Given for You: Having Sex vs. Loving Your Spouse Sexually

The way we talk about sex shapes what we see—and too often, we’ve learned to see in parts. Today, we take a jackhammer to the pavement of cultural scripts and rebuild a vision where sex isn’t “a thing” to get, but a way to love a whole person. We explore how lust reduces and love restores, why the body speaks of a person’s worth, and how honoring freedom, story, and dignity transforms intimacy.

If you’ve felt trapped in the loop of demand, disappointment, and dull desire, this conversation offers a way out: strengthen the will, slow down to see, and practice love that gives rather than takes. We also address consent beyond the checkbox, the quiet pressures that bend a person’s yes, and why a richer view of union and procreation can deepen trust and joy. Listen, reflect, and share with someone who’s ready to see more. If this resonates, follow the show, leave a review, and tell us: which lens will you practice first?

Free Resources to help you on your journey to Becoming Whole:

• Email us questions! info@regenerationministries.org

👉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)

Chapters

• 0:36 Why Talk About Sex Today
• 1:57 Sex As A Subcategory Of Love
• 7:14 Love vs Lust: Whole-Person Vision
• 17:38 Porn, Objectification, And Marriage Harm
• 21:44 Seeing Image-Bearers: Genesis And Dignity
• 28:59 Restoring Sight: Jesus And True Seeing
• 34:58 Seven Lenses For Whole-Person Love
• 44:39 Spiritual And Sexual Embodiment

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:18

I want to get after a topic today that I that pertains to all of us, married, single, doing well in your marriage, struggling in your marriage, uh, those who are pursuing sexual integrity in their lives, those who are healing from sexual brokenness in some other way, and those who are trying to help those dealing with sexual integrity. This has implications for all of us. I want to talk about sex. I'm not a surprise. We do that a lot on this podcast. But I but I what I want to do, and the image I have of this is we're gonna, we're gonna jackhammer up some asphalt, some parking lot, because there's been, it's almost like there's this paving over of some of the essence of God's design for sex in a way that has that we've all taken in so much that we hardly realize it's happened. We've we've paved over God's design for sex in some ways that we hardly realize what's happened to us. This has happened over time. We are the proverbial frog in the kettle. I mean, it's the the water's boiling. We don't realize it's boiling because we've been in it for so long. And I'm talking maybe decades, maybe generations, maybe since the beginning with Adam and Eve. So pray, because we're, you know, Lord help me, because we're gonna get into some deep waters today. And I hope it will encourage you, inspire you, challenge you. But um I want to I want to talk about sex in this first of all in this way. I want to just give you a little bit of an idea, a framework for thinking about sex. So often we think about sex as something unto itself, that sex is something that you, you know, you pursue, you want. Uh, if you're married, you want a good sex life. Um if you're married or single, you you sex is something you think about, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We talk about sex in our culture as something unto itself, almost like if I put it this way, an entity, you know, like uh a thing into itself. I did a podcast sometime ago, and maybe even some articles on this, that that uh encouraging people to kick sex out of their bed. And I didn't mean that I thought husbands and wives should should stop having sex, but rather the way that we think about sex, conceive of sex, often we think about it almost like it's this third element in the marriage relationship, husband, wife, and sex. And so what do you want from your spouse? I want sex. Um, I want good sex. Let me explain. What if instead of thinking about sex as something unto itself, something that we quote unquote want, although it almost like it's it's this thing? What if we were to think about sex as a subcategory of love? In other words, what if we were to think about, what if we were to train our minds and our hearts and the way that we talk about sex to be something not unto itself, but rather it is an expression of love. Or maybe we better said, it's an expression of something. So it's an expression of lust. Sometimes it can be an expression of hatred or loathing when it's coerced or forced. But it's designed to be an expression of love. It's not something unto itself, not something you pursue, but it is an expression. So in the same way, like you don't we don't typically talk about a good conversation as something that we're pursuing. Oh man, I'm just really in the mood for a good conversation. Now you might be, but typically you're you're connecting that with a specific person, right? Like you don't just kind of go like, oh, I'm just in a good, I'm in the mood for a good conversation. Where can I, where can I find a good conversation? You you're often when we're thinking about a good conversation, you're thinking about like, you know, I really want to talk to so-and-so. It's been a long time since I've sat down and had a heart to heart with my brother. It's been a while since my wife and I have really connected on a deep level. Some of you are thinking, man, I I would really value just somebody who'd be willing to have a heart to heart with me. So you may not know who the person is, but it's not just that you want a heart-to-heart case in point. AI, we are finding is a place where you can go to have a conversation. But at the end of the day, as as quote unquote satisfying as a conversation with uh some computer program might be, it will not satisfy in the same way. It cannot satisfy in the same way as a good conversation with a good friend. Why? Because although AI can record information about you and can craft how it says what it says to you, uh, it can never truly know you and love you because it is emotionless. It can it can mimic emotion in what it says, maybe even in tonality in what it says, but it is emotionless. It does not truly have a desire for you. AI and those who create it are much more in the realm of lust than love. What do I mean by that? Well, you've heard me define lust before. Lust is using another person, specifically another person's body for your own selfish sexual gratification. Lust is using another person's body for your own sexual gratification, right? To to elicit pleasure in you in your in your body and to feel the those feelings. So it's it's all about your experience, not about the other person. Love, in contrast, by definition, and I I get this from John Paul II love is giving of yourself for another person's good. Lust is taking from another person, regardless of what it does to them for your pleasure. Love is giving of yourself, even if it costs you something for the good of another. Okay. So you recognize like if we think about sex as a subcategory of love versus a subcategory of lust. Now it can be a subcategory of either, but God's heart for it is that it would be a subcategory of love. We often use it as a subcategory of lust, taking from another from our own sexual gratification. But it's designed to be a way that I give myself for another's good and a way that I receive from another who is giving freely of themselves for my good. All right. Already we're we're we're churning up the asphalt, we're we're you know bulldozing the concrete of our cultural kind of norm, the way we think about sex. So sex is not something unto itself. It is, it is merely a subcategory, and it is intended to be a subcategory of love. Um, right here we get into what uh Carol Voitva, who is the that's who John Paul II was before he was Pope, refers to as the personalistic norm. The personalistic norm. And I I'm not sure I track with him 100%. I don't mean I disagree with him. I'm not sure I understand him. The man is a was a brilliant mind, and I don't trouble um understanding everything he says. But if I understand his his what he's suggesting by the personalistic norm, it's something like this. In order to love someone, you have to view them and approach them and treat them as a whole person. In order to truly love someone, you have to treat them as a whole person. You cannot treat them as parts, you cannot dissect a person and only love, quote unquote, part of them. That's not true love, right? Like you you might have a favorite singer and you love their voice and you love their vocal ability and you love their music, but you can't say in full truth that you love them. They certainly do not, in full truth, feel loved by you simply because you love their music. There's so much about him or her that you don't know, right? So, in order for for you to truly love another person, you have to fully know the person and you have to fully accept and treat the person as the whole person that he or she is. Okay, so again, we're talking about sex here. So, what does it mean if if sex is a subcategory of love, and in order to love someone, you have to know the whole person and treat them as a whole person? All right, I hope I'm not just speaking too conceptually here, but let me let me bring it down to porn for a minute. Because this is a this is the contrast for us. So often in our world of lust, our pornographic culture, all we get is an image of a person's body, and maybe not even their whole body, maybe just body parts. And and we we use those body parts to elicit sexual desire and sexual pleasure in us so that we feel really, really good. That is so counter to love. Even in our marriages, husbands and wives, even in our marriages, we can treat our spouse in the same way. We can use their body parts because they make us feel good while ignoring the rest of them. Um, I was giving a talk years ago at a at a church, and I was talking about the ways that that God loves us in our entirety, in our wholeness, and and that his design for sex between husband and wife is that we're to be known and loved in that same way. And at the end of the talk, this this woman came up to me. She kind of waited for the room to clear a little bit, and she came up to me when it was just the two of us, and she said, Can do you guys have any help for me? Because my marriage is not like that. And so I connected her with one of our coaches, and and the fuller story came out. I don't know all the details of it, but in essence, the husband, in the name of Jesus, in the name of being the head of the household, had been demanding sex from her. You have to give me sex because it's what I want. Well, is that love? No, that's not that's not love. That's not love at all. Love requires that he treat and honor the whole of her. I think here of Genesis 2, when God has created Adam and Eve, and they are in the naked, in the they're in the garden, and the scriptures say in Genesis 2, and they were naked without shame. Then it goes on to say, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, and they were naked and unashamed. So I picture Adam and Eve in the garden, him looking at her, her looking at him. And, you know, we're so indoctrinated by lust that the idea of a man and a woman naked in the garden, we have a hard time conceiving of the idea that they could look at each other and not just see a naked body or naked body parts. I remember hearing a pastor once say, Man, when Adam looked at Eve and he said, Now this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, that the the, you know, a way of thinking about that is he was like, wow, check her out. And we kind of chuckled. But I think for most of us, even that idea of this is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, or that he's looking at her with kind of this wow factor, we think about it as just like sexual arousal. But what if, what if God's heart actually goes beyond that? What if even sexual arousal is meant to be a subcategory of love? What if when Adam looked upon Eve, he didn't just see her body, he saw her soul, he saw her mind, he saw something communicated of God's image in her body. And his wow wasn't just she's beautiful and pleasing for me to look at. And I noticed desire in me for her, but his wow was she is awe-inspiring, she is amazing, she is wonderful. And if his impression if his desire for her wasn't just to take her so he could feel pleasure, but his desire for her was his acknowledgement, she is something like me and different than me. And I can be more myself, and and something more beautiful can come about when the when the two of us come together. In other words, he saw her with honor and dignity and esteem, and he treated her that way. And and meanwhile, he recognizes in the way that she's looking at him, that she's looking at him in the same way. She sees him, and she's like, wow, he is something amazing. He is like me, but he is different. There are parts of him that are different than me, and I honor him and his difference in the way that he images God in a way differently than I do. So, men, take this in. Let this nourish your soul. Here's the statement. You are created in the image of God. You are created in the image of God. This is Genesis 126. And there is no creature on the earth, including woman, who images God the way that you do. Women, take this in. Let it be vitamins nurturing for your soul and for your body. You, according to Genesis 126, you image a God in a way that's unique in all of creation. You image our creator God in a way that men cannot, and you do so even in your body. And men and women, you together image God more wholly, more completely than either men or women could alone. Together we image him in a way that's that's unrepeatable in all of creation. Now, if we truly were able to behold each other that way, what would that do to how we see one another and how we treat one another? I believe this is part of what Jesus was doing when he came to seek and to save that which is lost, because I believe this part of our story as men and women, as sexual beings, and what sex means in and of itself, what marriage means in itself, this is the stuff that's gotten buried under the asphalt of our of our civilization. It's gotten buried under sin, it's gotten buried under decades and decades or thousands and thousands of years of lust and abuses, of misogyny and misindry, of missing each other, of divorce, all these things, so we don't even see each other anymore. And what if Jesus came so that we could actually see one another like we were intended to? What if when he came to seek and to save that which is lost, part of what he wanted to seek and to save was his God's image in man, God's image in woman, God's image stamped into man's body, God's woman stamped into woman's body. After all, Jesus, when he announced his public ministry, he quoted from the book of Isaiah. And a part of that, what he says is, I've can't I've come to restore sight to the blind. And we certainly understand that when it comes to those who are physically blind, but what if he meant more than that? What if he meant I've come to restore sight so that you could actually, men, instead of lusting after women and seeing them as sex objects, you could look at them and see them wholly. W-H-O-L-L-Y and H-O-L-Y. You could see them as they are intended to be, God's image bearers on the earth in all their beauty, all their dignity, all their glory. And women, you could see men in all their dignity, all their glory. All all that all the ways they image God is stamped into their body. I mean, I when I get my head kind of thinking about these things, I think it would not be too far to imagine that when a woman would walk in the room, a man who truly beholds her as the image-bearer of God that she is would be tempted to kneel, to see in her the value and worth that she has. Matter of fact, the old marriage value vows used to talk about uh worshiping one another, not not in the sense of like deifying or or um idolizing one another, but but worship one another, seeing the worth, the value in the other, and seeing the worth and the value in ourselves. Your wife is different than you are, men. She's a worth that's different than you, but you also have a worth that's different than hers. What if you were to understand yourself in your sexual relationship in that way? You see her that way, she sees you in that way. Sex is meant to be a subcategory of love, and to see and to love somebody means seeing the whole person truly who they are. Not parts, not parts, but the whole. So with that in mind, with that in mind, let me um let me unpack the little further. Let me let me let me talk about some different elements of a person that I think instead of just seeing sexual parts, I want to help you see the whole. Okay. So in order to do that, I I've come up with seven different categories that you can practice. You can practice seeing these in one another. You can also practice praying for these. You're like, Jesus, I don't see this when I see somebody. And my hope is that we grow in this way. If our sight is restored, our our our eyesight, our spiritual sight and discernment, the way that our minds are trained, if we can be restored in this way through the power of Jesus' resurrection working in our bodily members, if we can see others in this way, holy in this way, then then whether we're we're on our computer and and a pornographic or sexualized or an ad pops up, or we're at the beach, somebody walks by and they're wearing close to nothing, um, we we would actually feel less tempted to lust, or maybe just an increased desire to battle lust so we could actually love that person in appropriate ways, seeing them, honoring their body, whether that means averting our eyes, so we're not mistreating them or seeing them with eyes of love, like Jesus did. I mean, man, I could go on about this for a while, but like there are these interactions that are described in the gospels where Jesus is in these moments with women where like the woman at the well in John 4, he's alone with this woman, which was a scandalous thing to be. And for a woman who had her track record, who is understand to have been in multiple relationships with different men, that would have been such a scandalous moment. But Jesus saw her, he knew her. One of my favorite passages, I've talked about this on this podcast before, Luke 7, Jesus is invited to Simon the Pharisee's house. He's he's dining with with uh Simon there and other guests. And this woman, this immoral woman, comes in the room and she begins weeping at Jesus' feet, and she's wetting his feet with her tears, and she begins to wipe his feet uh with her hair, um, and she she anoints his feet with with perfume. And Simon's response is kind of this judgy, like, oh, well, obviously this guy's not a prophet, because if he was a prophet, he would know what kind of woman this is, that she's a sinner. That's what Simon saw. Jesus responds to Simon with these words, and he responds with more than this, but he includes these words. He says, Simon, do you see this woman? I think, I think he means more. I think he's inviting us. He wants us to see this woman. Simon didn't see the woman. He just saw a sinner. He just saw what she'd done sexually. Jesus says, Simon, do you see this woman? And he tells a parable and asks some questions to get Simon to see more about her. And he's trying to get Simon to see how much she loves and how much she is loved. So whether we're we're at the beach or there's a pornograph image that comes up, or for those of you who are married, to see your husband or your wife through the eyes of love. Oh, this is possible. It's possible. We'll always be on this journey, but we but we have to trust that Jesus wants to restore this ability to see in us and this ability to love this way, to understand that sex is not a thing unto itself. It is a subcategory. So with that in mind, a prescription from Josh Glazer, just seven categories to practice and to pray for that might help you to better see and behold the person in front of you. First of all, every single person you see. So I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about your husband or your wife. So for those of you who are married, but if you're single or you're married, and but this it applies to every person you see. But I want to I want to kind of focus in here thinking about the marriage bed, okay? Because um, because it is such an intimate, glorious place. And it's not just meant to be a place of sexual satisfaction, of quote unquote sexual pleasure. Um, it's meant to be more than that. So I'm gonna primarily talk about that and I want to invite you, but but but translate it. It it works for every category, whoever you're seeing, whether you know you an Eskimo in an Arctic place who's who's you don't just see their face or whatever, like it applies to everybody. So number one, every person you see, uh, one part of them is their spiritual. They are spiritual. And when I say part here, I don't mean there's like, you know, a fraction of them is spiritual. I mean like there's a fusion between their physical self and their spiritual self. Their spiritual self animates who they are. But it also, when I say spiritual, I'm I'm hearkening back to the reality that every single person you see is created by God and for relationship with God. It is a part of who they are. It is an intrinsic part of who you are. If you take away their relational capacity to connect with Jesus, to connect with God, you you lose something of the person. They're spiritual being, they're designed for a spiritual union with God. And they're also created by God to bear his image. They every single person you see images God in some way. What if you were to seek to see in your spouse how he or she images God? Pray for that, practice that, look for it, assume that it's there, search the lines, search the search their eyes, listen to their words, um, feel their skin, search for the way they image God. Is it in their tenderness? Is it in the depth of his voice or the or the softness of her voice? Is it the way she asks questions? Is there something in the way that she looks at you? Is it somehow how she hears you or how he hears you? Something in their touch. I mean, they image God. In what ways do they communicate to you verbally or through touch or through sight or through listening? In what ways do they communicate to you something of what God's love is like? Look for it. Look for it. It's in every single person. Secondly, so they're sexual, that's number one. Number two, let's not ignore that, sorry, they're spiritual, that was number one. Number two, that they there's let's not ignore their sexual body parts. Every single person that God's created has sexual body parts. Now, barring barring some a birth defect or or um or some disease that's that's compromised a person's uh sexual biology, every single person has a sex biology. They're male or female, they have sexual organs. And yes, those sexual organs can can uh uh elicit sexual desire and sexual pleasure as you behold them, as you're aware of them. It's true. Um, but there's so much more to them than that. We're gonna come back to that in just a little bit. But um, but but recognize that they're that they're sexual, they're male or female by God's design. And and male or female doesn't just mean they have male or female body parts. That that's an important part of it, for sure. But um, and we're gonna come back to those body parts in just a minute, but um, but it's not in inconsequential. It's God given. In the beginning, God created them, male and female. God created them in his image, and the and the first attribute of what it means to be in his image is male or female, he created them. That's the first descriptor of this creature that's designed in God's image. Now, that doesn't mean that God is male or female. That's to make, as Christopher West would pointed out, that's to make God in our image, but it is to say there's something about our maleness or femeness that images God. I mentioned something about this before. But it's it's more than just what is visible to us. Every cell in a healthy human body has either an XX or XY chromosome. Every single cell does. Um what what does that mean? It means that that our that our maleness or femeness is all throughout us. Uh it's all throughout us. And you there's no way to change that. You you don't you don't change that through having a surgery. You don't change that by changing your name. It's it's it is in us through and through. So it's worth asking the question, why did God make it like that? I remember I was talking to a young woman not too long ago who was saying that uh when she was talking about her her sex biology, she says, well, they're just body parts, right? Um, but that's not all that it is to be a man or all that is to be a woman. To have to have an XX, XX chromosomes in every part of your body, XY chromosomes in all part of your body. Like it is throughout all of you. So the Christian, the question is, God could have made it that way, that to be a male or female was just a matter of like one or two or three different body parts, but instead he embedded it into every single cell of your body. Why? Why? There's something about how your image, who you are through and through, that images God in your maleness or femeness. I don't, I don't understand that fully, but let's reckon with that as we're talking about sex is a subcategory of love. And to love someone means to receive, to view, to see them, to understand them in the wholeness of who they are. Your husbands, your your wife is a woman through and through. Women, your husband is a wife through and through. And that part of them is so important to God that it is in every it is embedded in every single cell of their body. It's it's worth honoring, it's worth esteeming, even if we don't fully understand why. Okay, third, the third part that we want to begin practicing, seeing and praying to see is that every single part person has a heart. They've got uh they've got emotions. What do I mean by this? Well, let's there's an emotional, psychological, there's an inner life to every single person you meet. They have thoughts. And in some ways, this aspect of a person is is a secret part of them. You can't know it unless they reveal it to you. Uh yes, you you there's unbidden emotion that comes across a person's face if you're paying attention. But there are always parts of a person's emotion, emotional life, psychological life that's a little bit hidden from us. Um, it's a sacred part of every single person. And it's worth pursuing and honoring. This is one of the things that I've actually would practice when trying to abstain from pornography when I was tempted to lust, to say, hold on, what I'm seeing here is just the outer, outer part of this person. There's a heart here, there are emotions here. What does this person feel at the end of the day? What does this person experience throughout the day? When was the last time this person cried and what were they crying about? Practice just thinking about that aspect of a person to see, even if I even if I was just using my sanctified imagination to see more of the whole of this person. I remember one of the um early kind of revelations I had, it was it was an apocalypse apocalyptic moment where kind of pulled back the veil and I saw some more reality. It was this, it was a porn star being interviewed by Diane Sawyer, and she had nothing but good things to say about the porn industry, and she loved being a porn star and she loved sex on the on the porn set and all that. But Diane noticed something about her her smiling, even as she was sharing really painful stories, and she asked her about it. And the woman cracked on in the interview, and she started to she started to tear up and she could hardly answer the question. And then she said, I like to hide. I don't want people to know the true self. In other words, I don't want people to know that my heart is broken inside. Every single person has a heart. Now, connected to that, let's talk about, and this might sound like a hard shift, but I think you'll understand the connection here. Every single person has a will. They have a will. And the reason I think this is important to think about when we're talking about sex as a subcategory of love, because in our culture, we talk about the will as the defining characteristic of whether or not it's okay to have sex. We we use the word consent. As long as someone's given consent, then sex is okay. And we should, you know, why not? Why not allow anybody to have sex as long as they they're an adult and they're giving consent? But at the same time, we recognize that a person's will or their capacity to give consent can be compromised by things like alcohol or drugs. And so now consent becomes a little more complicated because he or she has had three drinks. And so are they really giving consent or are they uh under the influence and unable to give their full consent? But I think that's too shallow a conversation. Let's when we're talking about a person's will, we have to recognize that as we as we do with alcohol or drugs, we recognize that a person's will can be influenced, it can be compromised, it can be impacted by other factors. And it's not just alcohol that can do that, it's also a person's social conditioning that can do that. How many stories we've heard in our ministry of a young woman who's been having sex with her boyfriend? Why? Well, because everybody does that, right? Or the number of women we've talked to over the years who have had sex with a man they didn't want to because he's been paying for the dates and they felt obliged to. That's social conditioning. That's some kind of outward pressure, not because they were truly free in their will to say yes or no. Um another example with the will, the will can be compromised through sexual abuse. We meet with men and women in our ministry all the time whose first sexual experience was a sexual violation by another person who had more power than they did. Um, that kind of sexual violation deeply impacts a person's ability and their capacity to say no to sexual things. It's confusing. Many of them, if they were abused when they were kids, uh were led to believe that it was their fault, that what happened to them was because they invited it or because they were too attractive. What does that do to a person's will when it comes to saying no or yes to sexual advances and sexual relationships? It screws it up big time. I mean, we know that from our ministry. And ask any therapist who's got experience walking with people who are dealing with the the wreckage of sexual abuse in their life, and they'll confirm what I'm saying. I I read and I don't know it for this thing, but I read somewhere long ago that if you were to uh look up the statistics of the number of men and women in the porn industry who have been sexually abused or sexually violated in their lives, you'd find that the number of that the sexual violation rate, the percentages rates are higher among those who are in the adult industry. And if if not prior to being in the in the uh porn industry, during the porn industry, this young woman I was just talking about a minute ago had been violated, raped on the set of these scenes. She wasn't given per uh, she wasn't asked consent, and things happened to her, and nobody did anything for her. And I mean, it's it's just it's it's abhorrent. Okay, coming back to the will. Every single person has a will, and their will has been impacted. It's influenced by their social conditioning and by what's happened in them in their lives. So, as husbands and wives, as you're seeking to love your spouse, you want to honor their will, right? You don't tend to feel pressured, you don't feel like you have to. Husbands, a word word to you here. Um, if you have grown up in a church environment where the church has said, hey, the husband has is is the head of the wife and she's supposed to obey him, um, if you use that as a bludgeon over your over your spouse to get her to have sex with you, that ain't love. Sex is meant to be a subcategory of love, and love is self-giving for the other's good, not for your own sexual gratification. And husbands, if you believe that you're you need to have sex with your wife so that you won't act out somewhere else sexually, uh that that's crap too. Just to, I mean, let me let me just call it a theological term. That's crap. That's crap. Why? Because you have a will, my brothers. You have a will. If you can't say no to sex, then your yes to your wife is not love. You've got to be able to say no to other versions of sex, sex other places, so that when you say yes to your wife, she knows that you truly want her. You are saving yourself for her. It is not her job to make it so that you can save yourself for her. If it is, then you're not able to give her your love. You need to strengthen your will. And I say that with compassion. Some of you have have you haven't matured in this way. Like, contact us. We'll help you to do that. We'll help you to be able to say no to sexual temptation. All right, we need to move on for time's sake. Next up. So already we got spiritual. There's a person's is has a spirit, there's a part of the spiritual, there's part of this sexual, there's a part of them that has a heart, they have a will. Um, also they have they have a, I don't know how to term this one, but they have a timeline. They have they have a past, a present, and a future. I think when we're thinking about loving another person sexually, it's important that we keep in in mind their timeline. I'm I mentioned a minute ago about how a person's past can impact their their will, right? So they have a history. So if you're tempted to view pornography, a helpful question to not objectify the person on the screen is to ask, how did they end up here? How did they end up here? I know that um there's some platform online platforms right now where there are a lot of women who are saying, no, this is my choice to do it this way. But I asked, I asked on a question, how did they end up here? No little girl, when you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, says, I want to be a sexualized model. I want men to ogle me and just look at my body and think that I look good and pay me for it. That is that's not the natural trajectory, the dream of any little girl, unless she's been sexualized, unless something's happened in her life, unless she's received messages about her value and worth being wrapped up in her body. Or her her her body doesn't matter that much. And so why not get people to look at it and and pay her money for it? She also has a future. Where's what she's doing today going to lead her in the future? Where's it gonna lead her in the future? What what does the future look like for a woman who has spent her entire life uh making money off of other guys ogling her? What is the future of a woman who's giving her body away for money look like? What is that doing to her heart, to her will, to her spiritual life? It's worth asking. She's got a past that's let her here. Connected to that, this is the the next one, she's she's uh she's got a relational component, right? Interestingly, um uh the our our sexual parts, our sexual biology, our sexual organs, they're designed for relationship. You look at you look at the um genitalia of a man and a woman, every other, every other uh organ in a man or woman's body works uh in independently in that person's body, you know. Uh but uh a male and female sexual organs only work, they're only you only understand even how they work when they come into in into relationship with a husband or a wife, right? That's where they make sense. So even their sexual, you're a person's sexual biology is pointing to the fact that they are, by God's design, relational. Relational. So, but but being relations relational so much more than that. Um, they are created with a mom and a dad. So they are created from the relationship of a mom and a dad, hopefully a husband and a wife. And if not a husband and a wife, then who? Your husband or your wife is created from relationship. They come from a family. They've got brothers and sisters. They are relational. This is just hardwired into every single person that that we work with that you meet. Every single one of us is relational, no matter how isolated that person may be, no matter how poor they might be in relationships, every single one of us is designed from relationship for relationship. It's just hardwired into us. That's the story of humanity from generation to generation to generation, generation to generation. It's one of the reasons that you can love the Old Testament because it is just full of like all these lineages of like all these people. We we don't come, we we're in the 21st century. We didn't come here without thousands of years of people coming before us that we are in relationship with. And every single person you meet uh is a is a product of relationship and is made for relationship, both within family and within friendships and within the body of Christ. This is part of how we bear the image of our triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is relational in and of himself, and he's created us to image him by being relational. All right, next. And this is the last one. And this is these are all, I hope you hear how these go together. Let's come back to the sexual piece. But specifically, every single person, including your husband and wife, is designed to be procreative. Pro-creative. So even a single person, their biological design includes the capacity to be procreative. Again, I recognize there can be disease and birth defects and other conditions that can impact a person's capacity to have children. Um, but but every single person you meet either will have, does have, or did have the capacity to procreate by God's design. Now, we recognize that God calls some people to celibacy, some people to be single during their lives. And even still, he has given them, every single one of us, the capacity for procreation. Everyone's body is designed to come into sexual union with a man and to be able to bear uh children. Every man's body is designed to come into sexual union with a woman, to pour forth his life, his seed into the woman, and to help bear forth a new child. This is the generation after generation after generation. So every single one of us is designed procreatively. So I said earlier that your sexual parts, yes, um, when you've when you see or experience someone else's sexual parts or kind of that our our sexual biology uh has the capacity to create uh pleasureful desires in us, sexual desires in us. Um, but that's not all they're designed for. They are, by definition, also designed for union and procreation, for union and procreation. This is by God's design. Well, what does this mean? What would it and what does it do when you seeing your husband or your wife recognize that a part of seeing them means that you're seeing that they're designed for procreation. They are designed, in other words, to become a mother or a father. Whether the sexual act today ends up getting you pregnant or not, this person that you're uniting with or that you're seeing is designed to be a mother or father. Um, in some Christian traditions, they view even if you're single, they still acknowledge like you're still designed to become a spiritual mother or father. You're designed to get older and pour out your life in life. Love for others, give to give of yourself for the good of others, to help them grow up to be mature in the same way that a parent would, or in a in a parallel way to the way a parent would in a in a biological family. And I I can't help but to say here, because it's just true, and I'm utterly convinced of it, that that the widespread use of contraception has blunted our capacity. So I've gone through all these seven things, the uh spiritual, sexual, heart, will, uh, past, present, future, uh, relationality, and uh uh and procreative parts of us. Uh and I'm I'm saying, hey, uh practice seeing these things, pray to see these things so that you can love another as a whole person. And and I I I can't help but to say that that contraception, our contracepted culture, it's widespread, just accepted contraception as a de facto part of sexual relationships, has blunted our capacity to recognize that sex is not just about pleasure, but it is about union and it is about procreation by God's design. Uh, as far as I know, it's the the Roman Catholic Church is the only um part of the Christian church that's held and said, like, look, we we say no to contraception. I mean on a on a high level. I know there are lots of Roman Catholics who who defy that teaching, but um, I have I've become convinced that that the widespread acceptance of contraception among uh most other Christian denominations, if not every other Christian denomination, has had unforeseen consequences and it has played a part in how we now more easily view others as objects of lust as opposed to creatures designed to be loved. Because when you see another person as their sexual parts are intrinsically, immutably, they they are they are eternally designed to be a part of their procreative capacity. It changes the nature of sex, it changes how you understand sex, that this sexual union is designed to create a human life. It's designed to be a part of creating a family. If we lived under that kind of understanding with that responsibility, it would radically change the way that we see other people. Now, this is just anecdotal, but I'll let you know. Um, my wife and I, for uh seven to ten years, maybe longer, I can't remember now, were practicing NFP. We weren't using um natural family planning, we weren't using contraception. We were, we were, she was largely tracking her regular rhythms and and corresponding our sexual relationship in in in along the lines of how her body was created. And during that time, I would practice when I when we weren't able to have sex, because I was like, well, we're not we're not willing to get pregnant right now, so we're not gonna have sex during this part of the month. Um, it was difficult, but it was an opportunity to practice. This is a part of who she is. She's designed procreatively, and it changed how I saw her. It was really meaningful and powerful. And I think we have we have got to recapture this in our culture. I'm not sure that we're gonna do it unless we uh just unless we take in the reality that contraception um has unintended consequences in how we view other people. And we've gotten to the point now where people kind of assume that everyone's got to have sex. And so contraception is a right. Uh, and for those who take it a step further, abortion then is a right. Um, whole nother podcast, whole other topic. But for John Paul II, Kira Voitiva, uh, in his book Love and Responsibility, this was one of the key thing themes that he brought up is that if you want to see a whole person, you have to see that their design, their bodily design, their sexual design is intended to bring about new life through creation. And if you want to love them, if sex is a subcategory of love, that's my word, not his, if sex is a subcategory of love designed to be by God, and if if loving them requires that you see the whole person and receive the whole person and give of yourself as a whole person, then it requires that you see them as designed to be a mother or father and design this and the sex act is designed to bring about uh and to and to bring about a new life, to bring about a baby. Um, not every time, but that's that's the design. All right. Anyway, I'm getting deep in the weeds here. But um, brothers and sisters, what if what would it be like for us to practice these things so that we might truly come to get rid of lust in the way that we perceive our husband, wife, or the man or woman that we see on the street, and instead to see people as creatures designed in God's image to be loved. Lord, you came to seek and save the lost. Jesus, you said that you came to restore sight to the blind. Would you restore our sight, Lord? Help us to see men and women. And for those of you who are married, Lord, help us to see our husbands or our wives as you see them, the whole creatures they are. Lord, let sex not be something unto itself. But would you transform us to to to learn to love sexually and to learn to make sex in our relationship just one version of how we love our spouse? I ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.