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Transcript
Hello, I hope that wherever you are today, you are convinced that God is preparing you for tomorrow, by what you are facing now; that you are being equipped every hour for the next phase of what you will do in life. And hopefully, here on the Life on Target podcast, we can equip you for tomorrow with the content we’re giving you today, specifically on the subject, the weighty subject that I’m going to be discussing today in an age where our culture has, quite frankly, lost its mind, because we’ve exchanged the truth about God for a lie. And we worship and serve the creature. That creature sometimes is us rather than the Creator.
Those of you of faith will recognize that is from Romans 1:25 with a little emphasis mid-verse by me. This is going to be an episode that is not explicit with respect to language, but I’m going to very openly and candidly talk about sex because most of y’all aren’t getting discussion about sex from the right people.
I’m going to talk about sex, and I’m going to talk about God’s standard for sex. This podcast is not going to be graphic because like I’ve said before, I want you to be able to listen to it with your children. I want it to be helpful if you’re driving in the car with them, that you can have this on. I routinely listen to my own podcast through after it’s processed and delivered to you to make sure I’m always getting better, and I use it as a chance to have discussion with my kids.
Talk to Your Kids About This
So, that’s going to be the standard for what we talk about here. I would play this episode for my kids—whatever age they all are— because we’re talking about sex as a family. We’re not talking about sex at a level that they can’t understand. We’re not getting into the explicit aspects of it, but the concept of sex, the reality that it was created by God (like anything created by God for our good) is something that I try to model out in my relationship with my wife. I try to discuss openly with my kids at an early age. Like we discuss anything. Subjects that God talks about are not off limits because they’re kids. We treat them like human beings at an early age. Not necessarily going into stuff that’s too mature for them, but also being constantly in conversation. I hope you’re doing the same.
So, we’re going to get down to business in this podcast and hopefully we can stop the madness by starting to talk about things that we used to talk about and doing things the way olden-day families did things because as we “reform” sex, as we “reform” sexuality things are getting much worse. And kids understood sex in one room houses on the frontier. I can’t imagine how that happened and how they could have families of that size and all be in the same room. But undoubtedly kids were exposed to that at an early age.
Following God’s Commands to My Honeymoon
Quick testimonial, personal testimonial here: The first time I had sex was on my honeymoon night, and I was 23 years old. I didn’t care how much my peers in Army Special Operations made fun of me. How many times they said, “You gotta test drive a car before you purchase it.”
Comparing a woman to an inanimate hunk of metal. Ridiculous.
I didn’t care what they said. I was committed to following God’s standard as relayed to me by my parents who studied God’s word and endeavored to teach me the truth as related in his Word. As a man, I didn’t care what people thought. I was a Special Operations warrior. I had already killed men on the battlefield many times before I had sex. My choice to keep myself for my wife, didn’t make me a wimp like our culture would suggest. It actually meant that I had strength from God. The strength comes from God to control my emotions and my physical body versus being ruled by my carnal desires. It meant I was saving my strength for my wife, who would take that strength and multiply it via our children and via cultivating a home, which we’ve talked about before is the institution that needs to save our way of life, that has the power to save our way of life—a godly home.
God’s standard is that sex is to be had by one man and one woman who are married to each other. That’s it.
God’s standard is that sex is to be had by one man and one woman who are married to each other. That’s it. God created sex for man and woman to enjoy within marriage. That’s not what Nate’s telling you. That is what is in God’s word. If you don’t agree, don’t turn off this podcast yet. Stay with me. Stay here. You likely waste enough time in your life that you can spare giving Nathan and the Life on Target podcast a few more minutes and engage with me and debate me on this subject if you want to afterwards. Stick with me, this is going to at least be food for thought for you where you are in life. If you’ve structured your life as an echo chamber, take this podcast and let it reform your life.
Teach the Standard to Your Children
This standard is what we should be teaching to our children. I’m teaching it to mine. You should be teaching it to yours. Our kids should grow up with us relaying to them and expecting them to rule over their bodies, to rule over their emotions, and to protect their sexual identity, protect their sexual activities and save it for marriage. The passage my dad relayed to me many, many times and formed our standard for dating for sex is Proverbs 5, talking about your waters, your cisterns being saved, not dispersed in the streets, not given to the woman that entices you to go down to death, but to save it and to rejoice in the wife of your youth and to be satisfied with her breasts.
And it speaks about it positively. This isn’t gross. This is what God designed. Teaching them the standard at a very early age is important. Sex is intensely carnal, but within God’s perfect rules is very good and fruitful. And how you talk about it in the home matters. It is increasingly hard to do it with your kids if they find out about sex from their friends, with smartphones. You should be beating the friends with smartphones to the punch by, at an early age, having these conversations and defining them instead of shying away. It can be hard to enter into these more touchy subjects with our kids, but we have to do it early. I’ve talked about it in varying levels of specificity with every one of my kids. My oldest one is 13. My youngest is 6. There’s been opportunities for it to come up, and we’ve taken advantage of those opportunities. Some of the first times that we specifically were able to talk about sex involved some turtles getting it on in our front yard. Some box turtles. They were stuck together.
Embrace the Teachable Moments
Our kids were fascinated. It wasn’t “Eww. Kids, don’t look” or “That’s gross” or“Cover your eyes. Kids, run away.” No, we gathered it around as a family. And we talked about how incredible it was that God created things the way that He did and how a mommy turtle and a daddy turtle equal more turtles. That’s it at super low level. They got to see it in nature. As we move towards farm life more, like we’ve talked about, we’re starting our homestead, my kids are going to get a lot more exposure in this vein. And I’m actually looking forward to a lifestyle that presents these opportunities.
Another time, our son came back from some friend’s house who have ducks and he said, “Mom, it’s gross! The duck was on the back of the other duck. And he stuck something in the other duck’s butt.” And obviously this is not exactly what happened. My wife was like, here we go. You know, this is the opportunity that presents itself.
And she talked about how it wasn’t a butt that the duck was actually sticking in and how we already talked about this. You know, even though we talked about it several times, the different contexts at a young age, doesn’t always translate. So, there’s opportunities to speak truth into that and be like, it’s not gross. So, what a mama duck and a daddy duck does, and that’s how it happens.
And that’s actually how it happens in the human race as well. And, you know, speaking of the human species, just like they say in Kindergarten Cop, “Boys have a penis. Girls have a vagina.”
God created the male body and the woman’s body to work together in marriage and bear more children. That’s the only way it gets done, no matter how many times that that gets published on the news, these weird anomalies, et cetera. I don’t even want to deal with that crap. Husband, wife, male, female. That’s the way we get more kids. And as image bearers, we reflect God’s nature. Just like in nature, a seed brings forth fruit. Man’s seed planted in a woman, bears more image bearers, more fruit. It’s a very natural and beautiful thing. Mike Foster talks about this in his book It’s Good to Be a Man that because godly sex is fruitful and results in healthy homes and more thriving image bearers that can cultivate the earth that can remake this earth for His glory, the evil one, the father of lies hates that he hates a fruitful home. He hates a loving and fruitful marriage. And because of this, he is going to try to deceive and accuse and create havoc in this any way he can. He wants to make something God created for blessing and turn it into a curse.
So, let’s review and expand upon that a little bit more. When sex is done the way God created, it’s awesome. It’s not gross. It’s for a husband and wife to thrive in marriage. It’s an all-around good time, and it equals more children that make life much more meaningful, purposeful, and ultimately fruitful. We read in 1 John 5:3 “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.” In Psalm 19:7–8
The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.
Psalm 19:7–8
Like we read about in these Scriptures that I just read, God’s commands are not just a list of “thou shall nots,” but when you truly understand God’s commands, they are freedom. They are the blueprint for the best possible life. One of the most prevalent lies of the evil one, the deceiver, is that he is the one offering freedom, but instead what he offers is slavery and death. We have to recognize this as human beings, as image bears of God, that God’s way, God’s order, God’s commands are the best. And we have to be modeling that in our life. When God says to do things his way and we do it, that’s blessing. If we don’t do it, then it’s not blessing.
Chasing Excellence
And this is not one of those things where we barter with God and say, “Okay, I’m gonna stay a Virgin. If you don’t bring me a wife by 22, that’s the point where I’m gonna do it my way. So, get back to me, God, if you got this.” But it’s pursuing righteousness indefinitely and trusting that ultimately it will be beneficial for you. My pastor says, “Run towards God as fast as you and continue running towards God as fast as you can. And oftentimes when you’re doing that, you’ll look next to you and there’ll be a single member of the opposite sex running right beside you—and both of you running towards the Lord. And then that maybe is the one that you get married to. Someone that is running towards God as fast as you.”
And this is also going to include sexual purity. Michael Foster said in his book, “Chase excellence, not women.” Or I think this could be flipped around to women: “Women, chase excellence, not a man.” Chase excellence.
How to Handle Failures
Now let’s go ahead and pivot a little bit. What if you’ve messed up? How do you talk to your kids about this? You don’t want to be a hypocrite. You don’t want to try to hide what you did, but also your kids don’t need every detail. Pastor Toby Sumpter talked about this. We just had a talk I’ll post the video. You don’t have to go into all the explicit stuff about what you did. You can’t make your performance in this area, what you’ve done, a substitute for God’s standard. And you can’t, when you talk about this, talk about how “Yeah. God says wait for marriage, but oh man, before I knew Jesus, back when I was in college, woo, your daddy was a player. He got all the women.” No, you can’t create this double standard or this double speak in your household. You have to be talking about it like sin and slavery. You have to acknowledge it. What it was. You have to relay the standard to them. And that the standard is God.
By doing this as a parent, you also have an opportunity to point them to and train them how to confess and repent for their sin. You have to explain to them that if they’ve messed up, for those of you that maybe didn’t have this knowledge growing up or had a broken past, or have kids that were sexually promiscuous at an age before you expected it and didn’t know, it’s important that you speak the truth, that they’re not damaged goods, that God is making all things new and start where you are repent and know that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to you.
It’s a miracle. It’s amazing. This is true of you when you’ve messed up. When you’re parenting, this is true. When your kids have messed up. God, in seeking to be obedient to him, confessing our sins, He makes all things new. There’s a good portion of the Q & A talk that we did with Pastor Toby, where he talks about starting with relationship and moving from there. If you aren’t quite ready to give this a try, the standard is the standard. That’s fine. You don’t have to be ready, but I’d like you to consider where in life that you’ve felt the most satisfied, or if you aren’t satisfied, give it a chance that maybe this is why, because you are doing things, not how God said. You’re doing things how the culture says. And look for ways now to try to reform, to confess, to change your behavior and see what God does.
Don’t Go Against God’s Rules
Before we close out, gentlemen, I’d really like to hit you hard if you haven’t been hit hard enough already: You are supposed to get sex from your wife. That’s it. If she’s being difficult, if she’s postpartum, if she’s has issues, if she struggles in the area of sexuality, you don’t get to go into the bathroom, pull up pornography on your smartphone and hack the system. That’s not how it works in God’s economy. And if you do that, you are missing out on His blessing. You can’t be telling your kids “Wait until marriage,” but in secret, be sinning sexually yourself. It’s all connected. If you want the peace and prosperity of a household that’s God’s blessing, you have to be committed on this front.
Candidly, this is coming from someone that wouldn’t want his internet search history published. I’ve fallen more recently than I’d like to publicly admit, but I’ve confessed and I’m free.
I’m experiencing some of the most joy and blessing in my life now. And beyond a shadow of a doubt, that is because I am being disciplined sexually and digitally. I would advise you men that are struggling with this to let your wife know that this is something that you struggle with. Not explicit, not giving her explicit detail, and then find a brother or two that you can confess every single time that you mess up. A brother that is going to affirm what Christ says about you, but also call you to obedience. James 5:16 says, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
Sin Dies in the Open
I’m a general contractor and I deal with mold and crawl spaces from time to time, and mold—just like sin—is actually very fragile. Mold needs, stagnant, air, humidity, and darkness. And when you take away humidity, when you put fresh air, when you bring in light, it dies. Sin is the same way. When you put it into the light, it dies. And the accuser is there on your shoulder, whispering to you, “No one can know, no one can find out about this.” But Jesus, God sees. And as a Christian, you have Christ’s righteousness, and your relationships should affirm this as well. They shouldn’t validate it. Shouldn’t be looking for your relationship, your wife to say, “Oh honey, it’s gonna be okay,” or your friends. You know, it’s gonna be okay, because God said it. What you need are friends that point you to God in these areas and call you out and encourage you towards righteousness.
Men, you also need to train your daughters not to fall for boys that don’t value their sexual purity until marriage. You need to affirm your daughter’s beauty. You need to hug them. You need to physically protect them so that they don’t go looking for it from another man, likely at an age earlier than you expect.
It’s all connected. Love their mom well. Model marriage well so that our kids desire to have a life that is lived according to the standard because they see it joyfully modeled in their home.
I know that’s a lot to take in. I know that this is an area that all of us likely have a troubled past, but God has given a way. There is a way to deal with this. And like I said earlier: dealing with it, confessing it. The blessings of God cannot be overstated. If you haven’t experienced it yet, I suggest that you find a strong church with strong men, a high view of God, and seek the standard in every area of your life.
That’s all for now. If this was valuable to you any way, share it with a friend, maybe share it with a couple more friends. This area of sexuality, of sexual purity, of sexual sin is important that we as Christians deal with it, that we model it well for others in the world. And this is the way that we are able to have dominion—full dominion—for Christ’s glory. See you next time.
