Speak to the desires of the heart (teach your children godly sexuality)

So one of my boys kept lifting up the skirt of one of my girls to see their knickers.  An excellent opportunity to talk about godly sexuality with them I thought...

So true to form I followed the principles I give in my workshop and talked about the goodness and the holiness of sexuality with them.  How it's a good and beautiful part of a lady made by God but it's also a special part and so we need to treat it with honour.

However he kept on doing it, despite talking about its specialness and despite disciplining him for repeatedly doing it.

I know, I know, I should have called out to God for help sooner - but sometimes we have to get desperate before we find ourselves on our knees actually listening - but He's so gracious that when I did he gave me the wisdom I needed:

"Speak to the desires of the heart"

You see the trouble was that I was saying all the right things but I was talking to his logical mind rather than his desires.  And if we want to see change then we need to address the desires:

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

But the question is: how do we address desires in a godly way?  In the same way as we teach any other aspect of godly sexuality; we talk about the goodness and the holiness of our desires.

You see God made him a boy and so there is a godly fascination and yearning in him for to complete the whole image of God:

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Mt 19:4-6 emphasis mine)

The holiness is the fact that this fulfillment occurs in a covenantal relationship and this yearning is a shadow of our yearning for Christ (Eph 5:32) who is the "desire of all nations" (Hag 2:7).

Since he was only about 5 at the time, I had to keep things a bit simple, so I began:

"There's something really interesting about girls, isn't there?"  He nodded.  "God made girls attractive to us so that we really want to find out more."  I could see that I now had his full attention.

"And that means that there's something in us that wants to see their knickers."

"But God made seeing a girl's knickers to be something special for marriage just like you only get presents on special days like Christmas."

Now it's tempting to stop here, but doing so means that we are expecting them to conquer desires by self-effort which is law not grace. So now we need to offer to pray for them:

"But in the same way it's hard to not open presents until Christmas day, it's hard to stop looking at knickers.  So we need Daddy God's help.  Can I pray with you?"

He nodded and the rest is history. 

You see affirming the goodness of our children's desires speaks to their reality, only then can we begin to steer these desires towards their intended goal.

Wired for intimacy part 2 (godly sexuality)

We saw in our previous post that babies brains are pre-wired to see faces and in particular their initial focus of their eyes is designed to see only those who hold them close, such as the mother who feeds them.  This is a shadow of the spiritual reality that we are designed to seek our Father's face who gives us our daily bread and the affirmation of His love for us.

Unlike other objects our brains process faces in a different part of the brain (the fusiform face area) which is dedicated to recognising faces.  Furthermore this part of the brain is given priority over the other image processing areas in the brain, which is why we often see faces in things (called facial pareidolia):

Hence advertisers use faces in their images as it is an effective way of getting a viewer's attention.  Using eye tracking software you can see below how we focus on faces and their eye gaze:

Hence the text gets more attention from viewers when the baby's eye gaze was in that direction.

Now the world will say that this must have developed as a survival technique - so we can spot the faces of a predator in the brush.  However, we know that we are made in the image of God:

"As the Father, Son and Spirit have always know fellowship with each other, so we in the image of God are made for fellowship"  Michael Reeves

We look into another's face to see the meaning behind their words and discover their true self - their nature and character.  For, as we know, the eyes are the windows of the soul.  Faces are needed if there is to be any intimacy.

Unlike animals*, we make love face-to-face this speaks of the fact that sex is meant to be an expression of intimacy† and it is no surprise that the Hebrew word for sexual intimacy, יָדַע (yada’), is literally translated as "Adam knew Eve" (Gen 4:1).  And in its pure form there is “no shame” as there was complete openness, acceptance and intimacy.

Interestingly, research shows that those who have religious or paranormal beliefs are more prone to see faces in things than sceptics or unbelievers.  This is a shadow of the fact that despite the intimacy of another no human can ever meet our need to be fully known.  

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Cor 13:12 emphasis mine)

Jesus is "the Desire of all nations" (Hag 2:7 NKJV).  Jesus is the face that we are wired to seek.

 *After extensive research I can only find two documented cases of animals having sex face-to-face. Both were gorillas and in both cases it was commented on that this behaviour was extremely unusual.

† It is no surprise that since the sexual revolution and the rise of pornography, where sex is seen to be just biological and devoid of meaning, there has been a corresponding rise in sex in positions that are not face-to-face. It is not about intimacy or connecting but satisfying our own urges and getting pleasure.

Wired for intimacy part 1 (godly sexuality)

Before we had our first miracle baby we read the book "The Social Baby" which shows that even from birth babies are wired to seek faces over other images:

"Within minutes of birth, the baby will turn her head to the sound of someone's voice, when another sound, even if of the same pitch and intensity, will not attract her attention...the baby is also attracted to faces...Given a choice between looking at a face-shaped pattern, and one with the arrangement of eyes nose and mouth scrambled up, the newborn baby will spend longer looking at the face"

Recent research has now identified that the part of the brain used for recognising faces is far more developed in babies and is almost equal to that of adults by even 4 months.

As Christians we don't believe that this design is merely for survival, we believe that the things made reveal God's divine nature (Rom 1:20a) for "The heavens declare the glory of God" (Ps 19:1).

In the same way the physical tabernacle was "a copy and shadow of what is in heaven" (Heb 8:5), this physical realm is a shadow of the spiritual realm.  A baby seeking the face of his/her parents is a shadow of the reality that we as children of God (1 Jn 3:1) are designed to seek the face of our Creator.

"I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters says the Lord Almighty" (2 Cor 6:18)

In the Father's face we are going to find the love, affirmation and protection that we need.

A baby know this - they take delight in looking at faces.  Children know this as any parent who hears a their child say "look at me!".  This is why God instructed Aaron to bless the Israelites with the phrase "the LORD make His face shine upon you" (Num 6:23-25).

To have God's face turn from us is to be cursed and cut off from our hearts desire (eg Ps 27:9; 2 Chr 30:9).  Babies know this - they become distressed if there is no response from a parent's face (you can see an example in this YouTube video).

We are wired to seek the Father's face, to have His face shine upon us and to have Him respond to us.  But not just a father's face but the mother's face too:

"A babies vision is a little blurry at birth but within a week a baby can focus on objects about 8 to 12 inches from his face which is the distance between a mother and baby's face during feeding."

One of the names for God used in the Old Testament is "El Shaddai" which is translated as "God Almighty" in places like Gen 17:1 and Gen 49:25.  Now shaddai could be come from the root "shadad" which means powerful (hence Almighty) or "shad" which means breast.  If it is the latter root then "El Shaddai" could be translated as "many breasted one" (sources: here and here).  Implying that God, like a mother, is our comfort, our sufficiency, our nourisher.

Given the current environment there are parties that sit firmly on both sides, each fiercely arguing that their version is correct translation.  The complementarians will argue that it's a powerful, strong masculine God, the egalitarians will argue it's a nurturing, tender, feminine God.

I believe that both are incorrect.  Each side only sees one part when both parts are needed*.  You see we are made male and female in God's image (Gen 1:27) and only both together represent the fullness of God"†:

"Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam" (Gen 5:2 KJV).

Adam was created in the image of God as one being - both male and female (Gen 2:7).  This is a shadow of the heavenly reality of the Father and the Son being intimately one (Jn 10:30) and indeed his nature of Oneness despite many opposing characteristics (eg grace/mercy vs truth/judgement).

Adam was then separated into two: male and female (Gen 2:22-23 the word rib is literally "side") as a shadow of the plurality of the nature of God (both in the Trinity and His nature).  But designed to become one again (Gen 2:24).   Hence the fullness of the image of God on earth is male and female together as one.

So babies are wired to look into the face of their parents and receive all the love, affirmation, protection, comfort, nourishment from them.  This is the shadow of the spiritual reality of us as God's children looking to Him (whose nature includes both masculine and feminine aspects) and receive all that we need from Him, our all-in-all:

No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads." (Rev 22:3-4)

* Why then does Jesus say we should call Him father and why is Jesus the Bridegroom if God is both masculine and feminine?  This requires us to understand how sexuality reflects the relationships in the Godhead and between God and man, which will be covered in a later post.

† So does that mean that only married people image God?  Not entirely, because ultimately the one flesh union of a husband and wife is also a shadow of the union of Christ and the Church (Eph 5:31-32).  Perhaps this post might help.  And so if you're single, you image God by being one with the Body of Christ becoming one with Christ.

Discipline vs punishment vs education (godly parenting)

Discipline has got a bad press.  It has become synonymous with punishment and punishment has become synonymous with abuse which society condemns.  It is no surprise that society has swung to the opposite end of the spectrum and is overly permissive, giving their children whatever they want thinking this is loving.  Christians have rightly seen the error of permissiveness but often just counter this by talking about discipline in terms of "firm but fair" punishments.

But no matter how fair the punishment is it's still missing the point as it assumes that discipline is about punishment!

Discipline comes from the Latin word discipulus which meant pupil, from which we got discipina which meant instruction and then the word disciple - a follower, a learner:

In fact it wasn't until the thirteenth century that the word became associated with punishment and it was due to a perverted understanding of being a disciple - that the body was bad and so must be punished by scourging.

Principally parents are called to disciple their children in the same way that Jesus discipled the twelve and Paul discipled Timothy and others in the churches he established.

However, once we get this idea the next mistake we make is to confuse discipling primarily with instruction and knowledge.  That if we tell our children what to do, if we give them the right information then they will make the right choices*.  After all the “expert” in the world's eyes is the one who has studied and got a PhD.

This idea is not Biblical it's Greek.  It comes from Plato's dualistic worldview that said the spiritual realm (which included the mind) was good, but the physical realm (which included the body) was bad.  This was one of the reasons why discipline ended up as self-flagellation because the 'bad' flesh had to be punished!

The Biblical/Hebraic worldview is holistic.  If you want to teach someone you show it.  Jesus didn't just give the disciples teaching and knowledge.  The disciples lived with him they saw, for example, how he healed and then Jesus sent them out to do the same.

This is why repeatedly Christ said “follow me” not “listen to me”.

This is why we as parents should not be saying “do what I tell you” or “do as I say (not what I do)”
but like Paul we should be saying “imitate me as I imitate Christ” (1 Cor 11:1 NKJV) and
“for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.  Therefore I urge you to imitate me” (1 Cor 4:15b-16).

During a prayer time when I was despairing about one of my children I felt God say “be the change you want to see”.  So like Jesus and like Paul I need to live my life openly in front of my children.  I need to model the life that I want them to emulate because God has designed us for discipleship - for copying others.

For example, I want them to learn how to depend on God so I need to show them my dependency on God.  This is why I don't use a satnav even though I am hopeless at directions.  It puts me in a position where the children see me calling out to God for help in finding the way.  It puts me in the place where I need others to help with map reading.  It puts in a place where I'm on the edge and have to depend on the Spirit to not get frustrated and call for help and if I mess up then my children will see me apologise to whomever is helping. A comfortable life will never come close to modelling this.


* How many times have parents read "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." (Prov 22:6) and thought this is principally about teaching them the bible and sending them to Sunday school.

Repetition is important (teach your children godly sexuality)

So here I am, I've given workshops to parents about how to teach godly sexuality to their children.  I live these principles in my own life.  I don't shy away from talking about sex and regularly have God-focussed conversations with my children about how our sexuality is good and holy.

It's all too easy after you've had one conversation with your children about sex to pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself on a job well done.  But just because you had "the talk" doesn't mean they actually understood what you said.



This was brought home to me when one the mother of a friend of my youngest son said he had told her son that babies were made by the man peeing in the woman's china.

I was mortified.  I was also humbled and repented of my self-satisfaction.  I learnt an important lesson that day:

Repetition is important, repetition is important and did I mention repetition is important.

I mentioned in a previous post about how talking about sexuality with our children should be "the talks" and not "the talk".  Well this is another reason why. 

It's just like discipleship - understanding is something that happens gradually over a period of time it's never a one-time brain dump. 

Father may we never tire of sowing into our children's lives until they grow into a mature knowledge of you, your creation and your nature.

Calling out your child's true identity (godly parenting)

In a previous post on godly parenting we briefly mentioned prophetic calling out of our children.  I want to look at this topic in a little more detail here.

The classic example of this is the story of Gideon.  When the angel of the LORD appears to Gideon he speaks out his identity:

"The Lord is with you, mighty warrior" (Judg 6:12)

But hold on a second!  Where is Gideon when the angel of the LORD speaks to him?  He's hiding from the Midianites by threshing wheat in a winepress!  The angel calls him a mighty warrior when he is anything but.  Then the angel of the LORD (=Jesus) commands him to rescue His people but Gideon makes excuses:

"How can I save Israel?  My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family." (Judg 6:15)

We can see that Gideon sees himself as small, weak, insignificant and doesn't see what God sees at all.  So God promises to be with him, but he needs a sign and brings an offering which is burnt up.

So Gideon now knows God, the creator of the universe, is with him and so everything's going to be OK, right? Wrong!  His first task: tear down his father's altar to Baal and Asherah pole

"But because he was afraid of his family and the men of the town, he did it at night rather than in the daytime" (Judg 6:27)

So still scared.  Next task: raise an army.  But this is where he asks for two more signs with the fleece (Judg 6:36-40).  OK, so personal visitation by Jesus and three signs.  Surely he's not scared now!  Wrong!  And God knows this which is why he says:

"If you are afraid to attack, go down to the camp with you servant Purah and listen to what they are saying.  Afterwards you will be encouraged to attack the camp" (Judg 7:10-11a)

He does and hears one of the Midianites speaking of a nightmare and the other explaining that it was about the sword of Gideon...God has given the Midiantes and the whole camp into his hands" (Judg 7:13-14).  Only then does Gideon step into his destiny that God knew all along: the mighty warrior.  He routs the Midianites and slaughters them in an act that is recorded forever.

God saw who Gideon truly was and spoke it over him - he affirmed and called out who he was going to be rather than who he currently was.  This is the Spirit of prophecy - calling forth things which are not yet to become true.

Prophetic calling out is not merely encouragement nor the power of positive thinking but speaking the truth of their identity. 

I've had well meaning Christians who confuse prophecy with encouragement and thinking by saying something encouraging and adding "God says" on the beginning will make it more than that.  For example, my wife has a degenerative condition that means she is becoming more and more disabled both physically and mentally.  A Christian brother gave me a word that "God says you're going to have the best Christmas ever."  It wasn't - it was one of the hardest ones as my wife's pain level was so high that she couldn't celebrate much and my stress level was high trying to care for her and organise Christmas.  This word left a bitter taste.  Why would God say something like that which wasn't true?  

Prophetic calling out is speaking the truth of our child's identity.  Since Jesus is the truth (Jn 14:6) and the Spirit of prophecy bears testimony to Jesus (Rev 19:10) - ie it speaks truth.  So prophecy will speak of the truth of our children's identity - it will require us as parents to get on our knees and ask for God to open our eyes to the truth about our children.

Just like when the army of Aram surrounded the city where Elisha was and his servant panicked.  Elisha prayed that his servant's eyes would be opened to the truth - and then he saw the army of God encamped around and outnumbering the enemy (1 Kings 6:17).  Once they saw this truth then how he approached the situation changed as they knew that victory would be theirs.

Once Jesus reveals our children's true identities we can then affirm and call out who they will become in Christ and keep our eyes on the prize, the author and perfecter of our faith (Heb 12:2) who will finish the good work he starts in our children (Phil 1:6).

An example is my eldest son Josiah William.  My wife and I prayed over the nine months about the right name: Josiah means "YHWH is my healer" and William means "protector".  Given that my wife and I were infertile and despite treatments had no children until the church prayed for us, Josiah was the right name for our second child.  But whilst we saw a glimpse of truth, God opened our eyes to even more.  God became our healer through Josiah in two other ways: The hospital was clinically negligent with the delivery of our first child and the trauma of that was still fresh in my wife's mind.  But God brought healing of that trauma through the fact that Josiah slept almost solidly for a week.  There was no crying, just a baby that you could put down in any position and have him sleep.  The second way was that God brought healing to our marriage through Josiah.  As I mentioned in a previous post my wife had clinical postnatal depression and was put in a psychiatric ward and I had a nervous breakdown.  Our marriage never really recovered and we were sleeping in separate beds for some time before my wife packed the car and our little girl and drove to the office to tell me she was leaving me.  I so grateful to God that He helped me make one of the best choices of my marriage - I said I would do what it takes to fix this - I would even go on a marriage course.  And we did and it was the beginning of the turnaround in our lives.  And Josiah's conception was week 5's homework.

God gave us a glimpse of who Josiah's identity was - it was natural that we would sow into this and call out the healer and protector that God had made him to be.  One day I found myself saying "You know Josiah, God has made your someone who will protect other people's lives - and I believe that one day you will save your brother's life".  And it came to pass that he did when he pulled his brother out of the way of a car that was going to hit him.  God through Jesus revealed the truth about Josiah and I have the privilege to speak that truth and see the Spirit make it reality.

This is so much easier said than done as it's all too easy to limit our view to the present actions of our children rather than the future man/woman that they will become.  That's why we need the Spirit to help us see who they truly are going to be in Christ.  God didn't lose patience with Gideon and say "For goodness sake!  How much more confirmation do you need that I am with you?"  Why?  Because He could see who Gideon was going to be and knew it would come about.

May the Father speak to you now as you think about your own children.  May He reveal their true identity to you and may you have the persistence to keep on blessing the Spirit's work in your children by calling out this identity no matter how outlandish it may seem.  In Jesus' precious name.  Amen.

An alternative ending to the Orlando shooting

**Content warning: this will be an honest account of some of my sexual struggles during my life and may not be appropriate for minors nor for those of a sensitive nature**

How long do you need to spec a gay bar before committing an atrocity?  1 day, 1 week, 1 month...how about 3 years?

This is how long Omar Mateen had been visiting the Pulse gay nightclub before he shot and killed 49 people.

People are naturally looking for an explanation of what happened.  For some it's about lax gun controls, for others its about hatred of gays, for some it's simply about a mentally unstable man.  I'd like to offer a different commentary based on parallels in my life.

The Qur'an is clear that homosexuality is a sin.  Yet Omar had been attending this gay nightclub for at least 3 years and had been having conversations with gay men via a gay dating app.

I would like to suggest that Omar struggled with the issue of being attracted to men and yet knowing it was wrong.  Islam offers no grace, no help to stop sinning, only law.  You must not do this.  What do you do in this situation?  How long can you live under such condemnation before you finally flip and lash out at yourself (through cutting or suicide) or at others (through abuse up to murder).

I understand a little of Omar's struggle.

I never felt affirmed as a man.  I felt that I was a disappointment to my father and didn't measure up.  My father-in-law also didn't see me as a man and whilst I remember joking in my wedding speech that "it's not so much losing a daughter but gaining a womany-bloke" the truth is I didn't feel like a "proper" man.  Getting married didn't fix that.  Nor did becoming a father.  I felt the constant need for approval of a father-figure that I never received growing up.
 
During my early marriage I acted out by looking at pornographic images of women. I knew it was wrong and I hated myself for it.  I used to take out my anger on my wife.  Often as a defensive mechanism because if she got too close she would expose who I really was and I didn't want that.  So I'd make out that it was her fault.

However, whilst early exposure to pornography and subsequent masturbation had hardwired my brain to women the yearning for manly approval grew and became more sexual.  I started fantasising about kissing certain men when I was talking to them.  I needed to feel loved and wanted by these men.  But I knew that this was wrong too*.  And I hated myself for it.  I tried to suppress it but it kept coming back.  Just like the way I projected my self-loathing onto my wife due to my pornographic addiction, I projected my self-loathing about my same-sex attraction onto gays.  I would see homosexuality as the unforgivable sin and loathe them in my heart.

Given the similarities between my life and Omar's - the overbearing father, the religious upbringing I know that this could have easily been my story.

Some will interject now and say "you need to accept these desires as natural and reject this outdated religious bigotry".  However, to quote CS Lewis:

"He (Satan) always sends errors into the world in pairs - pairs of opposites.  And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse.  You see why of course?  He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one.  But do not let us be fooled.  We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors"

My story ends differently.  Instead of denying my desires I didn't just accept them and act on them, I expressed them to Jesus.  I honestly told him about my struggles.  As I admitted the truth, I brought these desires into the light and that was when the transformation began.  He opened my eyes to the fact that it was only men in authority that I wanted to kiss.  It was because of my feeling so unmanly, so unworthy, so useless that was the root of my desire to be accepted and loved by authority figures.  Jesus has all authority (Mt 28:18), he is above every power and authority (Eph 1:20-22; Phil 2:9-10) and he loves me (Jn 15:9,12).  As I have been receiving the approval of the ultimate authority I have become more whole.  As I have drunk deep of Christ's masculinity I have become more manly.  As I have received the Father's love and approval my desires for men have simply faded away.  I have become complete and whole in Him who is my all in all (1 Cor 15:28).  I know that without this grace I could have very well been Omar.

Omar, I'm sorry you didn't discover this third way.  I'm sorry you didn't receive this love and grace that transforms.  I'm sorry that others paid the price for your self-hatred. 

Can I recommend my friends blog article on the Orlando shooting that expresses something of the heart of God here.

* It's not the purpose of this article to defend the traditional Christian view of homosexuality.  Others have done that adequately elsewhere.  Any plain sense reading of passages such as Rom 1:26-27 and a correct understanding of hermeutics will support this.  However, we mustn't get pushed into the false dichotomy of if I don't agree I must hate gays.  As this article shows there is another way.