Authenticity in Sexuality and Leadership (#702)
You can't be authentic with others until you learn to be honest with yourself. Kyle Rice follows up last week's podcast by joining Wayne again as they respond to some listener email and find themselves in a conversation about the desire for authenticity, and how it is often punished in religious settings, especially when people aspire to leadership. You can be gifted on a stage and still be lost internally. This life is always easier to talk about than it is to live. They also spend some time talking about sexual desire in an age where sex is treated too casually and often dishonestly for those struggling to keep the gift inside God's boundaries and thus experience its full joy and beauty.
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Glad you enjoyed your time with my friends in Florida. And you even remembered me! I sure have some dear ones that I would like to have listen to this podcast. And I learned some things myself! Always refreshing! I’m glad Pastor Pat got a hold of your teachings and confirmed how he was thinking about church. I’m glad I did too. I did try to get it going in the church I was in…one year when Joe and Mercy were here, we got together with the pastor and his wife and others every week and sat around our living rooms and had lunch and talked for hours…I was hoping that since it was such a small church group, the pastor would pick up on having a more relaxed vision for the church….but the things he learned in Rhema (sp?) Bible school were too strong in him and he couldn’t let go of the strict rules of what he was taught. Well, that’s okay…Anyway. Thank you for the way you think! Thank you Jesus for holding on to all of us while we get to know you more and more! Awesome God!
I am glad I listened to the podcast on the authenticity in sexuality and leadership, but it was a bit of a challenge. During my teens and early twenties, I was heavily involved in “church” and based on how I interpreted what was preached about sexuality, I felt it was dirty and very sinful and if I engaged in any sexual acts (or had sexual feelings/emotions and thoughts), God will be mad at me and strike me down and send me to hell. I’ve struggled with masturbation and watching porn most of my life (since pre-teen).
I never had anyone in my life who I could have an honest and transparent conversation regarding this and other issues for fear of rejection and being told of how sinful I am. Even now, I do not have any close friends (that I know of) where I feel safe to talk about my struggles.
Thank you Mr. Jacobsen and Mr. Rice for this podcast. I am beginning to be more authentic with God and myself and I am hopeful that my relationship with God will become better.
Denise, I pray you can know and rest in Father God is madly in love with you and nothing you do or do not do will change His perfect love for you. It’s sad that leadership has taught so many to feel shame because of watching porn or masterbation…
When the reality is how Wayne shared on this podcast that God’s boundaries are FOR US…for our best not something to follow to keep Him not mad ha ha! They are for us so it’s not like we are super bad kids in His eyes we are just hurting ourselves, our relationships, (and indirectly the trafficked women being bought and sold into pornography industry) by looking on what is a distortion of what Father God meant to be fun, passionate, holy, clean, beautiful with the one who is covenanted to you.
I have a lot of mercy for those who feel so much shame with pornography…it’s a click away now days so it can be a hard temptation to kick…but like Wayne shared its best to start with sex is a gift and you are loved and not start with “I messed up again…I’m bad”. You are loved no matter what always.
Thank you for the encouraging words. I am learning to rest in God’s presence and His love for me – that it’s not what I do, but it is who He is.
It’s common among my mom friends desiring a book to help our daughters grow up with a healthy perspective of sex…I did not have parents teach me anything about it even though when I asked them so sadly I learned from friends and experience with guys at school. When my daughters asked me recently (ages 9 and 10) about it…how babies come and they kept on asking for details etc…I ended up telling them straight forward and went online and found a nurse explaining it medically for youth. (They do have friends their age that watch movies or talk about it so I want it to come from us and not like I had it growing up)
I then shared how precious and sacred and beautiful this gift God gives to those within marriage and why it’s for marriage.. my husband was there to also share how special and amazing this gift of intimacy is. I have mom friends who grew up with sex being taught something so shameful and dirty it was hard for them in marriage just as Kyle mentioned. It would be nice to have a book for tweens…(I did buy Traci’s book and love it and her! ) but a book for tweens that provides a healthy non legalistic perspective would be helpful. But thankfully our daughters have parents who can help them navigate hormones, puberty, etc. My friend’s daughter, age 15, does not have any friends in her class who are not sexual active. Sad:(.
On the topic of masterbation I personally believe that it’s been taught as such a bad thing that people are so shamed by it in Christian faith arenas…making it worse than it is. I actually believe it can be a very helpful way to help singles and even in marriage…it can simply be just a release of the hormones and does not have to be associated with lust or pornography. People used to get married much younger and now people are expected to wait for marriage when all those hormones are at peak…it’s so helpful to not demonize masterbation and just let people not feel condemned or shamed as a way to release the hormones to keep walking in purity and not fall into pornography or lust. It can be tempered as something to not be addicted to as with anything else not letting it control you as the verse in Romans says. And on top of all that this goes for gals it’s not just a guy thing and girls in Christian arenas can feel SO shameful that only guys supposedly have this struggle and they are weird because they have these feelings too. I once had a pastor teach that masterbation is rape…raping yourself…talk about fear and shame!
Anyways love Traci for all these topics too!
Hi brothers and sisters
“keep the gift inside God’s boundaries”
I really dislike the term boundaries, which feels not like the promised freedom but more of a cage … what it really is when the main things aren’t right … the institution of marriage has comparably lost track of what it’s about like the institutionalized churches.
I personally believe that a bond of love is a bond of hearts and that is something far else than what most marriages or relationships ever were or ever had. To achive that is something of worth.
To me, sexuality is meant to be enjoyed only in the safety zone of mutual love and trust and unconditional acceptance of each other. For our own good. To prevent deep hurts … when one sexual partner falls in love and the other comes to the point that it’s not real love to him/her.
What I’m really saying is, that people are going way to fast into relationships, it would be so much better if they first become deep friends, building up trust about everything and then go into a relationship, when there is nothing to hide anymore, when you can be honest about everything with each other … so they love each other truly who and how they really are and not masks.
When you are not unconditionally accepted by your partner, when you can’t be honest about your problems, you probably got to fast into that relationship too, and I suggest to not have sex with that person any longer, because it doesn’t make it better. But if your partner really means something to you, strongly work at unconditional acceptance of each other, building up deeper trust, because when that is not, chances are high that it sooner or later goes into a direction of divorce inside the other person.
To me, unconditional acceptance belongs so firmly to the bond of love, it is to trust love more than control, to love the partner with his/her problems, which is the only way it gets better by the way, somewhen, when hearts get closer and closer, while pressure brings forth the opposite and even distances the hearts from each other, but when the hearts become one, in trust, there is also where the love grows. Without unconditional acceptance, both hearts can not even become one, they always have to play better than they are, because that relationship is not built on friendship, but on beloved masks.
Greetings and much love
Jo