278 - The Four Pillars Of Sexual Love w/ Dr. Juli Slattery

Welcome to the Pure Desire Podcast, helping you take back your life from unwanted sexual behavior and betrayal trauma. Happy day to you, listener. I am your host, Trevor Windsor, and you're listening to episode 278 of the Pure Desire Podcast. You're joining me, as always, is my co host, Nick Stumbo.

Ah.

Love is in the air.

Is that just like a standard saying or is that from something specific?

You know, that is a great question. I actually googled it.

Oh.

And found any number of places where that phrase could be used. But, yeah, I just was thinking of a more general phrase maybe, because in particular today in the state of Oregon, for those of you that live here, you know, October 31st, it is the darkest, wettest day we've had, like, since last winter. And so I'm feeling the need to, like, pump myself up, because rain and darkness is actually what's in the air here.

Yeah.

But if I say love is in the air and then it ties in today to today's episode, that just, you know, sounds much more hopeful.

It is gross outside. Like, let's just be very. Like, you literally look outside. It's disgusting. So, yeah, definitely need some love. And listen, like you said, someone's bringing in the love for us today, and this episode is gonna be a little unique. We've done some like this before, but we are actually pulling a breakout session from this year's the 2022 Pure Desire Summit that Dr. Julie Slattery taught.

Yeah, we were so excited to have Dr. Slattery with us. And we love Julie and her approach. I mean, because she's so thoroughly biblical, but also just thoroughly versed on all things love and intimacy and sex. And, you know, one of the things I think she really helps us develop is that, you know, not all sex is love, and obviously not all love has to be sex. But I think in a lot of married couples lives, they kind of just put the two together that, well, we're having sex, there's love. But I think what she really unpacks is how we can have an understanding of the sexual union that a married couple has to make sure that it is a part of their loving connection and not just something physical that they happen to do together once in a while. So I think she has great understanding and insight. And if anyone appreciates this podcast, which I'm sure they will, they'll want to pick up her new book on God, Sex, and Marriage, because I think that's an excellent resource for couples just to develop their mindset of biblical sexuality.

Absolutely. And listen, I Mean, she's using some language in her title that we use here. We like the word pillars. We tend to use that in some of our stuff. And she is going to be teaching on the four pillars of sexual love. But we want to take this opportunity to let people know that if they did not go to the summit, that there is an opportunity to purchase lifetime access.

And why wouldn't you? I mean, come on, after, if you liked today's episode, then keep in mind, there's what, like 15 more. There's sessions like this. Between the seven or eight main sessions and all the breakouts, there's just tons and tons of good content. And I think even for people who attended the summit, they would probably sit here and say, oh, you need to get those. And I will be. Because there's so much just to absorb that when you're going through the weekend, you can't possibly get it all. And I think for many of us to go back through at a later point and listen to some of our favorite sessions or being reminded of what God spoke to us, but then for those that weren't able to be there, it really becomes a way that you can kind of get some really top notch advice and input on your journey. Whether it's about where you're at as a couple or just as an individual in recovery, the topics really run the spectrum. So I think there's something in there for everyone.

Absolutely. And again, there's Jay Stringer, Julie Slattery, yourself. You spoke. I did a breakout. Robert Vandermeer, Ashley Jamison, several of our clinicians. So yeah, even Diane Robert's had a breakout as well, one of our founders. And so definitely go get this. And if you go to PureDesire.org shop, you're gonna see it listed there. So grab your lifetime access. A few things. Before we get into Julie's session, subscribe to the podcast. We're on all the major platforms. You can follow us on social mediauredesirepdmi. And this full episode will be up on YouTube. Just search Pure Desire Ministries. And with that, here is Dr. Julie Slattery session from the 2022 Pure Desire Summit titled the Four Pillars of Sexual Love.

So let me ask you to think, okay, if you, some of you have been in this situation, if you were counseling an engaged couple and they're getting ready to go on their honeymoon next week, what advice would you give them? If they're like, what advice do you have for us? What would you say? You want to shout at some answers? It's not about you. All right. Compromise. Run. Be patient. Take your time. Discover. Remove all expectations. Would you be willing to take a polygraph? Oh, my goodness. Wow. We're getting real now. Someone else up there had an answer. What was it? You forgot? You can't do better than that one, huh? Enjoy each other. All right. I'm assuming most of you are married. Are you married? Most of you okay with sex? Anything like you thought it would be when you got married, even if you had had it before you got married? Was anything? Yeah, for me, too. So I've been married to my husband for 28 years. And I remember growing up in the church, people always told me, of course, safe sex for marriage is this gift. And you don't want to open the gift until you get married. And I like gifts. You like gifts. So I couldn't wait to open up the gift. Well, we got married, we went on our honeymoon, and I thought, God, you really shouldn't have, because it wasn't the kind of gift that I thought it would be. And a few more weeks went by, and I said, God, is there a gift receipt? Can I exchange this one for, you know, something at Macy's? Because it just wasn't getting better. And I'll share more of that story in this section, in this session and the next one. But all that to say as much teaching as we might do on marriage and sexuality. I think most of us really have no clue for what we're getting into and no clue of the difficulty of what we're navigating. And you who are at this conference, in this room, you know that more than anyone. Are you willing to take a polygraph? Like, right there, it's just like, oh. Oh, my goodness. Like the pain that many of us have experienced in one way or another with this gift of sexuality. It makes us wonder, is this really a gift? And what I want to talk about in this session is, what is the gift of sex? How do we unwrap it? What is God's design for sex? Because as I shared with you in the last session, I think the biggest problem, most of us have, and we have a lot of problems, but the biggest one is we don't know how to think rightly about the gift of sexuality. And if we can't think rightly, then how do we solve problems? Even so, I use the analogy of jigsaw puzzles, because I like jigsaw puzzles. I'm one of those strange people. If you don't like jigsaw puzzles, you can't understand people like us. You're like, why would you do that? But I live in the Cleveland, Ohio area, and so there are many months of the year where we can do nothing but jigsaw puzzles. So you learn to love them. But I like to do about 2,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. And the only way I can do a jigsaw puzzle is if I have the front of the puzzle box in front of me and I have to have the picture that I'm creating. And if I have the picture that I'm creating, I can pick up any of those 2,000 pieces and I put it next to the picture and I go, okay, where does this fit? It fits somewhere here. And it gives me a frame of reference. But what I found for most couples navigating sex, we've got 2,000 pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that are all scattered around. But the problem is we have no reference point for what the picture we're meant to be creating actually is. We pick up the piece of recovery, we pick up the piece of differences, we pick up the piece of infidelity, we pick up the piece of vulnerability, and we're like, I don't know. Which is why we get into the mindset that healthy sexuality must just be about getting rid of sin, because we have no concept of what we're meant to be creating. And what I set the table for you in the first session is that God indeed does have a picture that we're meant to be creating within the gift of married sexuality. And if you're like me, this has been a gift that I am on the journey of discovering. And it has so many facets of it that I never realized. But first, what I want to do before I get to that picture is I want to look at some of the other pictures that we often try to build a sex life based on. Because whether you realize it or not, you have a picture in your head of what you think great sex is supposed to be like. And you might even pause for a minute. If you're here with your spouse, how would you just naturally answer that question? What does a great sex life look like? Go ahead and take a minute. Even at home, if you're with your spouse and answer that question, what have you learned that a great sex life is supposed to look like? I see some giggles. I see some serious looks. Polygraph woman. What is a great sex life supposed to look like? Do you have an answer? I'm calling on you. We're back in college. What do you think? Connection and emotional intimacy. All right, that's a great answer. What else did some of you come up with? Consistent. Okay, good. Mutually satisfying. You're caring for the other person during the experience. Good answer. What is that? Sacrifice. Okay, yeah, we don't hear that often. Fun. And then what does someone else say? Not being inhibited. So freedom. Right. So we're framing a picture here of what this is supposed to look like. And we've picked up through culture, we've picked up through learning, through books, through life, what we think a great sex life is supposed to look like. But if you, again, are anything like me, even if you got some of that picture on the front of the box. Right. You probably do not understand the scope of what we're meant to be creating within marital sexuality. So let's look at some of the images that we typically think represent a great sex life. The first image or the first picture on that front of the box is the picture that our culture gives us. And the culture's picture of sexuality is all about self fulfillment. It highlights, well, sex has to be good for me. It's supposed to be pleasurable, it's supposed to be fun. And yes, that's part of the picture of sex. But the culture highlights only that and says sex has to be about getting my needs met, my desires met, my fantasies met. And for sure, pornography reinforces this, thinking this picture of sex over and over and over again. And so many of you came into the marriage relationship with this picture of sex. And if you have this picture of sex, here's what you believe. Our sex life is broken if it's not always fulfilling and pleasurable. Is that true? I don't know. We'll have to find out. Have you ever believed that if it's not always fulfilling and pleasurable, something is broken? It's wrong. There's nothing good here. We also believe that sexual compatibility is very important. When I talk to single Christians, one of the things they'll often say is, how in the world am I supposed to know if I'm sexually compatible with someone? If I wait to have sex before marriage and, you know, I tell them, let me spoil it for you, you won't be. Even if you're compatible before you get married, you just are not going to be like, it's not all about sexual compatibility. But even within God's people, we have fallen for this belief that sexuality and healthy sexuality is primarily about compatibility. We're going to push on that a little bit later. We also believe from this picture that we're sexually healthy as long as the physical experience of sex is good. Have you ever believed that, like, as long as we're both climaxing, as long as we're both having fun, like, we're okay? There are a lot of Christian couples that need to be in a place like this because. But they're not here because they believe this. Like, hey, we're not really broken. Like, we're still having fun. This is good. That's an incomplete and inaccurate picture of sex. And again, to the extent that we buy the culture's influence in our lives, to the extent that we engage with things like pornography, and I would say even our media messages that reinforce this, this is the picture we'll be trying to create. If you are trying to create this picture with your sex life, you can fit about 500 of the 2000 pieces in, and the other 1500 you have no place for. And so we need a more complete picture of sex. The second picture of sex that some of us grew up with and have worked with is really a church's picture of sex. And this is my story. I was blessed to be born into a Christian family and going to church from the time I was a baby and went to Christian high school and Christian college and Christian graduate school, and boy, I knew the church's picture of sex, I thought, and it's all about rules and about duty. It's about following the biblical morality that God has laid out for us within sexuality. Some people might call this the purity culture or the purity picture of sex. Now, again, there is truth in this picture. This picture, though, will say our sex life is broken if we have sexual sin in our past. Is it true? No, not necessarily. At some level, we all have sexual sin in our past. But I hope not all of us are saying our sex life is still broken because we serve a God who can redeem anything. But there are many Christians who believe that they will consistently and always be on plan B because of what has happened in the past, because all they have heard about is the rules related to sexuality. We'll believe that you owe me sex because we're married. And unfortunately, this is a message that often gets taught and causes great harm. And we're going to look at 1 Corinthians, chapter 7 this afternoon and what that passage is actually teaching about the duty or obligation of sex. And we'll believe that we are sexually healthy as long as we avoid sin. Is that true? You know, God is not only concerned with our sexual morality, he's also concerned about our sexual maturity. And if a married couple stays married and doesn't cheat on each other and doesn't look up pornography, but they don't grow their love life together in their sexual intimacy together. Something's wrong there. And so there are a lot of people that have learned this picture of sex. And again, it covers some of the pieces, some of those 2,000 pieces, but it doesn't cover all of them. And so we need to press into, okay, well then what is God's picture of sex? And we talked a little bit about what God's picture of sex is, but let's flesh this out for particular application to the marriage relationship. God's picture of sex is all about covenant love. It's all about, again, the fact that God has given us marriage and the gift of sexuality that we would work out this metaphor that consistently reveals to us the nature of God's covenant love. Now, if you have been married for more than a decade, I want you to to think about this. Do you understand God's covenant love? Because more because of what you've experienced sexually over the last 10 years, you probably have never thought about that before. But as we look and press into this metaphor of sexuality and covenant love, you're going to be able to answer that question. And I think you're going to see, wow. You know, I have learned about God's love through the highs and the lows of everything that I've experienced within the covenant of marriage related to sexuality. Now, this is why it's important to get this. A good sex life means learning to mirror God's love to one another. That's what God says when we learn to love each other sexually like he loves us. That is the definition of a good sex life. From really a biblical perspective, if we look at the whole picture of sex, the journey toward mature love is more important than immediate pleasure. It's not about what's happening in the moment. Here's sometimes. Next week I'm going to be doing a conference for newlyweds. And one thing I want to tell them is that sex is relationally and spiritually significant, even when it's bad, even if you go through periods like my husband and I did. Of course, a decade or so of sex not working the way you thought it would. I experienced physical pain with sex for many years and didn't know what to do with that. And so sex became a burden to me. And I was consistently asking God, what are you doing here? What are you doing here? God, what is this gift? And now, with years of experience to look back on, and the more I understand God's, covenant love. I see God was doing something even through those difficult years. And I hope that you can see that too, wherever you are in the journey of healing and recovery, that the years the locusts devoured God is redeeming that God is always doing something because he's about the journey. And so what I want to do for you is flesh out this picture of sex a little bit more of what does God's covenant love have to do with our sex life? And how do we make this practical in our own relationship as well as. As we counsel and coach other people? So what I started to do was to really meditate on what is God's covenant love like? Like, if you had to describe God's covenant love through what we see in the scripture, what is it like? And I came up with four pillars of God's covenant love that we see in the Bible and how those four pillars relate directly to building a healthy sex life. And so we're going to talk about those four pillars, but let's look at them together. First, the four pillars are, first of all, covenant love has a foundation of faithfulness. Second of all, covenant love is the journey of intimate knowing. Third of all, covenant love has the spirit of sacrificial love. And fourth, covenant love involves a passionate celebration. All right. And so we're going to flesh this out for what that looks like in a sex life. And why is this important? And we've kind of danced around it a little bit in some of the sessions before this. But what are we working toward? Not just what are we moving away from in your marriage, in the marriages that you're helping, what is the vision for wholeness? Is it just that we're mutually satisfied? Is it just that we stop breaking God's rules? Or is there something richer and fuller that God is meant to be working us towards? And I think that this fleshes it out. And again, this is just in my own work. And maybe you would add to it and say, there's a fifth pillar. Go for it. But this is just what I've discovered in my work and my love. And with each. And my love with God and each of these four pillars, what we're going to do is we're going to look first at the front of the picture box. What does this look like in our relationship with God? And then we're going to apply it practically to the puzzle we're creating. And how many of you do like puzzles? Okay. Yeah. Look at you guys. You're awesome. That's probably why you're at a conference on a Saturday, too, right. So when you do a puzzle, how intimately do you know that picture? Like, you know every little nook and cranny. You know it so well. You've been studying it. And that's God's design for marriage and sexuality. That as we're working on this puzzle, we're looking at every nook and cranny, and we're discovering so completely the intimacy that God has with us. You know, when I first started the ministry, authentic intimacy, my kids were younger, much younger than they are now. They were about 8, he, 12, and 14, which. Imagine being a boy that age and your mom being known as the Christian lady who talks about sex. Yeah. So they're like, mom, middle school is tough enough. Did you really have to, you know? But one of the things that I told them, and they finally get it now. I'm like, what you guys don't understand is I really don't talk about sex. I talk about God. You know, I use sex as the conversation starter because it's all about him. And I want you to see that for your own marriage. But also as, again, we work with other people that, yes, let's talk about sex. Let's get into the details, but let's always bring it back to what it's really about, which is knowing the covenant love of God. So you ready to dive into these four pillars? Okay, so the first one is the foundation of faithfulness. And in practically every marriage book that I've ever read, faithfulness is like this special chapter reserved for the end. Have you had that experience? They talk about the beauty of sex. They talk about our bodies and understanding our biology. They talked about communicating. And then towards the end, they're like special issues. Like, if faithfulness is broken, you're like, we're in the special issues. I think that's a mistake. Because if we don't have faithfulness, we have nothing. Now, let's look first at, again the picture. Our relationship with God. Our whole relationship with God is based on the fact that he's faithful. If God is not who he says he is, then we've got nothing. If we can't take God at his word, then none of this matters. Which is why over and over and over again, in the scripture, we're told about God. God's chesed his faithful love. He's unchanging. He's the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. He will not change. He will not forsake you. He will not leave you. Faithfulness is key in our relationship. With God. It's what allows us to trust. And a covenant is all about faithfulness. It's a relationship based on character. If there's no character, then there's no relationship. And that is also true of marriage, and it's true of sexuality. The most important ingredient in your sex life is your character. If you don't have that, nothing else matters. You can have the perfect body, you can have great coaching, all the tips and techniques you can communicate. But if you don't have character, you've got nothing. Now, here's the truth of it. Every marriage has a faithfulness problem. It's not just marriages where there's been pornography use or there's been an affair. Every marriage has a faithfulness problem. Why? Because we, by nature are not faithful people. We have to learn faithfulness, and we have to learn it the hard way. Now, I've been using this phrase, covenant love, and I think this is the time where we kind of need to define that a covenant relationship is different than a contract relationship. God does not have a contract with you. God, thank you that you do not have a contract with us. All right? So a contract says, I do my part, you do your part, and as long as we keep doing each other parts, we're good, right? But as soon as you don't carry your end of the bargain, like, I'm out. Every relationship that we have as human beings in our frame of reference, we start with a contract mentality, probably, except for parenting. Like, that just biologically ties us into covenant. Like, we can't really get out of it, right? But every relationship that we have by choice, friendships, a church, employment, we go with a contract mentality. We have a consumer mentality. We even talk about this in Christian dating. Wow, she's way out of your league. He's not good enough for you. You can do better. And I think the online dating world is just, boy, it's really like, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. That looks interesting. Swipe. Like you're shopping for people pornography. Again, it's all about your pleasure. Who can please you, who has the body that you like, who gives you the experience that you want? And so whether or not we realize it, even the most devout Christian is apt to go into marriage with a contract mentality. And how many of you have said or thought this, I didn't sign up for this. Come on, guys, am I the only one? We have this mentality of, if I would have known it would have been this hard, I never would have gotten married. It's Just the way it works. We go into it with that mindset of what we deserve and what we expect and what we want. And that's just us, human nature. And we even have a contract relationship in our mind with God, even though he has a covenant with us. And so we say the same things to him. If I would have known what I was signing up for, or God. You're not coming through on your end of the deal. Come on, I'm doing my part. Where are you? God wants to teach us a different kind of love, which is the kind of love he has, which is covenant love. And covenant love says, I am here not because you're pleasing me. I'm here because I promised. I'm here because I'm called to love you. Love endures all things. It believes all things, it hopes all things. Love never fails. Now, when we apply this to a sex life, we enter the bedroom again, often with this picture of contract of what do I get out of it? And as soon as I'm not getting out of it, what I want, peace out. And so we all have a faithfulness problem. We all need God to teach us what this foundation of faithfulness is like. And if you. Again, if you don't have faithfulness, you can't enjoy the other three pillars. If you don't have faithfulness, you can't have intimate knowing. You can't be that vulnerable. It's not safe enough. If you don't have faithfulness, you can't really experience mutual sacrificial love. The opposite of faithfulness really is selfishness. If you don't have faithfulness, your pleasure is going to be superficial and short lived. And so covenant love has to begin with this foundation of faithfulness. So what does faithfulness practically look like in a marriage? And how do we get there? First of all, faithfulness has this element of holy jealousy. Think about that word, jealous. Jealousy. Is it a good word in our. In our world? No. Do you know that God calls himself jealous? The Hebrew word for jealous is Elkanah. He says, I not only am jealous or feel jealous, it's one of my names. And so if God says that I'm jealous, then that there's a holiness. And God says that he's jealous. Now what does jealousy mean for God? It means you belong to me, you are my people, you were made for me. And I'm jealous for your love. And so I have a righteous anger when you wander away, when you give me lip service. But your heart is not for me, when you say all the Right things. And you come to church and you pray and you fast, but your heart is following other gods. When you worship other gods, I have a right to be angry because jealousy protects that covenant. It's an outgrowth of the covenant. If you are married, there is a healthy jealousy that you should have for one another. Now there's an unhealthy jealousy that's about control and about possession and about manipulation. That's not what we're talking about. Healthy jealousy says, we promised exclusively to one another, and that is to be protected, and that is to be guarded. And so, guys, if someone else is flirting with your wife and you're not jealous, that's a problem. If your spouse is looking at pornography and you've just kind of learned to tolerate that, that's not good. God has designed the covenant of marriage to be the only relationship where it is healthy to be jealous. I was talking to one married couple who was in the throes of tremendous brokenness when I first met them. And as a Christian couple, they had decided to have an open marriage. And the reason that they had decided to have an open marriage is largely the wife, because she grew up seeing how wounded women get when men are unfaithful. And she just decided, well, if I don't care if he sleeps around, then I won't get hurt. So as long as I'm still his first choice, as long as, you know, he can be with whoever he wants and I'll be with whoever I want. They both had addictions to pornography, and they thought, okay, well, this spares us the grief of infidelity. We'll just open the door. And as you might anticipate, their marriage began to implode. And it was never really healthy. But all the affairs, all the pornography piled up until the wife was literally at the point of being suicidal. And as she and her husband have been on this journey of recovery, she's beginning to realize the beauty of feeling jealous for her husband and seeing his jealous eyes protecting over her. And they're realizing that we never could have real intimacy without that. And so there's an element where we need to protect and understand that if God is jealous in his covenant, there is a healthy jealousy that we must and should have for one another as we express covenant within marriage. Faithfulness also looks like I'm becoming a safe person, that my heart is for you. And this is often what happens in the recovery process. Again, we've got the person who's the offender, who maybe has been looking at pornography or been acting out sexually and that individual is getting help. They're starting to realize where they have lacked faithfulness in many different levels. But many of you will attest to this, that the road for the offended spouse begins with pain and begins with trauma, and it begins with fear. But as God does his work deeper and deeper and deeper, he or she realizes, like, I've got a faithfulness issue too. Like, there's stuff in my life where I have not been a safe person. And God needs to teach me what faithfulness looks like. It's different than what my spouse is going through. But I need to be a safe person. I need to be that person that can be counted on, that has that character. And this is how marriage can flourish. And again, we only usually talk about faithfulness in the context of affairs and infidelity and pornography. But faithfulness is wide reaching. Is. Are you for each other? Can you say, like God would say to us, I will never leave you or forsake you. Not that there shouldn't be boundaries when we address problems, but my heart is faithful. I remember when my husband and I first got married. Like I said, our honeymoon did not go well. And we had saved sex for marriage, barely. And it was about four days into our honeymoon and we still were not able to have intercourse because of physical pain. And, oh, my gosh, we were so disappointed. And to make it worse, we were in this little cabin out in the middle of Tennessee. It was his parents like, vacation cabin. And there was no bed. They were supposed to deliver a new bed, and we had no bed. So we had hardwood floors and an air mattress, but my husband forgot to pack the cap for the air mattress. So we had all kinds of difficulty. It was not going well. And again, this is about or 5. And we can endure through a few days. But after a few days like that, faithfulness, it was like, what did we sign up for here? And I remember Mike and I were both disappointed. We were both angry, we were both sad. And so we went to our corners of the cabin and, you know, just didn't want to be together. And after about half an hour or so, I don't even remember what I was doing. But I looked over and Mike was reading the Bible, and I thought, well, that's probably a good sign. And then he kept reading the Bible. And then about 10 minutes later, he came over to me and he wrapped his arms around me and he said, julie, I know this isn't the way we thought our marriage would start, but I just want you to know we got our whole lives to figure this out. And I'm not going anywhere. That's faithfulness, you know, that's putting a cinder block of faithfulness in the foundation of a relationship. And we have to think about faithfulness as more than, I won't cheat on you. It's, I will continue to build trust and safety so that you can be vulnerable, so that we can enjoy each other together. And so we all need to be working on faithfulness, every single one of us. And how do we work on it? We work on it by knowing the one who is faithful, learning from that picture that we refer to consistently. Have you learned what faithfulness is because of what you've been through? Do you understand more of God's jealousy for you and how beautiful it is? Do you understand how important it is when he says, I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to leave you because of what you experience in marriage? God is revealing. The second pillar of covenant love we talked about is it's a journey of intimate knowing. This is something that I again have had to learn in my relationship with God. Your relationship with God is not a journey of obedience. Obedience is part of it. But God did not save you so that you would obey him. He saved you so that you would know him. And the whole purpose of covenant is to have intimate fellowship with God. If you've been a Christian for many years, do you know God more intimately today than you did when you first met Him? Many of you are nodding now. Let me ask you a question. Do you know him more intimately? Did you get to know him more intimately through the good times or the bad? The bad, yeah. So intimacy is forged in the valley, but it's celebrated on the mountaintop. Right? So why would the journey of sex not be that way? Many of you have been through the valleys of difficulty with sexuality. And the invitation in the valley is to know each other more intimately. It's to become vulnerable beyond just what's happening with our bodies. And this is often what happens in our relationship with God. For many years, this was true for me. I confused activity for intimacy. You know, I confused. I do my quiet time. I go to church. I serve God. I read my Bible. That's activity. Activity is meant to set the table for intimacy. But I never entered in. I never entered into knowing God. And it was probably about 12 or 15 years ago that I really started to realize. And it hit me. There's this God that I worship and I serve and I love and I obey, but I don't know Him. I don't. I don't know. Like, does he ever say my name personally? When God says that he loves the world, Yeah, I know I'm part of the world, but does he love me? Do I love him affectionately? Is he my best friend? Is he my beloved? Have you met people that talk about God this way? I met someone who talked about God that way, and it convicted me because I'm like, I don't know him like that. And I thought, well, maybe that's just for the super Christians, you know, like the Olympic A.W. tozers and Francis Chance. And, like, that's not for the rest of us. And I read something that really struck me. We have exactly as much of God as we really want. God makes himself available to be intimately known by every single one of us. But in our journey of covenant, we so often become about the activity we are meant to be doing and not the intimacy we're meant to be forging. And that is the truth with married sexuality. We focus far too much on the activity and neglect the intimate journey that we're meant to be on. If you can put up the slide of the difference between sexual activity and sexual intimacy. So sexual activity focuses on compatibility and frequency. It's all about physical attraction. I have people tell me all the time, julie, I'm not attracted to my husband anymore. What do I do? I'm not attracted to my wife anymore. Our sex life is broken. That's an activity mindset. Activity focuses on immediate pleasure. What's happening right now? Why are you not climaxing? Why can we not have fun? Why is this not working? And activity focuses on getting my needs met. God's call is not for us simply to be physically active and look at what our body's doing. He's calling us to a journey of intimacy. Intimacy is focused on learning to love, learning to be known, intimate connection. It's a shared journey. It's not about getting my needs met. It's about how do we enjoy this together? And when I describe the difference between these two, I often have people come up to me and say, I've been married for 20 years and I've never experienced what you're describing. Our sex life has always been about a negotiated contract of how often to have it. And it's been about his fantasies that I don't know anything about and my fears and fantasies that he knows nothing about. And so our bodies connect, but that's it. It's not a shared journey. Friends, let me ask you a question. What is more intimate, having sex or disclosing to your spouse that you looked at porn last night. What is more intimate, having sex or grieving that another month went by that you didn't get pregnant? What's more intimate, having sex or sharing with your spouse how something that you experienced together triggered traumatic memories from the past? That is the valley that God is calling us to forge intimacy in. And it is so much more beautiful than just the action of sex. But we miss it. We get so frustrated that the activity isn't working. We give up on it. And God is saying, no, no, no. I created you for much deeper, for intimate knowing. And I know those of you who are watching and are in this room, many of you would say, hey, Julie, we've been there. Like, I would never wish on another couple what we've experienced because it was so painful. But I'd also never go back to the way things were before that happened. How many of you would say, that's us. Yeah. And, you know, an intimacy that the world can't touch. You know, an intimacy that is irreplaceable because of what you've journeyed through together. Now, how do we begin to experience? How do we move from activity to intimacy? Well, there's a couple things that we can do if you go to the next screen. First of all, we have to learn to communicate about sex. I think it's really crazy that the world talks endlessly about sex, but married couples don't know how to talk about it. It's so vulnerable. We don't know how to put words to it. A lot of couples don't even know what to call each other's parts. It's like, nobody teaches us how to do this right. We have to learn to talk about sex. And one of the ways that my husband and I learned to talk about sex that really helped is we would get a Christian marriage book on sex and read it out loud together. So don't read it separately. Don't just get it on audible. What happens when you read it out loud? You have to say words that you're like, I don't know if I can say this out loud. It's not my words, it's the author's. But it gives you the practice of talking openly and honestly and bouncing off of the author's words to discuss what's happening between the two of you. We have to work on communicating, invest in healing. You know, there are. There are areas of our sexuality that frankly, are mortgaged by the enemy. They're mortgaged by lies. They're mortgaged by Wounds. And you can't give what you don't own. And so the average married couple, they get married and they're like, okay, I want to give my all to you, but I only own about 20% of my sexuality. The rest is mortgaged by my past or mortgaged by my sin. And so the journey of healing is so that we can be completely free and we can engage freely with one another, learn to enjoy sexual touch and romantic love without intercourse. Just look in each other's eyes, kiss passionately for 30 seconds, holding each other's hands. Sex therapists will often recommend something called sensate focus, where you're relearning to experience touch. And it's not about the destination of intercourse and orgasm. It's about the experience of just knowing each other's touch and learning to feel safe and learning to communicate with each other's touch. Can I. Siri is looking that up for me. Isn't that he's always listening, right? Here's one thing I want to say, and some of you have experienced this. You may need to suspend sexual activity for time so you can actually build sexual intimacy. If you are struggling with lust and thoughts and fantasies, don't go to your spouse and act those out and say, well, we're married, so it's okay. Stop, Stop and say, lord, we need healing. We need to learn to engage each other with touch in a way that's holy. And the more we learned about, the more we learn about the brain and the plasticity of the brain. We're finding that there is the ability of the brain to heal through sexual fasting. That's for married people, too, that we can reintegrate and relearn touch. The same. If you've experienced sexual trauma and you continue just to have sex because you're supposed to, and you never stop and learn to build safety and learn to identify triggers and learn to get healing. You're not experiencing the fullness of what God has for you. And so God would say, sometimes we need to stop the activity to be still, to know that he is God, to be healed so we can begin to reintegrate into true intimacy. And then embracing the value of every season, which I've talked about, sometimes that intimacy is formed the deepest in the valley. All right, so we've gotten through two pillars. You with me so far? All right. Faithfulness, intimate knowing. The third one is sacrificial giving or sacrificial love. And it's required from both people. If we look at the front of the puzzle box, what is the highlight of God's love for us while we were yet sinners? Christ died for us. He gave his Son for us. Jesus laid down his life for us. If that is the front of the puzzle box, friend, why are we surprised when sex costs us something in marriage? Why do we believe that single people have to restrain and deny, and it's all about, oh, just honor God, don't do anything, but when you get married, you're going to have every fantasy and every desire fulfilled. Baked into the cake of covenant love is the idea that unselfishness overcomes selfishness, that we love another more than we love ourselves, that our sexual love is meant to cost us something. And you know, this is even just baked in the biology of how God has created us as man and woman. I'm just going to refer to some differences between the average man and woman. And as. As I read this, I want to acknowledge that for some of you, you're not going to 100% identify with everything here, but these are some basics that we would say for most couples, this is true for men, sex leads to feelings of love. For women, feelings of love leads to sex. For men, they're quickly aroused and satisfied. Women are slowly aroused and satisfied. I think it was Kevin Lehman who said the difference between the microwave and the crock pot, right? For men, the best part of sex is the release, the tension. It's the goal. For women, the best part of sex is the buildup of tension. It's the journey. Men want immediate, direct stimulation in one place, and I bet you can figure out where that is. Women want to be touched everywhere, delaying direct stimulation. Men want sex in order to relax, but women must relax in order to have sex. Men mostly are aroused visually. Women are aroused by emotions and sensations. The smell, the sense of smell is like five times more powerful for women than it is for men. A man's sexual prime is in his late teens and early twenties. Sorry, guys. Women's sexual prime is in their thirties and forties. For men, desire is dependent on a constant hormone, which is testosterone. For women, desire is dependent on changing hormones. We make it fun for you guys got to figure this out every day, right? Men are capable of a single orgasm, and women are capable of multiple and varied orgasms. Now, let me ask you a question. Do you think before sin entered the world, this is true of men and women? Was this true of Adam and Eve? Yeah. Do you think it's possible that Adam saw Eve naked in the garden and said, hey, you want to do it? And Eve said, let's walk around a little bit and talk first. I think that could have happened. Now, sin distorted this for sure. But why would God do that? You know? And part of my frustration as a young wife was, God, why would you give us this gift of sex and make us so different? Different? Did you make a mistake? He didn't. You know why? Because of our differences, it is absolutely impossible to have a long term fulfilling sex life without learning to be unselfish. Because God is more concerned with your love life than he is with your sex life. And so, yes, the journey of sexuality for many of you has cost you greatly. You've had to go through a horrendous experience of betrayal. You've gone through therapy, you've gone through recovery, you've had your heart broken. But even in that, God is showing you how he loves us, that he loves us with sacrificial love. Now, a few things we have to remember about sacrificial love that are very important. If you could go to the next slide, because this can be taken out of context. First of all, sacrificial love is always willingly offered and never coerced or manipulated. And so please, I beg of you, do not go home and say, it's time for you to sacrificially love me. When we look at the scripture, it says that Jesus willingly laid down his life. He said, no one takes it from me. I have authority to lay it down and I have the authority to take it up again. And we see the Pharisees manipulating him and he never gave in to them. Sacrificial love is willingly saying, I am acting out of love. And so it's never manipulated, it's never coerced. That's nothing to do with love. Sacrificial love should never put a person in emotional, spiritual, or physical harm. And so some of you need to hear this. Sacrificial love does not mean going home and having sex in a relationship that is still emotionally, spiritually, physically destructive. In that case, sacrificial love means getting help and setting boundaries for your sake, for the sake of your spouse, and for the sake of your marriage. Your attitude of sacrificial love impacts not only how you give, but how you receive. And this is important. Have you ever, like, gone out and tried to buy a gift for something for somebody and you really don't know what to give them? So you're like, ah, I'll settle on this picture frame. You wrap up the picture frame, you go to the party and you start apologizing for the gift even before you even give it, right? Like, I'm sorry, I know you're not gonna like this, but I didn't know what to get you. You know, that's the attitude that a lot of times we have in sex, especially us women. My body's so old, it's so ugly, it's so wrinkly, it's so fat, it's so flat. But this is all I have, you know, Instead, why don't we be like the widow's might, you know, this is all I have. But I give it willingly. I give it lovingly. And then when we receive, are you a cheerful receiver? Are you a gracious person that says, I love you, thank you? Or are you always saying, I wish, if only you don't? And so God's love for us teaches us to give, give generously, and to receive graciously. That's. That's part of the picture. And then finally, God calls both the husband and wife to an attitude of sacrificial love. When one person gives sacrificially, it's ministry. And there's probably been periods of your time that have looked a lot like ministry in the sexual relationship. But if you stay stuck in ministry, you will never get to intimacy. And so there has to come a time where you're both growing enough to be able to give sacrificially to one another. Now, the fourth pillar of covenant love is an important one, and it is the pillar of passionate celebration. And again, I want to look at the picture of God's love for us. What would it be like in a relationship with God if we had the three other pillars but no passionate celebration? So what would it be like if we knew God was faithful? If we were growing in intimacy with him? If we laid down our life for him, but we walked around like this? God is good. Yes, God is good all the time. What if we came to church and we were like, we have to learn more about how to obey God. You know, one of the main reasons we go to church that we totally miss it is to worship. Because you are not the bride of Christ. We are the bride of Christ. And so together, we, as the bride, we look up and we adore our Savior. We celebrate him. We tell him how beautiful he is. We tell him how wonderful he is. We receive his love. And you know the really cool thing when you worship together, singing and dancing, the same neurochemicals and hormones run through your brain as when you're having sex. Isn't that crazy? Like, we gotta do some dancing in here, too. The oxytocin bonds you as the body of Christ. The dopamine gives joy and praise. And you walked into church feeling glum and down and discouraged. But after worship, like we had this morning, like you're you love God, your joy is renewed. And the same is meant to be true within sexual the sexual covenant of a husband and wife. You need regular stops at the water tent of oxytocin and dopamine together and fun and enjoyment. And you know what's sad is that what happens with pornography, what happens with addiction, is that many of us can rebuild those other three pillars, but we don't know how to rebuild the fourth because we're afraid of it. We've had passion and pleasure so turned around that we can't imagine it being holy again. And so we repress and we suppress. And there has to come a time where God says, I want to redeem that the fullness is entering into the joy. Not just being an observer of fun and pleasure and worship, but entering in getting lost in it, being intoxicated with sexual love. This is God's design. It is God's plan. It is not enough just to build the other three pillars. The fullness of God's covenant involves joy and passion and celebration. And as we close, I just want to show you in scripture where this is so true. And again, this was powerful in my own journey with my husband. If we look at this book, Song of Solomon, any of you ever heard of it? I know we don't teach about it much because it's kind of weird, but if you think about the 66 books in the Bible, this one doesn't seem to fit because it is the only book out of the 66 that is only about a relationship between human beings. Now, it's metaphorical also, but it is the only book that God inspired to be about a human relationship only. Right? And God didn't choose for it to be about a parent, child relationship or a friendship or even marriage. He chose for it to be about sexual love within marriage. Go figure. I think he knew that we would need his endorsement and blessing on sexual pleasure because we would be confused about this. And so if we look at Song of Solomon ending or the end of chapter four and the beginning of chapter five, some people believe that this is a couple's wedding night. Now, before I read this, I'm going to give you a little clue here that I didn't know about many years ago. But I learned there is hidden language in The Song of Solomon. So whenever you read garden, it usually is referring to the female genitalia. Whenever you read fruit, it's usually referring to the male genitalia. When you read things like honey and milk and pomegranates and all these things, these are aphrodisiacs. These are things that inspire sexual pleasure and desire. So knowing that, read God's holy word, awake north wind and come south wind. Blow on my garden so that its fragrance may spread everywhere. Let my beloved come into his garden and taste its choice fruits. Hmm. So he says, I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride. I've gathered my myrrh with my spice. I've eaten my honeycomb and my honey. I've drunk my wine and my milk. What do you think's happening there? Some people would say that that's a veiled reference to oral sex. But whatever it is, they're having fun, like they're enjoying each other fully. And if you read the whole book of Song of Solomon, you see other examples of this. But I read this passage. Why? Because what happens next is very profound. It says that the chorus speaks. Now, who would be in this bridal chamber with a husband and wife? Only one. And that would be the presence of God. And here's what he says, almost as if he's announcing a benediction over this couple that have enjoyed the fullest of sexual love. The God of the universe would say, eat, friends. Drink deeply. Imbibe in love. Now, was that just for Solomon and his wife? No. They were a very imperfect couple. And that's a whole other issue of why would Solomon write this? Why would God inspire Solomon to write this? But I think we need to realize that we are all sexually broken, that our marriages all have stuff we wish wouldn't have happened. All stuff that we wish were better. But even so, the God of the universe, the covenant making God, comes into your bedroom and puts his hand over you and says, friend, this is what I created this for. You don't please me by holding back your pleasure and delight. You please me by entering into it. Eat, friends, drink and imbibe deeply. Why? Because he wants us to know the fullness of his love, that he's a God who rejoices over us. He's a God that calls us to enter into his pleasure. He's a God that is passionate for us. And in this beautiful gift of sexuality that is so tarnished, that has been so destroyed by the enemy, he wants to redeem all of it, including pleasure.

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