Day One:
John Fuller: Well, today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, we’re gonna be talking about a very sensitive topic that many husbands and wives wrestle with, but they rarely talk about it. And the issue transcends marriage. It impacts our identity, our purpose, and our faith. I’m John Fuller, and, uh, the following subject matter is just not going to be appropriate for younger listeners, and, uh, we’re gonna begin with a comment from our guest, Dr. Juli Slattery.
Dr. Juli Slattery: One thing that I’ve realized is that sex will never be a neutral issue in your marriage. It’ll either be –
Jim Daly: Oh, that’s a statement.
Dr. Slattery: It’ll either draw you together or to tear you apart.
Jim: Mm.
Dr. Slattery: And I also think that sex will never be an, a neutral issue in your relationship with God. It’s either going to be revealing God’s goodness or it also, for so many people, is a barrier to, uh, “I can’t get close to God because I’m angry or because I feel shame.”
Jim: John, this is a sensitive topic, but it’s an important one, especially, I think, for the Christian community. And I think it’s critical that we don’t back away from what may seem awkward or uncomfortable. You know, this is one we tend to joke a little bit about when it comes to sexuality, but let’s face it. I mean, sex is everywhere, especially in today’s modern culture.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: And it is good for the Christian community to better understand God’s intentionality with our sexuality. And we can’t avoid that tsunami of images and the messages that are literally getting everywhere. You know, Jean hates the halftime show for the Super Bowl, especially when the boys were young.
John: Mm.
Jim: It’s like, “Okay, boys, time for nachos. Come help me make them.” Just to drag them away from the TV so they didn’t see that sexuality. But then we, as the Christian parents, have to instill healthy sexuality for our kids because God did create this, and we’ve got to remember all of that as we, uh, not only parent, but live it out as married couples, as singles, as Christians.
John: Yeah. And Dr. Juli Slattery is our guest today. She’s a former colleague. Uh, used to sit in here for interviews with us, Jim. And, uh –
Jim: That’s right.
John: She is the president and co-founder of Authentic Intimacy, which is a ministry devoted to reclaiming God’s design for sexuality. Uh, Juli is an author, speaker, and podcast host, and she and her husband, Mike, have three boys. And, uh, Juli’s written a lot of different books on this topic, but the one we’re looking at today is called Surrendered Sexuality: How Knowing Jesus Changes Everything. And we’ll encourage you to stop by our website to learn more about Juli and her ministry and this terrific resource, uh, when you stop by FocusontheFamily.com/broadcast.
Jim: Juli, welcome back to Focus on the Family.
Dr. Slattery: It’s so good to be with you guys. Good to see you.
Jim: It’s so natural to be at the table with you (laughs).
Dr. Slattery: I know. Like, I, I just wish everybody could have heard us joking off mic, you know?
Jim: (Laughs).
Dr. Slattery: Like, it’s just like old times.
Jim: We’ll save that for the extra, the B roll.
Dr. Slattery: There you go.
Jim: Right?
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
John: Possibly.
Jim: So, uh, you can get a copy of the, uh, broadcast and we’ll touch on that.
John: For additional donation, yeah.
Jim: Uh, Juli, let’s start with your book title, Surrendered Sexuality. Uh, why surrender? Uh, surrender isn’t something we like to do as human beings.
Dr. Slattery: No, it’s not. Um, I, I’ve had the opportunity over the last 14 years or so to focus full-time on this topic of sexuality in the Christian life and the Christian church, and what I’ve found over those years is that, even as you mentioned, this is a sensitive topic and we tend to be a little squeamish about talking about it. And, uh, for a lot of Christians, we compartmentalize our sexuality and we try to control the behaviors. We try to, um, you know, just like, “I don’t wanna think about that.” Or, “I gotta stop doing this particular action that I know is wrong.” But when we look at scripture, what God really calls us to in every area of our life is to offer ourselves completely to Him, which is surrender. Which is to say, uh, “My body doesn’t belong to you. It was, I was purchased with the blood of Christ and I need my thinking transformed. I need to bring all my brokenness to you.” And so this book is really tackling a very different approach to dealing with topics of sexuality and struggles with sexuality than I think what we traditionally have, uh, have used in the past.
Jim: Yeah. I think it’s so important because sexuality is so powerful.
Dr. Slattery: It is.
Jim: I mean, it, it is deeply rooted in us, obviously, as human beings, and advertisers have leveraged this to the hilt, right?
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
Jim: Remember the old saying, sex sells.
Dr. Slattery: Mm-hmm.
Jim: And, uh, I don’t think they’ve gotten away from that. I think they’re still using that formula because it does.
Dr. Slattery: Yep.
Jim: People are attracted to that.
Dr. Slattery: Mm-hmm.
Jim: And this idea that God created it. In your book, you mentioned a woman, I’m sure you’ve changed her name, Shelly.
Dr. Slattery: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Who, uh, had some abuse history –
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
Jim: – And some other things, and that issue of shame was certainly a part of her experience. Uh, how did God help her to surrender those areas to him?
Dr. Slattery: Yeah. Uh, this is a real woman that actually went through the pilot study, uh, when I was writing this book. And as she was going through these chapters every week in this pilot study, she kept saying, “God did that for me and that’s what surrender looked like for me.” And she began to tell her story about how, uh, her brother was abusing her at home, uh, and –
Jim: When they were young?
Dr. Slattery: Yes, when they were little. And, um, she went to a vacation Bible school, accepted Jesus in her heart, went to Sunday school a few times after that, and got the courage to tell her brother, “You can’t do this to me anymore.”
Jim: Hm.
Dr. Slattery: But then she sort of buried that, and she didn’t really nurture her relationship with God growing up. Fast-forward, she gets married, and she continues to have a series of affairs. And she, her life is just falling apart, even though everything looks good on the outside, to the point where she’s suicidal. There’s so much shame and brokenness. And, um, she calls out to the Lord, “Lord, if you’re there, would you show me?”
And that day, a friend, kind of a, an acquaintance, invited her to church, and she’s like, “Okay, God, maybe you’re hearing me.” And that led her on a journey of learning what it really was not just to have Jesus as a savior, but to invite Him into the mess of the trauma, and the shame, and the sin, and the broken relationships. And so she’s been on a journey these last few decades of, “What does it look like for God to really restore and redeem the things I’ve experienced so that I can be whole?” Uh, and she’s just one example of the men and women that I’ve had a chance to meet and see what happens when we stop trying to just behave for the Lord, but we actually invite Him to be the power that brings change.
Jim: Yeah. And again, you know, we need to understand that here at Focus on the Family, I mean, this is like number one and two at the top of the list that people are calling for counseling every month.
Dr. Slattery: Right. Mm-hmm.
Jim: And we, we list those by the number of requests by topic. And so we know sexuality is right there.
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
Jim: And so again, a good reason to address it rather than hide it under a rock and not develop your spiritual insights –
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
Jim: – When it comes to your God-given sexuality, right?
Dr. Slattery: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Um, Juli, many Christians are asking the wrong question according to what you’ve written. Uh, you’ve said they ask what instead of why.
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
Jim: Describe the difference between those two.
Dr. Slattery: Yeah. So, you know, Christians are asking, “What can I do?” You know, like teenagers or young adults, singles are asking, “How far can I go? Is God okay if I do this?” Um, married couples are asking, you know, the questions like, “How often should we be having sex?” And it’s activity based. What are the rules?
Jim: Hmm.
Dr. Slattery: And we’re neglecting the deeper question of why does this matter in the first place? Why does God care about our sexuality? And I think, uh, particularly the younger generations are starting to ask that question, like, “Why would God care if I wanna marry another woman instead of a man? Why does that matter? And why does God care if I choose to look at pornography? I’m not hurting anyone. I don’t understand why these rules are there in the scripture.” And so what ends up happening is, I think, even for people that might embrace the rules, they have, uh, a suspicion about the goodness of God, that He’s keeping me away from something instead of ushering me into a more fulfilling experience of sexuality. Um, the narrative of our culture, that sex is about doing what you feel and about exploring yourself, is a much more powerful narrative than just saying, “The Bible says you shouldn’t do these things.”
And so a lot of where God has taken me in ministry is really digging into those deeper questions of, “Why did God create us as sexual people in the first place? Why does He care so much about this? Why is sex so powerful both for good and for bad in my life, and in marriage, and in relationships?” Um, and so, uh, really understanding that God doesn’t just want us to change our behavior, He wants us to have a renewed way of understanding our sexuality and the goodness of what He’s created.
Jim: You know, Juli, that is so true. You, uh, equate our obsession with sex in the culture with being on a junk food diet.
Dr. Slattery: Mm. Yeah.
Jim: How does that comparison line up?
Dr. Slattery: Yeah. So, you know, God created sex, um, to be, as you mentioned earlier, a gift, really a celebration of covenant. And He created us, whether you’re single or married, with deep longings for intimacy, con… With connection, to be known, to be loved, to, to belong. And we live in a culture that really undermines intimacy. I’m not talking about sex, I’m talking about intimacy. We don’t build a community. We’re more tied to our devices than we are to people. We don’t even know how to give eye contact anymore. We don’t know how to be vulnerable. We don’t know how to stay in community with people and work through conflict. And so instead of intimacy, we are drawn towards sex, thinking that that will solve my loneliness problem. And sex outside of covenant, sex outside of intimacy is like eating junk food. Like it’ll fill you up very temporarily, but there’s no nutrition in it. There’s no substance in it. And you find yourself then craving more and more of it and getting sicker and sicker. And then if somebody offers you true intimacy, it’s like if you’ve been living on a diet of chips and donuts and someone offers you an apple and carrots. You’re like, “I don’t wanna eat that. Like that’s boring.”
Jim: (Laughs).
Dr. Slattery: “And, you know, my taste is not even ready to receive that.” And so we see this happening in marriages where both the man and the women, a lot of times, have been engaging in pornography and hook up sex, and they wanna honor God in their sex life, but their brains have been trained on junk sex. And now they are trying to figure out, “How do we actually develop true intimacy in our marriage?” And they have no taste for it. They don’t have the muscle to even engage in it. Um, so that’s some of how, I would say, there’s that parallel.
Jim: Yeah. You know, you discuss self-discovery in the book as well. And, you know, I’m thinking of the old scientists, you know? Newton, Pasteur, and others who said, “What motivates me in science is to discover what God has created.”
Dr. Slattery: Mm-hmm.
Jim: That was the ethos back then, that it could be knowable because we have a creator that created the universe.
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
Jim: Therefore, mathematics, astronomy, all those things. You can use those tools to know God’s created –
Dr. Slattery: Mm-hmm.
Jim: – Universe. In that same way, self-discovery when it comes to sexuality, you’re saying, um, if we don’t turn that toward ourselves as human beings, but we apply it to discovering God in our sexuality, that, that’s an interesting journey.
John: Hm.
Dr. Slattery: Yeah. You know, I think part of it, and part of how I wrote in that in the book is just, um, understanding how we get caught in identity traps that keep us stuck in sexual sin.
Jim: Hm.
Dr. Slattery: And we have a culture that is obsessed with self-discovery. Um, in the absence of who God is, knowing who God is and finding our identity through Him, we have become a people who tell ourselves, “Look inward. Like, what do you want? What do you desire? What does your heart desire?” And sex is about the expression of what’s inside of me. And that is not what God created sex to be, and it’s not how God created us to understand who we are.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Slattery: Um, and so this is a real trap in particularly the 20s and 30s, um, young, young adults today, even within the church, of thinking that, “The most fulfilling life I can have is to look inward and then to have the freedom to express what’s inside of me.”
Jim: Juli, so often, as we talk to people, especially in this area of sexuality –
Dr. Slattery: Mm-hmm.
Jim: – It seems like we haven’t moved far from the garden.
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
Jim: In other words, it’s me.
Dr. Slattery: Mm-hmm.
Jim: I want to know what satisfies me.
Dr. Slattery: Right.
Jim: And in a lot of ways, that was the battle that Adam and Eve had against Satan, right? You can, you can have all knowledge.
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
Jim: You can be like God.
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
Jim: And there’s a bit of that battle in our sexuality, right? That we become so me focused and self-focused that we forget what the bigger picture is here.
Dr. Slattery: Yeah. Well, even if we look at the Garden of Eden, it didn’t even begin with Eve being me focused. It began with believing a doubt about the goodness of God, where Satan is saying, “You can’t trust God. Like He’s keeping you from something good and you can’t trust His Word. You know, surely you won’t die if you eat of this.” And you’re right, we see a real overlap with that with sexuality, where it doesn’t even begin with a me focus, it begins with, “I can’t trust that God is good. I can’t trust that God knows me, knows what I’m struggling with, really wants the best for me.”
Jim: Hm.
Dr. Slattery: “I believe that I am a better guide for what will be fulfilling than God is.” And then we also believe the lie that Eve did that, “Surely if I eat of this fruit, it’s not gonna hurt me. It’s not gonna hurt anyone. Like it’s, how can our… It’s two consenting adults. We love each other.” Or, you know, pornography, like, “It’s not hurting anyone.” And we doubt that there is a moral order that God has established and that if we step out of that moral order, uh, we’re doing something that ultimately is not going to be good for us or good for the people that we care about and love.
Jim: Hmm.
John: This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and our guest today is Dr. Juli Slattery, and we’re talking about her book, Surrendered Sexuality: How Knowing Jesus Changes Everything. And, uh, again, we’ll invite you to stop by our website to get a copy of the book and to learn more, and that’s FocusontheFamily.com/broadcast. And then, uh, Juli, there’s an interesting part in the book where you said, “Our sexuality can teach us about God.”
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
John: Kind of not, not –
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
John: – Discover myself –
Dr. Slattery: Right.
John: – But discover who God is. What are some examples of that?
Dr. Slattery: Yeah. No, that’s really key, John. Like, ultimately, God didn’t give us our sexuality to express what we are feeling. He gave us our sexuality to reveal how He loves.
John: Hmm.
Dr. Slattery: And for a lot of people, that’s like a, “What?” You know, like, “How in the world does my sexuality reveal how God loves?” And, uh, we have to understand that God created sex to be linked with the, a concept we call covenant love, which is, um, what we call also a biblical marriage, that a husband and a wife, a man and a woman, um, leave their families of origin and they will to choose to say, “I give my life to you. Um, that we are one flesh now, uh, and that is to be till death do us part, that we are making a promise that we will do life together, we’ll be faithful to each other.” And as we mentioned earlier, sex is sort of the, the physical outworking of that. Now, why, how does that reveal God? Because we read in scripture, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, that God made a similar covenant to His people. In the Old Testament, we see all of this bridal and sexual language in the prophets and even in the Torah, that would say, “God made a covenant with a nation of Israel that’s like a husband and a wife. And that covenant involves faithfulness, it involves intimacy, it involves, uh, enduring love.” And in the New Testament, we see that Jesus said, “I come to usher in a new covenant and it’s a covenant of my blood.” And then He calls Himself a bridegroom and we’re the bride. And there are all these parables that help us understand Jesus using the imagery of, uh, the virgin getting ready for marriage, getting ready, waiting for the bridegroom. And we’re told that there’ll be this union in heaven. And so what we have to understand is everything about our sexuality, everything about male and female, ultimately, were created to be a physical metaphor or a picture of a spiritual truth about the nature of how God loves us. Which again, even as I say that and describe it in two minutes, it’s really hard to wrap your mind around that, but once we start to teach this in the church and understand it and the, in the framework of marriage and teach it to our children, it changes the way we think about our sexuality.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Slattery: And all of a sudden we start to understand, “That’s why. That’s why God cares so much about sexuality. That’s why it’s so powerful for good or for evil.” And that’s why it’s so powerful in marriage and it reframes our understanding of the why.
Jim: Juli, you believe many Christians get tripped up on the concept of sexual purity.
Dr. Slattery: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Um, and you prefer sexual integrity.
Dr. Slattery: Right.
Jim: What’s the difference?
Dr. Slattery: The term sexual purity has come to represent, for a lot of people, a pass/fail test.
Jim: Hmm.
Dr. Slattery: Like, are you sexually pure or are you not? Well, did I follow the rules? And the more we think about sexual purity, the more, uh, I think we start to realize, first of all, it’s an impossible goal because Jesus defined our purity and our sexuality not just in what we do, but in what we think about. Is there anyone on the face of the earth who has never objectified somebody sexually or never lusted after someone? It’s like, we can’t. We can’t achieve that, but our purity actually comes through the finished work of Jesus Christ. And so I am pure not because I followed all the rules, I am pure because Christ did on my behalf and I receive His righteousness and His purity.
So that’s the first problem with purity, but the second problem with purity that, that term, is I don’t think it goes far enough into what God actually calls us to. He doesn’t call us just to avoid a certain act. He calls us to a wholehearted surrender of, “What does it look like, Lord, for me to honor you with my sexuality from cradle to grave? What does it look like for me to think about my sexuality in light of how you created it, not what the world is telling me? What does it look like for me even to not live my life in sexual shame because of what I’ve done in the past?” Like integrity means, if I believe Jesus has died and covered my sin, then I don’t live in shame. But how many Christians would say, “Yeah, I believe that, but I still live in shame because of my affair or because of my addiction.” And so there’s so much more that God is calling us to than just, “Avoid this act.” And I think when we just talk about sexual purity, people don’t know how to actually experience the power of God and the transformation of God, um, in their sexuality. And so I love that challenge of, “No, He’s calling us to integrity, which means I am an undivided follower of Christ. There’s not a pocket of my life where I give myself a pass. There’s not a territory of my heart where Satan is still reigning. It is, I am fully devoted to following Jesus, and that’s gonna be a journey. It’s gonna be a stumbling journey, but I am, by the grace of God, not gonna give up on that.”
Jim: You know, Juli, uh, right at the end here… And this has been really good input. I mean, it starts that process of thinking more deeply –
Dr. Slattery: Mm-hmm.
Jim: – About our, our God-given sexuality.
Dr. Slattery: Mm-hmm.
Jim: And to recognize it as that. And then how do we steward it?
Dr. Slattery: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Which is really what you’re talking about.
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
Jim: Cradle to grave.
Dr. Slattery: Yeah. Right.
Jim: And it will be a journey. And it’s so core to us as human beings that we do stumble through this.
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
Jim: And, uh, to your point, it does reference the fact that nobody is sinless.
Dr. Slattery: Mm-hmm.
Jim: I mean, this is an area of the human experience that I think everybody trips on.
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
Jim: And you don’t get away.
Dr. Slattery: Mm-mm.
Jim: And that proves that God needed to do what He did –
Dr. Slattery: Mm-hmm.
Jim: – By giving us salvation through Christ and Christ alone.
Dr. Slattery: Mm-hmm.
Jim: When someone is facing sexual temptation or maybe they’re in that recovery mode, um, which again, most of us will be, the healing process isn’t a one-time thing. And you, you do reference it as a journey.
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
Jim: So what are those practical things that they can begin doing today to move toward healthy and godly sexuality?
Dr. Slattery: Yeah. Yeah. So some of it, I think, is understanding that, for really good-hearted people who wanna follow Jesus, they recognize a sexual struggle or a temptation they have. I just recently was talking to a woman who is really struggling with sexual temptation, and she is like, “I don’t want this. I don’t want to fall into this. I don’t want the, the temptation.” But knowing a lot about her story in life, she also is dealing with deep, deep loss and grief.
Jim: Hmm.
Dr. Slattery: And it’s really complicated what she’s walking through, but if I just talk to her about, “Put the filter on your phone, and don’t look at it and, you know, don’t go out with this guy.” And yeah, and those things are good guardrails. We’re not addressing the real problem, which is she has deep wounds and deep loneliness that she’s experiencing. And I think traditionally, in the church, when we talk about sexual struggles and temptations, we, we go immediately to, “How do we get you to stop the behavior?” And we don’t recognize that the behavior’s being fueled by something deeper, that sin is always an illegitimate way to address legitimate needs.
Jim: Mm. That’s good.
Dr. Slattery: And so the healing process is not just saying, “Lord, would you help me to stop this?” But, “Why am I so drawn to this? And what are the wounds, and the longings, and the needs that are underneath this that I need help with?” Um, and so there are a couple things that I think all of us need, um, to pursue healing, and wholeness, and integrity. One of them, and this is really lacking in a lot of Christian communities, we need a safe place to be honest.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Slattery: Like, where are the safe places for you to talk about, uh, your abuse, your grief, your loneliness, your temptations? The second thing we need is we need a source of truth. What I’ve found is that whenever we’re struggling with sexual trauma, temptations, whatever it might be, there’s always lies underneath that that the enemy tells us. So it’s not just enough to hash it out in a community, where are we going for truth and how do we know what a lie is? Uh, and the third thing we need is we really need to understand that this is going to be a journey. We need people to journey with us. It’s not a one and done. It is, uh, a commitment to discipleship. And I’ve gotten to see over the last 14, 15 years that when we provide that for people, when we provide that kind of community, and truth, and process, uh, that they do grow and that God does begin to transform and bring freedom.
Jim: That’s so good. And this discussion has been so good. Let’s continue, if you are willing. Let’s stay with this and come back, uh, for another day and continue to talk about those things that help people to become more godly in their sexuality, which is the goal.
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
Jim: And, uh, you know, if you’re struggling in this area, call us. We have caring Christian counselors here at Focus on the Family. It would be a privilege for them to talk with you and help guide you, provide resources like Juli’s book, Surrendered Sexuality, as a tool to get you moving in a better, more godly direction in this area of your sexuality. And, uh, believe me, nothing’s gonna surprise them. We’ve been at it 48 years, so I think we’ve heard just about everything, and, uh, we want to engage you in that way.
John: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Our caring Christian counselors are made possible by our generous donor community who, uh, sustain the ministry either on a monthly basis or with one-time gifts, and we’ll invite you to partner with us as we, uh, talk about and help people in this area of, uh, intimacy and life. Our number is 800, the letter A and the word FAMILY, 800-232-6459, or check the website for details about our counselors and, uh, this great book, Surrendered Sexuality. Uh, our site is FocusontheFamily.com/broadcast.
Jim: And John, with those gifts, either a one-time gift or a monthly gift, uh, we’ll send a copy of this book, Surrendered Sexuality to you as our way of saying thank you for joining the ministry. You know, your ongoing support helps stabilize the budget and provides the resources that we need. Think of this, Juli. We’ve been measuring these things since you were here at Focus on the Family, but in the last 12 months, we’ve helped more than 530,000 husbands and wives build stronger, healthier marriages.
Dr. Slattery: Wow.
Jim: That’s pretty good.
Dr. Slattery: That’s amazing.
Jim: I’m excited about that.
Dr. Slattery: Yeah.
Jim: So join us, be part of the ministry, and again, you get a great resource in Juli’s book.
John: Once again, our number, 800, the letter A and the word FAMILY, or donate at FocusontheFamily.com/broadcast. And thanks for listening in to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller, inviting you back tomorrow as we continue the conversation with Dr. Juli Slattery, and once again, help you and your family thrive in Christ.
