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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
Remember the body of Jesus
The episode dives into the necessity of community in personal growth and healing. We discuss how God created us for relationships and the importance of the church in supporting individual journeys.
• Understanding the connection between personal faith and community
• The role of the church in personal struggles
• Addressing isolation in spiritual growth
• The importance of honesty and vulnerability in faith communities
• Real stories of triumphs and struggles within church experiences
• Encouragement to actively engage in communal healing
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!
It’s that time of year! We are inviting YOU to our annual dessert banquet.This year we have something special planned to go with our theme "RE-MEMBER."
Join us to see, hear, and learn the beautiful ways God remembers details of our stories with us.
Saturday, April 12th DC/ Northern VA: Click this link for more information and to register.
👉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)
Listeners, you cannot do this journey of healing, of sexual integrity, recovery in your marriage or parenting well alone. You weren't designed to do this alone. Last week we spoke about how God remembers us. He puts us back together, he restores our souls, as Psalm 23 says. But he doesn't just remember us individually. He doesn't just remember us individually. He seeks to actually reintegrate, remember the members of his body, the body of Christ, the community of God, the church of Christ. So I'm James Craig. I'm a director of projects here at Regen and spiritual coach, and I'm here with Josh Glazer, our executive director. Welcome, Josh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, glad to be here, and the other side of this that's so important for us is God remembers us, puts us back into the body of Christ, into this in a minute or later. That to be in the body of Christ means something significant about our relationship with God, and we'll talk about that more too. But what we're going to get into today, as throughout the rest of the series, really is important for those who want to walk in sexual integrity, and Jesus is good news, has good news for those of us who are, who are pursuing that.
Speaker 1:So, josh, why, why can't we do this journey alone? Isn't you know? Isn't me, in my prayer, closet with Jesus? Plenty like shouldn't encountering Jesus on my own and whatever settings, or even going to church and kind of getting that individual experience of of, uh, connection during worship or whatever. Isn't that enough, or why? Why isn't it if it's not right?
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, let me. Let me start by saying your individual time with the Lord in the prayer closet, your individual experience with him in church, is so important, so vitally important. Go into your prayer closet, go to church, expectant, hopeful that God is going to speak to you, meet you, touch you specifically. I can't understate how valuable and important that is because Jesus does, in fact, uh, remember you specifically, desire you specifically. We are not designed to be the the the Borg, the old Star Trek reference there For those who remember that like we're not designed.
Speaker 1:I don't, I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:It's just this, it's this, it was this, some kind of creature or computer or something that just sought to, like, bring all creatures into this oneness where they lost themselves and ceased to exist, and they, you know everybody. I think the line was like we are the Borg, you know. Like it was just kind of that is not God's heart for us, that's not God's heart for his church, his body. Um, he does love each of us individually and, to answer your question, I think I think the answer is and there's probably a lot more to it than this but I think the answer is he didn't design us that way. Why can't you do it on your own? Like we want to be able to do it on our own, like, especially in the American West, like we are individualistic that's like we uphold, like people who are can do it on their own.
Speaker 2:I can think about, like, um, just this whole idea of maturity.
Speaker 2:If we kind of unpack what most people think about when they think about getting older or getting more mature or getting better at what they do, I think a lot of us would say, like, if I'm, if I'm better at what I do, if I'm mature enough, I can do it on my own.
Speaker 2:But if you follow that to its logical conclusion, what that would mean then is the holier you are, the more isolated you are, the less you have to do with other people, and you will never find that in scripture. There's no place for it in scripture. Matter of fact, like if you read the letters of Paul, you cannot walk away from Paul's letters. You cannot walk away from paul's letters having studied them and think that there's any such thing as a christian who is not a part of the church, like church and and being a follower of jesus are one for paul, like that's just the way he talks about it. I think you were even saying, weren't you saying there's like a bible translation out now, that every time the, the, the noun, it's the y'all, the y'all translation.
Speaker 1:It's kind of trying to give us what the King James used to give us. King James gave us ye, which was you plural, and now we have the y'all translation, the y'all like.
Speaker 2:So this is out for our Texas friends here Y, apostrophe A-L-L, because we can read the you so often and just think he's talking just to me. Like, even though the letter starts with to the church in Philippi, like, which means to y'all in Philippi, we still read it and go like this I'm supposed to be able to do this on my own, but we aren't. We aren't. Yeah, again, to be short, like God didn't design us that way. It is not in our DNA because it is not in his DNA.
Speaker 1:Yeah, our DNA, because it is not in his DNA. Yeah, you know, last week I talked about how we are limited creatures. I mean, in Genesis, chapter two, we beat this drum a lot. It wasn't good that Adam was alone, even though he was with his creator walking in the garden. It wasn't good that he was alone. It's shocking, it's not good. I mean, we need things like oxygen, we need water, food I shared a lot about that last week but we also need the body we were actually designed for this union both with God, but also with one another.
Speaker 2:So good, yeah, I mean, think about the makeup of our individual bodies. They are relational through and through everywhere. I mean, like, what are our eyes designed for? They are designed for an environment around us. Um, and the neurochemistry of bonding that takes place when you engage eye contact with another person is and there are people that know much more about that. You probably articulate that more than I could but, um, like there's something that's meant to be relational about our eyes.
Speaker 2:If you've ever, if you've ever, had a conversation with somebody outside in the summer and they're wearing a pair of sunglasses that reflect, and, and so you're kind of looking at yourself in their eyeglasses when you're having a conversation, it's very disconcerting. It's like it's very difficult to connect, Um, our our voices. What we're doing right now, our voices, are directly connected to what we do with our ears right now, which is listening to each other. My ears are not just designed to hear my own voice speak for crying out loud, and there's really some like mysterious things that happen. So, anyway, and then, of course, because it's the regen podcast, let's talk about this Our sexuality is relational to its core core. We've said this in other podcasts too that, if you um, sexual sin is relational at its core, even if you're masturbating alone in your bedroom, like it's still relational. Sex by God's design is relational.
Speaker 2:Um, I heard uh, I think it was, it was Dr Todd White in his book mere sexuality, I think I'm getting that name right. Um, he says that if you look at the organs of the human body the lungs, uh, the heart, um, the liver, they all work. They're kind of self-contained, they work within the body to do what they're supposed to do in the body. You know, they need air, they need other things, they need food to be nourished. So we're not really isolated in that way.
Speaker 2:But, um, but there's one organ and one specific organ in the human body that actually can't complete its function without another person, and that's our sexual organs. They you don't even christian, to kind of steal from christopher west here. They don't even make sense, apart from the other gender, like male genitalia, female genitalia. They like if, if we were aliens from a different planet and we came and we're kind of poking and prodding. We have no idea what this part of the human body means or does unless, um, or without the other, like it's just, that's what, that's our, that's our design so everything about us.
Speaker 1:I've actually never really thought about the fact our eyes, our, our ears, our mouths, um, you know, in some ways our touch are, they're oriented to the other, they're oriented to connection, and so you're making me think about this, this really important reality that jesus actually came bodily. It's another thing that we like to focus on here at Regen, because it's so important. The incarnation is so important.
Speaker 1:Cs Lewis actually says the greater, the harder to believe a miracle of Jesus's life, death and resurrection isn't his resurrection, because if you believe in the virgin birth, the incarnation, believing the resurrection, is not a significant step. So actually, that's kind of the, that's the, that's the beginning, you know, that's the initiating point, and so I want us to get to reflect a little bit and remember, you know, think about contemplate Jesus coming into this world bodily and part of that. Obviously he came to forgive us our sins. He lived a perfect life, he modeled, he taught our sins. He lived a perfect life, he modeled, he taught. But he also came to establish a church. He came to establish the church in some ways, and so there's something important about, there's some sort of connection I want to explore between the physical, incarnational reality of God with us, god coming to be with us, and this thing that we call the church or the body of Christ.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so good. Yeah, I, I, I'm an, I'm a novice, I'm sure if we were looking at, like the, the writings throughout church history on on this, uh, let alone what Jesus and Paul and others in the New Testament unpack for us. I know I missed so much here and I wanna just be honest that I wrestle with being a part of quote unquote the church, like I don't mean just in my-.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's talk about that, Cause I think probably a lot of our listeners, especially if they've tried to bring some of their sexual brokenness whether it's their own sin, their betrayal or their kids being seemingly out of control or whatever like many of us, have not, you know, always been engaged the best by the church, it seems.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And or our growing up experiences, if we grew up in the church. You know, I was just at a youth retreat recently and a lot of kids who are churched kids, it's their environment, they grew up in the church. You know, I was just at a youth retreat recently and a lot of kids who are church kids, it's their environment they grew up in and a lot of them really struggle to be honest about the things that are real for them the hurts they have, the fears they have, the doubts they have about God themselves, the sins they're struggling with and one of the things I was telling a group of them.
Speaker 2:I was just sharing an experience I had years and years ago when I'd been up late the night before acting out sexually and I wanted to go to church and I made you know, dragged myself out of bed and went to church and stood in this large congregation and felt like such a hypocrite, like I didn't belong there. And it's too long a story to share in its entirety, but I I had a an encounter with the lord there that morning that changed my view of church and it changed it in this way that that so often we show up on a sunday morning. We wear our sunday best. We put on our smiles. People ask us how we are and we give the four letter f word I'm fine, how are you?
Speaker 2:like but if you show up in a church on a sunday, it ought to have, it ought to smell like what it's like when you show up at a 12-step meeting, an AA meeting, a narcotics anonymous meeting, a sexaholics anonymous meeting those meetings the first thing out of your mouth when you start talking is hi, I'm Josh and I'm an alcoholic. Or hi, I'm James and I'm a drug addict. Or hi, I'm, I'm James and I'm you know, I'm a drug addict, like um, and that's. It's a whole nother podcast to talk about, kind of the labels we wear, the identities that we might, that we pick up Um. So I'm not trying to make a case for against that right now, but but my point is just that walking into a church is automatically and we ought to view it this way is automatically an admission that I cannot do this alone. Uh's something so disordered, so off, so broken, so sinful about me that, left to my own, I will continue towards sin and death and brokenness and disease, disordered living. I need Jesus and I need his body. I mean, that's why I dragged myself out of bed that morning and really it's why we attend every week and, yes, it's to see our friends and worship's fun and to be inspired by a message. But the gathering together of Christians is a statement of we cannot do this alone, and we really ought to view it that way.
Speaker 2:I don't think that we do, and the ambivalence in me about that ranges anything from my pride I want to be able to do it alone. My fears, like like the, the parts of me that cannot do it alone mean that somebody else in this body needs to know that the collective here or a group of people here need to know I can't do it on my own. And and what exactly? I'm talking about? Not being able to do it on my own? And that's scary, because what if they're not okay with me being in their midst? What if they think that I ought to be more together than I am?
Speaker 2:Um, there's certainly parts of me that think I ought to be more together than I am. So, um, why wouldn't they think that? What if they kick me out? And we've heard stories here people who come into our coaching office who went to a pastor or a friend at church and said I'm struggling with this area of my sexuality, and they could tell in the person's face that that they were. They were disgusted In some, some cases they heard from somebody like that is disgusting. I don't ever want to talk to you about that again. Or you shouldn't come back here or we can't help you here. You know people like you aren't welcoming, like that kind of horrendous stuff which you never find in the life of Jesus.
Speaker 2:But unfortunately people have experienced in church not all churches- We've also had the other side of that story, where people have been scared to death to speak the truth about the things they deal with and the wounded parts of them, and found welcome and open arms and embraces and great, great support.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I'm reminded of this quote I came across today from John Chrysostom, a church father. It says even if we stand at the very summit of virtue basically even if we are like all put together, you know truly what the Sunday's Best is attempting to represent. Even if we stand at the summit of virtue, it is by mercy that we're saved. That really is striking. And so when we're talking about the church, it's so easy on either side to either demonize the church, it's easy to insult the church. I actually, I remember I'm recalling, as we're talking, dallas Willard says he'll never insult the church because he knows whose husband she is. I think that's such a beautiful. But here's the thing we need what Jay Strickland talks about knows whose husband she is. I think that's such a beautiful, but here's the thing we need, what Jay Stringer talks about Whose wife she is right, whose bride she is, whose bride she is.
Speaker 1:That's what I mean. Jesus's bride is the church, and so we need to have what Jay Stringer talks about as honor and honesty for the church. We need to recognize man. There are broken people and, frankly, there are spiritual leaders who should be more mature spiritually, emotionally and otherwise than they currently are, and that's a lot of where the hurt and brokenness comes from. And there's still this incredible power and commissioning and strength to the church.
Speaker 1:The church has never folded and all these thousands of years of persecution and lukewarm faith and disasters and disease, it's not folded because God is seeking to do something really powerful in it. And so there's something about like, if we're trying to connect with Jesus, you know, god, the filled with the spirit, who have the spirit of the living God in them, then for me to stick around the next couple thousand years, um, when, when, you know, uh, instead I'm going to leave and then I will return, but it's better that I leave, because I'm going to actually pour out, um, the antidote. I'm going to pour out my very self, my very spirit, into your hearts to try to, you know, to not try to build this human community. That, again, not yet perfect, but is meant to be like a hospital, it's meant to be a refuge, it's meant to be a bastion of truth and grace and, most of all, love. And so the church is kind of this like physical embodiment, this incarnational embodiment of representing Jesus.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes yes, and even more than that. So the question like, how did this ragtag group of people for the last 2000 years with the, their immaturity, their sin, the scandal, the secrets I mean there's? It feels like you can't go a year without just another scandal, another secret, more abuse being exposed. How did this thing last, you know, is it? And some would say, well, it's the sovereignty of god, kind of working through all things, absolutely, they'd say. Well, they're, they're, you know, there are true believers that are active? Yep, absolutely. But I'd propose that the the reason that the church lasts is goes back to that. Um, saint john, uh, how do you say? His last name?
Speaker 1:chrysostom chrysostom, I think I'm not positive.
Speaker 2:Yeah it goes back to his quote. It's not the virtue of of the church, it is that the church is infused with one, with, marinated with um, the god of the universe, through the power and presence of his holy spirit, and that's, that's an element of the universe, uh, through the power and presence of his Holy spirit, and that's that's an element of the oneness that both makes us, as a church body, one, uh, and also our oneness, it, it, it is our oneness with God himself, god who is eternal. It doesn't mean that we're we're perfect. It doesn't mean that we're we're perfect. It doesn't mean that we are, um, like god in all ways, but there's something about being infused with the eternal, undefeatable, never-ending, unextinguishable god that I think has has upheld the church capital C. If you can, can we bring that back to? What does that mean for the person struggling with sexual integrity? What does that mean for us with our desires? Do you have a thought for that?
Speaker 1:Because I could keep going, yeah, no think, um, one of the things coming to mind is when we do face these places in the church that are not representing jesus the way he is representing scripture, there can often be a gut thing of like I'm just going to leave and find another one, especially speaking speaking to fellow Protestants, there's probably, you know, there could be 10 great, you know, bible-believing, spirit-filled, whatever you know churches in your vicinity that you could go to, and I totally want to honor the fact that sometimes we do need to leave, sometimes we do need to sound the alarm when there's abuse happening, but there's also a lot of times where the spirit has led you to that church. I actually, like several of the churches I've been at in the last few years, I felt like this still small voice of God kind of said this is your church, this is your church home, and that really helps me to stick it out when things are not perfect. And part of what that allows me to do is to do what Jesus designed the body to do, which is to be a blessing, to be a purifying I don't know force, to be a force of love, a presence of love in my local body, even where she's imperfect, even where Jesus came to make a spotless bride, and so there's a good chance that for many of us here, especially if you're dealing with unwanted sexual behavior or betrayal or other brokenness in your family life, god might actually be wanting you to kind of set the tone. To set the tone of, hey, I don't know if I can change the whole church overnight or whatever, but are there a few people I can gather around me where we can go deep and be honest? Are there some people, like I'm doing right now in Pasadena, where I live, california? Are there some people I can go through one of these like sexual integrity programs, like MANA?
Speaker 1:I'm taking men through MANA or Oasis for Women or, soon to be released, compass, forleased compass for betrayed wives. Can I take people into this really deep content as part of the antidote, as part of the solution to deepening the church, to making the church more and more like a hospital, a place where we can say, hey, I'm a sinner, I'm broken, I need the grace of God, I need the mercy of God. Even if I was perfectly virtuous, as we just said, I still would only be saved by his mercy. I mean, that's a beautiful picture and so, again, not saying everyone's called to that and obviously there's times where we just kind of need to receive and be loved. But I wonder how often we are quicker to kind of duck and run instead of being part of the change that God wants to see in his local body, where you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's, I mean it's right on the mark James, I mean part of part of the. The truth about being being the church is that, um, when there's a problem, you are, you're in it. You know, like I. I mean, if you think about a family, and especially family with young children, like if my kids are having trouble, I don't say, well, you know they're getting bad grades, they're rebelling, um, I think I might go find another family. I mean I could do that, but but that would be we'd all recognize that. That what a breach, what a what a failure to stand and to be a part of the loving solution for this person. And I think we'd probably do well to consider, seriously consider that when it comes to our involvement in local churches, like, rather than ducking and running, running and the other reality about it and this goes back to the family, uh, concept again too is that, in the context of relationship is like relationships are where all our crap gets bumped. You know, like I, I've often thought I'm a father of six, got a wife, I've often thought that I'm I am the best christian, I can be in the morning before anybody else is up and I'm spending time with Jesus, so true.
Speaker 2:But the moment my kids are up and in my space or my three-year-olds running around asking for something or disobeying like man, another part of me comes out. Wow, and that's either condemnation or invitation. And the enemy wants to make a condemnation like you're a hypocrite. You're not, you know, really a good christian, whatever. And the spirit of the lord is his invitation. Man like I love you, so glad we had a time together, just you and me, in your prayer closet. Um, but I'm exposing something so you can press further into me and be healed, become more like jesus but the church is the same thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is so key, like sorry that, listeners, you're getting more of a dose of Dallas Willard than you bargained for this series. But Dallas talks about the fact that so much of what we think of as righteousness is really just kind of our blindness. You know, before everyone's up and around us, right? So much of what we think of righteousness is. I read my Bible, I had my prayer time but he actually helped reframe my understanding that true righteousness is to love, including to love your enemies, and reading the Bible and prayer and connecting with God in various ways.
Speaker 1:You know, bible study all these kinds of things are disciplines. They're like he describes it like batting. You know, if study all these kinds of things are disciplines. They're, like he describes it, like batting. You know, if you want to hit the ball out of the park like your favorite baseball player and you could perfectly emulate their swing and you kind of know exactly how they swing the ball you walk up to that pro baseball play. You're not going to hit the ball out of the park why? Well, not only because you know there's probably a lot of like awareness stuff you don't yet have. But even if you had, that you don't have the strength unless you've done the weight conditioning and the training in the background.
Speaker 1:So Dallas argues that true righteousness are the acts of love. True righteousness are when the agape from the Holy Spirit is coming up and out of us. And so I think this is a really important thing, josh, because a lot of the guys I walk with in coaching don't realize that lust seems like by far the biggest sin. This was true in my own life. Like lust, it's the, I imagine, like an IMAX.
Speaker 1:You know, film like this is the blockbuster that came out over the summer. But I've read this great article we'll try to link in the show notes that so often underneath the sin of lust are so many other things. They're like that thing playing in theater 13 that no one's seeing anymore because it's been out for a while. Pride, envy, I mean these different struggles, and I'm not saying any of this to condemn us, but I'm just saying so often when we're bumping up against real people our wives, our friends, the church it's actually bumping and jarring the crap in us that God wants to heal and so part of him, remembering his body, reconnecting his body, is making us people who are really willing to engage those places that block us from from communion with, with the body.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's so good, james. It's interesting too because you and I both have experienced this and I hope our listeners have. If you haven't, as a listener, uh, we pray that you will. But I'm I'm a teacher, I love to teach. I'm a writer, I love to write. Uh, awaken is is something James and I have worked on for a number of years. We're really proud of the content. But if you were to ask people what has meant the most to them about joining a group like Awaken360, none of them say it's the teaching. They all say it's this space.
Speaker 2:When I gather with these other men and I tell them what's real, and they tell me what's real, and something happens there. It's, it's powerful, it's beautiful, it's union, it's real connection, um, and it's what we're made for. And so many of them begin to learn as as we learn, at least in that setting, that what I've been pursuing in lust, the urge to merge that I've been chasing here and there and everywhere with lust, is actually a desire to be truly known, truly seen, to truly know and truly see someone else. It's it, it. It is beyond a sexual desire and one of the reasons that I think lust has such power and can be so compelling and so addictive is because, um it, in the, in the lack of satisfaction there, it still seems to hold out this promise.
Speaker 2:You just need more. The irony in when we come to our senses like, oh, I don't need more lust, but the? The irony is that you actually it's actually speaking the truth you do need more. You need much, much, much more than you would ever find in lust and, as a matter of fact, much, much, much more than you would ever find in the beautiful union of sex in marriage. You need more than that, like. The goal is not to get free from your lust so you can get married and have a happy marriage. That's, that's one, um, good goal, it's a good desire. But even that union as good as it can be and we're here to help people make it as good as it can get but even that will leave you wanting because you were made for a union. That's even bigger than that, even more than that.
Speaker 1:And this is what we don't have a lot of time to get into this, but this is what the sacraments point to. Now I know again there's debates are there two, are there seven, whatever? But just think about communion or the Eucharist. This is meant to be this icon, or you know the real presence?
Speaker 1:Most Christians, throughout all of Christian history, have believed at least in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.
Speaker 1:History have believed at least in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. There's something about, hey, there's an ache in me that's not being satisfied by the, as Christopher West would say, the fast food of this world. And we need to consume, we're made to consume, but what Jesus gave us to consume was his body and his blood, more of him. So I don't know how much you've done, josh, around this. You know how communion people talk about these days, how it can be something that we do and engage in for physical healing, for connection, for grace. But I imagine that there's a component of this act, this act of engaging the sacrament, that there's a component of this act, this act of engaging, the sacrament of engaging what everything that this bread and this blood mean, that helps transform us, you know into like it's like this foretaste. You know it's not the full thing, the full wedding supper of the lamb like we see in Revelation, but there's something still substantial about it.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yes it, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I've said this on this podcast, maybe some time ago, but I grew up in a christian tradition that, um, if they meant more than this, they never explained it to me in a way that I understood. They meant more than this. But the the concept of jesus the last supper. When he says, do this in remembrance of me, he breaks the bread, pours the wine, says this is my body, this is my blood, do this in remembrance of me. The institution of the sacrament of communion. And I grew up thinking in my child brain what that means I'm supposed to do some kind of, I'm supposed to think about something, do some mental work while I take this you know tiny little plastic cup and this tiny little octagon wafer or whatever it is, and that somehow this is supposed to serve as a good reminder of what Jesus did. Like the fact of remembering somehow does me good, transforms me, and, yes, remembering what Christ did does us good. But there's more going on there than just that, if we accept that there's mystery here and we can't explain it all, and that there is, in a real way, an unexplainable, invisible, maybe even tasteless way. Tasteless in the sense that we don't experience it through tasting. When I take this bread, I am in fact taking the Lord Jesus into my body. He is absorbed into my body, becomes one with my body, strengthens my muscles, strengthens my will, strengthens my heart in some real way. And I drink this cup believing that in some real way this is the blood of Jesus. And the Old Testament says the life of the blood is in or the life is in the blood. So I'm taking in the life of Jesus into me and it is being absorbed into me in some way. That's a space for great faith that something is going to change in me. Because I am coming to this table. Whose table? My table? The Lord's table? The one who said it to me?
Speaker 2:And I think I, you know, strong head nod to a Roman Catholic, brothers and sisters and those in the body of Christ who do, at minimum, talk about the real presence of God being in these elements. Because if you search yourself, you will find there is a hunger. Like Lord, I long to be one with you. I do not find in of myself, inside myself, what I need, what I long for, what I want. I can't pull myself up and stop this sin, I can't pull myself up and love like you. I need you in me and so, by faith, I take this body, by faith, I take this blood. Would you transform me? It became this beautiful, prayerful expression of an ache and of invitation to the Lord and I hope you heard, listeners, as I said, like we're talking about becoming one with God. I mean like that's, our bodies become one with what we eat and drink.
Speaker 1:And we're doing it with our brothers and sisters right next to us. At least that's the typical way that it's done. Listen to this quote that ties a lot of this together, from CS Lewis. He says next to the blessed sacrament, he's referring to communion. Next to the blessed sacrament, he's referring to communion. Next to the blessed sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. And so, lewis, you know he has a way in his brilliance of just cutting through so much of the questions, the division, but what he's saying is Read it again, James.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he says, next to the blessed sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. And so there's something about both the bread and the wine and this fact that both in general, we're around people, but also in that moment of taking communion, we're doing it in communion with the body, the body that we've been baptized into. We've been baptized as a sign of life with Christ. We've died with Christ, we've been risen with Christ. And this is really interesting Martin Luther the reformer. So we're pulling from a whole variety. As many of you can tell by now, we serve and have people on our team who are Roman Catholic, anglican, various Protestant denominations, but Luther said that when he was in spiritual warfare, the main thing he'd call upon is his baptism. Do you know this, josh? The main thing that luther would call upon is his baptism, because his baptism was a tangible marker of him dying with christ, a tangible sacrament of him dying with christ and being raised with Christ into this body.
Speaker 2:What does that mean? He would call upon it.
Speaker 1:He would basically yeah, I know that was probably a funny way of saying it, but basically he would say Satan, you have no power here, because I have been baptized. I remember my baptism, I died with Christ and I live in the life of Christ.
Speaker 2:Oh see, that's a guy who gets his union with Christ and I live in the life of Christ, oh see, that's, that's a guy who, who gets his union with Christ and his union with Christ's body, Like that's at least in, in, in, in some ways that that I seek to grasp, like that's powerful.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, friends, we want to close out this episode with one more call to remember. This is our final in our Remember series, but we want you to remember the Christian family throughout history. So, if you've noticed, I've been referencing these quotes. I'm actually pulling them all from this awesome ministry that I've come across called Our Church Speaks. It's an Anglican deacon out in Richmond Virginia. They actually wrote a book, him and his priest wrote a book, I think, just called our church speaks.
Speaker 1:My wife and I are going through it each week, where it gives a vignette of Christians throughout the last 2000 years, a quote, um a little bit about them, some devotional, but they also have stuff online, and so those quotes I was just pulling from were some of the images I was engaging with today the quote from Lewis, the quote from Christophson and many more, and so one thing that we can remember is that we're not the first to go through this First. Peter 5 says that the sufferings you experience are being experienced by the Christians throughout the world we could also say throughout history, christian history and so there's something really powerful about recognizing. I've been baptized into Christ and his family, you know, raised into the life of his family. I take communion to be united with Christ and his family, and I'm part of a family that's going back right around now. It's been about 2000 years.
Speaker 1:We're actually coming close to that specific milestone of Jesus's death and resurrection, and so there's something really powerful for our walk toward integrity, our walk toward healing, when we allow the voice of the martyrs and the voices of great Christians, the saints throughout history, to speak into our hearts. We remember they've suffered in similar ways, different times, different contexts, but they've suffered in similar ways. And there's kind of this incredible witness of the cloud of witnesses, a witness of the cloud of witnesses. And we have, you know, thousands of years of history of our family of God, starting with, you know, adam, and then Abraham and Moses in the Bible. But we also now have, you know, a couple thousand years of history of of saints, of people who have been in Christ. And I don't know about you, josh, but there's something so encouraging for me about remembering those who have come before, about you, josh, but there's something so encouraging for me about remembering those who have come before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I don't know if one, one way that we might think about it is like if you you've done any family tree work for your own family, or maybe you even have like a father or grandfather or grandmother, somebody kind of closer that you may have even known, who did remarkable things. Like you know, they're known for x, y and z. They started this foundation. Like you know they're known for X, y and Z. They started this foundation. Or they, um, you know, earned a purple heart and whatever the war was. Like um, you hear the stories, it wasn't you.
Speaker 2:But you feel something inside like, hey, that's my, it's my granddad.
Speaker 2:Like that's my grandmother, that's um, or that's my great, great, whomever I mean. Like we kind of by um, by association, we feel something like raising up in us, like, like I have his or her blood in me, like, and I think, um, that's, that's the way we're meant to think about our, our quote unquote spiritual brothers and sisters who have gone before us. Like, um, I've got um, yeah, I've got the, the, the, the, the same spirit I'm, I'm, I'm part of the family. I'm part of the lineage of all, of Peter, of John, um. I'm part of the lineage of of Corey Ten Boom and Jim Elliott and, um, I mean the the these heroes that I would, that I would think about and look to and go like, I want to be more like that. And, um, I've got in my heritage Jesus Christ, because he wasn't a phantom, he wasn't uh, he, he wasn't just just kind of artificially here, he was here in the flesh and we are baptized into his family. He is the last Adam and we are sons and daughters of the last Adam.
Speaker 1:And that's exactly how we've been ending every single episode in this short series. He remembers us. I want to ask you to pray in a second, josh, but I just want to read, from Our Church Speaks, this little quote from Polycarp, and I don't know if the waterworks will come out as I read it, but I was crying earlier as I read it, because I'll just let it speak for itself. And the picture, by the way and we'll have this in the show notes is him holding up his hands, like you know, kind of in front of him, and flames, flames enveloping him, and it says 80 and six years I have served Christ and he has never abandoned me. How, then, can I abandon my King and my Savior? So, friends, whether you're in the flames of betrayal, trauma, sexual sin, you just can't seem to stop past trauma. Wherever you're at, jesus didn't abandon polycarp and he doesn't abandon you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, jesus, thank you. Thank you that you don't create us as little solitudes, but you create us for relationship. You create us from relationship, lord, of the very fact that we are created, from the union of Father, son, holy Spirit, the overflowing love of you, lord, that's why we exist, that's what we image, that's who we are, and as we walk this path together, as the church, as we look to our left and our right, Lord, would you fill us with a deeper sense that we belong, that you made us to belong with you and with one another, and would you lead us away from temptations to go solo or to grasp at false intimacies, to grasp at false intimacies. And, lord, heal us, open us, charge us, help us to move towards the intimacy, the union with you and your body that we're made for and that we are in by your grace. And we pray these things in the name of the Father, son and Holy Spirit, amen, amen.
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