaker 2:In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son who came from the father full of grace and truth.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, james, maybe I'm just going to, I'm throwing you this out of the blue here, but anything in there, pop for you knowing what we're getting ready to talk about, or what we're talking about today with the incarnation.
Speaker 2:There's this amazing overlap of word which kind of can feel like I don't know, spiritual. It can feel intangible, yeah, with this idea of being made flesh being embodied, yeah, the combination there is really striking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's actually really helpful. That's a helpful frame up for us to begin, like, versus one and two are, do you have that more kind of esoteric feel to them, like, oh, the like the word's been eternal. And there's like some conceptual stuff Like, okay, the word was with God and the word is God. Like okay, like what does that mean? And then we get into the word word in the Greek and then it introduced the whole conversation about, like how the Greeks understand the word, word logos. And then we get to verse 14 and there's just kind of just like the word became flesh and dwelt among us. We go like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, now we know we're talking about Jesus who dwelt among us, very physical, practical, visible, touchable for those who lived with him. Actually, there's a real location in the world where he lived and walked. That makes a difference.
Speaker 1:We might get into that a little bit later, yeah, and so the reason I say it's a good setup for where we're going today is because I think for most of us in the area of sexuality, so whether we're wrestling with our own unwanted sexual behaviors, we're wrestling with fantasy, we're wrestling with sexual triggers, we're wrestling with maybe a spouse's or a loved one's sexual behavior that's really hurt us, either because of something they've done to us or because of betrayal.
Speaker 1:The whole area of sexuality can feel like it is disconnected from our spirituality, feel like it's like it is disconnected from our spirituality.
Speaker 1:And I've said before, like for me there are years and years and I think for a lot of people they can resonate with this where my sexual life, what I was doing in secret and even after I started confessing to people, what I was doing in my sexual life, was on an entirely different track from my, from my spiritual life, and it's like they were parallel tracks, really far apart, never crossed my. My spirituality just didn't seem to have any, any what's the word any any, any power to change what I was doing sexually or to help me in the area of sexuality. I think we're talking about today is going to begin to bring those tracks together, because they actually don't belong miles apart. They belong right up next to each other, if not as the exact same rail. Like to be sexual and spiritual are not? These are not opposing forces in our lives. They're not designed to be, at least they're designed to be running in the same direction, fueled by the same same thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is the design of what God intended for us as humans.
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, all right. So let me, let me kind of take us a little bit step further, like so just kind of trying to unearth a little bit, scrape away a little bit of the what are we talking about and get into why does this really make a difference? So if you're listening and you're thinking, yep, I wrestle with pornography or I'm struggling with extramarital affairs, or I'm hooking up with my girlfriend and we keep saying we're not going to do this anymore, but we keep, you know, every time she's over, every time over there, like we keep doing this, or you're wrestling your boyfriend, whatever it is, you recognize. Like the beginning of jesus's life is his incarnation, his conception, his birth. Like very physical. Right that, the birth of jesus. If you ever witnessed a birth on TV or in person? Very physical, there's blood, there's liquids, there's pain. I mean it's a very physical experience.
Speaker 1:The end of Jesus' life is the crucifixion and the resurrection. There's this. I shouldn't say the end, the end of his earthly life is crucifixion and resurrection. Again, very physical, you can't imagine it. Quote unquote spiritual crucifixion and resurrection Again, very physical, you can't imagine it. Quote unquote spiritual crucifixion. Crucifixion is it's bloody, it's tiring. He's beaten, he's bruised, it's happening in the meat of his flesh and then when he dies, his physical body hangs limp on the cross. Because there is no life in the body of Jesusesus at that point, all very, very physical. And his resurrection, his, his crucified body is now made new and resurrected.
Speaker 1:It's bodily and there are accounts in in the gospels where his disciples are actually like I'm not going to. You know, thomas is like I'm not going to believe unless I get to actually touch the wounds of jesus. And he touches his wounds. The scriptures say he puts his hand in j' side, like so physical gory, even a little bit, except it's real so and I think that.
Speaker 1:But in between those two bookends of Jesus' life, like the gospel writers include lots of teachings of Jesus, but they also include all these accounts of the physicality of Jesus as he saw people. I mean, just do a word, search on the word saw or looked or see. And there's so many places in scripture where jesus, like the gospel writer, is very specific to say that jesus saw someone. Oftentimes he'll even see someone and then draws his disciples attention to it, say like look, look at, see what I'm seeing. He spoke, so he used his mouth and there were words that he spoke. People heard him. He heard other people, he was using ears. And then some of our favorite accounts in the scriptures are when he touches someone and there's a healing. And some of those are described very physically too, like when he spit on the ground, made mud out of his spit and the dirt and then put it on people's eyes Again, very physical description. So there is no doubt in the gospel writer's mind that jesus was not some phantom, he wasn't a ghost, he was.
Speaker 2:He was physical not to mention him taking naps and sleeping on boats and storms, or going up to mountains to pray, yeah, or eating food yeah, drinking, drinking wine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right. So, james, take us a little more into the theology there, like, regarding this embodiment like jesus has a body, jesus is appearing in a body. Like what does christianity teach here?
Speaker 2:jesus is a body, which sounds so weird to say. Obviously he's more than that, but he came and he has a body. He is a body. I'm probably mixing stuff up, you say you always say it so clearly.
Speaker 1:No, no, that's exactly right You're, you're right on the mark. Yeah, keep going.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think what's so crucial here is that so many mistakes in Christian thinking have to do with either spiritualizing everything thinking like we're like angels or you know spirits, pure spirits or physicalizing everything. We're simply our brain and this body and that's it. But Christianity has this audacious claim that we are both physical and spiritual creatures.
Speaker 2:I jokingly say we're like angels and animals, we're angel-mals, which is I mean there's a way, better word for that it's called human but angels don't actually have angels don't have bodies the way we do, and there's a glory in God creating us, as these embodied creatures and animals don't have a spirit or a mind the way we do, and there's a glory in us being unique in that regard. So we have to actually contend with both and I think a lot of people dealing with sexual sin, unwanted sexual behaviors, other sexual difficulties in their lives it could be really hard to figure out. Okay, this body seems to be causing me all these issues. If only I could kind of get past it. If only you know, when I get to heaven and my spirit's kind of floating around in heaven, it's all going to be better.
Speaker 2:But actually the vision or the telos or the end goal of scripture or of this journey with God is the new heavens and new earth, including new bodies. We actually won't just become angel type creatures in heaven, maybe temporarily, as we're awaiting the new heavens and new earth, if we die between now and then. But the, the end goal, the, the, the destination really is this new heavens, new earth, new physical reality, redeemed, perfect, but physical nonetheless yeah, yeah, that's it, that's it.
Speaker 1:So what we're getting after, then, is where, where we struggle in our bodies and if there's any, if there's any sin, that is a bodily struggle, it is sexual sin. Paul actually in in first corinthians 6, calls out sexual sin as a unique sin against the body, which we'll come back to a little bit. But I mean and you know this experientially, listeners like James and I know it experientially like we feel temptation sexually, not in some kind of amorphous, like ethereal world, we feel it in our bodies, like, even like the. The sexual thought isn't really a temptation until you start to feel it in your body. At least that's my experience. I can have a sexual thought, a thought of a naked person across my mind, but, man, when I feel in my body some response to that thought, that's when the temptation really begins to go. And when I feed that thought and feel it more in my body, the temptation increases and then sexual sin itself.
Speaker 1:A huge part of the temptation is just the euphoria of the sexual activity, whatever it is, however long it lasts, and the addictive nature of sexual behavior comes in with what's happening bodily through your neurochemistry, in your brain and in your body, where, just like Pavlov, if I go back to him we've experienced I'd feel some kind of trigger, some type of pain point, some type of discomfort, and I seek relief, I seek resolution. Resolution, I seek to reverse what's happening or repeat some wound through this bodily thrill, this body, bodily euphoria, through sexual acting out, and over time my brain and neurochemistry learns like that's the way to go when you experience this situation. Go to this intense sexual pleasure. It.
Speaker 2:It actually even builds up. You know, beyond gray matter, the white matter in our brain is this part of where our habits are formed and habits are so effective and automatic, almost because white matter is like 200 times per second, can refresh or can go through cycles compared to our gray matter. Our left brain goes through five cycles a second and our right brain gray matter goes six cycles. So it's exponentially faster once you have a habit and that's why we drive so effectively. That's why Elon Musk has not yet made self-driving cars, you know, safer overall than humans, because we actually have incredibly fast processing in the white matter of our brain. The thing is, the white matter exists to be habitual. It exists to kind of make things automatic, but therefore it's a lot less flexible than gray matter.
Speaker 1:So, even on a biological level, the way God has designed us is to have these two different kind of parts of our brain the gray matter matter, which is more flexible, a little bit slower or a lot slower, still fast, and the white matter, which is extremely fast, happens way before you could consciously think of anything yeah, so you, so you're, as you're, thinking about sexual, the kind of, the bodily experience of, of sexual desire, sexual temptation or sexual feelings that you're, you're highlighting kind of the, just the speed at which the whole, the whole process can happen, where our bodies are reacting even before we realize what's, what's driving us, what's or, or the, the, the connections to our, to our, our learned, the, our learned experience, as opposed to just because it's just happening, it just happens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know, I'd love to actually just talk about the word flesh often used by Paul in place in the New Testament. It's easy to mix up this idea of flesh and you talk about this a lot, josh with our bodies and to say, oh the flesh, we need to kill the flesh. You know our bodies are bad, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, romans 7 and 8 were the way Paul writes about the flesh there, or the way that is opposed to the spirit, for example.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the word sarx in Greek, as opposed to soma, which is actually just body. But there's something about this word flesh sarx that it's acknowledging that there. I think Paul's acknowledging that on a physical level. I think the reason we have to translate a flesh in English instead of just saying the sinful nature, which might be clearer, I think there's a reason that translators keep it flesh, namely that in our brains we've developed these habits, in our bodies We've developed these habits. That doesn't make our bodies bad, but there is an element of our bodies are carrying the old ways.
Speaker 2:God designed us to not be like angels. Angels, actually theologians talk about or way smarter than me. They talk about how angels in a moment fell or remained. In a moment, angels either became demons or they remained, because they're not physical creatures who develop over time. We have both the pain and the luxury of being on a journey, having a process, having our brains be formed and reformed by God Angels, being pure spirits, don't, and so there's an instantaneous either ascent to God is still king and Lord, or a descent into hell and we're going to rebel against God. And so there's actually a glory in even that thought, as much as we'd love to have our conversion be an instantaneous transformation. There is an instantaneous transformation on a spiritual level, but God's actually designed our bodies to kind of transform over time, to remove the sinful nature over time, to be sanctified yeah, well, and I, I love that, you I love, I love the.
Speaker 1:A couple things about that, one to your last point. What I love about it is is the recognition for you and for me and for all of our listeners who are wrestling with unwanted sexual behavior, that even though you know the right thing to do and you're growing and you know where temptation is coming from and you know your wounds and all that stuff, like to find that your body still has the same reactions. I remember, alan, you're writing an article years ago he's our founder years ago about just like keeping keeping watch for self-hatred or kind of any self-crimination.
Speaker 2:When your body responds, he's like don't, don't, like and we actually just republished that a week or two ago, and I just read it today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cool, it's from 2007 yeah, that's great yeah, but so so that kind of that idea of like and and. Alan's background was same-sex attraction and so for and and even, and you know, same direction for him long before it was kind of culturally acceptable. So he's living in a christian world, like to have same-sex attraction kind of just kick in for him, same same-sex sexual temptation, kick in in his body, for his body, of the response and I'll say no, no, like, don't be hard on yourself when that happens, because your body, your body, it will take time to, to change, to grow Like and and some of these things you may continue to experience for the rest of your life. It's okay, that doesn't, that doesn't need to define you. We should, we translate flesh because in like, so people don't get confused. We translate it sinful nature, and I agree with you.
Speaker 1:I think to do that like removes it from the body and puts it into some kind of spiritual, ethereal place and guts the translation, then, of some of the power of what we're talking about today, which is the importance of the incarnation, because christ didn't enter into our sinful nature, but he did become flesh, he became, he united himself with humanity's physicality, with, with our matter. I think it was christopher west who said like matter matters in so many other religions and heretical christian teaching, when, when people get kind of off track in their Christian teaching, who think of the body as bad and the spirit is what's good. And that's where some of that. It's so important to unpack what Paul's writing about in Romans. He is not opposed. You cannot read Paul holistically and come to the conclusion that he's opposed to the human body. He is not. He is for the body.
Speaker 2:The body is actually this temple. The body becomes this temple of God. The body is actually also this community of saints who are connected to the head, who is Christ.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's such powerful, beautiful images that are very positive, purely positive, when it comes to like, yeah, to read the beginning of romans 8, for example, you gotta make it to the end of romans 8 where he says oh crud, what did she say he? He talks about because of christ. Like god will give life to your mortal bodies, like the hope of christianity because of christ is that, is that all that's messed up in our bodies, all the you're better at the gray matter, white matter, stuff than you did. All all the ways we have these, these kind of imp reflexive reactions, all the pain, all the wounds, all the sickness in our bodies, all of it, all of our learned sin, patterns and habits will be made new. We will be resurrected and fully made alive, where those the things that pull us away towards death and sin will be done away with because of Christ, and we will find ourselves desiring to move towards that.
Speaker 1:Just as an aside, kind of maybe to highlight this, I've asked the question for years like I wonder in heaven, what will be the case? Will it be that sugar and sweet food will be healthy, or will it be that we won't desire it in the same way? And I don't wonder about that anymore Now I'm absolutely convinced that our body may have a different reaction to those things. I don't understand all the chemistry of heaven, but what I am convinced of is that our desires will be completely rightly aligned and we will desire what is good. So, for example, enough ice cream, but not too much. Why? Because it is good that way, like that's good for us in that way.
Speaker 1:So, in the realm of sexuality, what we are, are hoping for, aspiring for, like can, can hope for because of christ, is that our bodies will desire what is good and right and beautiful, according to god's will. And yes, in heaven, because we, we will be embodied in heaven, but but also on the earth, we can anticipate hope for, pray for, seek, aim to grow in the, the new life of christ, of christ bodily one way to say it is that is that the incarnation, jesus body is the hope of our bodies, jesus's body is the hope of our bodies, and so if your body, friends, or josh or james, if your body is inclined towards sexual sin, the body of jesus christ is your hope, that your body will cease to be inclined to a sexual sin and instead be inclined towards sexual integrity, wholeness, love, self-giving rather than self-taking.
Speaker 2:And even just thinking about his body, thinking about what you said earlier about him having the nail pierced hands in his glorified body, him maintaining those scars, those wounds I mean more than a scar. I don't even know what you'd call a hole in your body. Him maintaining those scars, those wounds, I mean more than a scar. I don't even know what you'd call a hole in your body. Right, he maintains that in part, I think, to show us that all the pain that we're experiencing in our bodies on this earth, all of the suffering, all of the temptation that we're resisting, he actually intends it to be redeemed and to become a beautiful part of who we are. That's again going back to that journey metaphor. Angels don't go on journeys the way humans do, because we go through this pain, we go through the suffering we're living in this fallen world, but God will even use those things and have it be part of our redeemed bodies in the new heavens and new earth, whether it's physical signs, like what he had, or in some other way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there'll be no shame with it. Like a lot of people know my sexual story Fewer, people know everything that I've ever done, but there will be no secrets in heaven and there will be no shame with it. It will like the reversal, like the you know you had an inside out sock will be turned out right. It will like the reversal, like the you know you got an inside out sock will be turned out right, and it'd be like and it all made for good and more glory to Jesus for it. All right.
Speaker 1:So, james, as as we kind of turn towards the last part of this podcast, like, let's get practical, or as practical as we can, one of the things we talked about before we started recording that we're talking theology here, and the importance of good, true Christian theology in regards to Jesus being embodied, not just appearing as a body, not just faking it, but literally becoming human.
Speaker 1:And we made the promise at the beginning that, look, this matters for your journey in sexual integrity. And I just said you know Jesus, jesus's body, is the hope of our bodies, including all the, all that we experience in the realm of sexuality. Practically speaking, what difference has this made for you? Like, what might you introduce or just offer as kind of like a yeah, I can begin practicing this, or I might introduce this, or kind of pull this into my life in a way that isn't like yes, it is worth, friends, it is worth contemplating the body of Jesus. Please do. It will do you a world of good. And are there some practical things that we can do that might help people to kind of take this into their bodies in a way that makes a difference in this sexual journey?
Speaker 2:Well, just to say, I mean, I love good theology and philosophy because when I see the clear connection to the practical, so even what we were just sharing, there's so much implications, so many implications in what we are called to do as disciples. And actually we didn't talk about this earlier, but the word discipline, spiritual disciplines, just came to mind as we're talking, because disciplines are things that we do bodily. They're not, you know, emeritus, good works, but they're things that train our bodies, as Dallas Willard would talk about, like a, like a baseball player, having to do rep after rep of hitting, but also, you know, with proper form, but also hitting the weight room to have the actual strength. If you tried to replicate and you did the exact same swing as Otani you know the famous Dodger you wouldn't actually probably hit the ball out of the park unless you've been doing all the stuff in the background that he's been doing. So spiritual disciplines, things like fasting.
Speaker 2:I remember you said one time, josh, that someone had talked to you about how fasting was so key to overcome overcoming their alcohol addiction. Because you're training yourself to take away things that aren't inherently bad. Sex is not inherently bad, alcohol is not inherently bad. You're taking these things. By fasting, you're taking away food which you do need to say to your body I can live off of Jesus, and so you're physically kind of putting yourself into that place of I'm going to receive what God provides and not keep trying to grasp for what I think I need. That's just one example. So many spiritual disciplines have you found those helpful at all?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just to just to emphasize that, like fasting does have spiritual implications. I mean mean those who fast, those who teach on fasting, the author. But god's chosen fast is a wonderful, like old book about fasting. We talk about the spiritual benefits of deeper intimacy with jesus, more empowerment in your prayers. For example, sometimes fasting is a part of demonic deliverance, or can be a part of demonic deliverance, and on a on a very physical level, it helps to teach us restraint. It helps us to teach us, teach us temperance, which is a virtue. And who's the?
Speaker 2:well, you're literally teaching your brain in in that place of food, that or food, or you know, some people, I I sometimes do technology fast. They're so sweet the times I do a full 24 hours without technology. It's like, especially if I've planned it well enough, where there's church, there's meals with friends, there's, you know, good times with my wife or whatever. There's actually such a sweetness to taking away that and training myself. I don't need to grab my phone every 10 seconds or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and abstaining from food begins to you talked about like kind of saying to your body you can, you can do this, like you can go without what you're desiring in this moment. I, in a corollary way, that might actually sound like a contradictory way, I've actually found that like as I fast inviting it to be an expression of my body rather than something I'm expressing to my body. So letting the hunger, like teaching my body kind of to recognize the hunger, is a hunger for something more than just food. Like that, my body itself is hungry for more than just food. I am hungry for more than food.
Speaker 1:So a friend long, long ago taught me like one of the great prayers of fasting is, when you notice that you're hungry, to pray Lord, I hunger and thirst for you and I feel it in my body, echoing David's words in the Psalms, like my heart and flesh cry out for you to live in God. So it feels, on one level, like something we're doing against our bodies, to teach our bodies to beat our bodies and make it our slaves, to use paul's words. But it is also, I I believe, a way to to again thinking about those railroad tracks to pull our body and our spirituality together to say you know, we are on the same team here, man, so yeah, so what? What else for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's so many other great disciplines, but one thing I've noticed with several of the disciplines things like worship and prayer is there can be this like, instead of just sitting in a chair when I first wake up, which tends to make me want to just doze back off this idea of what does it look like to get my body involved in worship and prayer. There's the word praise, which is one form of worship. Obviously, we're called to worship God in all we do, but thinking about praise, right, when we hear the word praise, we think of singing, we think of instruments, but interestingly, the most commonly used words for praise had less to do with singing instruments. Those did exist, but the vast majority were things like casting out your hands, bowing down, prostrate, raving like a lunatic.
Speaker 2:I think of David when he found the Ark of the Covenant. These are all things that we do in our bodies and you know, if you grow up in certain traditions, the idea of seeing people raise their hands like oh, they've just hit a cool emotional moment in the chorus of the song we might judge that. But actually I want to encourage us. Whether our emotions are there or not, we can actually get our bodies involved in our worship and it's going to help us in our spiritual worship because, again, we're not pure spirits, we're these body, spirit creatures.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so good. I so again thinking about the, this connection between our sexual journey and our physical journey. It was a very simple statement made by a guy who was leading a living waters group I was in years ago. He said look, we sin with our bodies. That's why we're here. We're in this group. It's a recovery group because we sin with our bodies. Let's worship God with our bodies, and when you really unpack some of what we're doing with sexual sin, it is a form of idolatry, or often a form of idolatry. So it is a, it's a way of presenting our bodies in service to another God, small G God, and so so worship in that sense, and using our bodies to worship is can, can be a very direct expression of nope, not that God small G, this God capital G, and and I give my body to the Lord, which is what he has done for us, again going back to the incarnation, like he gave his body for us and cs lewis just uh back set up in his great work, the screw tape letters.
Speaker 2:I just finished rereading. It's such a great book to remember some of the spiritual warfare we're dealing with. But the the demons talk about how you know, uncle screw tape. The the demon training his nephew talks about how humans don't realize that getting their bodies involved in prayer can actually help focus prayers. I remember, josh, you've shared and we talked about this in awaken 360 this idea of like getting our body involved when we're tempted getting in a cruciform, so getting the shape of a cross laying down or you know whatever, kind of just like again, this mixture of spiritual and physical. I'm aligned with the crucifixion of christ. I'm I want to suffer for the body of christ. I want to suffer for my spouse rather than give into this temptation. I'm kind of aligning myself with Jesus in that posture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great example, I think, of the like. Let's bring this together. Like the spiritual is not separate from the physical, they go together. Yeah, oh, so many places we go with that because scripture is full of it. Once you start seeing through this lens that these are not separate tracks, these go together, makes such a difference. I want to ask, ask you had one more that you mentioned beforehand I want to bring up in a minute, but just a couple for me when I think about how to like this theology, how does it make a difference in the realm of my own journey with sexual temptation, sexual desire, and I have to go here and we're not going to have time to unpack this fully. But once we begin to reckon with the reality that God has made our bodies and that he esteems them so much that he himself became embodied for us to rescue our bodies, to save the male body, the female body that God has made, sex and sexual desire and all of our sexual organs, like these are part of his design and begin kind of just seeking him to remove the toxins of the idea that somehow sex is Satan's idea and like it's his domain, so faulty, like we begin to recognize that, then it can begin to move us into the realm of like. I can talk to God about what I'm feeling sexually. I can be open with him. In this moment of temptation I gave in a little bit there. I started thinking these thoughts, I feel aroused by it. It I don't need to, it's not a shameful thing, that's just reality, my body's reaction, reacting here. Lord, enter into this, enter into this space.
Speaker 1:One of the passages that's been so meaningful to me in this is first Corinthians 6, where Paul talks about and he. He says more in this passage, but he says at one place he says when we sin, we sin against our bodies. That's such a helpful thing for me to remember that, even though it feels like I'm doing my body a favor, so to speak, when I'm sinning sexually, paul's very clear like no, no, no. Actually, your body's not designed for that. When you sin sexually, you're doing something against your body and it's unique to sexual sin. It's not everything I mean. You sin sexually, you're doing something against your body and it's unique to sexual sin. It's not everything I mean. In the same thing, he's talking about gluttony and he does not say when you overeat, you're sinning against your body, which I think we'd have an easier time understanding.
Speaker 1:And then he goes on to say your body is made for the lord and the lord for your body. And so now we're in the realm of thinking like, wait, wait, so I understand. The lord is for your body, christ incarnated, the, the incarnational christ, is for our bodies. But my body, our bodies, are designed by god in the beginning. They're designed for him. That means that that all that we do, all that we are, is meant to open us to him and to be aligned with him, filled with him. So many places I can go there, but let me try to land this play and I'm trying to rush through this a little bit, but let me slow down for one moment just to say this that that means, at minimum in the sexual realm, that when I'm tempted to lust after someone's body, my tendency is to think I'm seeing too much of them. And when we understand the body rightly, we can recognize that the temptation to lust is not seeing too much of them, it's seeing them inaccurately or it's seeing too little of them.
Speaker 1:Pope John Paul II is the one who said the problem with pornography is not that it shows too much, but that it shows too little. It does not show you that this body is made for the Lord. It does not show you that this body images the God of all creation. One very practical thing baby never shows you male or female genitalia as that which is meant to be unitive, and and and expressed in love to bring about new life, rather to show you these things as just, I don't know, designed to, to, to just be used for sexual gratification. Now, there, there is so much sexual pleasure that God has woven into these aspects of the body, but but that's just one piece of it. There's so much more meaning to God has woven into these aspects of the body, but that's just one piece of it. There's so much more meaning to the body.
Speaker 1:And so it doesn't mean that I don't, in a moment of sexual temptation, avert my eyes from the person I might be tempted to look at.
Speaker 1:But it does give me a place to go with it, aside from just turning away One of my prayers. Often, when I'm tempted to sin sexually or to lust, and I'll do this even at the gym, like I, you know, I might be at the gym, I'm working out and somebody walks by and I, you know I can see so much of their body. When temptation kicks into that moment, I can literally like, bow my head right there and just stop and be like Lord, I'm struggling to see this person. Would you give me eyes to see? Like, help me to see a whole person. Then he will sometimes like, even like, look look at the person's face, notice this about them, like, help me to see more rather than less. That's that. I took a long time to say that, but that's just one kind of place that I've gone with this whole what we're talking about today and the importance of the incarnation when it comes to our journey to sexual integrity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I just want to add in just part of what the enemy is trying to do through cultivating lust in us is to destroy the body of Christ, the community of Christ. Many of our listeners are, you know, here in the West, where we're from. There's a lot of great things about Western culture and there's importance to this individual relationship with God. But it's also important, if not more important, to recognize we're part of a body and the enemy tries to sow lust, in part to divide the body, whether it's to, you know, isolate us with our shame from looking at porn or lust after our, our sister or brother in Christ, instead of really seeing them and being part of the body. But it's in the body that so much hurt has happened, or it's through people so much hurt has happened, but it's in the body of Christ that God has designed so much healing to happen.
Speaker 2:So if you're listening to this Christmas week, some of you guys might be surrounded by family, Some of you guys might be alone, but either way there can be a deep sense of isolation or not really being seen or known. And so my admonition as we think about this idea of the goodness of our bodies get around God's body in person to whatever extent you can, with the most joy that's possible. God bring joy when I interact with these people, but he wants to actually bring us deeper into his body, seeing and loving and experiencing joy with people as a huge antidote to so much of the way lust seeks to isolate us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so good. I'm so glad you brought that up. That's a great place to end. So just a few takeaways, friends, if you're still tracking with us the theology that the word became flesh, that Christ truly was and is both God and human, that this is something that he has chosen to do because he loves your body and your body needs saving because you are both spirit and body. You are your body.
Speaker 1:That's the theology of Christmas and it is worth contemplating and spending time just musing on it, wrestling with it. It will take you to places of spiritual doubt and confusion in some ways, because it's like how could that be? And yet it is absolutely true, because God loves you, spirit and body. God loves you, spirit and body and intends to save your body. So contemplate on that, begin seeking ways to pull that into your day-to-day thought life and absolutely bring it into your own recovery journey as you seek freedom from unwanted sexual behaviors or healing from sexual sins that have been done against you. So, yeah, wonderful. So much more we can say about that. Keep tuning in to Becoming Whole podcast because we'll say more about it. James, would you wrap us up, Just close us out and pray for those listening?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Lord, as we reckon with all the pain that can come from people, from our own bodies sometimes hatred, sometimes frustration, anger, shame, or even the bodies of others, the way they've used them to hurt us. God, I pray that you'd bring redemption. You'd bring incredible redemption. Give us eyes to see what you want to do, the ways you are seeking to redeem our bodies, our minds and your body as a whole as the community of God. And so, lord, whether people are listening the week of Christmas or later, I just pray that you would encourage them and give them what they need to enter deeper and more holistically into your body. Jesus, and all that that means. We pray your blessing over those listening and we pray your deeper integration as we're seeking to become whole. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we pray Amen, amen.
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