Josh Glaser [00:00:01]:

Hey, good people. Welcome back to becoming whole podcast. Okay, so today we want to talk about quitting unwanted sexual behavior. But I want to talk about it from a different perspective because I think a lot of us, when we first start trying to quit our porn addiction or masturbation or lust or hooking up with somebody else, whatever it is, you that’s the category we’re thinking in. What I need to give up, what I need to stop doing all well and good. There’s good reason to want to stop your unwanted sexual behavior. The things that we give ourselves over to, the things that we worship, we become enslaved to. And if you’re listening to this podcast, you likely know that feeling of being enslaved to your unwanted sexual behaviors.

Josh Glaser [00:00:49]:

You want them, and you don’t want them. You want them because they feel so good in the moment. They seem to satisfy you in the moment, but they’ve taken a hold of you, and you’ve crossed lines. You said you’d never cross. You drew lines and said, I’ll go this far, but no further. And then you went further. And I say that because that’s exactly what I did way too many times. I said, you know what? Five more minutes, and then I’m done.

Josh Glaser [00:01:13]:

And then that five minutes came, and I said, well, five more minutes and five more minutes and five more minutes. There were the types of pornography that I never wanted to see, that I ended up seeing. There were things I saw and heard in my acting out that I wish I could unhear and unsee. That’s the nature of sexual sin. And the enemy is all over that. Just as an aside, he’s all over that. He loves it because he wants to lead you down a path saying, hey, go through this door. It’s glorious.

Josh Glaser [00:01:39]:

Isn’t this beautiful? Isn’t it beautiful? And then there in the corner is something that you wish you could unsee, or he leads you across a line, and you wish you could undo what you did, and then you’ve gone that far, and then he’s got you. I mean, he’s maniacal. He’s despotic. He’s terrible. Anyway, he’s not the point of this podcast. But that’s the first category. The first category is trying to give up something that is causing you shame, hurting you, hurting other people in your life, leaving things that you care about at risk, your family, your kids, your wife, your husband, whomever. And you want to stop doing those things because they’re as destructive as they are to you.

Josh Glaser [00:02:22]:

That’s category one. But there’s another category, and if we miss the second category of leaving unwanted sexual behaviors behind, we miss out on a whole glorious path and journey that is so important for becoming the kind of men and women that we want to become. And that second path, that second part of this journey is not about leaving something behind. It’s about becoming someone more becoming who you are created to be. Now, some of you hear that and without thinking about it, you actually translate that to mean this, I’m going to become who I’m meant to be by quitting that stuff. That’s only part of it. So one specific category that I think will help to illuminate this. You are designed by God.

Josh Glaser [00:03:08]:

You are uniquely designed by God to be a self giving gift. What does that mean? It means that you your spirit, soul and body, your heart, your mind, your will, all that you are is designed to be a good gift to God and to other people. And if you’re married specifically, then to God, to other people, and most especially to your spouse and your children, you are designed to be a self giving gift. Why? Because God is a self giving gift. This is the nature, the character, the invisible nature of God that Paul writes about in Romans one. I mean, at least this is part of his nature, that he is self giving. He is love. And love is self giving.

Josh Glaser [00:03:58]:

Lust says, I want to take from you even if it hurts you for my selfish gratification. Love, in contrast, says, I want to give myself for your sake so that you can have life, so that you can be loved. That’s love. So love includes sacrifice. Love includes laying down my rights and my life and my wishes for another person’s. Good. Now, love doesn’t include becoming a non entity. So we’re not talking about like losing all sense of boundaries and losing all sense of yourself.

Josh Glaser [00:04:32]:

That’s not love. That’s emotional dependency or relational idolatry or something else. But love understands the goodness of the self and offers the self as a good gift to others. I heard someone say years ago, and I thought this made so much sense. They said, you know, if you aspire to be a priest or to move into some type of vocational ministry that requires singleness, and you do so because you have out of control sexual behavior, that’s not a good reason to do it, because God wants he wants you to give yourself as a good gift, not as a faulty gift. Now, granted, I’m not in any way saying that any of us ever reach a place of absolute perfection in this life, but we are meant to understand ourselves as God’s creation, as good gifts. He made us, he made you to be a good gift. And so your sexuality is included in what he design in you to be a good gift to others.

Josh Glaser [00:05:37]:

Did you catch that? So if your whole view about getting rid of your sexual behavior is, I want to get rid of this sin, then you’re missing that actually God designed your sexuality as a good thing and a good gift to others, specifically if you’re married to a spouse and to children. But your sexuality is not just the sexual act. It’s all that makes you a man, all that makes you a woman. And so your sexuality is actually design to be a good gift to all the people in your life in different ways depending on the relationship that you’ve got. So you’re a man who has children. That means that you are created to be a father to those children. You’re a woman who has children, you’re created to be a mother to those children. That’s a part of your sexuality.

Josh Glaser [00:06:20]:

It doesn’t mean you’re being sexual with your children, but your femaleness is a part of what makes you sexual. That’s your biological sex. And so your sexuality is designed to be a gift to your children. And you as a woman have things to give to your children that your husband doesn’t. And you as a husband, as a man, have things to give to your children that your wife doesn’t. You are designed to be a good gift in the marriage bed. You are designed to be a good gift. So rather than approaching your marriage bed, if you’re married as someone who’s seeking to have your own sexual needs or sexual desires met, not that that’s a terrible thing because there is a reciprocity, there’s a give and take.

Josh Glaser [00:07:01]:

You’re not the creator, you are a creation. So you don’t have infinite giving that you can do. But your first priority should be to come to your marriage bed as one who gives yourself as a good gift to your spouse. Now that’s a different category for you to think about sexuality. Welcome to the fallen world. We do not think that way in our fallen world. Sexuality is all about the self receiving, the self taking, the self getting. That’s what our culture looks at sexuality for.

Josh Glaser [00:07:33]:

Matter of fact, if you don’t like what I want, then that’s your problem, not mine. We’re bulldozing the true nature of love in our culture because we’re kind of saying what love is, is you have to treat me a certain way. You have to respect who I am. You’ve got to do this for me. That’s what love is and I’ll do the same for you. That’s not love. Love is self giving to the point of we go back to the marriage vows here the traditional marriage vows, which are an image of love, which say for better, for for worse. I give myself to you.

Josh Glaser [00:08:08]:

So I’m not giving myself to you because it’ll make life better for me. I give myself to you because as a good gift, I see you as good and I want to make your life better. Great book. That kind of unpacks. A lot of this stuff, much greater than I’m doing, much better than I’m doing, is Edward Sri’s book Men Women in the Mystery of Love. And he’s really unpacking the teachings of John Paul II. Before he was Pope John Paul II, he wrote a book called Love and Responsibility. And Sri here in this book is unpacking that and does a great job.

Josh Glaser [00:08:41]:

It’s a short little book, but listen. He says, in self giving love, men and women recognize in a profound way their life is not their own. They have surrendered their will to their beloved. What? Let me read it again. In self giving love, men and women recognize in a profound way that their life is not their own. They have surrendered their will to their beloved. What if we live that way in the area of our sexuality? What if we surrender our will to our beloved? And if you’re single, your beloved is Christ. I mean, the beloved for all of us is Christ.

Josh Glaser [00:09:24]:

But what if you surrendered your will to your beloved Christ? To your beloved Jesus? What if that’s how you lived out your sexuality and you learned over time the virtue of chastity, which is what? Steers the ship of sexual love. Steers the ship of romantic love. Steers the ship of love. It’s self mastery that is in place so that all that I am can be directed towards loving. With self giving love. That’s what Jesus modeled for us. And that is what you and I are created for. All right, so to sum up, we can try to get rid of our unwanted sexual behaviors because they cause us and other people trouble.

Josh Glaser [00:10:07]:

Yes. Amen. Do that. But also aspire to become a man or a woman who knows how to love with a self giving love. In how I handle my body and how I handle my eyes, my thoughts, all that I am is meant to be self giving gift for the love of another Jesus. We are so far from this. Would you make us more like you in our everyday life, in our everyday friendships and relationships? And certainly, Lord, in the area of our sexuality? Oh, Lord, we pray it for our good, and we pray for Your glory. Amen.