Some years ago, one of my daughters was a bit sweet on a boy who lived in our local neighbourhood. At first, I thought she was just going out to play with his sisters, but then I could see that she was openly flirting with the lad even though she was only about eight years old at the time.
Whenever she saw him, she would go outside and hang around. But it wasn’t until a chance observation that I realised this boy was treating my daughter appallingly. In addition to his nasty behaviour toward her, he was using her affection to get her to do whatever he wanted. I tried talking to her about the issue, but she just couldn’t see it.
Why lectures don’t work
In the West we pride ourselves on Greek logic and rational thinking. Christians in particular are caught up in this and so we teach truth via clear explanations and facts.
But it doesn’t work.
Be honest. How many sermons can you remember? How many lectures from your parents can you remember? In fact, how many of your university lectures can you remember?
If you do remember anything then I can pretty much guarantee it is because you remember a story or illustration or you remember how you felt.
You see information is great for the mind but it doesn’t engage the soul.
Facts are dry and don’t engage the heart whereas stories draw you in and teach concepts in a much deeper way than ever “objective” facts could hope to do. This is the Hebrew way of life – sharing their collective redemption story with their children.
For example, telling their children the story of Israel’s redemption through the Passover meal (Ex 12:24-27) or telling their children the story behind the memorial stones placed by the river Jordan (Josh 4:2-7). Indeed much of the Bible is written as narrative/story of God’s interaction with people and then Jesus primarily taught truth through parables.
Stories, unlike facts, draw us in and invite our participation whether they’re true or fictional.
A great example of this is the story of the Prodigal Son (Lk 10:25-37). What more needs to be added to the narrative that would help us understand the Father’s love? It perfectly carries the message as is.
You see parables aren’t merely illustrations for the message – they are the message.
It is imperative that we let the story do its job and don’t reduce it to a moral.
Those who tell the best stories will have the most power. Many criticised C S Lewis for “wasting time” writing the Narnia books. But history tells us the power these stories have had in shaping and inspiring people.
Facts and warnings weren’t reaching my daughter and so I needed something else that would communicate the danger of giving her affection to someone who was mistreating her.
So I made up a story called “The Princess and the Crocodile” where a princess who loves animals wants a crocodile but her father refuses saying it won’t be a good pet because it won’t love her back. So she decides to go to the river and…well, let’s just she gets in a sticky situation…
This opened her eyes to the reality of her situation and now five years later, I’ve expanded the tale, and have released it as an ebook to help other parents teach their children to realise how precious their love is. It is my prayer that it will help children to only give their heart to those who will value it.
Now in the third year of my blog and things have only got more honest as I continue to share the revelation I have received my journey into sexual wholeness and to my true identity as a child of God and how that works out in my roles as a godly husband and father.
I can only continue to express my gratitude for those who handle my vulnerable posts with care and give me encouraging feedback and messages of support. Thank you so much.
So in order from least to most views here are the top ten posts of the year:
This vulnerable post spoke of a period of depression I went through, how I sought to worship God in the midst of it and how He brought me through. (124 views)
Despite not being written in the last year, organic search traffic has led to this entry into the top 10. It’s a very quick overview of how we have got mixed up, particularly in appreciating the goodness of our god given sexuality. (124 views)
This post looks at how God designed male and female to embody his polar characteristics of (masculine) transcendence and (feminine) immanence. So that together male and female give the full image of God. (173 views)
There is much pressure on the church to change the image of God. This post builds on our understanding of what masculine and feminine mean and therefore why God is expressed as principally masculine and we are feminine in relation to Him, even though both male and female are in His image. (331 views)
A follow up to my original post (and number 2 on this list), this one talks about how viewing women as mothers, sisters and daughters in Christ can transform relationships and put to death lust. (376 views)
The third entry from a previous year that is picking up a lot of organic traffic. In this vulnerable post I share the difference between worldly solutions to lust with a godly approach which has helped me. (1,672 views)
A guest post from Joshua D Jones on the need to develop godly friendships across the gender divide to experience the fullness of Christ’s body. (2,783 views)
Honourable mentions
The fourth older post (and last year’s top post) that is still receiving a lot of organic traffic is this one on recognising how bad behaviour is often an immature gifting that needs to be directed to its true purpose (112 views).
Four posts from 2017 that got bumped off this list due to traffic to older posts were:
After reading the exceptional book Forbidden Friendships it is my absolute pleasure to have the author, Joshua D Jones, guest post on the topic of whether Christian men and women can ever be friends:
Having close friendships with members of the opposite gender is healthy, biblical and important for spiritual growth. Sadly, in the name of integrity, some churches construct walls that keep us from meaningful brother-sister friendships. These divisions are neither biblical nor in line with church history at its best. And contrary to their promise of safety, adhering to them actually puts us at greater risk of sexual immorality, not less.
Many churches employ the terms “brother” and “sister”—but they are often empty of any real meaning. Some now teach that men and women should never be close friends, believing that mixed friendships will lead into sexual sin or “emotional” affairs. Others may admit that men and women can share friendship—but then they let it die the death of a thousand qualifications. One well-known church website boasts of how none of the church staff ever “has lunch with someone of the opposite sex” or “rides alone in the car with someone of the opposite sex.” Boundaries abound. Sadly, though these rules have become commonplace over the last 20 years, adhering to them does not appear to have made us any purer.
God designed us male and female. We need each other. Marriage and family are not the only places this need should be expressed. If that were the case, single people would be helplessly cut off from the love and fellowship mixed friendship brings. And let’s be honest: we often don’t know what to do with the singles in our midst. In other centuries, Christian celibacy was viewed as a gift and a symbol of the coming kingdom of God. Jesus was single. Paul was both single and thankful for it. Now we pray for single people in hopes they find the magical one and only – giving them advice that is more Hollywood than Holy Word.
In response to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, various high-profile scandals – and the recent changes in marriage laws – many Christians have gotten defensive about marriage. It is right for us to defend the Biblical doctrines of marriage. But in doing so we have exalted the relationship to a godlike status – promising it can fulfil every social and emotional need. In the process, friendship – an institution that was once sacred to Christians – has taken a far back seat to marriage, out of fear that a friend might compete with a spouse. Friendships with the same gender are often neglected, and mixed friendships are seen as taboo.
My wife cannot fulfil the role of all of the sister/ mother relationships that my soul needs. Neither can I replace all of the brother/ father relationships that God may have for my wife in the church. We are not called to be a gathering of tightly defined families for God. We are called to be THE Family of God. It’s true that we must avoid putting ourselves in situations that bring about strong temptation – with either gender. And, yes, cross sex friendships can have pitfalls that we must be wise to avoid. We are naïve if we pretend that our fallen nature always makes this easy. But the possibility of something good being abused or misused is not a valid excuse for avoiding the good thing altogether.
Our new integrity rules are counter-productive because we have genuine needs for healthy male-female relationships. If we don’t get those needs met in healthy ways, we make ourselves vulnerable to seeking them out in unhealthy ways. The man who receives holy female affirmation from sisters in Christ is less likely to search for unholy female affirmation on a computer screen or and improper relationships. The woman who has godly fathers and brothers in the church caring for and encouraging her is less likely to be looking for ungodly masculine love through erotica and illicit interactions. By separating ourselves from healthy interaction with the opposite sex, we are not farther from sin but more open to it.
Contrary to what Freud taught, we can live happily without sex. But we can’t live happily without intimacy. Paul instructs Timothy, “Talk to younger men as you would to your own brothers. Treat older women as you would your mother, and treat younger women with all purity as you would your own sisters” (1 Tim 5:2). The church is to be a place where father, mother, sister, brother, aunt and uncle relationships can flourish – across biological, generational, and gender lines.
Joshua D. Jones tweets, reads, prays, and smokes pipe tobacco in his yellow arm chair in Therfield, England. He enjoys his family and meeting up with his best friends for coffee, food, and conversations about everything and nothing. He gets to pastor Therfield Chapel – a delightful church full of fun and ferocious saints. He frolics in fields of nouns, verbs, and alliterating adjectives over at his blog, sanitys-cove.com.
In addition to his book, Forbidden Friendships, he has just released Elijah Men Eat Meat – a book of short but strong readings for young men based on the life of Elijah.
Last night Hugh Hefner, founder of the Playboy empire, died aged 91.
Many in the media are mourning his loss as he was someone who “advocated free speech, civil rights and sexual freedom” and many men are joking that it’s the only death in history where no one will say “he’s in a better place now”. This is despite the appalling way he treated some of the women in his ‘care’ that girls like, Izabella St James and Holly Madison, are only now starting to reveal.
What are we, as Christians, to make of this man?
Too often we are quick to condemn and despise him for the way he has led so many astray. So much so, that the magazine was losing about $3m annually as its content pales in comparison to what is now available online.
The truth is slightly less black and white. It’s like the parents cursing the next generation for “going off the rails” whilst ignoring that they raised them.
Both Hugh Hefner and his contemporary Alfred Kinsey were raised in Strict Methodist Homes. Kinsey went on to publish “Sexual behaviour in the human male” in 1948 which contained biased research and promoted his view that delayed sexual experience was psychologically harmful and Hefner started Playboy in 1953 and donated millions of dollars to change sex laws and fought a series of cases that lead eventually to Rowe vs Wade and legalised abortion.
In Hefner’s “Christian” upbringing, sex was taboo—the body inherently tainted and “sinful.” Hefner, says that “There was absolutely no hugging or kissing in my family” and so he started Playboy magazine as “a personal response to the hurt and hypocrisy of our puritan heritage.”
You can see the hurt of this expressed in this quote from him in Playboy, Jan 1974:
“The Puritans thought they could simply repress man’s sexual nature, and they reaped a whirlwind as a result. Their code of sexual morality — which became America’s — was nothing more than a set of rules laid down by people who believed that all pleasure was suspect.”
In fact his parents were simply continuing the long tradition that has plagued the history of sexuality in the Church which says sex is holy but it is not good.
What is the consequence of this repression of the goodness of sexuality. Well, as Christopher West puts it so eloquently in his excellent book “Fill These Hearts“:
“A person can starve himself for only so long before the choice becomes clear: either I find something to eat, or I’m going to die…That’s why the culture’s “fast-food gospel” – the promise of immediate gratification through indulgence of desire – inevitably wins large numbers of converts from the “starvation diet gospel”. I don’t know about you, but if the only two choices are starvation or greasy chicken nuggets, I’m going for the nuggets”
The children rebelled and said sex is good and not holy.
Neither one is correct but we flip-flop between repression and rebellion.
Why is this? CS Lewis puts his finger on the cause:
“[The devil] always sends errors into the world in pairs–pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors.”
We as Christians need to get the balance right – it’s so tempting to repeat the same mistakes of our parents and their parents before them, especially as this world becomes more depraved.
Our God given sexuality, like fire, is powerful. But just like a fire if we don’t light it then the house gets cold and people crave warmth from anything and if we light it outside of the fireplace then we’ll burn our house down.
We must teach our children that our God given sexuality is both goodandholy and give them a vision that is so much brighter and purer than anything the world has to offer.
Hugh Hefner, I’m sorry that we preached a gospel that wasn’t a gospel at all but only man-made rules that seem wise but are powerless to bring any change to what we feared (Col 2:20-23). I’m sorry we then condemned you when you rebelled against one lie and embraced another. I’m sorry we preached one thing in public but did another in private and never owned up to our faults but kept it all hidden. Forgive us.
I also recommend Christopher West’s compassionate post on this topic.
In the film Jerry Maguire, Jerry (played by Tom Cruise) has a revelation about what was wrong with the sports agency company he works for. He writes this in a manifesto which he distributes to all employees. However, the management refuses to accept the suggestions and he loses his job.
Last week a Google employee, James Damore, noticed what was wrong with Google’s efforts to get more women working there and realised how they could make changes to their environment to improve diversity. He wrote a memo to all employees. However, the management refused to accept the suggestions and he lost his job.
What was it that they didn’t like?
Well he dared to mention that men and women are different (and backed it up with extensive research).
God made men and women different to embody His masculine and feminine attributes. One of the main characteristics that I wrote about in this post is that men embody the masculine transcendent nature of God (outward focussed – doing, taking action, risk taking, creating, initiating, giving, concerned with form (roles)). Whereas women embody the feminine immanent nature of God (inner directed – being, sustaining, safety, nurturing, responding, receiving, concerned with relationship).
This means that only together do men and women make the full image of God.
This was part of the wisdom of God to ensure that men and women need each other as each has blind spots. His design was that we honour those differences and create a unity of diversity just like God is a tri-unity.
Satan, who is the anti-Christ, seeks to distort the image of Christ – who is the perfect image of God (Col 1:15). Adam and Eve, who were already the perfect image of God (Gen 1:27), were tempted to think that by abandoning God they could become like God (Gen 3:4-5). They sought to create their own image apart from God.
The consequence of this was the relationship between God and man and between man and woman was broken. The differences that were meant to unite us now divide us.
Instead of loving women as Christ loves the church (Eph 5:25) and instead of using their positions to serve others like Christ served us (Mt 20:26-28) they made women feel inferior. They no longer valued part of the image of God.
It is no surprise that women rose up against this mistreatment. However, instead of fighting against the cause (Satan, sin and the brokenness that came from these) and therefore seeking to reclaim and restore the image of God – they created another false image.
“Contrary to the world’s view, however, the ‘battle of the sexes’ is not between the man and the woman, one trying to dominate the other – but rather between God and the self-centred desires of the ‘flesh’ in both man and woman.” Gordon Dalbey
Since gender had been used to divide people then women figured that removing gender differences would imply equality and remove division and create unity. So they put forth the view that all differences (other than reproduction) between the sexes were merely socially constructed.
However any unity created outside of Christ is a false unity – it is partnering with the anti-Christ and so presents a false image of God*. It also rejects the expression of differences that glorify God (and can also demonise masculine traits such as competitiveness).
It is not unity but uniformity. It pays lip-service to diversity but as the reaction to the google memo shows, it is incredibly intolerant of any view other than its own.
The flip side to the uniformity view is that:
“If two people were exactly alike, one of them would be unnecessary.”
And one of the out workings of this logic has worked its way out in men being seen as unnecessary for raising children which children have paid a terrible price.
However, in Christ “There is neither … male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28). Together our differences make up the Body of Christ. Together our differences display the image of God to our children and to society. Together we are co-workers and co-heirs bringing the Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
From a business point of view, which was the reasoning behind the Google memo (and which some have dubbed the Google manifesto), valuing the contribution that both men and women bring will help businesses to thrive.
Each brings something different, each can see the others blind spots. For example, men tend to be goal-orientated but on its own they can lack people-orientation and end up with an ends justify the means approach. Women tend to be people-orientated rather than goal-orientated and so can call out this blind-spot. However, they tend to see and respond to the immediate needs rather than the long-term issues and so men can call out this blind-spot. Together they will achieve more. Which sounds Kingdom to me.
However, the flip side of having differences which add to the business is that these differences will mean that gender parity will not occur:
As Christians instead of getting caught up in these arguments, let us instead celebrate and honour the differences that God has given in men and women and together go build the Kingdom. To the glory of God. Amen.
In this second post in a series, I’m going to look at one of four false identities that the Father had to remove as part of my journey to wholeness and discovering who I am in Christ.
***CONTENT WARNING*** This is a vulnerable post about my journey to sexual wholeness and may not be appropriate for minors nor for those of a sensitive nature.
I have been honest about my struggles so that others who were trapped in the same lies of shame can also find freedom and release. Please handle with care.
False identity #2: My identity is in my sin
Hello my name is John and I’m addicted to porn.
The first time I said those words was like a thunderbolt of revelation. I knew my life had spiralled out of control but confessing that I was addicted was a bitter truth that had taken years to face up to and finally confront.
The first step of the 12 step program used in alcoholic anonymous and other recovery programs based on it is:
We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviours, that our lives had become unmanageable.
A brief history of my addiction (content warning)
It took over 30 years to get to this point. From an innocent fascination with scantily clad women in the lingerie section of home shopping magazines grading up to softporn magazines when I was 18 and old enough (and sometimes brave enough) to buy them.
They were my escape from my life which was full of abuse and empty of love. It might have been an illusion to think these images were interested in me – but the illusion was better than the reality.
Encounters with the Holy Spirit and meeting my wife were transformational and I was free for some time.
But then the internet.
Porn became accessible without even having to leave the house. I spent hours searching for images to escape the stress of my job and the shame built as I couldn’t tell my wife just how much I had let her down. So I dumped it on my wife and made everything her fault. As our marriage headed for the rocks, things got worse as online video became a reality and a more powerful pull. I started looking at porn at work and even got caught by a co-worker. I reached out for help and had filters installed on my machines but I couldn’t talk about it in any depth with my “personal pastor” as he found the whole thing bizarre that I would do anything like that. I received healing for many of my childhood wounds and began to learn who I was in Christ but the addiction was so strong it often felt like I had no choice. It became a habit where I was looking for porn online (despite the filters) every day and masturbating every day. “It can’t get worse than this” I though.
I was wrong.
I was so used to “normal” porn that to get the fix I needed stronger fix and so I started watching worse and worse. Each time I would feel physically sick but soon that would subside and it became a new normal. I kept trying to reach out to the men in my church asking if anyone else struggled. No-one admitted they had a problem. In addition, they were upset that I had even mentioned that at a men’s meeting. Eventually, I found one man who was not shocked and helped me fine tune my filter on my computer.
But my understanding of who I was in Christ was weak and so I still felt powerless against the addiction. This belief led me to secretly buy new laptops to use or to use keyloggers to steal the filter password from my mentor.
The shame grew – how could I admit to my mentor and my wife each time I did something like this again.
It was then I discovered recovery groups with xxxchurch.com
After so long, I finally had a community of men who were Christians and who were open about their struggles.
It was with this band of brothers that I could finally fully open up about where I was and receive God’s light into some very dark places.
I sin or I am the sin?
However, it was a short step in my journey from saying I was addicted to saying I was an addict.
But this is a very big difference in my identity.
One says I have a problem, the other says I am the problem.
I had defined myself by my sin not by who I was in Christ.
Whilst admitting I had a problem was liberating, saying I was the problem was a cage.
You see confessing that we have sinned sins brings healing (Jas 5:16) whereas saying we are the sin brings shame.
Shame says this is who I am and nothing can change it.
Like Adam and Eve, shame leads us to hide God and cover ourselves up.
I remember being walked through the story of the prodigal son through prayer ministry and I couldn’t embrace the Father. I felt I was too dirty.
How do we cover our shame? In my life I have sought to cover my shame through five ways:
Religion – I will cover myself in good works to try to counteract the shame I feel inside
Transference – I will put my shame on other people and say it’s their fault that I am like this
Rebellion – I am the problem, I am rubbish therefore I act rubbish – I live out my identity of sin
Self-harm – I am the problem therefore I will punish myself
Distraction – I will try to drown out the voice of shame with sensuality (eg drugs, alcohol) or busyness (eg TV, gaming)
Dealing with shame
We don’t need to cover our shame because Jesus has dealt with shame fully at the cross.
You see, the thing they don’t tell you in Sunday School is that the Roman method was to crucify people naked as a final humiliation. Jesus was shamed to take our shame.
This is symbolised in the Day of Atonement – there was a sacrifice to deal with the punishment that our sin deserves (propitiation) and there was a scapegoat that was sent out into the desert to symbolise our shame being taken away (expiation).
Jesus was the fulfilment of the Day of Atonement – he took the punishment our sins deserve (Isa 53:4-5) but he also bore the shame of our sins (Heb 12:2; Rom 10:11).
“As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” Ps 103:12
This is true even if the shame you feel came from someone doing something to you. Jesus was innocent but was shamed by others.
Our shame only leads us to withdraw from God, but never does it lead God to withdraw from us.
God came to Adam and Eve in the Garden after they sinned – it was them that hid from Him.
In the story of the prodigal son, it was the Father who shamed himself by running and exposing his legs (which in that culture was a really big deal) to embrace his son. Furthermore, he bore the shame of what everyone would have said about his son’s behaviour.
In Jesus, God stepped down into our world to meet us in our circumstances and our messes. In the words of Corrie Ten Boom, “there is no pit that Christ is not deeper still”.
Just like in the story of the prodigal son, God doesn’t wait for us to get home and “get it right” before He loves us. We just have to turn to Him – that is repentance – and he comes running to us even while we are far off.
That’s why Jesus accepted the shame – because of the joy set before him (Heb 12:2) – the joy of seeing sinners repenting (Lk 15:7,10) and expanding the Kingdom (Lk 10:21).
But there’s more.
Cleansed and made righteous
God not only deals with the punishment our sin deserves and takes our shame taken away, He also makes us righteous:
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21)
Just as in the story of the prodigal son, when the Father meets us he covers our nakedness in a robe – that robe of righteousness is Christ:
“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Gal 3:26-27)
God looks at us and sees Christ.
This was foreshadowed in the sacrifice system.
When a Jew brought a lamb as a sin offering, the priest didn’t look the Jew – he looked at the lamb.
If the lamb was without blemish or defect then it was acceptable (egLev 22:21).
Similarly, God doesn’t look at us for perfection, He looks at His Son – the Passover Lamb (1 Cor 5:7) who was without blemish or defect (1 Pet 1:19) and so God is satisfied (Jn 1:29).
It’s not about us – it’s about Jesus.
That’s why in the story, the father stops his son just before he says “I am no longer worthy to be called your son”.
It’s true, we’re not worthy – but Jesus is worthy for “while we were sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8) – in fact whilst we were his enemies (Rom 5:10). We didn’t love him or pursue him first. God initiated “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10).
There’s no way we can earn our salvation – that’s why it is a free gift (Eph 2:8).
The Father sees who we are in Christ as our life is now hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:3). And since Christ is now seated at the right hand of the Father (Eph 1:20) we too are seated in heavenly places (Eph 2:6).
This is the reality.
Living from our new identity in Christ
That’s why we’re told to set our hearts on things above (Col 3:1-4) as that is where our life, our true identity is.
This is also why we’re told to put to death all the things that belong to our old nature (Col 3:5) and throw off the sin that easily entangles (Heb 12:1) – as it’s no longer part of us. It isn’t who we are any more.
Danny Silk in his excellent book “Culture of Honour” says that he once stepped on a nail which went through his foot but never did he think “I’m a nail!” Similarly as a child of light if we discover darkness inside us – we don’t then say we are darkness. That is as silly as saying “I’m a nail!” We were once in darkness but now we are children of the light and so we live as children of the light (Eph 5:8). God has dealt with our sin powerfully and has made us righteous. We live from that reality – yes we might sin but it’s no longer natural (1 Jn 5:18) – we’re going to fall into righteousness not into sin.
Human children will physically become like their parents not through their own efforts but naturally because of their DNA.
This is a shadow of the spiritual reality that because we have God’s seed in us we will naturally become like Jesus and stop sinning .
No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God (1 Jn 3:9).
That’s why it is fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23) – it’s something that grows naturally as we live by the Spirit not the flesh (Rom 8:5-13) and keep in step with what the Spirit is doing in our lives (Gal 5:25).
The battle for our new identity
That’s why Satan will try to get us to fix our eyes on ourselves, on our sin.
Because as soon as we take our eyes off of Christ, things in the natural will look hopeless. So either we will mistakenly try to fix things ourselves through rules (which are powerless to bring about any change, see Col 2:20-23, and will just result in us becoming proud Pharisees or) or we will give up. Either way we won’t be living as a loved son seated in heavenly places.
But more than that, Satan wants us to fix our eyes on our sin so that, we will stop running the race as we doubt that we can do anything. Whereas God has made us co-workers with Him (eg2 Cor 6:1) planned good works for us to do (Eph 2:10).
This is why we need we are told to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith (Heb 12:2 NASB). That’s who were are and we are becoming who we truly are. The Spirit is working in us (Phil 2:13) will finish the work Christ started in us (Phil 1:6). We just have to keep in step with the spirit (Gal 5:25), we will be transformed from glory into glory into the likeness of Christ (2 Cor 3:18) until at last we will be like Him when we finally meet Him face to face (1 Jn 3:2).
Summary
You are not your sin. You are a beloved son/daughter who has been forgiven and made righteous in Christ and welcomed to your true home. Receive His love, receive His embrace that is dependent on His love not your ability. Enter now into the party he has thrown for you (Lk 15:23), hear His songs of joy sung over you (Zeph 3:17) and draw strength from them (Neh 8:10). Let His love transform you:
“Of course not!” I hear you say, “After all, every good and perfect gift is from above” (James 1:17).
Would you curse a gift that God has given your children?
Again I’m sure you would say no.
But the truth is, we often do.
Our bodies are gifts from God.
“Ah yes John, but sin has entered the world and brought sickness”
True, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the correct functioning of our bodies as designed by God. Specifically I’m talking about periods and nocturnal emissions.
How often do ladies complain about their periods and say to their daughters: “You’re so lucky you haven’t got them yet!”
That is cursing our daughters. We are giving them a fear of becoming women. We are also telling them that God has made something horrible. That God is not good.
How often do us men say nothing to our sons about nocturnal emissions? How often do we leave them confused and feeling ashamed of this natural function?
We are cursing our sons. We are letting them think bad of something good. We are letting shame infect their sexuality – which causing them to either embrace shame as an identity or to reject their sexuality as horrible. Neither is blessing God’s gift to them.
We need to celebrate our children becoming women and men. We need to help them embrace God’s calling (which includes their bodies) for their lives.
But how can we do this?
As I have mentioned before the first principle* is to affirm the goodness of our bodies.
For my daughters I would have a conversation something like this:
“Would you put a new baby in a cot with dirty old sheets?”
To which my daughters would reply “Of course not!”
“Absolutely. We always give a new baby fresh clean sheets. In the same way, every month your body changes the sheets of your womb to get ready for a new baby. It throws away the old ones which come out of your ‘gina (our abbreviation for vagina) as a period.”
In addition, I want to mark their first period as a special moment in their life. And so we talk about when they have their first period daddy will take them out to a restaurant of their choice to celebrate. We often talk about this and discuss where they might go and what they might choose to eat. It creates such an anticipation in them and last week I had the pleasure of talking the second of my daughters out for her meal. She had such a blast and I have never seen anyone eat quite so much.
For my sons I would have a conversation something like this:
“Suppose you’ve got a brand new phone with GPS tracking to use on a mountain climb. Would you check that it works before you start your journey or would you just turn up and try it on the day?”
To which my son would (hopefully) reply “I’d check it.”
“Absolutely, checking it works is a good strategy to ensure that we don’t have problems on the day. In the same way, God has designed your body to check that your willy works for when you are married. When you’re sleeping it tests it out by making sperm and shooting it out. This means that you’ll wake up with sticky stuff in your pants but it’s a sign that your body is working well.”
In addition, I want to mark what could be a source of shame as a special moment in their life on their journey to becoming a man. However, my eldest son who likes food says he’d much prefer to go to a skate park to celebrate. So be it.
But as Christians we can go further than just celebrating our bodies as good. For we are made in God’s image and so our bodies are also holy. And this was the second principle.
You see everything was made to glorify God and so that means that our bodies tell us something about the nature of our God. The aspect I want to focus on here is how our bodies reflect the redemption story.
Jesus death has brought cleansing for our sins. Specifically it is His blood that cleanses us for “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Heb 9:22).
This is the first part of our new birth as Christians – we are forgiven and made holy so that we are a fit dwelling for the Holy Spirit.
This is the meaning of a woman’s period. The shedding of blood symbolises Christ’s blood being shed to bring forgiveness of our sins. In fact, the Hebrew word for female (nĕqebahH5347) comes from the root word meaning pierced (naqabH5344) and we know that Christ was pierced for our transgressions (Is 53:5).
Every month women are given a physical reminder of the cost of our redemption – which is easy to lose sight of in our sanitised world far removed from animal sacrifice or killing animals for food.
After the period is complete a Jewish woman would have their mikveh, a ritual bath as the rite of purification. This is our baptism by water symbolising our repentance and death to sin and our old way of life.
The second part of our new birth as Christians is that we are born again of the Spirit (Jn 3:3). Just like God breathed his breath = Spirit into Adam to give life to his mortal body, so too Christ’s Spirit is given to us to give us new life. We receive Christ’s imperishable seed† (1 Pet 1:23) we become Children of God (Jn 1:12-13; 1 Jn 3:1,9) and ultimately receive new imperishable bodies from that seed (1 Cor 15:38, 42,44).
This is the meaning of the man’s sperm. The Greek word Paul and Peter use for seed is sperma (G4690). The ejaculation is symbolising the new life that Christ gives us. And in the same way that children grow up in the image of their parents (Gen 5:3) by genetics and can’t do anything to change that, we grow up into the likeness of God through the fruit of this same spirit (Gal 5:22-23) – it is a fruit – a natural consequence of being his children. In fact, the Hebrew word for male (zakarH2145) comes from the root word meaning remember (zakarH2142). It can mean “to mark (so as to be recognised)” which would reflect the fact that the Spirit marks us out as Christians, but it can also mean “a call to remembrance” which isn’t just a mental ascent but a call to action – which is why it is used when referring to circumcision as well as man or God taking action when they remember something. This speaks of how faith without deeds is dead – we are called to live out our new life. We are called to like our true Heavenly Father‡.
In the same way that only together do male and female make up the complete image of God (Gen 1:27), only together do they symbolise the full story of our salvation.
Father, forgive us for the ways we have disparaged our bodies because we have lost sight of the true meaning. We renounce and break off any curse that we have put on our bodies or our children’s bodies. We bless our bodies in Jesus’ name and receive them as a good and holy gift from you. Help us to celebrate the gift of our bodies, let us cry out to you in praise for how they speak to us of the forgiveness and new life you offer us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
*Click here to be taken to the overview of how to teach your children godly sexuality.
‡I am aware that there are many other nuances in these Hebrew words but I hope this gives a glimpse into the richness of the meaning of periods and sperm.
In our previous post on this topic we looked at three steps to dealing with lust:
Acknowledge it, but realise that the woman is a shadow of who our hearts are really looking for.
Realisewe have a higher calling: we men are made to love women sacrificially like Christ loved the church (Eph 5:25), we are called to give (love) not take (lust).
Act according to our calling by praying blessing on the woman we see. For example “Father, I thank you for this beautiful woman. I thank you that you have made her to be loved and cherished. I ask that you would pour out your blessing on her, that she would become aware of your presence, that she would find her value in your love and not how she looks….”
In this second post on this topic we look at how to prevent lust entering into our relationships with women in our Church.
For three years I led an organic church which ministered to those broken by traditional church. I had the honour of serving a number of young beautiful women. With one woman in particular she needed much prayer, counselling and support on her journey to wholeness and I soon realised that an attraction was growing within me.
This was not surprising due to the amount of time I was spending with her and the prayer counselling process which forms a bond between spirits. It was becoming distracting and was starting to interfere with my ability to serve her. But yet I was praying for her like I mentioned above. So what was I to do?
There’s this great passage in 1 Timothy that holds the key:
“Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.” 1 Tim 5:1-2 (emphasis mine)
We were family! As someone much younger and in my care, she was my spiritual daughter and I was her father. Once I saw this truth it started to change how I related to her. I started relating as a father loving his daughter rather than a man relating to an attractive woman. I started calling her my “daughter-in-Christ” to help outwork this view into our relationship and my mind.
The desire that I had felt inside me began to be transformed now I knew where it was to be focussed. The sexual energy that God had given me as a man was now channelled to the correct godly destination. No longer was it being hijacked by the worldly view that it must always result in physical gratification.
It was such a delight to love her as a father and seek her mature into a woman of God and the delight and pride I felt at her wedding to a godly man was overwhelming.
The phrase “brothers and sisters” occurs more than 100 times in the New Testament which speaks of the reality of our new relationships in Christ. In addition, Paul called Timothy his son (1 Cor 4:17, 1 Tim 1:2a; 1:18, 2 Tim 1:2a; 2:1, Tit 1:4, Phile 1:10) as did Peter call Mark (1 Pet 5:13). Paul also treated the Thessalonians as his children (1 Thess 2:11).
So may you start calling the women in your church your sisters (or if you’re much older like I was, your daughters) and see your relationships transformed as your sexual desires find their true purpose in Christ. In Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
I was walking with my youngest son to the garage to pick up our car from its service when he asked:
“Dad, are willy’s rude?” “Not at all – God made them so they can’t be rude.” “But when I say willy at school I get told off. So they must be rude.”
I could see the logic. I also had to do some on the spot thinking….
“OK. What’s the coolest present you can imagine?”
He thought for a while and then replied “A minion’s pizza!”
I have no idea what that is – and frankly neither did he – but it combined two things that he loves together so it must be cool.
“So imagine one of your friends gives you a minion’s pizza and you throw it on the floor. And your friend says ‘That’s so rude!’” “So is a minion’s pizza rude?” “NO!!!!” “But they said it was. So it must be rude.” “It’s not rude” “Well why did they say it was then?” “Because I of what I did with it.” “Exactly. God made willys and so they’re not rude – but you can do rude things with them like talk about them in a bad way. So just like we treat a special cool gift like a minion’s pizza in a special way – we need to treat our special cool gift of willys in a special way too.”
This kind of conversation captures the two principles of teaching godly sexuality – we affirm it’s goodness and we affirm its holiness (and also here and here).
Just affirming one of these two would lead to disaster whether that be worldly hedonism or religious repression. So it’s important to express both.
I hope this conversation proves helpful – if you want to add your thoughts below then please do so – or if you want a godly answer to a question your child has asked then do also comment below.
The wife was only about 13 or 14 and was naïve and inexperienced.
She married a husband who was much older than her and was a manual labourer who only just managed to keep them off the bread line.
They were so poor they couldn’t even afford a goat that is the traditional celebration meal for their first child.
For most of their life they lived in a “dodgy” town which the rest of their country looked down upon. In addition, due to an incident they became social outcasts in their community.
This incident also nearly caused the whole marriage to be called off – in fact the husband had to be persuaded before he’d even consider going ahead.
So clearly the couple had weaknesses and lived in an area and environment that wasn’t brilliant for bringing up kids. Their parenting wasn’t much better.
They lost their eldest child and only noticed after a whole day! It took a further three days of searching before they found him!
In addition, they didn’t get their eldest child – in fact, they thought he had lost his mind and said as much in public and tried to take charge of him.
These two incidents show some serious weaknesses as parents and I question anyone who thought they were suitable for adoption. Yet this was the couple God entrusted with His beloved Son.
These were the imperfect parents who were raising His perfect Son.
And just like they messed up we are going to mess it up.
Now don’t get me wrong. This isn’t going to be one of those motivational posts that say “don’t worry about it – God has trusted you with your children so you must have what it takes and everything will be fine.” That would do you and your children a disservice.
We are going to mess up yet God still calls us to be parents. How do we move forward in such a contradiction?
For example, I regularly say “I’m sorry I messed up and lost my temper. Daddy God is so much more patient than your earthly daddy. Will you pray for me that God will make me more like Him.”
Similarly, when my children mess up, I forgive them and pray with them that the Father would transform them too – we are all on a journey together of being transformed from glory to glory.
Whilst saying sorry is helpful there are still consequences of our mistakes that a sorry can’t fix. But, we have a God who can redeem our mistakes. There are so many times I have prayed for my children as they slept that he would undo the damage of my mistakes and He has been so gracious. He delights in restoring all things and transforming them into the likeness of His perfect Son. Despite the illnesses, brokenness and dysfunctions my wife and I have walked through our children are becoming whole.
“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only – and that is to support the ultimate career. ” CS Lewis
So when you mess up and the Accuser starts giving you grief don’t seek solace in platitudes – seek the forgiveness that is freely available through Jesus’ blood and the transforming power that is freely available for you and your children through our union with Him.
Father, thank you that there is grace. Thank you that everything we need is available in You. Give me my daily bread for parenting my children and forgive my sins as I forgive my children’s sins. For Yours is the power to transform situations and the glory that comes out of your redemption, for ever and ever. Amen.
If you want a light-hearted look at Mary and Joseph as parents I did a short skit on this:
The official blog of godlysexuality.com 