GYC SE 2010: Infinity - The Pursuit of Excellence

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GYC Southeast

God Invented Sex

Alan Parker

Nicole Parker

God Invented Sex Part 1: Biblical Theology of Sexuality

First part, we're going to deal with what is the kind of the background, the biblical background to sex, God's plan, the devil's plan.

So we're going to deal with those 2 elements.

In the second presentation, we particularly are going to deal with How to relate to same-sex attraction and to homosexuality.

In the third presentation, we will deal with the question of sexual addictions.

How you can help a friend who perhaps is sexually addicted.

We're gonna deal with how to take the first presentation and second presentation and deal with the practical implications.

How do you live out your sexuality so that you live a life of love instead of a life of lust?

And so those are our 3 plans through these seminars and we hope that you will stick with us through this process.

I think I'm going to go ahead and start and then we'll begin with prayer.

And then if you have any questions right at the end of our 3 seminars, we are going to have a Q&A.

We have 3 people who will be giving their testimonies.

In the second seminar, they're going to stick around for the third seminar.

And we will try and make some Q&A time at the end of each seminar.

So if you have specific questions, just hang on.

I know you may not want to ask questions publicly.

So if you want to write something down, if you've got a piece of paper.

Otherwise, if you're brave enough, just raise your hand.

Father God, we thank you that you invented sex.

And so help us to know how to relate to the sensitive topic that many of us have run away from, we've chosen not to deal with because it's such a challenging area.

And yet God, we believe you do have a plan.

So be with us now as we relate to the best and the worst and help us to see your involvement.

Well, we're gonna do, my wife and I are both going to do this because my voice has been going out a little so she has kindly stepped in to share some of the principles, Come on in guys.

And so you can see our topic is Water Lily White in a Sewer Pond World.

So I thought we'd just start a little fun, you know, God made different sexes, right?

So there was a little experiment done when a lady was teaching French.

And she was saying some words in French are masculine and some are feminine.

And so she was describing that some is male, some is female.

And going through it, and somebody raised their hand and said, well, what gender is a computer?

So instead of giving the answer, she decided to split them into 2.

And the man worked on that question, and the woman worked on the question, is male female?

The men, of course, said a computer is female.

They said it's not le computer, but la computer, Because no 1 but the creator understands their internal logic.

The native language they use to communicate with others' computers is incomprehensible to anyone else.

Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later review.

And as soon as you make a commitment to 1, you find yourself spending half your salary for accessories for it.

Of course, the woman came back and said, that's not true.

We have decided that the computer is not a woman, but it's masculine.

In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on.

2, they have a lot of data, but they still can't think for themselves.

3, they are supposed to solve problems, but half the time they are the problem.

Notice that tends to occur more at some times than others.

Number 4, as soon as you commit to 1 you realize that if you'd waited a little longer you could have gotten a better model.

And so we want to suggest that God invented sex.

He could have made us all 1 sex, couldn't he?

Hey, let's make them all you know, not male or female, but it.

And there's some species in nature like this.

Wouldn't life have been much easier, we seem to think, without it being sexual?

It sometimes would be easier not to have to worry about this.

To multiply, reproduction, because the earth was barren, be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth, okay?

But if that's the case, then if that was the only reason, what would be your conclusion?

Don't have it unless you want to have kids.

Now we've already had 3 kids, so that would mean the end of our sexual lives.

Yeah, I think you've all come up with good things.

He even created it so that it would be pleasurable the way he created the organs.

Was specifically designed so that they would create pleasure.

He created it for intimacy, to bring people closer together, for love, a sharing of love.

That's why even in today's culture people talk about making love when they're referring to sex.

Now of course in today's world we tend to focus on what?

God Invented Sex Part 2: Someone I Love is Gay

Lord Jesus, this is such an important topic because we know that you love homosexuals.

Teach us, Lord, how we can best reach out and minister to serve our fellow men.

Open our hearts to your word and to your great love for us.

All right, I've titled this Someone I Love is Gay because that was the title that first came to my mind and it just seemed right.

I remember the first time I ever heard about homosexuality.

I was this little kid, and I saw something on TV about 2 people who were getting married that were same sex.

And I thought, well, that's kind of peculiar, but I guess if that's what they want, OK.

Anyway, but It was never really a topic that interested me.

Until 1 day, when 1 of my friends sat down and talked with me, and he said, you know about me, right?

And I said, I know almost everything about you, yeah.

What do you mean you know about me?" He said, you know I'm gay.

He said, I've been praying for years for God to take this away from me, but he doesn't.

At that moment, homosexuality changed for me because I had a face.

And he's still living a lifestyle that he knows God doesn't want him to live.

But we stay in touch and I know that God is working in his life.

And true Christians, true followers of God, will love them too.

I want you to know how important that is because there are so many people in the world that don't.

And the media paints us as Christians, as these homophobes who hold up signs saying, God hates gays and worse.

When my friend told me that, I didn't know what to say to him.

And I told him the first thing that came to my mind.

I said, if that's your problem, it's my problem too.

I have no idea why God has allowed you to have homosexual feelings.

I have no idea why he hasn't taken it away from you.

But As long as this is your struggle, it will be my struggle, and we will go through this together.

We will figure out why this has happened to you and how God can set you free.

That's what I told my friend, and that's my commitment still, to understand.

So I've researched this tremendously, And I know there are people who see things very passionately on different sides.

I've spent lots of time talking with people on both sides of the fence.

But I see clearly from research, from science, that what the world tells you is not necessarily true.

There's another side to the story and that's why we need to say something.

We need to show that Christians do not have to say God hates gays in order to stand up for truth, to stand up for why the Bible says what it says.

Sooner or later someone you know and love will need to come out to you.

That's the first reason why it needs to matter to you.

This week, as Monday was National Coming Out Day, 1 of my friends celebrated by coming out to me.

I probably have at least 10 homosexual friends along the way here and there.

He knows I'm a person who will love him and accept him.

And together, we will work through figuring out what's at the root.

We already got a long way in just a short conversation understanding what was going on in his mind.

He shared with me some of the things that happened in his childhood, how he longed for love from his father.

Last year, I had a student here at Southern share with me.

She had come here, wonderful girl, passionate to follow God, and spiritual leadership here.

On the outside, everything looked perfect.

But her life, her relationship with God had started to fall apart.

And as her relationship with God fell apart, she got into what the world calls a codependent relationship with another girl.

We call it an idolatrous relationship according to the Bible.

And that idolatrous relationship had become sexual.

She came to me because she knew I was a safe place.

You need to be a person who is known as a safe place because there are people in your life who you don't know about who need to be able to talk.

It's not 10% of the population as the Kinsey Report says.

That was based on studying in prison, you know.

How many guys, if you're going to interview a whole bunch of guys in prison, say how many of you have ever been involved in sexual activity with the same sex in the last few years?

Well, that's the only thing that's around and these are perverted guys.

But that's also fluctuating because people change.

But the thing is, there are people in your life that you need to be able to be there for.

The girl who came to me from here at Southern, I was able to counsel with her, spend some time.

In just a few hours we untangled what was going on in her heart and her mind, the pain that she had been through in her life and how it had driven her to this.

She was able to reconnect with God and she said it was a much deeper relationship with God than she had ever been able to have before because she hadn't been able to allow him into the deep places in her life, these areas that were hurting so much.

And through the tears and prayer and journaling and understanding God's love for her in new ways for the first time she was delivered.

That's not just a strange thing that happens to 1 person in a million.

There are 3 men who are going to be sharing their testimonies this afternoon for you to tell you how the Lord delivered them.

But there are many more, many, many more.

They just don't tell you Because who wants to be labeled, right?

Nobody wants to have everybody look at you and go, oh, you were gay.

Well, we're not going to marry you, right?

You need to know what to say when someone comes to you as their safe place.

God Invented Sex Part 3: Sexuality--Struggling and Striving

Lord God, as we tackle a difficult subject, as we deal with the problem of lust and sexuality, help us to experience your plan for our lives, a plan where love is demonstrated, where sexuality is powerfully used for your glory.

And Lord, where we struggle, help us to find grace, help us to find the ability to get up and to try again.

For we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.

I have had several people come into my office, sit down in the chair opposite my desk, and tell me, help me, I'm addicted.

They'll explain a struggle, some of them since the age of 12, 13, an ongoing struggle when they discovered pornography in their dad's house, on the computer.

In some cases, they discovered that their dad was addicted to pornography, and they fell into the same trap.

And then as we're talking about this, I say, have you tried to stop?

And they tell me, oh yeah, I try so many times.

And then I realized that what's going on is much deeper than what I can see.

And when I first started having people sit in my office, I had simple solutions.

And then they would try and they couldn't stop because this was something that they were addicted to.

So I want to suggest to you that there are ways that God is calling us to deal with the problem of addiction.

So we're gonna deal with 3 parts here, the cycles of lust and the problem of addiction, the Bible's powerful answer to the lust cycle, which I've woven into some strategies and tools for lust-free living.

I'm gonna give you 7 strategies that I believe are biblical that will help us to deal with the problem of sexual addiction.

But even though he invented sex, we still struggle with it.

Anyone here never struggled with their sexuality?

Because a sexual person is a person who is struggling to live out God's plan for their lives in a sex-saturated society.

So let's think about what an addiction is.

And this comes from the scientific literature.

And so I'm just going to take what they say and put it up here.

1 gentleman was sitting in a seminar, much like this, being held by a speaker on sexuality.

He was kind of looking 1 way, looking the other.

And then when the speaker started to deal with masturbation, the guy just blurted out, well, what's wrong with masturbation?

And so the speaker looked at him and said, well, I just have 1 question.

He didn't say another word for the rest of the seminar.

Comes out the end, he said, well, why would I want to stop?

Question was, why wouldn't you want to stop?

If you can't stop, if you find yourself keep going back, you're addicted.

If it's getting worse, you're developing tolerance.

The kind of things you would never have watched before, you now find yourself watching.

If you use it to manage your feelings and moves, it's a mood leveler.

If you're feeling high, use it to bring yourself down.

If you're feeling bored and lonely and depressed and anxious, use it to kind of bring yourself up.

If you're using it to regulate your moods, it's a sign that you're addicted.

If you continue despite negative outcomes or potential negative outcomes, somebody's going to see.

You could threaten your future spouse or your spouse.

And you just don't care about the outcomes.

You're having sex and you know that there's a danger that your girlfriend can get pregnant or you could end up with an STD.

Or you experience swings, and this is typical.

You know, an addicted person goes, hey man, I'm gonna do it this time.

I'm really on top of it I'm gonna conquer this thing baby.

I may as well go all the way What else can I do?

You swing from, I don't want it at all, and to, well, if I'm going to have it, and I've already fallen, I may as well go all the way.

So our question is, are we admiring or desiring?

It's 1 thing to admire God's beautiful creation.

It's another thing to desire to have that beautiful creation naked and in your bed.

It's 1 thing to say, well, you know, there passes what God has made.

But it's another thing to strip that person down and depersonalize them and to go to the internet and to let that lustful thinking take over our lives.

Jesus view, anyone who looks at a woman, and this is from the ESV, with what?

It's not just admiring, it's desiring, has already committed adultery with her what?

You see, the real problem, Jesus said, is not just the action, it's what's going on in the heart.

It's what's happening right here inside of your heart.

And the biblical word for heart is really the same as the mind.

So when it says heart, it's really talking about what's going on in your mind.

Where have you allowed your affections and your attentions to go?

And there are people who, when they end up in severe adultery or pornography, and they're saying, I just don't know what happened here.

It happened with something that started in the heart.

It wasn't just that you watch pornography, it was what was going on in your mind in between.

Notice this from James chapter 1 verses 14 and 15 describing the problem of lust.

Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust.

The word for lust there really means selfish desire.

He's drawn away of his own lust and enticed.

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Series

God Invented Sex

God Invented Sex Part 3: Sexuality--Struggling and Striving

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Recorded

Parts

God Invented Sex Part 1: Biblical Theology of Sexuality

46m

God Invented Sex Part 2: Someone I Love is Gay

1h

God Invented Sex Part 3: Sexuality--Struggling and Striving

1h 15m

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