February 13, 2024 • 48 mins
Today's episode is going to be a wild ride, as we dive headfirst into a conversation that's bound to be one of the most raw and real shares we've ever had.
Yep, you guessed it - we're talking about sex. But hold on, we're not approaching it the way you've heard a million times before.
Our mission here at The God Pod? To flip the script and invite you into a judgment-free zone where we can explore your relationship with yourself (and with God) without any shame weighing us down.
Joining me on this journey are my dear friends and mentors, Kevin and Rea Queen, who I affectionately call my "fairy godparents". Together, we're diving deep into my own experiences, baring it all in the hopes of showing you that there's no room for shame or condemnation when faith is your compass.
When I first stumbled upon this whole idea of "saving myself" for marriage, I didn't fully grasp what I was getting into. But as my relationship with my now-husband evolved, so did my understanding of commitment.
Before I knew it, we were on a journey of self-discovery and revelation, strengthening our bond in ways I never thought possible. And as our wedding day approached, I felt this urge to share our story, to shed light on how my faith journey transformed my views on love, intimacy, and self-worth.
So here we are, laying it all out on the table, hoping to spark some honest conversations and remind you that your journey is valid, unique, and oh-so-worthy.
GUEST: Kevin & Rea Queen from @Crosspoint.tv
HOST: @LeanneEllington
To learn more about Leanne, head over to www.LeanneEllington.com, and to share your thoughts, questions, feedback, or guest suggestions instantly, head on over to www.WhatsGodGotToDoWithIt.com.
Follow Leanne on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leanneellington/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
If you want to go on a journey. If you're skeptical,
don't worry. Not here to preach.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I want to keep it clean and talk to me
and recall where faith needs stop nature, get in touch
with your creator with a baking love and je.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
She even speaks Hebrew.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
What's that? What's that?
Speaker 4 (00:37):
As well?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Send the passion talking transformation?
Speaker 1 (00:41):
What's done?
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Got so well? Hello, and welcome back to What's God
got to do with it?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Today is a doozy people.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
We are going to be diving into a really interesting conversation.
I know it's bound to be, but probably definitely actually
the most vulnerable share today. We are going to be
talking about sex, and probably not in the way that
you have seen it, heard it, learned it, lived it
in society. We want to give you a picture and
really invite you into a conversation that allows you to
(01:13):
relinquish any shame, relinquish any stories that you picked up
about yourself along the way, and really invite you into
the possibility of what could be true for you and
your relationship with yourself, your relationship with God.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
I am joined here.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
By my friends mentors, Fairy, god Mother and Godfather.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yep, now it is written spoken.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
Yeah, Hello, you know Kevin from a previous episode. You've
heard me talk about re on previous episodes, and you'll
hear her on a future episode as well. But I
asked them to be here because they have really been
alongside this journey. I'm going to share my experiences with
this and really hopes to, you know, show that really
there's no shame here. There's no condemnation when you don't
(01:59):
know what you don't know. So I am going to
share that, but we also want to just open the floor,
open the door for you to get whatever clarity you need,
because I know for me, when I first, you know,
started a relationship with God, these conversations were not there.
They were not spoken of. I heard about things like
purity culture but didn't know what it was. I heard
about things like no sex before marriage, but didn't know
(02:20):
what it meant. And then of course there's a lot
of guilt and shame and judgment associated with these things.
So I'll just kind of kick us off and then
then we'll dive in. And for everybody listening, thank Ree
and Kevin for me, because I really don't believe this
episode would be possible without them supporting it. So I'm
going to go ahead and dive in and just and
just share, and I'll start with bits of the story
and then we'll kind of, you know, diverge probably, But basically,
(02:43):
when I found God, for whatever reason, something struck my
heart and I was like, Okay, I have this new
relationship with myself, this new relationship with my body. And
when it came to my relationship with men, and I've
shared on this on this podcast before, before I knew
who I was, before my identity was rooted, I was
attracting emotionally unavailable men, and I was settling for breadcrumbs
(03:05):
of what I truly deserved because I didn't know who
I was in God's eyes. And that's what happens, and
not in a shameful way, but just in a that's
what happened kind of way. Well along the way, I
was never probiscuous. I was always pretty responsible, but I
did I had sex outside of marriage. And when I
first came into union with God, I made a declaration
(03:26):
that the next man that I am with intimately is
going to be my husband. I thought that that was
a big step for it actually was a really big
step for me at the time. But I didn't necessarily
know what it meant. There was no specificity attached to that.
I was just like, the next person I'm intimate with
will be my husband. Well, as we're filming today, I'm
getting married in about ten days too. That husband, Kevin
(03:49):
is gonna be marrying us. Ree will be a witness.
So when Charles and I first got together and I
told him, I was like, the next person I want
I'm going to be intimate with is my husband.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
And pretty quickly we knew that.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
I mean, we were dating with the intention of marriage,
not in a pressurized kind of way, but just that's
what we were both looking for kind of way.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
And we fell.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
In love and we knew that we were going down
the road of marriage, even though there was an urgency.
And so within the first few months we took our
relationship to the next level and we were intimate and
it was never anything that defined our relationship. We had
built the foundations way beyond that, beneath that, within that.
But who I was at the time, I honestly didn't
(04:29):
feel bad about it. I didn't feel ashamed. I was
just like listen and kind of like the inner workings
were like, hey, God, I'm giving you all of my life.
I've surrendered you know, this area in this area and
this area, and I'm and I've really renewed my mind
around this area right, and I think I'm doing it right.
Like the guy that I'm supposed to marry, or that
I'm that I'm planning to marry, this is the man
that I've chosen to be intimate with. Now, keep in mind,
(04:50):
at this point, I hadn't really read the Bible in entirety.
I still haven't read it in entirety, but I haven't
read nearly as much as of it as I've read
today and really understood it and really committed my life
to living it, to be honest, because that's been an ascension.
But that being said, to make a story a little
less long, about a year ish into our relationship, I
(05:11):
did start having a little tug in my heart.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Whether it was from hearing you.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Know, actually the church I go to in Murphysborough, one
of the pastors there was talking about when people come
and say, hey, will you pray for my marriage if
they are having sex before marriage. He's like, listen, I
love you, but like, I can't pray for your marriage.
And that said something to me. I was like, huh,
that's interesting, like I wouldn't my relationship wouldn't be prayed for.
And of course, probably who I was at the time,
(05:37):
was like, well, what's up with that? Like that's not cool,
Like I'm a good Christian all the things right, but
I still didn't get it. And then just in groups
that I was in, or just in little thing like
reading the Bible and reading scripture, I started getting convicted.
So I went from being like not convicted that I
wasn't convicted, to all of a sudden being convicted that
I wasn't convicted. And then little by little I was
(05:59):
like interest saying, okay, maybe there is something to this
about you know, saving yourself for marriage, about giving your
body to your husband, about keeping that as something that
is sacred within the confines of marriage. And so I
approached my fiance who will soon be my husband, and
I said to him, Hey, I'm feeling convicted, and he
answered exactly how I why I love him. He said, okay, what,
(06:22):
like what do you want to do about it? Like,
what what do you want to do? I support you,
and I said I think we should probably like and
it was not decisive at all, I was.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Like, ugh, and I was hoping he would say no.
Probably parts of me, you know, because.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
I think also who I was at the time was
afraid that that would make a man leave because I'd
never had that anything other than that, right, So he
was like, I'll do whatever you want to do, and
I said, okay, let's wait and he said, okay.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
I'm on board.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
So from you know, February of twenty twenty two, so
like over a year and a half ago, was the
last time we were intimate, and neither of us knew
what we were getting into, right, and this was both
of our first godly relationships.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
And I don't know.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
If he knew that he was going to propose to
me because we didn't get engaged for another year after that.
So definitely it wasn't one of those things of like, oh,
put a ring on it so that I'll have sex
with you.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
It wasn't like that, right.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
It was more about honoring God because I felt like
I was compartmentalizing my relationship.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Now. Just I want to say here.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
I'm not trying to shame anybody, convince anybody, persuade anybody
to do what I did. This was just kind of
what happened for me. The other side of this is
what led up to this, is when I would I
would meet with you guys for lunch or coffee or whatever,
and I found myself kind of compartimentalizing who I was.
I was like, oh, yeah, I moved out to Murphis Burrow,
but I didn't tell you guys that I was like
living with Charles and that we were intimate and all
(07:39):
the things.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
And I was like, Wow, I'm out of integrity.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
I've committed to living like full disclosure, fully in alignment
with who I am, and then this one area of
my life I am compartimentalizing, not to mention. Little did
I know God would have a little podcast called What's
God Got to Do with.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
It on the horizon for me.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
And I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that
if I had not like got and write with my
own alignment with God, I would have never stepped into
this role because I would have felt out of alignment
and I would have known even if.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
I didn't know what it was.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
So there are so many different things that I didn't
see any of this at the time when God nudged
me and was like, hey, I think you should like
put a pin in it. So all that's to say,
there were so many fruits that have come off the
back of that, and we'll talk about that. But there's
an intimacy that was created between Charles and I that
has absolutely nothing to do with physical anything, and it's
an intimacy that would have never that I believe would
(08:31):
have never existed without this kind of departure from the
typical physical connection and intimacy that people explore. And then
there's this relationship with my body that I've kind of
rediscovered because my body image has been a very interesting
wack a doo subject for me my whole life, right,
And just when you think that you've gotten to a
certain level with that, there's always more. And so this
idea of like, oh my gosh, I'm kind of saving
(08:54):
not kind of I'm saving myself and my body and
honoring and treasuring my body. And I get to give
it to this man after we are wed before God,
and again the fruits that it has bared that we
didn't even know we were looking for.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
That good old Charles.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Just came for the ride with me, you know, when
I said, hey, let's do this, and he's like, I'm
on board, you know. So that is the long and
the short of it, and we're gonna we're gonna dive in.
So first of all, when I first shared this with you,
we were sitting over at lunch over in Franklin at
Urban Market, and I was like, okay, you were like updating,
what's what's the updates?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
And I'm like, oh yeah, by the way, I'm engaged
by the way all this.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
And it's not that I was a shame to share it,
but like what I'm sharing right now on this podcast,
I needed time to reconcile it and know that I
was good and know that he is good, and know
that all was well. And because again I didn't know
about this. I didn't know about sexual shame because I
never had it until I had it right, And there's
so many different types of sexual shame, and mine came
(09:51):
up in different ways that again I didn't even know
I was aware of or could.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Be aware of.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
But I came to you and I shared what happened,
and I was like, this is what happened, this is
what we decided, this is what happening now, future future pacing,
and I mean, you guys couldn't have been more accepting
you are this picture of grace and love and unconditional
acceptance and showing me exactly what I thought I knew,
which is that, like Liam, this is okay, Like you've
renewed your mind, there's nothing wrong, there's something to be
(10:16):
ashamed of. Also, I still had that little stigma attached
to it.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So all of that right, I want.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
To turn it over to you, and just first i'd
love to hear y'all's experience of this, and maybe if
you recall some of some of what you shared or
what you know came up for you as I shared
this story, and for anybody who's listening. And again, this
is not like a We're not here to convert you
or you know, convince you or whatever you know, trying
to twist your arm into anything. We're just sharing a
picture of what this could look like, especially in a
(10:44):
modern day society.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
If I was just to pick up with with our story.
You know, Rihe and I both we both grew up
in homes where it was taught that the best way
would be to wait until we were until we were
married to have sex. And I remember learning that through
I think I learned it through the youth group that
(11:06):
I went to, but that didn't give me a lot
of the tools that I needed. And it also I
don't know that there was necessarily a positive view that
was put on sex as much as it was a
don't do these things, and so I think there was
still shame attached. And it wasn't until later that I
began to learning understand.
Speaker 5 (11:28):
That that sex is a gift.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
There's a gift that God has given to us that's
best enjoyed in the context of marriage. And I think
I saw more of the taboo than like the gift
that was worth preserving, and that I've heard one person say,
you know, seeing that it's a gift and just like
a fire in a fireplace, that like a fire in
(11:53):
a fireplace, it works best in the fireplace. You know,
you put a start a fire anywhere. But the way
God has made us physiologically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, that intimacy
is best experience God's design within the context of a
covenant relationship of a I'm here, you're like, I'm not
(12:13):
going anywhere, like I'm with you forever until the end.
And so I don't share that to put any shame
on anybody who's experienced outside of the covenant, outside of marriage,
just to go. I think that is God's design even
since the beginning. You know, created Adam and Eve in
the garden, and God, God invented sex like it's his idea,
(12:34):
like he came up with He was not surprised. Oh
you guys can do that like he was. He made
to be enjoyed, you know, in the in the garden.
And what's interesting is after Adam and Eve, after they
sin against God, the first thing they do is like
there is they they hide. That's one way we know
(12:55):
that something's not right is when we start hiding anything
from Like if if I was on the way home,
if I was to go to Crystal and pick up
some Crystal Burghers or lesson McDonald's, and like if I
hide the McDon Like if I hide that from Brie,
you know, like I hope she doesn't see the receipt.
You know something's not right when I'm when I'm hiding.
(13:18):
And the same is true you know, with with a
history on Safari, on the phone, or with pictures or
image anywhere in life. So Adam and Eve they hide
from God, and God's first question to them is where
are you like where's your heart?
Speaker 5 (13:33):
You know?
Speaker 3 (13:33):
And I think that when things are within that context,
it's like it's it's heart shared together without like I
don't need to hide, you know.
Speaker 5 (13:42):
I'm not hiding anything.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
I'm intimacy like into me, see right, Like I am
giving you myself, you know. And and so it's that
expression of intimacy and love that God designed within the
within the covenant.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
I agree with everything that you just said, Kevin, and
I just want to point back Lee in to that
day that we were at Urban Market and you said
it when you were sharing your story at the beginning
of the podcast. But the phrase that I heard you
say that day and I heard you say again was
the renewing of your mind. And that's just from scripture.
That's Romans twelve, verse two. Do not conform to the
(14:18):
pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing
of your mind. Then you will be able to test
and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and
perfect will. And so it's beautiful because you had already
settled in a place where your identity was. You said
it even this, You even said this at the beginning
of the podcast. Your identity was firmly rooted in Christ.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
That was settled.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
And when you know who you are and who you are,
you were able to surrender to who whose you are.
And I think that was just a process that took
some time for you, and I love it because you
were willing, you were surrendered, and you were willing to say, Okay, God,
renew my renew my mind in this thinking, and he did,
(15:03):
and he did, and he showed you what his will
is for your life around sex and intimacy and sex
before marriage and sex inside of marriage, and his will
for your life in what shame looks like and what
shame doesn't look like. And so I think, if we're
being honest, there is a point where it almost has
(15:24):
to start with knowing who you are and whose you are,
and everything else can kind of flow out of that.
Because if you don't know God as good, and you
don't know God as provision, and you don't know God
as saying, here, here's my will. It's good and pleasing
and perfect, it's hard to trust what he can say,
(15:44):
what he does say, what he will say to you.
But when you know Him as those things, you can
trust when he says, hey, why don't you go to
Charles and say we're going to wait, and you're like, okay, God,
I trust you. I trust you. I know what that means.
I don't know how that's going to look, but I
trust you. And then if I favor in that from
the Lord, and then that step of obedience, and that
favor propels you to the next step of obedience and
the next bit of favor.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
So so beautifully put in so many gold nuggets in that,
and you use you know, the concept or the distinction
between conform and transform, you know, conforming to the world
and transforming and renewing your mind.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
And I think that's what a lot of people do.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
And to just get on the other side of the
fence of anybody who's listening, where there might be that
question of like, but wait if I like where they're
typically conforming to what they think they should be doing,
or what the man or woman wants, or what society
is doing, and because they're not rooted in who they are,
they feel like that that's their only option is to
conform to what the external variables are telling them to do, right, Yeah,
(16:41):
And I know for me, it was that fear of like, well,
if I'm not putting out for lack of a way
of saying it, like what's my worth?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
What's my value? Will they want me? Will they stay?
Will they leave?
Speaker 4 (16:50):
All those things that we're in that fear of abandonment,
fear of rejection, and then we self abandon and we
give ourselves over to whatever it is, whether it's you know, food, drugs, alcohol, sex,
whatever it is, even though it's not what we truly
want because fear of again abandonment. So if anybody is
listening and they're like yesing to that of like, well,
I would love this idea of renewing my mind and
(17:12):
having a new relationship with with my body, with sex, with.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Men, women, with who whatever it is?
Speaker 4 (17:17):
But will they love me?
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Will they stay? Will they leave me?
Speaker 3 (17:20):
What comes up for you for that, Well, I'm gonna
go back to the garden where like Adam and Eve,
where they hid it from God and they've created fig leaves, right,
they're covering up their nakedness, and God's like who told
(17:41):
you that you were naked?
Speaker 4 (17:43):
You know?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Who told you? Like where did you learn this thing
to be ashamed? You know? And that was their experience
of like I've got to cover up, and God didn't
leave them there and he went. It said that he
went and make clothes for them, and that really cool,
Like if we just nerd out for second, that created
the first sacrifice, because something had to die for him
(18:06):
to be able to take those animal skins and cover
over their shame. Let's fast forward to the Cross right
where our story is that Jesus laid down his life
as a sacrifice for our sin and our shame. And
when the Romans would crucify someone, they would strip them naked, wow,
(18:27):
to shame them, the condemnation on them. So all of
our guilt and all of our shame and all of
our crimes and all of our wrongs and the wrongs
that have been unto us, he took on himself to
provide a covering for us. So now we can be
one with God. So like this whole message is just
(18:47):
covered and saturated with grace, with forgiveness, freedom, freedom.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
So what happened at the Cross not only did it
cover our sin, but it broke the power of sin.
And now we're not We don't have to be mastered
by anything, right, we don't have to be mastered by
these things, or these relationships or these behavior there is power,
and we still sin Jesus. What's interesting is he took
(19:14):
it today. He's like, you've heard it said, don't commit adultree.
But I tell you, if you look at a woman
love and lustfully, you commit adultrey in your heart. So
that we wouldn't just take it about this like standard
of like Okay, I'm just not gonna do I'm going
to go right up, Todd, just right, because that's our tendency.
The question we want to know how far can I go?
When we were dating throughout college and we're like, okay,
this is our line, Well how far can we? That
(19:36):
was that was a question, which is not the question,
Like the question is like how do we walk in wholeness?
How do we honor one another? How do we care
for one another? How do we care for one another
the future version of ourselves and for the relationship that
we want. How do we work on talking? Because when
I'm with you, I just want to make out, and
if we're making out, we're not talking right. And so
(19:59):
there's this idea that like when we get married, it's
just going to be all it's gonna be a like
a sex marathon. And then you get married and realize
it's not you know, it's like, but what God was
wanting to do is to train us how to communicate
and how to talk before we were together. Where now like,
that's what marriage is built on. It's not built on
(20:20):
the physical. And I want you to see the way
that I mean, if somebody's like, well, I don't know
if God and Satan exists, just think about the way
this works. Before marriage, there is this temptation to have sex,
have sex, have sex, have sex, sex, have a lot
of sex, have sex with a lot of people, have sex,
have sex, have sex.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
This is the.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Temptation, and it's in all like, the temptation is in
all of us.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
It's almost like a badge of honor two for a
lot of people, like you know.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
It's like like keeping score. Okay, So if anybody like
wonders about the reality of God and Satan and temptation
and sin, and I think about this way when I
face temptation, and it's just it's the one two punch
face temptation to do something or to not to do so,
to you know, to commit this sin, whatever the sin is.
(21:06):
And before it's like, ah, nobody will know or it's
not a big deal, or it's just it's just one time,
it's gonna be the last time, or this, and then
if I take the bait, after that moment, it's like
and you are the worst person, like can you believe
you did that? And then the shame and the guilt
that gets hitped on after that, that just when you
(21:27):
just take that and it's how we can go in
our own minds one moment and then we completely shift
from it's not that big of a deal, yeah, to
heaping on the shame. I think that lets us know
there is a bigger world at play, a spiritual world
at play, because there's a lot on the on the line,
and God gives his grace and he wants to give
us the grace to walk through those moments and to
(21:49):
make decisions and when we fail, that we don't stay
in a place of guilt and shame, but that we
walk in that in that freedom.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
And I think also it gets stacked on of like,
well I've already done it, I might as well just
keep going. And then it becomes your identity, Like shame
becomes an emotional home for a lot of people, whether
it's with sex, whether it's with any other you know mechanism,
you know. And then that's where it comes back to
what you were saying before, like, when you are not
rooted in an identity that comes from something higher than
these worldly places that we are identifying, we're lost, you know.
(22:20):
So I'd love to hear what you were just about
to say about that too. You look like you had
a glaze in your eye.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I'm just caught up in the conversation, just listening. I
think there's an amazing conversation that can be had about
shame in particular as a feeling and guilt as a feeling.
And our friend Chip DoD does an amazing job with this,
So I won't try to recreate his book and his
(22:47):
thoughts on this. But shame has a gift in it,
and the gift of shame is humility, and guilt has
a gift in it, and the gift of guilt is
forgiveness and freedom. And so, like Kevin said, getting stuck
in shame and guilt, you don't have to because there
(23:10):
is a healthy viewpoint of shame and guilt. Now again,
a process. It's not overnight. It's not like, oh I'm
experiencing shame, Okay, Now I have humility and now it
doesn't have to be like that. And sometimes you go
in the other direction where it becomes like toxic shame
where you feel worthless and never going to overcome this
(23:32):
choice that you made, and sometimes that happens. But there
is a gift in shame and there is a gift
in guilt, and if we can get there, and I
don't think we can get there alone, we will find
and experience that gift. And so that would be an
amazing conversation. And again Chip DoD has some amazing resources
(23:52):
on that. So if that's something that anybody would want
to look into, that would be Choice of the Heart
is what it's called.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
Yeah, I actually mentioned his Voice of the Heart on
the neuro Faith episode. So we're coming full circle here, Yeah,
so yeah, I mean, and so for anyone, you know,
coming back to this identity conversation and knowing who you
are and being rooted in something bigger, you know, for
anyone out there who's like, I don't even know what
that feels like to not be just valued by my
body or to not have value in a relationship without sex,
(24:22):
Like what do you do with that? When you're in
that place? You know, and you might not have a
relationship with God or might not know that you do.
You know, where do you start that identity conversation? In
terms of finding value in a relationship? I would preface
and say it first, it starts with yourself. Obviously, you
can only you know, give away what you have to give.
So like, how are people that might not be in
(24:43):
that place right now and they're looking to outsource their
worth to a relationship or sex or whatever. And again,
there's no shame, there's no condemnation here, but like, where
would somebody begin.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
I think it's healthy to have some friendships. I can
remember being we were seventeen on a basketball tournament down
in Fort Walton Beach and a friend of mine, his
name is David, and we were standing there on the
beach and he was like, man, I'm really struggling with this.
And he told me what he was struggling with and
I was like, man, I'm struggling with that too, And
(25:13):
it was like he was like, man, can we help
each other? And I was like the courage that took
for like, so he didn't know that I was that
I was struggling at the same time, but like that
we were able to share that with one another and
though we're not the only one, and so having a
friend like that, because really, I don't think it's fair
to read for me to ask her to be my
(25:35):
accountability like yeah, accountability partner. Like I think what's better
than like accountability is I would say, like preemptive. And
it's almost where you share your struggles with somebody with
somebody else. And for me, that's a same sex as friend.
We got a friend, Dave now got another. We've got
several friends that I'll just have conversations about struggles with
(25:57):
and it is when we confess those things, share those things.
If somebody's well, where do I find those things? I
think that's one of the best functions of a healthy,
you know, local church, is that you can find some people.
I say it this way, and I think it's true
in relationships as well. It's like when you're running and
you run and you look to the left and right,
and you look to you know, and you're looking to
(26:19):
see who's keeping pace, who's running with you, and you're like, oh,
there's somebody. Like run after God, run after who you're
created to be, Run after his plan for you, like
his dream for your life. Run after the version of
yourself that you want to like, run after those things,
and his spirit is powered to take a sprint and
then look to your left and your right. You know,
there are some places where we can go find people
who will just validate the decisions that we've made and
(26:41):
agree with everything and not challenge us.
Speaker 5 (26:43):
And they're not running with us.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
That's not going to be helpful. But find people mentors.
Even when you sat down and shared with us, I'm
so glad, like it was refreshing, It was so refreshing them. Oh,
there's a level of honesty and confession. There was a
quote from Bonhoeffer where he said, why is it that
it's often easier for us to confess our sins to
God than to a brother or a sister. God is
(27:05):
holy and sinless. He is a just judge of evil
and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother or
sister as sinful as we are, he knows from his
own experience, the dark knight of the secret of sin.
Why should we not find it easier to go to
a brother than to a holy God? But if we do,
we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been
deceiving ourselves with our own confession of sin to God,
(27:27):
whether or not we've rather been confessing our sins to
ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution. Who can give us
certainty that in the confession and the forgiveness of our sins,
we are not dealing with others, but with the living God.
God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother
breaks the cycle of self deception. A person who confesses
(27:49):
his sins in the presence of a brother knows that
he is no longer a luve with himself. He experiences
the presence of God in the reality of the other person.
And so if we want to be forgiven, we confess
things to God. If we want to feel forgiven, we
confess it to another person, a trusted friend who's running
in the same direction and running with us since.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Yeah, and knowing that you're not going to be judged,
because there could be a totally the same conversation in
a different audience where it's like, well, you need to
do this, and you should do this, and you shouldn't
be doing that, and you know betterly in and all
these things right. And it comes back to what you
said about in the garden, where when Adam and Eve
took on the shame and they put the shame on
themselves and.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
God was like, where are you Like? Basically, what I
hear is like that.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
Shame's not coming from me, right, So when we talk
about this idea of you know, again, there's so much
stigma and shame, and it's shame put on ourselves but
also being shamed by others. And you hear especially around
the topic of sex, and there's so many people that
might be listening that have are like, probably this is
a breath of fresh air to hear this conversation because
(28:53):
they've experienced this. So that distinction between like this is
not coming from God? Can you speak into that a
little bit of like what's not coming from God? Can
you speak into that a little bit of like what's
(29:14):
not coming from God?
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Shame is not coming from God. God is only good.
He is only good, and so if it's not good,
it's not him, it's not his character. He is kind
and loving and patient. And a beautiful practice that I
have learned over the last oh, I don't know, seven years,
(29:36):
eight years is to focus on who God is a
one word God, you are Peace. Thank you God that
you are peace, not even adding anything else. God, you
are peace. God, you are healer. God, you are good, God,
you are just. God, you are merciful, God, you are deliver.
I mean, on and on and on, and when I
(29:56):
can call those things to mine in a hard conversation,
or when I'm sitting across the table and I'm about
to hear some maybe jarring news, that is who God is,
and that is who He's called me to be, and
so I can pull from and extend that, God, you
are good. I am going to be good to this
person with my words. God, you are a peace. I
(30:18):
am going to just shower peace on them in this situation. So, yes,
shame is not from God. And I think that sometimes
we do have a tendency as human beings to default
to that idea, you're just shaming me, You're just shaming me,
when really it's their hearts that are saying, ah, i
(30:39):
feel like I've hurt myself, i feel like I've hurt
someone else, I feel like I've hurt God. And they
don't exactly know how to deal with that, to confess that,
and so the default sometimes is to say, you're shaming me,
You're shaming me, And I would just encourage anybody who
might find that that's a default sometimes to default to
(31:02):
that you're shaming me phrase, just to get honest and
just it's there's no shame in looking at your feelings
and looking at what you're really feeling and working that out.
There's no shame in that. In fact, there's like we said,
there's freedom in that, and there's forgiveness in that, and
there's fullness of life. Really, yeah, there's a fullness of
(31:24):
life in that.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
It's good.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Yeah, coming back to the freedom side of this, you know,
because part of it is relinquishing the shame, but then
stepping into what God has for us, you know, and
coming back to I shared little bite size of this
when I first, you know, we first started the podcast,
was this idea that like, I gave my life over
to God.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
You know.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
I gave him my my physical life. I gave him
my emotional spiritual life.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
I gave him weed. Like I was like, take this,
I'm not I don't want to.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
I don't want to drug my emotions anymore. I gave
him my finances, my business, all of the things, right.
But I in one of my realizations was like and
and by the way he prospered me in all of
those areas. It's like double portion, triple portion, you know,
like everything I was like, oh my gosh, why I
It was one of those things where I was like
why didn't I.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Do this soon?
Speaker 4 (32:07):
Or like I feel so free, But I was holding
on with like this tight grip to my sex life
so to speak, actually literally with this air of my
life and compartimentalizing my faith. And that was kind of
one of the awarenesses for me as I was like, God,
you are so good and you've been so good to me,
Like what is keeping me from trusting you at this?
And part of it was again I always say, it
(32:29):
takes faith to have faith, because faith is not this
thing that like you just inherently have all the time,
Like at least I for me, I don't I have
to like go out on a leap of faith to
experience the faith that I need to have to have
the belief and the certainty that faith is good, right,
because faith is scary, right. But that being said, it
was it was a leap of faith to just be
like to even like admit it to myself. And for
(32:52):
that inkling of for me feeling convicted was I felt shame.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
It was exactly what you just said.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
I assumed that other people were shaming me, but it
wasn't them, It was me, right, And that's when I
and this is a really important distinction for me that
I feel called to share, is this was really the
first time I've ever felt like convicted about anything, like
feeling it in my bones, feeling it in my spirit.
There was a physiological, spiritual, mental, emotional. It was all
(33:18):
three dimensional convicted as in like something's not right. And
and again, I my emotional home was shame for so long,
so naturally it makes sense that that's where I went.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
But it was this idea.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
It was me out of alignment with the identity that
I had. I had called myself to step into because
God had called me to step into it, but I
wasn't living in it, in this one little piece of
my life. And so when I gave it over to Him,
and that's where I want to impart upon you. The
reason I'm sharing this right now is not out of coercion.
It's out of like the gifts that God is giving me.
(33:50):
And I'm not even married yet, I'm still a born
again virgin technically right now.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
On you know, the date that we're that we're recording this.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
But the fruits that in the and the beauty and
the richness that he has given our relationship and intimacy
whole new definitions of intimacy and connection and acceptance and worthiness.
And talk about me proving to myself that I feel
worthy of having a man that loves and cherishes me
for who I am, not for how many times I
have sex with him. Right, So there is something to
(34:19):
be had. And again it takes faith to have faith.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
But these are the gifts.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
And the freedom that lives on the other side. Not
to mention the shame that I didn't even know I was.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Having about my body.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
Now you all have been listening to this podcast to
know along I've had a very complicated relationship with my body.
The relationship, the next level of body image and body
connection that I now have because of this that again
I wasn't looking for. It was just the gift on
the other side of this of now I'm like, I
get to give my body to my husband. I get
(34:48):
to honor my body first and foremost and then give
it as a gift.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
It's a gift for him, it's a gift for me.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
It's a gift for us, and there's freedom on the
other side of the shame blanket. So I think it's
really important that we talk about both because again, a
lot of sex talk is stigma, shame, guilt, all the things.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Yeah, let me say one quick thing, because I know
you have a lot more to say about it than
I do. But for your story in particularly, and it's
part of my story too, is you said conviction and
conviction is a word that just it's not condemnation, it's
not guilt. I mean, it's not like, oh I feel
so guilty for that. It's conviction, and conviction is from
(35:26):
the Holy Spirit. And to your story is that with
your relationship with the Holy Spirit, he did some work
in you, and the truth of His word did some
work in you. And so capital T truth was how
you got to the place of conviction. And so that's
my story too, that the truth of the Living Word,
(35:49):
the living Word, it can it can apply and speak
to so many different situations, so many different circumstances. But
the truth capital T truth of the Living Word is
how we know what God's Back to that original scripture
that I read, his good, pleasing and perfect will is
and because you were connected to his truth, his living word,
(36:11):
he was able to speak. Your eyes and your ears
were blessed because you were open to see and to
hear what He was telling you in this particular place.
We all have we all have places where we need
to be convicted, where we not need to be convict.
That's not the best way to say it. Where we
where the Lord wants to gently pull us into a
fuller life, and we all have them. We're married, so
(36:35):
maybe sex, you know, in this way is not ours.
But I've got something that the Lord wants to gently
pull me in and show me and convict my heart
where there's a gap in our relationship. So this is
not just your struggle, Leanne, It's my struggle. It's kevin struggle.
It's anybody who wants to move into the fullness of
(36:56):
life that God has for us and be holy as
He is holy. We will all have to journey through
and pass those convictions that He gives us, and you know,
take hold and work through those things.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
I mean, and I think about when I think when
you were talking about conviction, I was thinking about when
we were we were engaged, and you know, we had
certain lines that we had drawn, but we were like
trying to get his clothes to those lines. And I
don't say, I don't even want to say. Ree was
I was to be the leader in the relationship, you know,
I needed to lead her and honor her differently, and
(37:30):
I wasn't. And I remember I was leading. I was
preaching to some high school students on sex and I
was talking about that. And afterwards I was leaving and Re.
I remember we were in like this little alleyway behind
this house and the church, and and Ree was like,
she said, you're a hypocrite. She said, what you said
up there, you don't live. And they say reality is
(37:51):
what you bump up against, you know, And I bumped
up against the reality that I wasn't. A hypocrite is
an actor. So pretender hypocrite doesn't mean that we mess up.
It means that we're putting on a mask and we're
pretending to be something that we're not.
Speaker 5 (38:04):
And I was.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
I was living in pretense. And so it had to
get real, honest with myself and honest with Ree. And
it took some time, but in our engagement, we said,
you know, then we said a boundary. I knew that
if I went in her house that I would not
have enough will power to make the best decisions. And
so from that point on it was I will kiss
(38:26):
you on your front doorstep and I would leave and
go back to my car. And it changed things. But
we had a goal, you know. Our dream was, Hey,
let's honor one another for the sake of our marriage.
We were engaged and so I so, you know, as
I was listening to your story, I'm like, I don't
think God's getting up there and oh, well, they crossed
this line or they didn't cross this line, okay, Like
he's he's not keeping score like that. His heart is
(38:49):
like for us all to flourish, you know, and and
and he doesn't deal with dealing shame. I can I
share a story? Please agree that what God is like
Jesus that if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.
In other words, this is what God is like. Just
look at me, disciples, like, show us the Father. If
you show us the Father, will believe that He's like
you've been with me the whole time, Like, just look
(39:11):
at me. In John chapter eight, he's teaching in the
temple and all these people are gathering around him, and
the Pharisees, which were those the religious lawyers. And they
brought him a woman who had been caught in adultery.
And it's interesting in that caught in the act. So
we don't know if she had clothes on or if
she was I mean, it was that they didn't bring
(39:31):
the man. This is just they threw her under the bus.
They brought her before Jesus and they said, this a trap.
They said, teacher, this woman was caught in the act
of adultery. The law of Moses command esta stone such women,
what do you say? And so they were they were
wanting to trap him, to accuse him, And it says
and Jesus bent down and started to write on the
(39:51):
ground with his finger, and when he kept they kept
questioning him. And he straightened up, and he said to them,
let any one of you who's without sin to be
the first. Just wanted to throw a stone at her.
And then he stooped down and he rode on the ground,
says and at this those who heard begin to go away,
one at a time, the others first, until only Jesus
was left, with the woman still standing there. And Jesus
(40:12):
straightened up and asked her woman where are they has
no one condemned you, no one, sir, she said, Then
neither do I condemn you.
Speaker 5 (40:21):
Jesus declared, go and leave your.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Life of sin, the gentleness, the kindness, the love. The
only one who was without sin in that whole group
of people was Jesus. He was the only one who
was without sin. And he didn't throw a stone. What'd
he do? He knelt down and he drew in the sain.
Now we don't know what he drew. I don't think
it matters what he drew. I think other people wanted
(40:45):
to know what he drew, because when somebody starts drawing
something in the sand, all eyes gone. Was he drawing
in the sand? But I think he did that to
preserve her dignity, because people would stop looking at her
and what she didn't have on and stop looking at
her and shame. Yeah, absolutely, And so he took the shame.
(41:06):
He drew and the dirt. And all we know is
that they dropped all those stones and they left. So
Jesus is he is not throwing stones, He's not throwing shame.
He's offering love. And he told her that not out
of shame, but out of like, so she could flourish,
live the best lion. And he said her free, and
(41:27):
that's what he's after.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
He's that's absolutely yeah, because I mean, sex in one
viewpoint is this bad, ugly, shameful thing. Sex in another viewpoint,
same thing right in the right context, right, or in
the context that serves us and makes it and brings
us closer to God, is this beautiful thing? And really
it comes back to the line that connects all of
this is the renewing of the mind and seeing yourself differently.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
And it's interesting because I always.
Speaker 4 (41:53):
Come back to beliefs, like our beliefs create our behaviors.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Our beliefs shape us. Our beliefs, you.
Speaker 4 (41:58):
Know, what we believe along enough time becomes our identity
in talking about like the worldly beliefs, you know, full transparency.
When I first told my mom that Charles and I
had decided to wait, you know, her first question was.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Is everything okay? What's wrong? Did something happen? Because I grew.
Speaker 4 (42:14):
Up learning that you live with a man before you
marry him, you travel with him, and you you test
out the.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Goods before you marry him. Right, And this is this
is shows that.
Speaker 4 (42:24):
This is a cultural conversation too, right, So when I
said to my mom, I was like, no, we everything's good.
I was like, we want to honor God, like we
want to just really you know, have a godly relationship
and keep it sacred for marriage. And I told her,
I was like, the fruits that are already transpiring, you know,
the intimacy, the connection, all of that. And it took
her a few moments to just be okay with that
(42:45):
and make sure that she knew that everything was okay
and not just okay more than more than okay.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Great.
Speaker 4 (42:51):
But she also had beliefs that if there's no sex,
there's a problem or whatever. And I grew up so
so bottom line, we all anyone listening has their own
set of beliefs, right, and we are a belief away
from renewing our mind really or renewing our mind away
from new beliefs.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Right.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
So I want to put a seal around this conversation
by what in terms of beliefs, what are the beliefs
that you think are keeping people from renewing their minds
and what are the beliefs that we can you know,
instill invite people into around around this subject.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
Well, I think we've talked about we've gone back to
the garden, back to the very beginning. And I think
when Satan attacked Adam and Eve, it wasn't with a
claw hammer, it was with an idea. And it was like,
did God really say? In other words that that is
like can you really trust him? Can you really trust
that God's good? Can you really trust that he has
(43:42):
your best interest in mind? Can you really trust that
he has a plan? Like can you really trust that
He's going to provide for you? Can you really trust
that his way is best? And we live in such
a sexualized culture and everywhere and everything and every conversation,
(44:03):
and so there are all these other ideas. So I
think it's it must begin. We're not a cosmic accident.
We're not just a random collection of molecules, like we've
been made out of love. And last night we were
talking about how what we think, and this is like
the looking glass self as a sociological principle, but when
(44:25):
what we think the most important person in our life
thinks about us is where we get our sense of worth.
And so this is why I would say it has
to start with making God the most important person in
your life, because that's where your worth comes from. It
doesn't come from that dude, It doesn't come from that lady.
(44:45):
It comes from comes from Him. And that's where worth,
you know, begins. So God's goodness, his love and our
worst being found in him.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Yeah, and just practically, I would just say start small, like,
start with one beliefs that you want to change, or
start with one practice that you want to incorporate. It
doesn't have to be everything all at once. Now, I'm
gonna read my Bible every day. I'm gonna read it
cover to cover. I'm gonna go to church, I'm gonna
get in a small group. I'm gonna only date Christian
meth I mean whatever, I mean, whatever it is that
(45:16):
that you've decided or that you've been convicted about, starts small,
Start small, one thing, and those one things will link
together to create a big thing. And like we've said, fullness, freedom, Yeah, fullness, right,
I got it.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
The three episodes. Let's talk about that. And I think
that's a great place to stop. No, thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
I really, you know, for me personally, it feels really
important to uncover this topic and let it be an
open conversation where we because there's no shame in today's conversation.
We're obviously talking about the shame that comes alongside it,
but it just is and it's something that can be
really beautiful and talk about. I mean, this whole idea
coming back to knowing who you are and whose you
(46:03):
are and the most important person reflecting back your worth
being God like. Again, that's why it's like, just try
this on where we are not here to try to
twist your arm into anything. It's just and again I
will reiterate, I was not looking to, you know, save
myself for marriage. It wasn't even on my mind. But
God convicted me and the fruits that have been available
(46:25):
to me, that from the seeds that got planted when
I didn't even know what I was planting, Like I
thought I was planting a cantalope and I ended up
with a watermelon, like I don't even know, you know,
But it's so beautiful. And my marriage is I mean,
I'm not married yet, you know, but it will.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
I know, it's my pre marriage life.
Speaker 4 (46:42):
Has already flourished and benefited. And so again it's just
in every time we talk about this, what's God got
to do with that conversation? Today happens to be saxon intimacy.
It's like just inviting you to try it on. Renew
your mind, ask yourself what you're not seeing, ask God
to show you what you're not seeing, and revel is.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Abound, good, awesome, yes, beautiful.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Well, thank you all for being here. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (47:05):
We are signing off for now, but we will catch
you next time. Bye oyey, We'll be back with more
What's God Got to Do with It? But in the meantime,
I would definitely love to hear from you, so just
tell me where you are in your story or maybe
what questions you have, like where do you feel you
need clarity or support or wisdom in your own journey.
(47:29):
I definitely want to hear from you, So head on
over to What's God Got to Do with It dot
com and scroll down to the form to share your thoughts,
your questions, your feedback, and you can do that instantly.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
So What's God Got to Do with It? Dot Com?
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Speaker 4 (47:45):
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Speaker 1 (47:54):
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Speaker 4 (48:00):
Sure to rate and review to show your support.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
It really means so much. What's God Got to Do
With It?
Speaker 4 (48:07):
Is an iHeartRadio podcast on the Amy Brown Podcast Network.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
It's written and hosted by
Speaker 4 (48:13):
Me Leanne Ellington, executive produced by Elizabeth Fozzio, post production
and editing by Houston Tilley, and original music written by
Cheryl Stark and produced by Adam Stark
If you want to go on a journey. If you're skeptical,
don't worry. Not here to preach.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I want to keep it clean and talk to me
and recall where faith needs stop nature, get in touch
with your creator with a baking love and je.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
She even speaks Hebrew.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
What's that? What's that?
Speaker 4 (00:37):
As well?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Send the passion talking transformation?
Speaker 1 (00:41):
What's done?
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Got so well? Hello, and welcome back to What's God
got to do with it?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Today is a doozy people.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
We are going to be diving into a really interesting conversation.
I know it's bound to be, but probably definitely actually
the most vulnerable share today. We are going to be
talking about sex, and probably not in the way that
you have seen it, heard it, learned it, lived it
in society. We want to give you a picture and
really invite you into a conversation that allows you to
(01:13):
relinquish any shame, relinquish any stories that you picked up
about yourself along the way, and really invite you into
the possibility of what could be true for you and
your relationship with yourself, your relationship with God.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
I am joined here.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
By my friends mentors, Fairy, god Mother and Godfather.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yep, now it is written spoken.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
Yeah, Hello, you know Kevin from a previous episode. You've
heard me talk about re on previous episodes, and you'll
hear her on a future episode as well. But I
asked them to be here because they have really been
alongside this journey. I'm going to share my experiences with
this and really hopes to, you know, show that really
there's no shame here. There's no condemnation when you don't
(01:59):
know what you don't know. So I am going to
share that, but we also want to just open the floor,
open the door for you to get whatever clarity you need,
because I know for me, when I first, you know,
started a relationship with God, these conversations were not there.
They were not spoken of. I heard about things like
purity culture but didn't know what it was. I heard
about things like no sex before marriage, but didn't know
(02:20):
what it meant. And then of course there's a lot
of guilt and shame and judgment associated with these things.
So I'll just kind of kick us off and then
then we'll dive in. And for everybody listening, thank Ree
and Kevin for me, because I really don't believe this
episode would be possible without them supporting it. So I'm
going to go ahead and dive in and just and
just share, and I'll start with bits of the story
and then we'll kind of, you know, diverge probably, But basically,
(02:43):
when I found God, for whatever reason, something struck my
heart and I was like, Okay, I have this new
relationship with myself, this new relationship with my body. And
when it came to my relationship with men, and I've
shared on this on this podcast before, before I knew
who I was, before my identity was rooted, I was
attracting emotionally unavailable men, and I was settling for breadcrumbs
(03:05):
of what I truly deserved because I didn't know who
I was in God's eyes. And that's what happens, and
not in a shameful way, but just in a that's
what happened kind of way. Well along the way, I
was never probiscuous. I was always pretty responsible, but I
did I had sex outside of marriage. And when I
first came into union with God, I made a declaration
(03:26):
that the next man that I am with intimately is
going to be my husband. I thought that that was
a big step for it actually was a really big
step for me at the time. But I didn't necessarily
know what it meant. There was no specificity attached to that.
I was just like, the next person I'm intimate with
will be my husband. Well, as we're filming today, I'm
getting married in about ten days too. That husband, Kevin
(03:49):
is gonna be marrying us. Ree will be a witness.
So when Charles and I first got together and I
told him, I was like, the next person I want
I'm going to be intimate with is my husband.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
And pretty quickly we knew that.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
I mean, we were dating with the intention of marriage,
not in a pressurized kind of way, but just that's
what we were both looking for kind of way.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
And we fell.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
In love and we knew that we were going down
the road of marriage, even though there was an urgency.
And so within the first few months we took our
relationship to the next level and we were intimate and
it was never anything that defined our relationship. We had
built the foundations way beyond that, beneath that, within that.
But who I was at the time, I honestly didn't
(04:29):
feel bad about it. I didn't feel ashamed. I was
just like listen and kind of like the inner workings
were like, hey, God, I'm giving you all of my life.
I've surrendered you know, this area in this area and
this area, and I'm and I've really renewed my mind
around this area right, and I think I'm doing it right.
Like the guy that I'm supposed to marry, or that
I'm that I'm planning to marry, this is the man
that I've chosen to be intimate with. Now, keep in mind,
(04:50):
at this point, I hadn't really read the Bible in entirety.
I still haven't read it in entirety, but I haven't
read nearly as much as of it as I've read
today and really understood it and really committed my life
to living it, to be honest, because that's been an ascension.
But that being said, to make a story a little
less long, about a year ish into our relationship, I
(05:11):
did start having a little tug in my heart.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Whether it was from hearing you.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Know, actually the church I go to in Murphysborough, one
of the pastors there was talking about when people come
and say, hey, will you pray for my marriage if
they are having sex before marriage. He's like, listen, I
love you, but like, I can't pray for your marriage.
And that said something to me. I was like, huh,
that's interesting, like I wouldn't my relationship wouldn't be prayed for.
And of course, probably who I was at the time,
(05:37):
was like, well, what's up with that? Like that's not cool,
Like I'm a good Christian all the things right, but
I still didn't get it. And then just in groups
that I was in, or just in little thing like
reading the Bible and reading scripture, I started getting convicted.
So I went from being like not convicted that I
wasn't convicted, to all of a sudden being convicted that
I wasn't convicted. And then little by little I was
(05:59):
like interest saying, okay, maybe there is something to this
about you know, saving yourself for marriage, about giving your
body to your husband, about keeping that as something that
is sacred within the confines of marriage. And so I
approached my fiance who will soon be my husband, and
I said to him, Hey, I'm feeling convicted, and he
answered exactly how I why I love him. He said, okay, what,
(06:22):
like what do you want to do about it? Like,
what what do you want to do? I support you,
and I said I think we should probably like and
it was not decisive at all, I was.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Like, ugh, and I was hoping he would say no.
Probably parts of me, you know, because.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
I think also who I was at the time was
afraid that that would make a man leave because I'd
never had that anything other than that, right, So he
was like, I'll do whatever you want to do, and
I said, okay, let's wait and he said, okay.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
I'm on board.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
So from you know, February of twenty twenty two, so
like over a year and a half ago, was the
last time we were intimate, and neither of us knew
what we were getting into, right, and this was both
of our first godly relationships.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
And I don't know.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
If he knew that he was going to propose to
me because we didn't get engaged for another year after that.
So definitely it wasn't one of those things of like, oh,
put a ring on it so that I'll have sex
with you.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
It wasn't like that, right.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
It was more about honoring God because I felt like
I was compartmentalizing my relationship.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Now. Just I want to say here.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
I'm not trying to shame anybody, convince anybody, persuade anybody
to do what I did. This was just kind of
what happened for me. The other side of this is
what led up to this, is when I would I
would meet with you guys for lunch or coffee or whatever,
and I found myself kind of compartimentalizing who I was.
I was like, oh, yeah, I moved out to Murphis Burrow,
but I didn't tell you guys that I was like
living with Charles and that we were intimate and all
(07:39):
the things.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
And I was like, Wow, I'm out of integrity.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
I've committed to living like full disclosure, fully in alignment
with who I am, and then this one area of
my life I am compartimentalizing, not to mention. Little did
I know God would have a little podcast called What's
God Got to Do with.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
It on the horizon for me.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
And I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that
if I had not like got and write with my
own alignment with God, I would have never stepped into
this role because I would have felt out of alignment
and I would have known even if.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
I didn't know what it was.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
So there are so many different things that I didn't
see any of this at the time when God nudged
me and was like, hey, I think you should like
put a pin in it. So all that's to say,
there were so many fruits that have come off the
back of that, and we'll talk about that. But there's
an intimacy that was created between Charles and I that
has absolutely nothing to do with physical anything, and it's
an intimacy that would have never that I believe would
(08:31):
have never existed without this kind of departure from the
typical physical connection and intimacy that people explore. And then
there's this relationship with my body that I've kind of
rediscovered because my body image has been a very interesting
wack a doo subject for me my whole life, right,
And just when you think that you've gotten to a
certain level with that, there's always more. And so this
idea of like, oh my gosh, I'm kind of saving
(08:54):
not kind of I'm saving myself and my body and
honoring and treasuring my body. And I get to give
it to this man after we are wed before God,
and again the fruits that it has bared that we
didn't even know we were looking for.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
That good old Charles.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Just came for the ride with me, you know, when
I said, hey, let's do this, and he's like, I'm
on board, you know. So that is the long and
the short of it, and we're gonna we're gonna dive in.
So first of all, when I first shared this with you,
we were sitting over at lunch over in Franklin at
Urban Market, and I was like, okay, you were like updating,
what's what's the updates?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
And I'm like, oh yeah, by the way, I'm engaged
by the way all this.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
And it's not that I was a shame to share it,
but like what I'm sharing right now on this podcast,
I needed time to reconcile it and know that I
was good and know that he is good, and know
that all was well. And because again I didn't know
about this. I didn't know about sexual shame because I
never had it until I had it right, And there's
so many different types of sexual shame, and mine came
(09:51):
up in different ways that again I didn't even know
I was aware of or could.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Be aware of.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
But I came to you and I shared what happened,
and I was like, this is what happened, this is
what we decided, this is what happening now, future future pacing,
and I mean, you guys couldn't have been more accepting
you are this picture of grace and love and unconditional
acceptance and showing me exactly what I thought I knew,
which is that, like Liam, this is okay, Like you've
renewed your mind, there's nothing wrong, there's something to be
(10:16):
ashamed of. Also, I still had that little stigma attached
to it.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So all of that right, I want.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
To turn it over to you, and just first i'd
love to hear y'all's experience of this, and maybe if
you recall some of some of what you shared or
what you know came up for you as I shared
this story, and for anybody who's listening. And again, this
is not like a We're not here to convert you
or you know, convince you or whatever you know, trying
to twist your arm into anything. We're just sharing a
picture of what this could look like, especially in a
(10:44):
modern day society.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
If I was just to pick up with with our story.
You know, Rihe and I both we both grew up
in homes where it was taught that the best way
would be to wait until we were until we were
married to have sex. And I remember learning that through
I think I learned it through the youth group that
(11:06):
I went to, but that didn't give me a lot
of the tools that I needed. And it also I
don't know that there was necessarily a positive view that
was put on sex as much as it was a
don't do these things, and so I think there was
still shame attached. And it wasn't until later that I
began to learning understand.
Speaker 5 (11:28):
That that sex is a gift.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
There's a gift that God has given to us that's
best enjoyed in the context of marriage. And I think
I saw more of the taboo than like the gift
that was worth preserving, and that I've heard one person say,
you know, seeing that it's a gift and just like
a fire in a fireplace, that like a fire in
(11:53):
a fireplace, it works best in the fireplace. You know,
you put a start a fire anywhere. But the way
God has made us physiologically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, that intimacy
is best experience God's design within the context of a
covenant relationship of a I'm here, you're like, I'm not
(12:13):
going anywhere, like I'm with you forever until the end.
And so I don't share that to put any shame
on anybody who's experienced outside of the covenant, outside of marriage,
just to go. I think that is God's design even
since the beginning. You know, created Adam and Eve in
the garden, and God, God invented sex like it's his idea,
(12:34):
like he came up with He was not surprised. Oh
you guys can do that like he was. He made
to be enjoyed, you know, in the in the garden.
And what's interesting is after Adam and Eve, after they
sin against God, the first thing they do is like
there is they they hide. That's one way we know
(12:55):
that something's not right is when we start hiding anything
from Like if if I was on the way home,
if I was to go to Crystal and pick up
some Crystal Burghers or lesson McDonald's, and like if I
hide the McDon Like if I hide that from Brie,
you know, like I hope she doesn't see the receipt.
You know something's not right when I'm when I'm hiding.
(13:18):
And the same is true you know, with with a
history on Safari, on the phone, or with pictures or
image anywhere in life. So Adam and Eve they hide
from God, and God's first question to them is where
are you like where's your heart?
Speaker 5 (13:33):
You know?
Speaker 3 (13:33):
And I think that when things are within that context,
it's like it's it's heart shared together without like I
don't need to hide, you know.
Speaker 5 (13:42):
I'm not hiding anything.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
I'm intimacy like into me, see right, Like I am
giving you myself, you know. And and so it's that
expression of intimacy and love that God designed within the
within the covenant.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
I agree with everything that you just said, Kevin, and
I just want to point back Lee in to that
day that we were at Urban Market and you said
it when you were sharing your story at the beginning
of the podcast. But the phrase that I heard you
say that day and I heard you say again was
the renewing of your mind. And that's just from scripture.
That's Romans twelve, verse two. Do not conform to the
(14:18):
pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing
of your mind. Then you will be able to test
and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and
perfect will. And so it's beautiful because you had already
settled in a place where your identity was. You said
it even this, You even said this at the beginning
of the podcast. Your identity was firmly rooted in Christ.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
That was settled.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
And when you know who you are and who you are,
you were able to surrender to who whose you are.
And I think that was just a process that took
some time for you, and I love it because you
were willing, you were surrendered, and you were willing to say, Okay, God,
renew my renew my mind in this thinking, and he did,
(15:03):
and he did, and he showed you what his will
is for your life around sex and intimacy and sex
before marriage and sex inside of marriage, and his will
for your life in what shame looks like and what
shame doesn't look like. And so I think, if we're
being honest, there is a point where it almost has
(15:24):
to start with knowing who you are and whose you are,
and everything else can kind of flow out of that.
Because if you don't know God as good, and you
don't know God as provision, and you don't know God
as saying, here, here's my will. It's good and pleasing
and perfect, it's hard to trust what he can say,
(15:44):
what he does say, what he will say to you.
But when you know Him as those things, you can
trust when he says, hey, why don't you go to
Charles and say we're going to wait, and you're like, okay, God,
I trust you. I trust you. I know what that means.
I don't know how that's going to look, but I
trust you. And then if I favor in that from
the Lord, and then that step of obedience, and that
favor propels you to the next step of obedience and
the next bit of favor.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
So so beautifully put in so many gold nuggets in that,
and you use you know, the concept or the distinction
between conform and transform, you know, conforming to the world
and transforming and renewing your mind.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
And I think that's what a lot of people do.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
And to just get on the other side of the
fence of anybody who's listening, where there might be that
question of like, but wait if I like where they're
typically conforming to what they think they should be doing,
or what the man or woman wants, or what society
is doing, and because they're not rooted in who they are,
they feel like that that's their only option is to
conform to what the external variables are telling them to do, right, Yeah,
(16:41):
And I know for me, it was that fear of like, well,
if I'm not putting out for lack of a way
of saying it, like what's my worth?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
What's my value? Will they want me? Will they stay?
Will they leave?
Speaker 4 (16:50):
All those things that we're in that fear of abandonment,
fear of rejection, and then we self abandon and we
give ourselves over to whatever it is, whether it's you know, food, drugs, alcohol, sex,
whatever it is, even though it's not what we truly
want because fear of again abandonment. So if anybody is
listening and they're like yesing to that of like, well,
I would love this idea of renewing my mind and
(17:12):
having a new relationship with with my body, with sex, with.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Men, women, with who whatever it is?
Speaker 4 (17:17):
But will they love me?
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Will they stay? Will they leave me?
Speaker 3 (17:20):
What comes up for you for that, Well, I'm gonna
go back to the garden where like Adam and Eve,
where they hid it from God and they've created fig leaves, right,
they're covering up their nakedness, and God's like who told
(17:41):
you that you were naked?
Speaker 4 (17:43):
You know?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Who told you? Like where did you learn this thing
to be ashamed? You know? And that was their experience
of like I've got to cover up, and God didn't
leave them there and he went. It said that he
went and make clothes for them, and that really cool,
Like if we just nerd out for second, that created
the first sacrifice, because something had to die for him
(18:06):
to be able to take those animal skins and cover
over their shame. Let's fast forward to the Cross right
where our story is that Jesus laid down his life
as a sacrifice for our sin and our shame. And
when the Romans would crucify someone, they would strip them naked, wow,
(18:27):
to shame them, the condemnation on them. So all of
our guilt and all of our shame and all of
our crimes and all of our wrongs and the wrongs
that have been unto us, he took on himself to
provide a covering for us. So now we can be
one with God. So like this whole message is just
(18:47):
covered and saturated with grace, with forgiveness, freedom, freedom.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
So what happened at the Cross not only did it
cover our sin, but it broke the power of sin.
And now we're not We don't have to be mastered
by anything, right, we don't have to be mastered by
these things, or these relationships or these behavior there is power,
and we still sin Jesus. What's interesting is he took
(19:14):
it today. He's like, you've heard it said, don't commit adultree.
But I tell you, if you look at a woman
love and lustfully, you commit adultrey in your heart. So
that we wouldn't just take it about this like standard
of like Okay, I'm just not gonna do I'm going
to go right up, Todd, just right, because that's our tendency.
The question we want to know how far can I go?
When we were dating throughout college and we're like, okay,
this is our line, Well how far can we? That
(19:36):
was that was a question, which is not the question,
Like the question is like how do we walk in wholeness?
How do we honor one another? How do we care
for one another? How do we care for one another
the future version of ourselves and for the relationship that
we want. How do we work on talking? Because when
I'm with you, I just want to make out, and
if we're making out, we're not talking right. And so
(19:59):
there's this idea that like when we get married, it's
just going to be all it's gonna be a like
a sex marathon. And then you get married and realize
it's not you know, it's like, but what God was
wanting to do is to train us how to communicate
and how to talk before we were together. Where now like,
that's what marriage is built on. It's not built on
(20:20):
the physical. And I want you to see the way
that I mean, if somebody's like, well, I don't know
if God and Satan exists, just think about the way
this works. Before marriage, there is this temptation to have sex,
have sex, have sex, have sex, sex, have a lot
of sex, have sex with a lot of people, have sex,
have sex, have sex.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
This is the.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Temptation, and it's in all like, the temptation is in
all of us.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
It's almost like a badge of honor two for a
lot of people, like you know.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
It's like like keeping score. Okay, So if anybody like
wonders about the reality of God and Satan and temptation
and sin, and I think about this way when I
face temptation, and it's just it's the one two punch
face temptation to do something or to not to do so,
to you know, to commit this sin, whatever the sin is.
(21:06):
And before it's like, ah, nobody will know or it's
not a big deal, or it's just it's just one time,
it's gonna be the last time, or this, and then
if I take the bait, after that moment, it's like
and you are the worst person, like can you believe
you did that? And then the shame and the guilt
that gets hitped on after that, that just when you
(21:27):
just take that and it's how we can go in
our own minds one moment and then we completely shift
from it's not that big of a deal, yeah, to
heaping on the shame. I think that lets us know
there is a bigger world at play, a spiritual world
at play, because there's a lot on the on the line,
and God gives his grace and he wants to give
us the grace to walk through those moments and to
(21:49):
make decisions and when we fail, that we don't stay
in a place of guilt and shame, but that we
walk in that in that freedom.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
And I think also it gets stacked on of like,
well I've already done it, I might as well just
keep going. And then it becomes your identity, Like shame
becomes an emotional home for a lot of people, whether
it's with sex, whether it's with any other you know mechanism,
you know. And then that's where it comes back to
what you were saying before, like, when you are not
rooted in an identity that comes from something higher than
these worldly places that we are identifying, we're lost, you know.
(22:20):
So I'd love to hear what you were just about
to say about that too. You look like you had
a glaze in your eye.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I'm just caught up in the conversation, just listening. I
think there's an amazing conversation that can be had about
shame in particular as a feeling and guilt as a feeling.
And our friend Chip DoD does an amazing job with this,
So I won't try to recreate his book and his
(22:47):
thoughts on this. But shame has a gift in it,
and the gift of shame is humility, and guilt has
a gift in it, and the gift of guilt is
forgiveness and freedom. And so, like Kevin said, getting stuck
in shame and guilt, you don't have to because there
(23:10):
is a healthy viewpoint of shame and guilt. Now again,
a process. It's not overnight. It's not like, oh I'm
experiencing shame, Okay, Now I have humility and now it
doesn't have to be like that. And sometimes you go
in the other direction where it becomes like toxic shame
where you feel worthless and never going to overcome this
(23:32):
choice that you made, and sometimes that happens. But there
is a gift in shame and there is a gift
in guilt, and if we can get there, and I
don't think we can get there alone, we will find
and experience that gift. And so that would be an
amazing conversation. And again Chip DoD has some amazing resources
(23:52):
on that. So if that's something that anybody would want
to look into, that would be Choice of the Heart
is what it's called.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
Yeah, I actually mentioned his Voice of the Heart on
the neuro Faith episode. So we're coming full circle here, Yeah,
so yeah, I mean, and so for anyone, you know,
coming back to this identity conversation and knowing who you
are and being rooted in something bigger, you know, for
anyone out there who's like, I don't even know what
that feels like to not be just valued by my
body or to not have value in a relationship without sex,
(24:22):
Like what do you do with that? When you're in
that place? You know, and you might not have a
relationship with God or might not know that you do.
You know, where do you start that identity conversation? In
terms of finding value in a relationship? I would preface
and say it first, it starts with yourself. Obviously, you
can only you know, give away what you have to give.
So like, how are people that might not be in
(24:43):
that place right now and they're looking to outsource their
worth to a relationship or sex or whatever. And again,
there's no shame, there's no condemnation here, but like, where
would somebody begin.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
I think it's healthy to have some friendships. I can
remember being we were seventeen on a basketball tournament down
in Fort Walton Beach and a friend of mine, his
name is David, and we were standing there on the
beach and he was like, man, I'm really struggling with this.
And he told me what he was struggling with and
I was like, man, I'm struggling with that too, And
(25:13):
it was like he was like, man, can we help
each other? And I was like the courage that took
for like, so he didn't know that I was that
I was struggling at the same time, but like that
we were able to share that with one another and
though we're not the only one, and so having a
friend like that, because really, I don't think it's fair
to read for me to ask her to be my
(25:35):
accountability like yeah, accountability partner. Like I think what's better
than like accountability is I would say, like preemptive. And
it's almost where you share your struggles with somebody with
somebody else. And for me, that's a same sex as friend.
We got a friend, Dave now got another. We've got
several friends that I'll just have conversations about struggles with
(25:57):
and it is when we confess those things, share those things.
If somebody's well, where do I find those things? I
think that's one of the best functions of a healthy,
you know, local church, is that you can find some people.
I say it this way, and I think it's true
in relationships as well. It's like when you're running and
you run and you look to the left and right,
and you look to you know, and you're looking to
(26:19):
see who's keeping pace, who's running with you, and you're like, oh,
there's somebody. Like run after God, run after who you're
created to be, Run after his plan for you, like
his dream for your life. Run after the version of
yourself that you want to like, run after those things,
and his spirit is powered to take a sprint and
then look to your left and your right. You know,
there are some places where we can go find people
who will just validate the decisions that we've made and
(26:41):
agree with everything and not challenge us.
Speaker 5 (26:43):
And they're not running with us.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
That's not going to be helpful. But find people mentors.
Even when you sat down and shared with us, I'm
so glad, like it was refreshing, It was so refreshing them. Oh,
there's a level of honesty and confession. There was a
quote from Bonhoeffer where he said, why is it that
it's often easier for us to confess our sins to
God than to a brother or a sister. God is
(27:05):
holy and sinless. He is a just judge of evil
and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother or
sister as sinful as we are, he knows from his
own experience, the dark knight of the secret of sin.
Why should we not find it easier to go to
a brother than to a holy God? But if we do,
we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been
deceiving ourselves with our own confession of sin to God,
(27:27):
whether or not we've rather been confessing our sins to
ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution. Who can give us
certainty that in the confession and the forgiveness of our sins,
we are not dealing with others, but with the living God.
God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother
breaks the cycle of self deception. A person who confesses
(27:49):
his sins in the presence of a brother knows that
he is no longer a luve with himself. He experiences
the presence of God in the reality of the other person.
And so if we want to be forgiven, we confess
things to God. If we want to feel forgiven, we
confess it to another person, a trusted friend who's running
in the same direction and running with us since.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Yeah, and knowing that you're not going to be judged,
because there could be a totally the same conversation in
a different audience where it's like, well, you need to
do this, and you should do this, and you shouldn't
be doing that, and you know betterly in and all
these things right. And it comes back to what you
said about in the garden, where when Adam and Eve
took on the shame and they put the shame on
themselves and.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
God was like, where are you Like? Basically, what I
hear is like that.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
Shame's not coming from me, right, So when we talk
about this idea of you know, again, there's so much
stigma and shame, and it's shame put on ourselves but
also being shamed by others. And you hear especially around
the topic of sex, and there's so many people that
might be listening that have are like, probably this is
a breath of fresh air to hear this conversation because
(28:53):
they've experienced this. So that distinction between like this is
not coming from God? Can you speak into that a
little bit of like what's not coming from God? Can
you speak into that a little bit of like what's
(29:14):
not coming from God?
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Shame is not coming from God. God is only good.
He is only good, and so if it's not good,
it's not him, it's not his character. He is kind
and loving and patient. And a beautiful practice that I
have learned over the last oh, I don't know, seven years,
(29:36):
eight years is to focus on who God is a
one word God, you are Peace. Thank you God that
you are peace, not even adding anything else. God, you
are peace. God, you are healer. God, you are good, God,
you are just. God, you are merciful, God, you are deliver.
I mean, on and on and on, and when I
(29:56):
can call those things to mine in a hard conversation,
or when I'm sitting across the table and I'm about
to hear some maybe jarring news, that is who God is,
and that is who He's called me to be, and
so I can pull from and extend that, God, you
are good. I am going to be good to this
person with my words. God, you are a peace. I
(30:18):
am going to just shower peace on them in this situation. So, yes,
shame is not from God. And I think that sometimes
we do have a tendency as human beings to default
to that idea, you're just shaming me, You're just shaming me,
when really it's their hearts that are saying, ah, i
(30:39):
feel like I've hurt myself, i feel like I've hurt
someone else, I feel like I've hurt God. And they
don't exactly know how to deal with that, to confess that,
and so the default sometimes is to say, you're shaming me,
You're shaming me, And I would just encourage anybody who
might find that that's a default sometimes to default to
(31:02):
that you're shaming me phrase, just to get honest and
just it's there's no shame in looking at your feelings
and looking at what you're really feeling and working that out.
There's no shame in that. In fact, there's like we said,
there's freedom in that, and there's forgiveness in that, and
there's fullness of life. Really, yeah, there's a fullness of
(31:24):
life in that.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
It's good.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Yeah, coming back to the freedom side of this, you know,
because part of it is relinquishing the shame, but then
stepping into what God has for us, you know, and
coming back to I shared little bite size of this
when I first, you know, we first started the podcast,
was this idea that like, I gave my life over
to God.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
You know.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
I gave him my my physical life. I gave him
my emotional spiritual life.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
I gave him weed. Like I was like, take this,
I'm not I don't want to.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
I don't want to drug my emotions anymore. I gave
him my finances, my business, all of the things, right.
But I in one of my realizations was like and
and by the way he prospered me in all of
those areas. It's like double portion, triple portion, you know,
like everything I was like, oh my gosh, why I
It was one of those things where I was like
why didn't I.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Do this soon?
Speaker 4 (32:07):
Or like I feel so free, But I was holding
on with like this tight grip to my sex life
so to speak, actually literally with this air of my
life and compartimentalizing my faith. And that was kind of
one of the awarenesses for me as I was like, God,
you are so good and you've been so good to me,
Like what is keeping me from trusting you at this?
And part of it was again I always say, it
(32:29):
takes faith to have faith, because faith is not this
thing that like you just inherently have all the time,
Like at least I for me, I don't I have
to like go out on a leap of faith to
experience the faith that I need to have to have
the belief and the certainty that faith is good, right,
because faith is scary, right. But that being said, it
was it was a leap of faith to just be
like to even like admit it to myself. And for
(32:52):
that inkling of for me feeling convicted was I felt shame.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
It was exactly what you just said.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
I assumed that other people were shaming me, but it
wasn't them, It was me, right, And that's when I
and this is a really important distinction for me that
I feel called to share, is this was really the
first time I've ever felt like convicted about anything, like
feeling it in my bones, feeling it in my spirit.
There was a physiological, spiritual, mental, emotional. It was all
(33:18):
three dimensional convicted as in like something's not right. And
and again, I my emotional home was shame for so long,
so naturally it makes sense that that's where I went.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
But it was this idea.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
It was me out of alignment with the identity that
I had. I had called myself to step into because
God had called me to step into it, but I
wasn't living in it, in this one little piece of
my life. And so when I gave it over to Him,
and that's where I want to impart upon you. The
reason I'm sharing this right now is not out of coercion.
It's out of like the gifts that God is giving me.
(33:50):
And I'm not even married yet, I'm still a born
again virgin technically right now.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
On you know, the date that we're that we're recording this.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
But the fruits that in the and the beauty and
the richness that he has given our relationship and intimacy
whole new definitions of intimacy and connection and acceptance and worthiness.
And talk about me proving to myself that I feel
worthy of having a man that loves and cherishes me
for who I am, not for how many times I
have sex with him. Right, So there is something to
(34:19):
be had. And again it takes faith to have faith.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
But these are the gifts.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
And the freedom that lives on the other side. Not
to mention the shame that I didn't even know I was.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Having about my body.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
Now you all have been listening to this podcast to
know along I've had a very complicated relationship with my body.
The relationship, the next level of body image and body
connection that I now have because of this that again
I wasn't looking for. It was just the gift on
the other side of this of now I'm like, I
get to give my body to my husband. I get
(34:48):
to honor my body first and foremost and then give
it as a gift.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
It's a gift for him, it's a gift for me.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
It's a gift for us, and there's freedom on the
other side of the shame blanket. So I think it's
really important that we talk about both because again, a
lot of sex talk is stigma, shame, guilt, all the things.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Yeah, let me say one quick thing, because I know
you have a lot more to say about it than
I do. But for your story in particularly, and it's
part of my story too, is you said conviction and
conviction is a word that just it's not condemnation, it's
not guilt. I mean, it's not like, oh I feel
so guilty for that. It's conviction, and conviction is from
(35:26):
the Holy Spirit. And to your story is that with
your relationship with the Holy Spirit, he did some work
in you, and the truth of His word did some
work in you. And so capital T truth was how
you got to the place of conviction. And so that's
my story too, that the truth of the Living Word,
(35:49):
the living Word, it can it can apply and speak
to so many different situations, so many different circumstances. But
the truth capital T truth of the Living Word is
how we know what God's Back to that original scripture
that I read, his good, pleasing and perfect will is
and because you were connected to his truth, his living word,
(36:11):
he was able to speak. Your eyes and your ears
were blessed because you were open to see and to
hear what He was telling you in this particular place.
We all have we all have places where we need
to be convicted, where we not need to be convict.
That's not the best way to say it. Where we
where the Lord wants to gently pull us into a
fuller life, and we all have them. We're married, so
(36:35):
maybe sex, you know, in this way is not ours.
But I've got something that the Lord wants to gently
pull me in and show me and convict my heart
where there's a gap in our relationship. So this is
not just your struggle, Leanne, It's my struggle. It's kevin struggle.
It's anybody who wants to move into the fullness of
(36:56):
life that God has for us and be holy as
He is holy. We will all have to journey through
and pass those convictions that He gives us, and you know,
take hold and work through those things.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
I mean, and I think about when I think when
you were talking about conviction, I was thinking about when
we were we were engaged, and you know, we had
certain lines that we had drawn, but we were like
trying to get his clothes to those lines. And I
don't say, I don't even want to say. Ree was
I was to be the leader in the relationship, you know,
I needed to lead her and honor her differently, and
(37:30):
I wasn't. And I remember I was leading. I was
preaching to some high school students on sex and I
was talking about that. And afterwards I was leaving and Re.
I remember we were in like this little alleyway behind
this house and the church, and and Ree was like,
she said, you're a hypocrite. She said, what you said
up there, you don't live. And they say reality is
(37:51):
what you bump up against, you know, And I bumped
up against the reality that I wasn't. A hypocrite is
an actor. So pretender hypocrite doesn't mean that we mess up.
It means that we're putting on a mask and we're
pretending to be something that we're not.
Speaker 5 (38:04):
And I was.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
I was living in pretense. And so it had to
get real, honest with myself and honest with Ree. And
it took some time, but in our engagement, we said,
you know, then we said a boundary. I knew that
if I went in her house that I would not
have enough will power to make the best decisions. And
so from that point on it was I will kiss
(38:26):
you on your front doorstep and I would leave and
go back to my car. And it changed things. But
we had a goal, you know. Our dream was, Hey,
let's honor one another for the sake of our marriage.
We were engaged and so I so, you know, as
I was listening to your story, I'm like, I don't
think God's getting up there and oh, well, they crossed
this line or they didn't cross this line, okay, Like
he's he's not keeping score like that. His heart is
(38:49):
like for us all to flourish, you know, and and
and he doesn't deal with dealing shame. I can I
share a story? Please agree that what God is like
Jesus that if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.
In other words, this is what God is like. Just
look at me, disciples, like, show us the Father. If
you show us the Father, will believe that He's like
you've been with me the whole time, Like, just look
(39:11):
at me. In John chapter eight, he's teaching in the
temple and all these people are gathering around him, and
the Pharisees, which were those the religious lawyers. And they
brought him a woman who had been caught in adultery.
And it's interesting in that caught in the act. So
we don't know if she had clothes on or if
she was I mean, it was that they didn't bring
(39:31):
the man. This is just they threw her under the bus.
They brought her before Jesus and they said, this a trap.
They said, teacher, this woman was caught in the act
of adultery. The law of Moses command esta stone such women,
what do you say? And so they were they were
wanting to trap him, to accuse him, And it says
and Jesus bent down and started to write on the
(39:51):
ground with his finger, and when he kept they kept
questioning him. And he straightened up, and he said to them,
let any one of you who's without sin to be
the first. Just wanted to throw a stone at her.
And then he stooped down and he rode on the ground,
says and at this those who heard begin to go away,
one at a time, the others first, until only Jesus
was left, with the woman still standing there. And Jesus
(40:12):
straightened up and asked her woman where are they has
no one condemned you, no one, sir, she said, Then
neither do I condemn you.
Speaker 5 (40:21):
Jesus declared, go and leave your.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Life of sin, the gentleness, the kindness, the love. The
only one who was without sin in that whole group
of people was Jesus. He was the only one who
was without sin. And he didn't throw a stone. What'd
he do? He knelt down and he drew in the sain.
Now we don't know what he drew. I don't think
it matters what he drew. I think other people wanted
(40:45):
to know what he drew, because when somebody starts drawing
something in the sand, all eyes gone. Was he drawing
in the sand? But I think he did that to
preserve her dignity, because people would stop looking at her
and what she didn't have on and stop looking at
her and shame. Yeah, absolutely, And so he took the shame.
(41:06):
He drew and the dirt. And all we know is
that they dropped all those stones and they left. So
Jesus is he is not throwing stones, He's not throwing shame.
He's offering love. And he told her that not out
of shame, but out of like, so she could flourish,
live the best lion. And he said her free, and
(41:27):
that's what he's after.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
He's that's absolutely yeah, because I mean, sex in one
viewpoint is this bad, ugly, shameful thing. Sex in another viewpoint,
same thing right in the right context, right, or in
the context that serves us and makes it and brings
us closer to God, is this beautiful thing? And really
it comes back to the line that connects all of
this is the renewing of the mind and seeing yourself differently.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
And it's interesting because I always.
Speaker 4 (41:53):
Come back to beliefs, like our beliefs create our behaviors.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Our beliefs shape us. Our beliefs, you.
Speaker 4 (41:58):
Know, what we believe along enough time becomes our identity
in talking about like the worldly beliefs, you know, full transparency.
When I first told my mom that Charles and I
had decided to wait, you know, her first question was.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Is everything okay? What's wrong? Did something happen? Because I grew.
Speaker 4 (42:14):
Up learning that you live with a man before you
marry him, you travel with him, and you you test
out the.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Goods before you marry him. Right, And this is this
is shows that.
Speaker 4 (42:24):
This is a cultural conversation too, right, So when I
said to my mom, I was like, no, we everything's good.
I was like, we want to honor God, like we
want to just really you know, have a godly relationship
and keep it sacred for marriage. And I told her,
I was like, the fruits that are already transpiring, you know,
the intimacy, the connection, all of that. And it took
her a few moments to just be okay with that
(42:45):
and make sure that she knew that everything was okay
and not just okay more than more than okay.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Great.
Speaker 4 (42:51):
But she also had beliefs that if there's no sex,
there's a problem or whatever. And I grew up so
so bottom line, we all anyone listening has their own
set of beliefs, right, and we are a belief away
from renewing our mind really or renewing our mind away
from new beliefs.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Right.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
So I want to put a seal around this conversation
by what in terms of beliefs, what are the beliefs
that you think are keeping people from renewing their minds
and what are the beliefs that we can you know,
instill invite people into around around this subject.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
Well, I think we've talked about we've gone back to
the garden, back to the very beginning. And I think
when Satan attacked Adam and Eve, it wasn't with a
claw hammer, it was with an idea. And it was like,
did God really say? In other words that that is
like can you really trust him? Can you really trust
that God's good? Can you really trust that he has
(43:42):
your best interest in mind? Can you really trust that
he has a plan? Like can you really trust that
He's going to provide for you? Can you really trust
that his way is best? And we live in such
a sexualized culture and everywhere and everything and every conversation,
(44:03):
and so there are all these other ideas. So I
think it's it must begin. We're not a cosmic accident.
We're not just a random collection of molecules, like we've
been made out of love. And last night we were
talking about how what we think, and this is like
the looking glass self as a sociological principle, but when
(44:25):
what we think the most important person in our life
thinks about us is where we get our sense of worth.
And so this is why I would say it has
to start with making God the most important person in
your life, because that's where your worth comes from. It
doesn't come from that dude, It doesn't come from that lady.
(44:45):
It comes from comes from Him. And that's where worth,
you know, begins. So God's goodness, his love and our
worst being found in him.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Yeah, and just practically, I would just say start small, like,
start with one beliefs that you want to change, or
start with one practice that you want to incorporate. It
doesn't have to be everything all at once. Now, I'm
gonna read my Bible every day. I'm gonna read it
cover to cover. I'm gonna go to church, I'm gonna
get in a small group. I'm gonna only date Christian
meth I mean whatever, I mean, whatever it is that
(45:16):
that you've decided or that you've been convicted about, starts small,
Start small, one thing, and those one things will link
together to create a big thing. And like we've said, fullness, freedom, Yeah, fullness, right,
I got it.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
The three episodes. Let's talk about that. And I think
that's a great place to stop. No, thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
I really, you know, for me personally, it feels really
important to uncover this topic and let it be an
open conversation where we because there's no shame in today's conversation.
We're obviously talking about the shame that comes alongside it,
but it just is and it's something that can be
really beautiful and talk about. I mean, this whole idea
coming back to knowing who you are and whose you
(46:03):
are and the most important person reflecting back your worth
being God like. Again, that's why it's like, just try
this on where we are not here to try to
twist your arm into anything. It's just and again I
will reiterate, I was not looking to, you know, save
myself for marriage. It wasn't even on my mind. But
God convicted me and the fruits that have been available
(46:25):
to me, that from the seeds that got planted when
I didn't even know what I was planting, Like I
thought I was planting a cantalope and I ended up
with a watermelon, like I don't even know, you know,
But it's so beautiful. And my marriage is I mean,
I'm not married yet, you know, but it will.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
I know, it's my pre marriage life.
Speaker 4 (46:42):
Has already flourished and benefited. And so again it's just
in every time we talk about this, what's God got
to do with that conversation? Today happens to be saxon intimacy.
It's like just inviting you to try it on. Renew
your mind, ask yourself what you're not seeing, ask God
to show you what you're not seeing, and revel is.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Abound, good, awesome, yes, beautiful.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Well, thank you all for being here. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (47:05):
We are signing off for now, but we will catch
you next time. Bye oyey, We'll be back with more
What's God Got to Do with It? But in the meantime,
I would definitely love to hear from you, so just
tell me where you are in your story or maybe
what questions you have, like where do you feel you
need clarity or support or wisdom in your own journey.
(47:29):
I definitely want to hear from you, So head on
over to What's God Got to Do with It dot
com and scroll down to the form to share your thoughts,
your questions, your feedback, and you can do that instantly.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
So What's God Got to Do with It? Dot Com?
You'll find all the ways to do that.
Speaker 4 (47:45):
And if you like this podcast and want to hear more,
go ahead and follow, like, and subscribe wherever you listen
to podcasts to get your weekly dose.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
Of What's God Got to Do With It? New episodes
drop every single Tuesday, and while you there, be.
Speaker 4 (48:00):
Sure to rate and review to show your support.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
It really means so much. What's God Got to Do
With It?
Speaker 4 (48:07):
Is an iHeartRadio podcast on the Amy Brown Podcast Network.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
It's written and hosted by
Speaker 4 (48:13):
Me Leanne Ellington, executive produced by Elizabeth Fozzio, post production
and editing by Houston Tilley, and original music written by
Cheryl Stark and produced by Adam Stark
Host
Leanne Ellington
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