Episode 3: Rethinking Sex: Recovering a Biblical Lens

Hi everybody, this is Francie Winslow and I'm so glad that you're here with me on the Heaven in your Home Podcast. I am excited today because we are going to jump in to a really specific conversation on what has formed our view of sex or our sex view as I'll call it in this episode. Before we get any further though, I want to pause like normal and just invite the Lord into this conversation. Whatever you're doing, just keep going and just open up your heart to the Lord for a minute while we come to Him in prayer. Father, thank you for the opportunity to get to know your heart on this very core subject. We invite you into this topic to rewire our thinking, to reveal your heart, to renew our minds so that we can see this gift, how you see it, the gift of sex, the gift of our bodies, the gift of marriage and our calling to partner with you in mission on this earth. Father, be glorified in this podcast, in these conversations that we're having and bring revelation of your heart to us, set us free God to see the goodness that you have given us and to be free from the lies of the enemy around this topic. Help us Lord. Give us your wisdom and insight. We invite you into this conversation in Jesus' name, Amen. Okay, so I am really passionate, you guys. I'm really passionate about us reseeing sex, about us revisiting this concept of being image-bearers and what it means that our bodies are good and God made them and our sexuality is good and our gender is good and married sex is good and all of it is a gift that has a larger purpose. They are all parts of the story that God has written on our body so that we can know him better, so that we can glorify him fully on this earth. And there is so much to unpack around that, but before we could begin to reimagine this gift of sex according to a biblical view, before we can even allow him to reform our thinking, I think what is necessary is to pause and examine the lens through which we see sex. As I have spoken to women, really all over the country and in different countries, thanks to Mops International and them sharing my talk all over the world, I have realized through feedback and interacting with moms and hearing their stories and their testimonies that we all have grappled with this topic. We have all struggled with this topic. We have all been wounded and had misunderstandings or pain around this topic. As a result, we see it through a shaded lens, we see it through kind of dirty glasses. And I really believe God wants to take those dirty glasses off and give us fresh lenses to see this gift of sex, this gift of married sex, this gift of sexuality and gender and marriage through a fresh biblical lens so that we can be fruitful and participate in this mission of God on the earth in a way that is abundant and powerful and spirit filled to every degree. So before we get there, let's examine what lens are we looking through when we see the topic of sex. As I have thought about it, I can see that there are five lenses that we have all probably encountered and maybe one of them is the kind of the main lens that you look through most of the time when you think about sex. I'm just curious, if you guys could email me or even reply to the emails if you're on my newsletter, definitely respond and tell me what this is like for you and what lens has been predominant for you as you have struggled or thought about or had questions about the topic of sex and marriage and sexuality. But from what I can tell, from what I've learned this far, I'm sure I'll continue learning is that there are, I'm going to call them the five W's. The first W, when I see what forms our sex view, their five W's, the first W is the world. And I'm pretty sure because we all live on planet earth and we all have ears and eyes. We have all been affected to some degree or another by the world when it comes to our sex view or our worldview on sex. When I talk about the world impacting us, I mean the images we see, pornographic, but also just graphic. The images we see in TV shows, the images that are in the movie theaters that are not x-rated. I would say most things that are rated are have images, even PG-13, have images that are affecting us and how we see sexuality. They're affecting us mostly by osmosis, subliminally, how we view our own bodies in light of what we put in front of our eyes, what we see as beautiful on the screen, then affects how we see our own selves. We can't really take apart, we can't really separate what we take into our eyes from the way it affects our soul because God gave us faces with seven holes on our face to take in stimuli in an ideal world, all that we take in through our eyes and our ears and even our sensory, our nose and our mouth would glorify God, would honor God, bring us closer to God. But so often what we take in through our eyes, through movies, through magazines, through TV shows, even commercials, it gives us a certain message about sex, about what is sexy, what sex is, what sexuality should look like, what it is to be a male and female, it paints a picture for us. So, we have the world preaching a very strong, secular, humanistic worldview when it comes to sex that is many, many times very antibiblical. We have messages that are constantly coming in, I remember even when I was in high school, they would be like the 17 magazine would be the place where you would get educated about girl issues, about boy issues. You would get all the scoop that you were to embarrass, maybe to ask your mom or your friends about, I don't even know what it is now to be honest with teenagers, somebody can help me out on that. But what is the 17 magazine of today's world? Those things inform us, standing at the checkout rack in the grocery store, they inform us of what the world says is beautiful or valuable or sexy or sensual. I would say also, Facebook is a huge informant of our sex view. It is constant input from the world on their thoughts about what is a priority when it comes to relationships. And it's through news articles, it's through everybody's opinions. And not everybody's opinions are bad on Facebook. I'm just saying there's a lot of input. I would, in an ideal world, and I can't even claim to have done this, but in an ideal world, I would think for every time we click on to Facebook and check it and get input, we should open our bibles and get input from what is true and tested and solid and trust worthy. We have so much input from the world that truly outweighs the input we get biblically. And so if you think about why are we confused at times, just take an inventory about how much input you've received from media, from social media, from print media, and take an inventory on how much input you've received from the Word of God and from biblical teachings. And that will give you a good idea on how much information you have taken in from the world. I'm right there with you. I think the bottom line is not to beat ourselves up over that, but it is to evaluate, oh, I am educated by the world on so many levels. I am educated, even by the entertainment that I think is kind of not a big deal. It still is imprinting us with a message about sexuality, whether we want it to or not. That's the first W, the world. The second W is our wounds. Our wounds provide a lens through which we see sex and sexuality and marriage if we are not working towards healing. I say that with gentleness and love and tenderness because I've worked through my own wounds and I still have wounds that the Lord by His loving kindness will bring to light. Whenever I get a little icky feeling of something is not right inside of me or I feel a reaction towards something, instead of trying to shove it down, I find that that is an invitation from the Holy Spirit to let it come up and come out before Him because He's our healer. So if you're even listening to this and at some times in the podcast you're feeling a little resistance or a little pain, let it come out to Him because it's only in coming out, it's only in detoxing that pain, not wounding, getting it out that we can actually get the good stuff in and get healed. So oftentimes our wounds are the lens through which we see sex and then they are barrier to further intimacy. If we are living with deep wounds, we will have blocks to intimacy, but God made you to live intimately connected to Him and intimately connected in your marriage and it is worth seeking healing. It's worth seeking help, it's worth seeking counseling. And the good news is that God is our healer. He describes Himself as that. He came to heal the broken hearted and I can find hundreds and thousands of testimonies just even in my own life. I've heard God healing people, I've heard people telling me they're hearts being healed, they're minds being healed, their bodies being healed, He's a healer and you can count on that for you too. Don't let the wounds of your heart be a barrier to intimacy. So we've got the world and the wounds being lenses through which we see sex if we are not determined to have a different way of seeing it. The other way, another W that informs our sex view is the whispers around us. This was a big deal for me. I grew up in the middle of the night. in the South, lots of love, lots of amazing people, lots of good family connections, but I think in the South, sex is not something we talk about, especially in the Bible belt. And I would say that there was one scenario I remember growing up where I remember some ladies that I was around one day were just kind of joking. And I was actually eavesdropping on them. I was out of town and I could hear them, but I was familiar with this group of ladies and they were saying, you know, I would rather have, are you ready for this? I would rather have some affection without erection every now and then. And they all burst into laughter. And I know that I'm married, I get that, but at the time, it really shocked me and made me feel sad. Like, is that what marriage is like? Is that what is like to be a middle-aged woman where that's the conversation? And I think those were the sex conversations they were having. There was no God's dream for your marriage. There was no abundance. There was no theological good news about sex that I could look forward to. It was this kind of dreaded thing that women joke about, that women laugh about and maybe you identify with it. And it's fine to have fun when we're, you know, just joking about the facts of life. But I think underneath that was an ache, an unmet ache for true intimacy. And I could feel that in the whispers of the women around me is unmet aches. Another woman that I had lunch with in college one day, I remember she, I looked up to her, she was a godly woman, and she was married, and she ate really healthy before organic was cool. And I remember her saying, you know, "Francy, I would rather eat a greasy cheeseburger than have to have sex with my husband." And this was a godly couple, and I just felt like a dagger went into my heart because I was engaged, and I thought, I thought I had stuff to look forward to. I thought marriage was going to be better than these women were portraying it to be. And I had just hoped that if God had a plan for marriage, and if he had a dream for marriage, that I know it would be hard, but I had hoped that there wouldn't be this ache of unmet desire, this ache of unmet intimacy that I kept hearing underneath these comments, these whispers, these subtle side comments that were powerful, actually. I think the other part of the whispers is actually quieter than a whisper. It was the deafening silence of so many women who never talked about it, who never brought it up, who never were able to articulate any bit of truth and hope and goodness and positivity around the topic. If you grew up in the church, I think you might recognize some of this in terms of the fact that you would go to church, but rarely hear a woman talk about sex, rarely hear women talk about sex in a healthy, positive life-giving way that portrays the fullness of God, that portrays the genesis to revelation, goodness, and the analogy of the gospel written on our bodies and in our sexuality and in our marriage bed and how actually we're image-bearers, and it all points to this greater love story that God has written on our bodies. I never heard any of that. I never heard the power that happens when two become one. I never heard about the anointing and the grace and the joy that happens when a marriage is experiencing oneness and unity. And I think that's because we have had a massive ache in our hearts as the church and whispering and silence is about all we've been able to do. I wonder if you identify with that. If you do, send me an email and let me know your story. The fourth W is weariness. If you are a mom of littles, I know you get this. If you're a mom of bigs, I know you get this. If you are parents who are sleep deprived because you have little ones or maybe sleep deprived because you have big ones who are having emotional conversations at night or out late and you're worried about them. If you're a single person, if you're a single mom, you get this weariness. We are all dealing with this and wanting to know how do we find strength in our weariness. But when it comes specifically to our view of sex in a marriage, weariness can be a real intimacy stealer. It can be a real joy stealer because sometimes we just don't want to have anybody else touch us. I don't want to have anyone else need me. That is what I hear from moms all the time and I get that. I really do get that. While I get that, I do believe that there is another way to think about it. And we will get into that. But weariness often steals our sex joy because we're overworked and under-rested physically. We're exhausted but also spiritually. We're weary. Our souls are not consistently refreshed in the presence of God in a way that gives us this vision for our marriage that propels us. It's more like an afterthought. And I get that. And we together, we're going to keep diving into practicals on how we can build in strength and joy and rest even into our marriage connections so that we can overflow. Those four first W's, the world, wounds, whispers and weariness all can be blocks in our ability to reimagine the goodness of God on our bodies and our sexuality and our marriages. Before we can move on to the fifth W, we have to be willing to recognize, identify and grapple with those W's so that we can take those glasses off. If you're walking around dirty glasses but you don't realize that they're dirty, you're just going to keep seeing through a dirty lens. But we have to reach up to our face, grab the two sides of those glasses and throw them down and say I don't want to see through that lens anymore. I want a reformation of my mind. I want to revision with my eyes the goodness that God has for sex and sexuality and marriage because I want to be on mission in the fullest way possible. I want to partake in the goodness of God on every level to know Him in every way, in my body, in my heart, in my mind and to show Him in every way, in my body, in my heart, in my mind so He can be glorified. If that's your heart's cry, then the fifth W is good news for you. The fifth W is the word of God. The word of God can be our lens for our sexuality and for our sex lives. I was speaking at a large church women's group a couple years ago and I was presenting on this and I just said can you raise your hand in this audience if you feel like you had the word of God presented to you in a profound way that really shaped your view of sexuality, of gender, of sex and marriage. Raise your hand and in that whole room of women, not one person raised their hand and it was so shocking to me that we can be raised in the church, we can be involved in the church yet have this most fundamental part of our lives, of our most intimate relationship on earth, our marriage unaddressed by the word of God which is our plumb line, it's our foundation, it's our perspective giver, it's our truth standard and the word of God does have something to say to us. The Holy Spirit through his word has life to speak over us. I want to start with Jesus as we unpack quickly. This is just going to be a really quick overview of a beginning conversation of what the word of God has to say about sex because basically the rest of this podcast, all the episodes are going to be building on this idea of what does the Bible say about sex and sexuality and the mission of God through our marriage. But we're going to just begin the conversation right now so I'm going to open my Bible to Matthew 19 because if we want to know what the word of God says, we have to test scripture with scripture and if you just take one little verse out and then think you can build your whole theology on that, that's not always so strong but when we can use scripture to interpret scripture and see in the beginning and in the end, in the middle, this theme is repeated, that's a strong theme, that's something that we can really work with and especially something that comes out of the mouth of Jesus, you can go there and know, okay, this is where I want to start. So we're going to start with the words of Jesus. He was being tested by the Pharisees and they were really trying to poke around and see what are you going to say about this? Let's throw them a hard question. Some Pharisees came to him, this is Matthew 19 verse 3 through 5, testing Jesus. So this is testing him, poking him, trying to provoke him, saying, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Do divorce his wife for any cause at all? So they're asking about divorce and reasons and the mosaic law and Jesus saw right to the heart of it and I love his answer because he answered them and said, have you not read? Do you not remember scholars of the word, scholars of the law? Do you not remember that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? So basically he said, whoa, whoa, whoa guys, don't you remember in the beginning God? Don't you remember in the beginning God? I'm repeating that because we get so caught up on so many questions. God is inviting us back to the beginning to resee his heart for marriage, for sexuality, for gender because he made it all and he made it very, very good. He blessed gender, he blessed sexuality, he blessed a man and a woman and gave them a mission together. Jesus said, let's go back there. Let's begin this conversation on marriage in the beginning because it was God's idea. But that's it with you. It was God's idea. It is not a social construct. It was God's brilliant, divine design to mark us with his image for he who created them from the beginning made them male and female. And God said, he's quoting, "For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave, become one, glue himself to his wife. And the two shall become one flesh. Consequently, they are no longer two but one flesh. But therefore God has joined, let no man separate." So in the beginning, God created man and woman. We see in Genesis 1, 26 through 28, I'm going to jump there. Have you have your Bible out? If you're getting into this, you can jump with me or you can just listen. In the beginning, this is the Genesis story. God made, he made all the things, he made the beast of the earth, he made the plants and the trees. And then in 26, then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness and let them rule over the fish and the sea of the sea and the birds of the air and over the cattle and over the earth and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. And God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created them male and female. And God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have rule over it. Okay, in the beginning, God created man and woman in his very image. He stamped the bodies of a man and a woman with his image and called it very good. From that place of identity, of male and female being very good, he blessed them to have sex, to come together for two to become one flesh. That's what one flesh means. Two becoming one flesh, letting their bodies connect in a way that they're no longer two entities that sleep in different rooms and different beds and have different schedules and different bank accounts and different everything, but have a contract. They are to create this bond of oneness that overflows with an anointing that enables them to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and lead with the love that they have received from God. To live as God's ambassadors, His reflection, His essence on the earth, because they were marked with His very image. The invisible God, get this, guys, the invisible God wanted to make Himself visible. That's why this matters, because God loved this world, but then He said, "I want to be on the earth, so I'm going to mark these humans with my image so they can be my representatives, they can extend my goodness, my amazing glory everywhere they go, they can bring it. Because my image rests on them, they are my ambassadors, they reflect me. Parts of this man reflect my heart, parts of this woman reflect my heart. When they are joined as one, I am visible in their midst. The nature and the essence and the image of God is made manifest." Wow, I feel like worshiping is somebody listening to this. Are we in awe of God yet or what, guys, there is so much more that I have to say. I want to stop here because I don't, I could go on forever, but I want to leave you with the reality that God had a good plan. He had a mission in mind, and it was for His glory to fill the earth. He created a man and a woman in His likeness, and He said it was so good, because He is an invisible God who wants to make Himself visible. He wants us to know Him. As we know Him intimately, we will reveal Him. We will show Him our invitation is through this gift of marriage, and even sex that when our bodies become one, there is this God-ness that shows up in our midst. It is the essence of God's heart when a man and a woman fully alive are married. God's love is revealed in a way that reveals His heart for the earth. We see it continued where Paul talks about husbands, love your wives, as Christ loves the church, wives honor your husbands, and it is this analogy of marriage that continues to unfold. We see it in Ezekiel, how God prophesied over the people that He saw them, and He clothed them, and He betrothed them, and He loved them. We see it through Hosea and Gomer. We see it through Isaiah. I am jumping all around, but it is all throughout the Bible where this imagery of the love of God being like a bridegroom longing for His bride. We see it all through the song of Solomon, and we see it in Jesus saying, "There will be a wedding feast, and I am the bridegroom coming for my bride." God had a desire to be one with His people. He wanted to be so intimately connected to us in love that He made us His image-bearers, and He gave us sexuality as a gift that would manifest this message of eternal love, and every time a husband and a wife have sex, every time they become one, it is like a burst of revelation that we were made for oneness. Every time we feel pleasure, we remember we were made for eternal pleasure, because everything we are experiencing is a reality that we are image-bearers of God. We are not made for self-expression. We were made for God expression. I am going to say that again. We were not made for self-expression. We were made for God expression, and that is what our sex life is about. A God expression so powerful that it even overflows through our hormones, through the intimacy we feel in the longings and the goodness of our actual relationship, and it propels us to do good works for God because our intimacy and our unity has power. When we want to do things for God, it's so hard to do that from a place of disunity. It's almost impossible. But when we experience the power of unity, Psalm 133 talks about the power of unity being like oil flowing down Aaron's beard and dew on the mountains. It is so powerful when brothers dwell together in unity that there is anointing and fruitfulness. It's directly related to this call to lead the earth as his image-bearers that we got in Genesis 1, our very first commission. That's what our sex life-sexuality, the gift of marriage is about. It is this bigger idea, this bigger gift, and it is mind-blowing. I hope that your mind doesn't feel too blown, but it is good news, and I just want to begin this conversation that there are endless depths to be mined together. As we seek to re-see sex, re-envision God's gift of sex, so that He can reform our minds and in the process, disattach us from the power of the world and the worldly lens that we have known and disattach us from the ache of our wounds because He's healing us and heal our ears from the negative whispers we've heard throughout our lives and the aches of intimacy, the longing that we've had of unfulfilled longing, healing us from all of that, even healing our bodies from our weariness that oftentimes we have thought, "Sex is about me and I'm too tired for sex, but what if we saw it as this gift of seeing intimacy as a way to unity that propels us into the very mission of God, which is for us to live from a place of oneness so that we can serve our families well, so that we can work well as unto the Lord, so that we have this capacity to invite people into our home through hospitality because our marriage is unified, our marriage is strong, our marriage is our launch pad for the mission of God. That was His dream in the beginning, was intimate connection between family, husband and wife, an intimate connection between God, such powerful intimacy that were propelled into fruitful living, abundant fruit. That's what Jesus said we were made for. We glorify God when we bear much fruit. That's God's heart for sex. That's God's heart for gender, sexuality, marriage, all of it. It's beautiful, it's powerful, and it's good, and He is doing something in our midst to reveal His heart for us because He wants to heal us because He's all done with the enemy stealing the truth that we're image-bearers of God, and there's something incredibly powerful about honoring that part of our body and our life on earth that we were made to be image-bearers on every level. Would you pray with me? Father, thank you for this good news. Thank you that the gospel can actually be revealed through our bodies and our sexuality and this longing that we were made for an eternal, unstopping love that we actually see a glimpse of it in earthly marriage, ultimately we just acknowledge that you are our satisfaction. But we see the story. We see that it was written on our bodies that male and female were image-bearers, that we are reflectors, that we are part of your revelation on the earth, and that the story is continuing, and you want to continue it in our hearts and in our lives. So, Father, would you just help us see better? Would you help us revision your heart so that we can reflect that heart to the world? Come and heal us from the world, from the wounds, from the whispers and the weariness, and set our feet on the strong word of God as our rock, as we continue to learn more about your heart for sex, sexuality, marriage, and the mission. of God. We love you, Lord. Thank you, God, for this time. And we invite you into this conversation and all the future conversations to come that you would be glorified in Jesus' name, Amen. [Music]