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Discipleship is the integration of what we believe into our everyday lives and relationships. It involves three things: (1) knowing what we believe, (2) living what we believe, and (3) passing on what we believe.
We have a mission. It’s not to convince people that sex outside of marriage is sinful. After all, Jesus didn’t say, “Go into all the world and make virgins and heterosexuals.” He told us to make disciples. Our mission is to exalt Jesus as Lord, Creator, and Savior of every aspect of our lives, including sexuality.
We should not be ashamed to discuss what God was not ashamed to create. —Dr. Howard Hendricks
If this is true, and I believe it is, then every sexual question begins and ends with questions about God.
God created you as a sexual person in order to unlock the mystery of knowing an invisible God. John Piper alludes to this in his assessment that “the ultimate reason (not the only one) why we are sexual is to make God more deeply knowable.”12 Your sexuality tells the story of God’s intention to draw you into His covenant love, the celebration of intimacy with Him, and the devastation of betraying Him. Written within your sexuality are echoes of an eternal, invisible truth.
In particular, sexual intimacy in marriage teaches us two things: (1) covenant love should be passionate and (2) it will always involve sacrifice.
God’s love for us required a great sacrifice. God the Father sent His Son to suffer and give Himself for us. If marriage is a picture of God’s covenant love for us, why would marriage not also require unselfishness and sacrifice as part of that picture?
Integrity means this: while people do not know everything that’s true about you, everything they know should be consistent with the truth. To live with integrity doesn’t mean that you share every struggle you’ve ever had, but what you present to even a stranger should be completely consistent with the overarching story of your life. Living an integrated life also means there should be at least some people who know the whole truth about you. Yes, we confess our sins to God, but you believe a lie if you think that no other human needs to know what you’ve done or how you’re struggling.
help us picture a future we want to live out. Sociologists Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker pointed out, “People pay attention to—and live out—compelling and attractive stories….What happens when someone lacks access to alternative stories about sex? Simple: they don’t easily envision alternatives to what they know.”4 When we don’t tell our stories, people won’t know that there is an alternative to the world’s narrative of sex.
We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world. —G. K. Chesterton
