Can I Really Change!?!

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How free can you be? How free? Can you be?

In some version or another, this is a question that we get a lot, especially for people who are just starting their journey towards sexual integrity.

They’ve wrestled with their specific attractions and temptations and are wondering, is this going to be a part of my life forever?

Can I actually be free? Can real change happen for me?

Can I Really Change!?!

In some ways, they’re asking three different questions.

  • How much change is possible for me?
  • How much change can I expect; specifically? And that’s a slightly different question.
  • Has God actually promised me change?

So there’s three different kinds of versions of the same question of can I ever really be free?

And the answer is yes, yes you can be free!

Join me in this episode as we walk through those three questions as I answer both from my experience in 20 years in this ministry and in God’s Word.

Outline:

  • How free can you be in sexual integrity?
  • Can I ever really be free?
  • All things are possible according to scripture.
  • What we can’t promise you.
  • How to be conformed to the image of Christ.
  • Sanctification and salvation happens by God’s grace.
  • We all want to get back to Eden.
  • Learning to open your desires.
  • What is possible in this life?

Help the show:

This Episode’s Transcription

Josh
How free can you be? How free? Can you be? In some version or another? This is a question that we get a lot, especially for people who are just starting their journey towards sexual integrity. They’ve been wrestling with repeated falls, they’ve been, they’ve tried different ways to find freedom. They’ve felt the power of their sin come over them again and again. And again. They’ve wrestled with their specific attractions, their specific temptations, their specific sexual arousal template, and they’re wondering, is this going to be a part of my life forever? In some way? Or can I actually be free? Can real change happen? For me? And really, in some ways, they’re asking three different questions. One question is, how much change is possible? For me? How much change is possible? They’re also asking, how much change? Can I expect? Specifically? How much change can I expect in this life? And that’s a slightly different question. And then lastly, they’re really asking how much change is promised? How much change? Are you promising? If I start coaching or read regeneration stuff? Or get involved in this group or that group? And maybe more largely, how much changes? How much changed? Has God actually promised me? That’s probably the more important question. So there’s three different kinds of versions of the same question of can I ever really be free? And first of all, let me just acknowledge to you if you’re asking that question, or you’ve asked it yourself, you want to acknowledge the question comes from a really important place comes from important place, I recognize that often that question comes because people have faced a sense of hopelessness. And we’ve talked to so many people in our ministry who have prayed for years and years and years, who’ve gone forward from multiple altar calls, who’ve been through different programs who have tried different things, who have believed for healing, I believe, for changing lives, and have not experienced it to the degree to the degree that they’d hoped for. So what I’d like to do in this podcast, just kind of walk through those three questions, and just answer as honestly as I can. I want to answer both just kind of matter of factly. From my experience, and granted, my experience is just one person’s experience. I mean, I have been with this ministry for over 20 years, and we’ve got a lot of staff members. And I know a lot of people who do this kind of ministry, in different forms all over the country. So but it is my perspective based on that experience. But I also want to answer the question, biblically, I want to answer faithfully to the scriptures, What do the Scriptures promise and what don’t they promise us about? About change about what we can actually hope for? So let me start with just unpacking a little bit how much change is possible? Bottom line, answer that question is, all sorts of changes possible, all sorts. And I say that both based on what Scripture teaches us that With God, all things are possible. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. If God has raised Christ from the dead, how much more will he not also raise up your mortal bodies? All things are possible, according to scripture. I mean, this is the this is the message of our faith, that through Christ’s entering into our humanity, he has and dying, the ultimate and being raised to new life, he has led the way for us to follow him in all the ways that we’ve experienced death, to follow him into those places where we will experience life in those parts of our lives and in our life in general, from death to life. So biblically, all things are possible. How much change is possible? Every bit of change is possible. You can experience freedom you can experience new life in the area’s your sexuality. Sexuality is not immune from the Gospel of Jesus Christ, sexuality, fallen sexuality, sinful sexual sexuality, your attractions, your feelings, your behavior, all of it. Or none of it is immune from the power of the resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. None of it is immune from the power of His Holy Spirit living in you breathing new life into your into your body. Now, experientially I’d also say I’ve I’ve met folks who have experienced a radical change in their behavior, radical change in their attractions, radical change in their sexual orientation, radical change in their relationships and their marriages, marriages and situations that just seemed I are like there is no hope. We have I know people who have experienced radical change in those areas and new life they never expected would ever want to go through what they went through again. No, they wouldn’t. But they’re grateful for what God has brought out of the ashes. So yes, the change you’re hoping for as possible. Now, is the change you’re hoping for promised? Well, we certainly as a ministry can’t promise you all the results that you want. And neither do we think that God promises you all the results that you desire in this life. Certainly, we can hope we continue to pursue, but we can’t promise because we’re not entitled to full healing. Now, whether we’re talking about full healing in the area of of a physical deformity or physical ailment, a sickness, a sin struggle, whether that struggle is sexual or not, in our relationships, in our careers, with our finances, we can believe for all sorts of things. But we don’t believe that Scripture teaches, nor has it been our experience that everyone experiences, all the change that they want, in every area of your life. What God does promise. And so what we promise because he promises, he does promise that he is going to be with us, He will be with you. He will be with you. His presence with you. His commitment to you is not contingent on how much you change. His commitment to you is not contingent on how well you do at changing your behaviors. His presence, His commitment to you is not contingent on whether or not you never experienced temptation, or never slip up again, in any area of sexual temptation. We see this in Matthew 2820, where he’s commissioning His disciples to go out and spread the gospel. He said, and certainly I’m going to be with you always, even at the end of the age. We read this in Hebrews 13, five through six, where he says, Never will I leave you or forsake you. We also know that he promises and so we promise that he will complete the work that he’s being done in us, we read this in Philippians, one, six, Paul says, I’m confident of this, that He who began a good work and you will see it through he will complete it, he will perfect it. When is that gonna happen? Either in this life and the life to come, we don’t know. But he will complete the work he’s begun in you. So the long that you have the hope that is deferred, even the hope when your heart is growing weary of hoping you can continue to hope because God will bring about full restoration in your life. And lastly, we know that we he does promise that he will work, everything that we’re going through all the we experience, he’s going to work it together, for the good of those who love Him have been called according to His purpose. And what that means is that he will use it all together to continue to conform you into the image of His Son, that’s Romans 828, and 29. Don’t skip reading Romans 829. When you read Romans 828, you read Romans 828 alone, and it can sound like oh, good lights gonna turn on just the way I want. But Romans 829 talks about being conformed to the image of Christ, God is going to continue to work all things together in your life, for your good as you love him, and you can continue to conform you and your image of Christ. Now, just to expand that a little bit. To be conformed, an image of Christ means to be come who you are created to be, the fullness of who you’re created to be doesn’t mean you’re going to look exactly like Jesus Christ. It means that Christ is the second Adam, he is the prototype of what a human being is meant to be. And so as he conformed to His image, he is going to conform you to who you are meant to be as a human being, the fullness, the full life that he intended for you, your unique manhood, your unique womanhood, and all that he is designed for you. These things, God’s got these things, God’s God, these things, God promises you. And this is a part of pursuing him over pursuing your specific version of what change is gonna look like in your life, pursue Him and He will not let you down what he has for you is good, it is good, it is good. And yes, and yes, he knows the change, you’re after he knows the relationships you desire. He knows the difficulty of your temptation and how hard it is to bear those things. And he wants to help you along the way. So let’s go to how much change can I expect in this life?

Josh
So this is where I’m going to I’m going to speak from, from my experience a bit of money in ministry for 27 years. First of all, let me I gotta say this right from the get go. You can expect change and transformation your life, but it does involve your cooperation. transformation happens sanctification and salvation happens by what God does in our lives. It’s a gift of His grace, but he doesn’t force it upon you. There is participation. We do participate, we say yes to what he’s doing, by participating with him by opening our lives. And there’s a journey to that. We’ve all fallen from eaten both in the grand scheme of things we’re not needed anymore. But also in our individual lives, we can all look back and see moments in our lives that seem like they were, they were better, you know, Christmas morning when our children and embrace from a parent, having our moms and dads take care of us, a blissful marriage, you know, whatever it was for you. But every one of us in our own story have experienced falling away from eating in a barn here, by the way from language from Dan Islanders, school and his his story work modality. But we’ve all experienced a fall from even we’ve experienced our, our parents marriage breaking up, we’ve experienced abuse, we’ve experienced our own addictions, we’ve experienced other people’s addictions, we’ve experienced bullying, we’ve experienced life that hits us hard in the head. And we find that our ideal hope for what our lives would be is not what we wanted to be. And unfortunately, in a fallen world, that doesn’t happen for everybody equally. So your experience of that might feel different than other people’s experience probably does. We all want to get back to Eden. We all want to get back to some form of bliss, we want life to be good again, that desire is really, really good. And the shortcut, the temptation is to embrace our addictions, to run to pornography, to embrace what the world says is true about our sexuality and our gender, to give in to our own sins, whatever they might be our own temptations, to slink back to, to sit back and be cowardly are within with sloth which is a failure to become Oh, you know, I’ll just whatever happens happens, I just won’t work at it. Those that’s the shortcut to trying to find eaten the trying to find rest again, trying to find wholeness again. And there are a million different shortcuts the enemy offers isn’t interesting, by the way, right in the beginning in Genesis three, he does this and he does it all through our lives as well. The enemy attacks us and where he wounds our identity or wounds our lives. He then offers us a shortcut to get back to Eden he’s responsible for for tempting us out of Eden. And then He offers us a false Eden to return to he’s, he’s a jerk. What can we say? The longer harder journey is taking up our cross and following Jesus it is pledging our allegiance to Christ who gives us life. It is believing in Him and following him forsaking all of their loves, as they compete with him, and choosing to love Him most of all, to giving him the throne in our lives, to accepting the both of us as our Savior and as our Lord, as as Reverend Bob Regan has often reminded us. This is the harder journey. It’s learning to open your desires, open your sexuality, open your story to God, for for what He has for you for his comfort, his healing, his presence, his sanctification, his growth, his conviction, opening ourselves. This is this is how there’s a part of how we take up our cross and follow Him. And as you do that, what you can expect to experience in his life you can expect to experience more of God’s presence. And with that you can expect to experience less shame and self loathing around your struggles. Not because necessarily because your struggles less than immediately, but because you experience God’s presence and love for you right where you are, just as you are. When the prodigal came home from the far country, and was an absolute mess, he experienced the Father’s love. The father covered him with his own robe to cover his shame. And he put him in the seat of honor. And God will do that for you. Right where you are. Even as you continue to struggle with things you’ll experience, more self awareness. If you’re if you’re doing this journey, right, you’ll come to understand yourself better. As you look into your story, look into your your specific temptations, your specific arousal, with curiosity and kindness, you’ll, you’ll you’ll begin to experience more self awareness and with that more self compassion, and more self acceptance. Doesn’t that sound great? I mean, so much of our longing for change can be motivated by our self loathing about the fact that we that we don’t like who we are. And so one of the places that God begins for many of us, it often to our chagrin, and also to our surprise is a place it’s more fundamentally needed, which is, he loves us. He loves us. He loves us right where we are. We’ll also experience over time, a lessening of the intensity and frequency of our temptations. As we experience more self awareness, more self compassion, we can expect to experience a decrease in the intensity of our temptation to sin, we can expect to experience a decrease in the frequency in our temptation to sin. And yes, we can experience to sin less over the course of time as these things take root in our lives. There’s a really important tension to point out here between what we can expect in this life and hope because if we, if we let go of hope that we will be completely free, then what we can end up doing is putting a ceiling on how far we can actually expect to go. We want to trust more in God’s move in our lives than we do in what we are experiencing. And trust his power to change us more than our experience, and everybody else’s experience. Because if we don’t do that, then I think we do put a cap, we shut down our own faith and put a cap on how far we are likely to go. So here it’s important to remember what I said at the beginning about what is possible. What scripture says is possible in the testimony of those who have experienced radical change. And through that we hold to God’s gracious commitment to never leave us or forsake us. And as we do that, we can expect to experience more relational and spiritual fulfillment. As we decrease as we increase our own self understanding as we increase in our own self compassion, we then learn how to offer kindness and compassion to others, and that improves our relationships and then improve improves our relationship with God as well and our own spiritual fulfillment. That may not be all that you want, but it is the journey you’re invited to. Friends. Everything is possible in Christ.




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By Josh Glaser

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