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
Sexual Integrity Requires Confidence
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What if the missing piece in recovery and marriage isn’t more discipline, but deeper confidence? Not swagger. Not self-worship. A grounded assurance that you’re God’s workmanship, made very good, and called to show up with your whole self for the good of others.
We unpack how this kind of confidence breaks the cycle of lust and fantasy by replacing shortcuts with purpose and presence, and why it’s the difference between real love and people-pleasing.
If this resonates, share it with a friend who needs courage today, subscribe for more conversations like this, and leave a review with one belief about yourself you’re ready to replace.
Resources from this episode:
- Good Will Hunting (🚨 language warning)
- Genesis 1:31, Ephesians 2:10, 1 Corinthians 12
- Created for Greatness: The Power of Magnanimity by Alexandre Havard
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So here's the thing. I've been learning about this new element of something important for recovery that I did not know about. And I've been in recovery for 25 plus years now. Um I'm thinking about it today as the un unexpected ingredient. And so,
Naming The Unexpected Ingredient
SPEAKER_00James, I'm going to share this unexpected ingredient that is it's an ingredient to sexual integrity. It's an ingredient to healthy relationships, it's an ingredient to a good marriage. It's an ingredient that's uh important to uh good marital sex and unexpected because I didn't expect it to be. Um and the ingredient listeners and James is uh confidence. Confidence is uh is an essential ingredient to sexual integrity, to good relationships, to good marriage, and even to good marital sex. So, James, as you hear that, um I I we have not talked about this.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if that's a new concept
Defining Confidence Beyond Pride
SPEAKER_01to you or one that's you know it's new to me, but it is it is it's it's actually my entire coaching platform here at Regen is uh confidence coaching. No, I've actually never never thought of this one day in my life, but I think I have some inklings of like I wonder where he's gonna take this, and I'm excited to see where we go with it.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Well, uh so right out of the gates, like when you hear it, what what comes to mind? What objections come to mind, what questions come to mind in you? Think about confidence being an ingredient in these things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, man. Well, um, I think there's probably something around confidence and and love. Funny enough, I my mind started going here. Maybe it's because of your prayer before we started, but um, I was thinking about a movie I watched. It's one of those kind of pure flick style movies. I don't usually brag that I watched these, um, but it was it's on Netflix called The Forge, which is it's like a Christian uh the something brothers films. But anyway, um, sometimes God hits me with those. And I know they're not always the best forms of art, but the central character in this movie is a mentor figure to this young man. And this guy, he he's a business owner, he dresses in a way to honor others, is how one of my friends puts it. Like dresses in a way that shows people you're worth me dressing up for, almost to say, like he's he's in a suit. Um, he shakes someone's hands, he looks them in the eye. All those kinds of things, the the kind of confidence he wears actually blesses those around him. So that that image from that movie for The Forge comes to mind of this, like, there's actually something really beautiful and powerful about someone who's confident in their love for others. My mind also goes to those who are overconfident or you know, confident in a hubris type of way, a prideful way. Um, but yeah, I kind of think of those two different types of confidence right off the bat.
SPEAKER_00That is fantastic. All right, no, you're teeing this up perfectly because those, those juxtap the juxtaposition of those two images is exactly where the we need to go in this podcast. So I think a lot of us, uh I'll speak for myself, uh, the idea of confidence being a virtue was something um new to me a few years ago. I was actually working on a seminary paper and uh and had to we we had to pick a virtue that we were gonna try to develop in ourselves. And I was and we were supposed to do it prayerfully, so I was praying and I heard the word confidence.
SPEAKER_01I was like, well, this is oh, that's not gotta
Confidence As A Christian Virtue
SPEAKER_01love those out of left field type of words from the Lord. That's that's yeah.
SPEAKER_00I was like, that's not a virtue. It's not a virtue. Like I I need to find a virtue, but I I just so I you know I sat down to Googled, like, is confidence a virtue? And it popped up on this virtue list. I was like, wait, what the heck?
SPEAKER_01Like Do you remember? Was it like any of the old old thinkers have it on their list, like Aquinas or him pulling from Aristotle? Was it okay? I'm excited then where this is gonna go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I think the initial Google list I got was probably just uh uh and this was before Google AI, but um, but it was just it was probably like literally a list alphabetized, and I'm like scrolling in like, okay, you know, chastity, uh confidence, no way. So but so here, so a couple clarifying points right out of the gates. Like um the like typically the word confidence comes from that that idea, it's the two parts. So con is or or you know, in in whatever the Latin root there is. Latin, yeah, con with, right? Yeah, with it can also mean completely, or and then and then fidere is is to trust or to have faith. And so it's with trust or or complete trust. So we can think about it like having confidence in somebody else. We have confidence in God, or we have confidence in something that somebody else has done, we have confidence in what Christ has done for us on the cross. So we are putting our trust, we have, we are, we are interacting with trust towards towards that other.
SPEAKER_01Dude, that way, because that so often we're like, all right, it's all about faith, right? Paul emphasized faith all the time, Jesus emphasized faith. But sometimes it's just like this intellectual left-brain ascent to to true doctrine is what we mean when we say the word faith. Yeah. But what you just brought out with the word confidence, I'm like, that sounds a little bit more like what I bet Jesus and Paul meant when they were talking about faith. Like this real sense of, as Dallas
Humility Versus Hubris
SPEAKER_01Willard would say, you have faith in a chair if you're gonna sit in it, trusting that it's gonna hold you up. Like that level of like, I'm confident this chair, as I point next to me, is gonna hold me up when I sit in it. So I don't know, that's that's already stirring for me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Okay. So then, so and I think a lot of us as Christians, we're like, okay, well, yeah, sure, sure, sure. We have we can have confidence in. And so even back in in seminary, when I'm looking at this word, I'm like, well, are we is that what we're talking about here? Like having confidence in God, having confidence in the completed work of Christ. Like, um, but the virtue is actually confidence in self. And so immediately my alarm bells are going off. Like, hold on, hold on. Like, we are not supposed to have confidence in the flesh, like we this is not about us, like we can't do this ourselves. Um and this is where Aquinas gets into this. And and and so this will kind of form like where we're going with the whole idea of um uh why these things are necess a necessary component to sexual integrity, or as you pointed out, an important component to love. So you let's start with the hubris, hubris side or the pride side. Confidence is not the same thing as pride. So I think it's Aquinas, and certainly other thinkers. Um, I'm reading a book um by the guy's last name is Havard. I can't remember what his uh we'll have it in the show notes, but it's um it's a book on magnanimity. But um he says he says the the difference here is that that pride it's not that pride thinks too much of itself. Although I could imagine this a scenario in which someone has pride where they ought not. Like um, like if you're in if you're in recovery from pornography addiction, for example, and you're like, oh man, I can I can stay up late, you know, on my computer by myself. Like, um that might just be foolishness, you know. Like, but um there so there might I I don't want to get into all that, but there might be an element of pride, and like I'm not I'm not gonna submit to anybody else's opinion about that. Um but the way the way that I think it's the way that Aquinas talks about that kind of um hubris, that kind of pride, is not that you're thinking too much of yourself, but you're thinking too little of others. And so you can have confidence in yourself while also submitting to other people's wisdom, other people's authority, other people's good, the good that they bring. So so if we think about confidence not as uh the opposite of humility, pride or hubris is the opposite of humility. That's like I'm I'm thinking too little of other people, too little of God, too little of my brothers, too little of my pastor, too little of my spouse, you know, whatever. Um that that opens now suddenly this doorway towards a confidence in self that that is not opposed to other people or not in conflict with other people. So let me just pause there for a second. Like, what's yeah, your brow is furrowed, what's popping from.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm like I'm imagining. So if anyone's not familiar for Aristotle, uh around you know a couple thousand years ago, he always talked about virtue as the middle ground, what he called the golden mean. And you could actually have too much of it or too little, and that would be the errors. And so what I hear you saying, Josh, is too much of confidence, too much. I'm putting in air quotes, because you know, but too much confidence could be this hubris, this pride. And I'm sure we're about to get into what too little confidence can look like. But a parallel that really might be helpful for some of our listeners, one of Aristotle's four key virtues, what we call the cardinal virtues, was fortitude. So kind of courage or strength, right? So too much courage, you're like, wait, how do you have too much courage? No such thing, right? Too much courage would be the person who recklessly runs into battle and just, you know, it he's running a thousand feet ahead of the rest of the army and he's just gonna be destroyed, right? Like that's not actual wise golden mean kind of courage. That's recklessness. He has a better word for it, but it's basically recklessness. So what I hear you saying with confidence is too much confidence is actually this, it can be this pride thing. And so many of us look at it like, yeah, in recovery, you need to have a humility. I mean, I know some people, you know, they get rid of filters, they get rid of accountability software. And for some people, that's fine. Like, you know, some people get to such a place where that's the case, it's fine. But I know for others, and this includes myself, I've chosen to continue to have these kinds of blockers, these kinds of things in place because I just don't want unlimited access to uh I describe it like an alcoholic living in a liquor store. I mean, that's what we have when we have access to all these devices around us all the time. I don't want to have unlimited access to completely unblocked sexual content. So that might be an example of like, I don't want to personally remove these things for peace of mind. And so I don't step over the virtue into this excess, but I want to stay somewhere in the middle with the confidence.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm not as familiar with the kind of the middle, the middle way idea. The golden mean. Yeah. Well, I can I can say this. I can certainly resonate with that idea of like the willing submission of some of my freedoms for the sake of walking in sobriety. That kind of humility, I think, is is needed by all of us. Like we're we're we are not God. So the idea of pursuing confidence as a virtue certainly is not like utter, utter reckless trust in ourselves. Like you know, we have we do have limitations. Um let's keep going though, because I think I think it'll un it'll unfold a little bit more as we get as we get further. Um so a a couple ways of thinking about this include this.
Made Very Good: Our Origin Story
SPEAKER_00Well, actually, let me let me let me back up just a little bit at the risk of of just stumbling over my words here. Again, we're talking about the importance of confidence as a component to sexual integrity, which sounds almost like we're we're talking about both sides of our mouth here, because we just said, well, we need humility, but again, humility and confidence are not opposed to each other. Uh humility and hubris are opposed to each other. Humility and pride are opposed to each other, but confidence is different. And so the basis of our confidence, if I understand Aquinas right, the basis of our confidence is not exclusively or or detached just in and of ourselves. The basis of our confidence is God. We can have confidence in self, not because we're all that compared to everybody else, but we can have confidence in self because we are one created by God. So Genesis 1.31, God has created all of creation. Six times he said it's very good, or it's good. It's five or six times. Five times. Five times he said it's good. He sees it's good. Then he creates human beings, and now behold, Genesis 1.31, God saw that it is very good. Now there are a couple ways you can look at this. So that I'm not trying to give this as the one and only interpretation, but it could be now that the all of com all of creation is complete. So it's all working together as the seamless fabric, and that's what's very good. But certainly as a part of that is now the the introduction of human beings, male and female, on the earth to rule and reign over the earth, to be fruitful and multiplying the earth. Now uh creation is very good. So the so the basis of confidence is is first and foremost, we're God's creation. We're made by him. Why are we confident? Not because of something I've done in myself, but because of something that God has done in making me. Or as the old expression is like, you know, um, God made me and God don't make junk. You know, like God makes us very good.
SPEAKER_01It's almost like uh God made me and my father's good. And and I I can rest. Maybe you're about to go to some of this kind of place, but like if I were to say, if I had kids, you know, Craigs are our men and women who do X, Y, and Z. We we seek to love people we see, you know, and then the child's reflecting, they're like, I'm a Craig, like that's good. You know what I mean? Yeah, there's something like that going on, probably.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, it's kind of what you described in the movie Forge when you're watching this this successful man treat someone else with dignity and honor, yeah. There's something about the the value that he obviously exhibits in himself and can he conveys it upon another. Um and and and the the the opposite of that, I mean, imagine, imagine, I mean, I I can imagine for myself, like today, well, the day we're recording this, my my son is turning 17. If if my son looked in the mirror and saw the things of me in him and wanted to hide them or didn't see them as valuable, um that that wouldn't be confidence, that would be something else um operative in him. We'll we'll get into that more too. Ephesians 2 10. Um, we are God's workmanship. That word workmanship is the is the word poema in Greek. I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that right because my Greek is is rather poor. That's the word we get poem from. So we're we're God's handiwork, we're God's workmanship, we're God's poem. That's a that's a that's a beautiful word, a beautiful idea.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, so so our confidence is rooted in God made us and he made us beautiful, good. Uh we're we we see his fingerprint, his design on us, his signature on us, and he's created us for Paul goes on in Ephesians, for good works. For good works, not bad works, not sexual sin, but for good works. So already, hopefully, our listeners are getting a little taste of if I want to walk in sexual integrity, if I want to have a good marriage, I've got to understand that the fabric, the the deep fabric of who I am is made by a very good God, and he has made me to be like him, to be very good. He's made me a poem, he's made me uh a beautiful workmanship for good works. That's a different way to think about ourselves than I'm a piece of dirt who sins sexually and who'll always be sinning sexually, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, whatever that is.
SPEAKER_01Like Josh, I picture like clay, right? And I've heard this recently from Christopher West, who who we we love to learn from at regen. He teaches theology of the body, and he says, uh, the devil don't have his own clay. As in God created us, I mean, literally out of the dirt or the clay, if he will. And even if we're twisted, even if uh, you know, I I'm all right, let me make it more elementary. Uh, think of play-doh, right? You know, when you get like kind of dirt in play-doh, it's not going to be super easy to get out. That doesn't change the fact of like this was a good chunk of play-doh. I don't know if that's a little too elementary, but this idea that God's not in the business of like throwing out what he's created, he's actually in the business of redeeming, he's in the business of new creation, as N.T. Wright loves to point out. Not uh yeah, he's untwisting that which has
Workmanship And Worth In Practice
SPEAKER_01been twisted. He's unbending that which has been bent. Very different than uh, you know, kind of starting over, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00So just think on a psychological level, though, if you're in recovery and you believe that what's that your makeup, the fabric of who you are, is uh is a sexual sinner. It's just that's just down to the bone that's who you are. When you're tempted to sin sexually, the the logical conclusion with that framework is that um you're gonna have to work against who you are to remain faithful to God. And not only that, but God's not expecting you to be able to do it as opposed to your God's workmanship created before the foundation of the world for good works. Now if you get that into your psychology, into your brain, into your thinking, uh, then suddenly you're in a different space. You're in a space of like, wait a minute, these impulses are real in me. Um I've got to deal with them. They they are integrated somehow into the fabric of who I am. That's what we call corruption in the Christian world. Um we have sin that that dwells in us. But if if the if the core of who I am, if by identity who I am, the the part of me that the me that Jesus came to seek and to save, not to do away with, but to seek and to save, um, to purify from the from the dirt in me, then I'm on a psychological level alone, I'm in a different kind of framework to respond differently to temptation. Um interestingly, one of the questions that we asked, um, this wasn't this was a different class and seminary, was the question of is the image of God still in us after the fall? You know, Genesis 1, God creates uh humankind in his image, male and female, he creates them. Is that image still in us? Well, we look forward in Genesis after the fall. I think it's the Genesis 9. Uh I think it's around the story of Cain and Abel. Could be earlier. Uh we'll we'll find it put in the show notes, get to get the accurate quote here. But the God declares the punishment for somebody who takes someone's life is that their life will be taken. And the grounds for that punishment is that humankind, if you take a human life, you're you're gonna lose your life because humans are made in God's image. And so that that's the grounds for for that kind of punishment that God lists there. Um, and I'm not this isn't a podcast about capital punishment, but it's just to say like there is something as corrupted as we are, as the reality of sin in us, uh, there's still something of God's image in us. And that's that's what we're after here.
SPEAKER_01Josh, I can't help but think of that psalm that um says, I'm a worm, not a man. And I know for many people who have heard that, it seems to reinforce this idea that I'm basically subhuman in my fallen state. But first of all, I mean, it's clearly poetic language because we're lit, we're not literal worms, obviously, right? Worms are worms, we are not. So there's a poetic exasperation. There's a poetic kind of like, oh, you know, what's going on? Um, this cry of the heart. We we say stuff like that when our hearts are in anguish, right? Like, what is going on with me? But what you're pointing out is that even if we can feel like that sometimes, we still bear the image of God. So in reality, we are indeed not worms, even on like a metaphorical level of like being slimy and we might roll around in the dirt to some degree, but that doesn't actually change the fact that we're made in the image of our father. For for those who are in Christ, we have this father in heaven, but but his initial creation was to bear us as children, right? And so to some degree, we we bear the image of this God who longs to readopt us as sons and daughters.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. And obviously there's there's so much more we could get into there in kind of the theological realm of like uh sin and redemption, um, purification, those kinds of things. And I don't want to gloss over those, but I want to come back to this idea of if you want to live a life of sexual integrity, you need a level of confidence. If you want to have a healthy marriage, you need confidence because we haven't we haven't even scratched the surface to get there quite yet. Our confidence is also, though, so it's rooted in the fact that we're created by God, we're his workmanship. Uh, also that we are a part of the body of Christ. If we are followers of Jesus, if we put our faith in we are, we have become part of the body of Christ. Probably do us a lot of good in the realm of confidence to sit in that for the bit. Now, Paul's clear in in 1 Corinthians uh 12, Christ is the head of the body, he's in charge, right? So uh hubris would say, like, I'm in charge. Um, but actually in 1 Corinthians 12, he's getting after hubris and pride. He's saying, like, whatever part of the body you are, however great that part of the body is, you cannot say to another part of the body, I have no need of you. In other words, every part of the body is needed. So whatever your
Body Of Christ And Belonging
SPEAKER_00spiritual gifting is, whatever your role, whatever your station in life, whatever your location, whatever your marital status, wherever you live, whatever your influence or lack thereof, you are a part of the body of Christ by virtue of being in Christ. That is reason for confidence. That is reason for thinking of yourself with a level of esteem. Again, not pride, as in I don't need anybody else, I can do it all on my own, but confidence. I am valuable, deeply loved. There's something of Christ that comes to me. Through me into the world that is unique to me.
SPEAKER_01And if if we cut that off, if we say there's nothing of value, that part of the body's not activated and everyone's at loss. Everyone loses out if I cut off the part of the body that I am.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we might might I mean to we might paraphrase what Paul says there. Like, if I if I'm an I, I can't say to the hand, I have no need of you. If I'm an I, I can't say of myself, the rest of the body has no need of me. So that that brings us to another example of why confidence is needed. So I think we'd understand this. Like, if you if you were born a genius, there's just something about your intellect, you didn't do anything to deserve it. Um, you can cultivate it or not. Um I don't know if you've seen the movie Goodwill Hunting. I was just thinking of it. Yeah, Matt Matt Damon.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01He could just read library books and and take it all in and learn all the knowledge there is to know.
SPEAKER_00Right. So he's he's a for those of you not read or seen the movie, watch it. It's a great movie. Matt Damon plays this this kid who's he's from somewhere in New Jersey, I think, and he's he's South Boston.
SPEAKER_01Close, close.
SPEAKER_00I get all those places. Uh but he he's a genius, and it's becomes clear, but he's just throwing his life away. And there's there's at one point his his best friend says to him late in the movie, he says, if if I he's like, you know what I dream of? I dream of of showing up at your at your apartment one day. I knock on the back door to to pick you up for work, and you aren't there because you've left. He's like, that's what I want. If if you if you're there for the rest of your life, you're staying stuck here with me for the rest of your life. He's like, I'm gonna be so angry at you. I mean, he what he basically what he's saying is like, he's like, you are like be confident. You have this gift, use it. It's important, it matters, you matter. And it's not it's not to diminish his friend, his friend matters too. But it is to say, like, we don't do anybody, it's not humility to take a good gift and to bury it, to put it under a bushel, or to pretend like it's not there.
SPEAKER_01Well, and this is part of our mission is that the men and women who come to us, not everyone's gonna be called to to work at an org like what we do. So we we've felt called, having gone through this journey, to work at a place like this and help others. But for many people, there's a vocation, a destiny, a calling that sexual sin is trying to stop. I remember uh years ago I read I think a John Piper article. He called it masturbation in missions. And I think it was kind of controversial as sometimes Piper can be. But what's so fascinating about it is he's pointing out that so many men are kept from the mission field because they're in bondage to sexual brokenness. And so if you think about that for a second, like this is not just about being sober so you can just live sober. It's actually being sober or being freed up from some of the shackles of sexual sin, if I can say it that way, to step into more of what God has made us to be. And that is that's part of why I love coaching here. It's because I'm trying to help guys get in touch with that. There's more that God has for us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, that's a great segue. So and I'm I'm watching the clock here a little bit. We we have a little bit of a shorter podcast because we have a shorter time span to record today, but lust and fantasy are are uh they they kind of couple well with the um space and what's what's the opposite of virtue? The uh vice vice of sloth or sloth, this failure to become. So fantasy and lust are are ways to to withdraw from the true good work that is in front of us to do. The uh the aspiring towards greatness that's actually a legitimate, reasonable, even humble response to the good gift of God. So I, you know, I use the natural gifting of a genius, but like let's let's talk about a musician who practices day and night and day
Gifts, Vocation, And Recovery
SPEAKER_00and night for years and years and years and becomes an expert virtuoso or master at the at the piano. Like it's not humility for them to play chopsticks for the rest of their lives. Like that's a great image. And and their aspiring towards greatness blesses them and blesses everybody else, right? So um lust and fantasy are are a way to dodge the hard work required of confidence, that confidence actually pushes us towards, and instead to be insecure. And interestingly enough, when we get into, and this, if you haven't done this, listeners with a with a spiritual coach here somewhere else, like when you get into a lot of people's fantasies, what you find, not everybody, but for a lot of people, their fantasies include an element of looking for in the object of their lust something that they wish they themselves had. Yep. I mean, I've said it on this podcast before, but like the the image of a naked person is by God's design meant to communicate the value not only of the person, but of the person that they're giving themselves to. Lust or fantasy basically tries to short circuit that, shortcut that, to say, like, I'm gonna get that feeling of being worth somebody's all, but I'm gonna do it in this fake way, where I don't they don't even have to know who I am. I don't have to aspire to anything, I don't have to work hard, I don't have to commit, I don't have to be in a relationship. So that leads us to the last bit of what confidence needed. So John Paul II, the late Pope John Paul II, writes that that love is a it's a how does he put it? The definition is something like love is to give oneself for the good of another. To give oneself for the good of another, versus lust, which is I'm gonna take from you for my own selfish gratification. Love is I'm gonna give of myself for your good. But and here's here's here's where we're gonna land the plane here for the love to be true love requires two things. One, obviously, it requires that I see the other as valuable enough to give all four, right? Um, but it also then requires that I that I understand and know myself to be of value. Because if I am a piece of crap, to give myself for another is not a good gift. Wow. And so John Paul II is like, if you want to love, you have to know both that the other person is of infinite value and that you are of infinite value. And so now your gift of them, what you give of yourself is actually you recognize this is a gift to them. Not by virtue of like, you know, you're better than the rest, you're better than everybody else, but like God's made you, you're part of his body, you're a unique part of his body, um, and he's got a destiny for you and so much more. So I know we're right up at the it's the clock here, James, but like give give us a final word and then I'll wrap up.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh. That's so beautiful. I just can't help but think in my own journey, I'm getting more in touch with what they call upside down maturity, which is when a child is parentified, when a child is expected to care for a parent, what that does is it teaches the child, because a child, by by where their brain is at, their brain's you know, developmentally at a place where it can only care for one person at a time. And so if I'm caring for a parent, I'm giving out of something I don't have, I'm not caring for myself. An adult, which in this neuroscience world is age 13 and up, which is also happens to be when Jesus would have been considered an adult in the Jewish world. Um, that
Lust, Sloth, And Escaping The Work
SPEAKER_01that at that point the brain has the capacity to care for self and another at the same time. And so I just I can't help but think, Josh, of how many guys I work with, how many men and women who come to our ministry have been taught to self-give, self-give, self-give, but not on the foundation of I know how to actually get what I need from the Lord in healthy, holy ways. And so part of why I think so many people mentioned that metaphor of like, put on the oxygen mask first, then help another person with their oxygen mask, is because so many of us grew up not actually being taught how to, let me say it this way, not being taught the value of ourselves, the infinite value of being a person made in the image of God, loved by God. And out of that value is what we can give as true love. Because when I'm giving out of a place of that upside down maturity, it might look loving, it might be self-sacrificial, but it's actually to the detriment of myself. It's not understanding that I'm also of infinite value. So to give true self-giving agape love, that's the Greek word for self-giving love, means I need to know my value in the eyes of God.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And that's a confidence.
SPEAKER_01That's a that's a call to confidence, right?
SPEAKER_00That's right. Yeah. Oh, there's so much more there. I know maybe part of the challenge for for you today, if you're wrestling with ongoing lust or fantasy, pornography, whatever the sexual acting out is, could it be that on some level, some level, the Lord still wants to pour into you a deep sense of how valuable you are because he's made you. Maybe put even more of a point on it. Could it be that he wants to show you some things about you that he knows because he made them in you? You're his workmanship to help you to to grow to become a person who says who out who looks at lust and porn and eventually comes to a place of like uh those are those are I've outgrown those. Those are not what I aspire to because I actually aspire to to greatness in the Christian sense of the word, because I'm made for it by a great God.
SPEAKER_01Which which greatness means to be a servant, and to again be a true servant is to know your value that you're giving in service. That's why Jesus is the true servant, that's why he is the greatest.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, yeah. Do you hear that again? Like, like the confidence in in himself, not kind of unconnected from the Lord, but as one who knows how how that he's willing to do.
SPEAKER_01He knows who his daddy is, he knows his value.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. Oh man, I feel like we're just scratching the surface. So Jesus, um Lord, where we've all we've done is just kind of thrown out an idea, maybe a seed of an idea. Would you uh would you meet our listeners today, maybe even speak to them, stir something in them? Put your finger on that place in them that feels like, man, I I'm not sure I'm worth that, or maybe even I feel like what I've done disqualifies disqualifies from me from that. Would you reveal the the lies of the enemy that is have from the beginning tried to make humankind think and feel about themselves, that they are they are not beloved by you. They are not made in your image and likeness. Lord, would you restore what the enemy and what sin have taken? Would you cleanse us from the impurities in us? Help us to know what you're like, and as we see ourselves with that confident lens, Lord, uh, would you would you uh just breathe your breath in us that we might lift our eyes and thank you and thank you and thank you and worship you all the more. God, you are a good God. You don't make junk, and we worship you. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
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