 red-hot relationships and so hopefully you had a great Valentine's Day this last week and you came ready to ask some questions. We've had two services, some crazy questions already, but no question is a bad question unless I say it is. And so we're gonna do our very best and we've got Portage joining us online and as John said, we're gonna be talking specifically about the subjects of dating, singleness, sex and boundaries within those relationships. And so if you haven't texted in your question yet, go ahead and do that. And we wanna just stay right up the front. One of the main reasons why we're talking about these subjects is not in any way to be provocative, just all, they're talking about sex just to get people's attention. The reality is the world already has our attention on these subjects and the world has opinions and expresses them clearly and often and on a very wide scale about how it views sex. And yet God is the one who created sex and sexuality and marriage and dating and all those types of things. And so it really ought to concern us what does God have to say about these things? And so that's why we're talking about it. It is PG, so we just wanna warn you up front and give all of you parents an out if you need to check your kids into our radiant kids, which is fantastic. And they won't be talking about this today down there. So they will not be teaching your kids how to date. That's your job. So let's go ahead and let's start taking some questions here. This is from John and Richland. Is it true that your first time you took Jane out to dinner, you ordered a side of figs and kept holding them out asking, is this a date? It's my brother-in-law asking. And actually on the way I got Jane to go out with me on my first date was I told her, you know I've been reading through the Bible and I read all of numbers, but I don't have yours. And her response, well have you read the book of Job and do you have one? And so we've been married for 27, almost 28 years now. So it worked out all right. Biblical dating pickup lines. There you go. All right, thanks John. All right, here we go. Ashley, in Richland, is it wrong to have a sexual kink? I'm not sure what that is. I am not 100% positive of what the, I remember the band, the kinks from the 80s. That's about my only frame of reference there. I think probably talking about a fetish or something along those lines where a proclivity or those types of things. And here's the reality is that sex was created in order to be enjoyed within the context of a covenant marriage, one man, one woman in a covenant relationship for life because marriage was meant to be and is the safest environment that we will ever live within. Which means within that context we can be ourselves. That means we can communicate. That means sex should be without shame. And sex from God's perspective is not just about having our own needs met. It's about meeting the needs of the person that we are in covenant relationship with. So I would say this, that a lot of what has shaped, even within the church, our view of sexuality, what's permissible, what we're allowed to do, things like this, is the result of the fact that before we came into Christ or even after we've been shaped in our view of sexuality from the world and from a porn driven culture that has shaped all kinds of aspects of our view of sexuality. And I think for anybody, listen, if there are, within the confines of marriage, as long as there is mutual consent and desire to experiment within that relationship, within the confines of that safety, if it's pleasurable for both, the book of Song of Solomon is full, it's full of metaphorical, allegorical language that really is sexual between a bride and a bridegroom. And so there's a lot of room. God is not a prude, but yet it needs to be mutually agreed upon. It needs to be something that is not just about you getting your own needs or desires or kinks met as much as it should be about enjoying one another in having an attitude of how can I meet your needs? How can I bring you pleasure? And then if within that marriage relationship, you guys agree upon that, that's between you and that's between God. Now, if you come into a relationship, a marriage, and you're trying to get something out of it and you're imposing it or you're coercing or your spouse is uncomfortable with it, I would just encourage you check your heart. Why is it that you want that? Why is it that you're putting that above them? And I would say this is good for all of us. Where did that desire come from? Does that desire come out of purity or does it come out of impurity? Has it been shaped by your desire for your spouse or has it been shaped by a desire that the world has planted into your heart? And if it's impure, submit that to Jesus. And if it's just out of a passion and a pursuit for the person that you're married to because you find them beautiful, you find them attractive and you want to experiment and you wanna enjoy the beauty of sex within marriage and you're both consenting on that, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. That would be the best answer I could possibly give. This is at all time first, I've never been asked that. There you go, okay. So, Bruce from Richland. Does dating always need to be for courting or is it useful to help learn whom and what you want in a partner? Can dating with romance just be for fun? Well, dating is, listen, my opinion is, especially when it comes to young people, dating is when you pair off from normal friendship and normal groups in order to explore romantic feelings or express romantic feelings. And I know that in our culture, it's kinda like society tells us, oh, well, you know, as soon as you hit puberty, you're ready for dating. All that does is set you up for disappointment and temptation and for sin, especially when you are dating and especially one-on-one dating at a very young age. There's nowhere to go with that because my question is, okay, you can have feelings for someone, but as soon as you're 15 years old and you're dating somebody, what are you doing? You're saying, I don't wanna just be a friend. Well, what does that mean beyond that? Beyond your feelings, it means I wanna be physical with you. That's what that means. And as soon as you begin to give room for that, you are setting yourself for all kinds of issues. Now, for young adults and for adults who are single and you just wanna date for romance, I want you to define romance for me. Because if you're saying, I just wanna date because I wanna make out or I just wanna date because I wanna have sex or I just wanna date for the sake of flirting or whatever, that in and of itself is troublesome. And listen, when you're in the age bracket where you are ready to get married and start a family and you have a desire for a relationship, then it should. It doesn't mean that you have to propose on a second date. I'm not an advocate of that where it's like, well, I wanna propose to you before I even know you. Or I'm not an advocate that says that there's nothing wrong with dating, but dating should be leading somewhere. Dating should be leading to explore, are we friends, are we compatible? Are we already attracted to one another? Is this gonna go someplace? And if it's not, it's gonna go to another place. And when it goes to that place, it will compromise you. And so I think there's some guys that just love to date just for the sake of being able to win. Can I get this girl to go out with me? Or girls who just, I just wanna see if I can get this guy to go out with me. That's actually immaturity for us being honest about it. That's coming from a place of insecurity and it's coming from a place of immaturity. Dating is an exploration of is this someone that I could see myself spending the rest of my life with? And if it's not that, then dating groups, be close friends. You can be attracted to somebody. Doesn't mean that you have to date them. You can be not attracted to somebody and it doesn't mean you have to date them. And everybody go, that's good news. But I think that it's dangerous ground for you. It's like, yeah, I'm 25 years old. I just wanna date a whole bunch of people and go out. You're like, that's like saying, you know, I wanna go ride my bike through a land mine field and you know, just have a nice little stroll through the DMZ. It's like, great, you're gonna blow yourself up. Okay, there you go. Pastor Lee's advice on dating. That's why, by the way, Jane and I got married at 2021. It's like, we met and within six months we were engaged and within a year we were married. It's like, because if we stretched that out, it would have been dangerous. I'm a human being and at 20 and 21, I had a strong sex drive and I still do. There you go. I've never said that in church either. And so, now Jane, on the other hand, she was a saint, she was awesome. Would have been no problem for her. Okay, here we go. Now I'm blushing and I am extremely red. Okay, Janet, Janet online. Why is it okay for people who've divorced, gotten abortions or are living in sexual sin to be in leadership positions, but not LGBTQIA believers? Well, it's not okay. It's number one, it's not okay for anybody to be living in present, active, knowing sin and to be in spiritual leadership within a church. The Bible's very clear about the criteria for leadership. There's Timothy chapter three talks about the criteria for leadership within a church. Titus chapter one and chapter two talks about it. First Corinthians talks about it. So in this case, it's why is it okay for people who have been past tense, divorced, gotten abortions, past tense or are present tense, living in sexual sin to be in leadership? So I have to dissect those. Number one, any sin that you have committed in the past that you have repented of and surrendered to Jesus Christ and asked him to forgive you is cleansed from you. It is removed as far as the east is from the west from you and you are no longer under shame, condemnation or guilt for it. Here's what Jesus said to the woman who sinned. Your sins are forgiven you, go your way, sin no more. Okay, so all of us, it doesn't matter what your sin is, if you've sinned in this room in the past, raise your hand right now. Okay, we would all be in trouble if there was no such thing as mercy and grace. But mercy and grace, God's forgiveness is connected to our willingness to repent from it, recognize it as sin and surrender to Jesus. Now, the next part that says or are present tense, living in sexual sin, that's a problem. Because when we are living in present, active, knowing sin, we are disqualifying ourselves from leadership. Because it's a sin and the Bible is very clear about sexual sin. It's not just one particular sin. I know this person is zeroing in on LGBTQIA, all those different factors and orientations and those types of things. But the Bible, it categorizes all sex outside of the bonds of marriage between one man and one woman. It calls it sexual immorality. And it's not just that it qualifies you from leadership to be actively involved in sexual sin, knowing it, unrepentant, ongoing, actually separates you from the kingdom of God. It's very specific in 1 Corinthians. Chapter six, it says in verse number nine, and do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do you not be deceived? Neither sexually or immoral. That means people that have sex before their marriage, people that have sex outside of their marriage, which is adultery, people that have sex, and then it goes on with talking about adulterers, that's people that you're not married to, and practice homosexuality, that same-sex sex, all of those sex outside of how God ordained and created one man and one woman within the confines of covenant marriage to have sex. Anything outside of that, it says, is sexual immorality, but then it also lists off thieves that's stealing, the greedy, swindlers, drunkards, revilers, will not inherit the kingdom of God. So you can't be a leader in a kingdom that you can inherit. And so we're not just talking about one particular type of sin, we're talking about all kinds of it. So unfortunately in the church, we've made a big deal about people who have same-sex attraction, and I think what this person is asking is, look, I look around and see people that have heterosexual sin, and they're okay, and they get a lot of grace, and they get a lot of mercy, but what about people who identify themselves as gay or same-sex attraction? Seems like we've really marginalized or zeroed in on that, and I would say to you about that, you're absolutely right. We've been too lax when it comes to what we're comfortable with and zeroed in on what we don't struggle with. But you know, God doesn't view heterosexual sin outside of marriage as somehow a lesser sin than the person who's homosexual and has sex with somebody of the same sex or gender. He views them both as the same, and sin, remember this, sin is a violation of God's law, but it also means missing God's intended mark. What's God's intended mark with sex? God's intended mark with sex was number one to be a bonding agent between two people, body, soul, and spirit, and sex was also to be pleasurable and bring about reproduction. That's God's design, that's why he created sex. And so I want you to know, if we have people in leadership, it doesn't matter if they are struggling with same-sex sex or heterosexual sex outside of the confines of marriage, we will walk with people graciously, try to bring them to a place of repentance, walk with them with mercy and grace to bring them into a place of health. But when there is a lack of willingness to repent for something that God is very clear upon, I don't care if it's you're divorcing your wife when you don't have biblical grounds, divorcing your husband when you don't have biblical grounds, actively involved in sexual relations or a host of other things. We will not allow people to remain in positions of leadership. We won't cover it up, but we will lovingly confront, we will lovingly walk with people. If it takes 10 years for somebody to walk out of something of some lifestyle or sin, as long as their heart is pointing towards Jesus, we will walk with them. But that doesn't mean that those people are qualified to be leaders. As leaders, we have to have a higher standard. Let me just announce it to you. If I ever walk into this church or any other church and I have a different wife than Jane in the front row, pack up your stuff, leave and go someplace else. Because I will have lost my mind and become disqualified from being a leader. So I'm no different than anybody else. So on this front, we all need grace, we all need mercy. Those of us who wanna be leaders are held to a higher standard and a higher leadership. And to those who are in our congregation that would identify themselves as LGBT or same-sex attracted, God calls you to the same thing, calls all of us to walk in purity before Him, submit our lives to Him. And we also wanna say this, we're sorry that your sin or your lifestyle has been elevated to a higher level of sin than anybody else's. That's wrong, we love you, we wanna walk with you, we want God's best for you. All right? Can we just affirm that for everybody? Okay. All right, next question. With our over-sexualized media, how do we know what is appropriate and what is not when watching TVs and movies? That is a great question, Shannon. Thanks for submitting that. You're absolutely right. Our culture is absolutely over-sexualized. It is, it's everywhere. Things that right now are on primetime television are things that 20 years ago would've been called porn. But we've just become desensitized to it. It's like you wanna know how you boil a frog without it jumping out of the pot of water is you turn up the degrees one degree at a time until it's boiling and it will boil to death. And that's exactly what Hollywood, it's exactly, let's just call it what it is. It's what the devil has done in American culture. If he would've just put what is on television in Hollywood right now right up in front of us 20 years ago, we all would've went like this. We would've been bashful, we would've been guarded, we would've turned it off. But because it's been one degree at a time and because we'll laugh about it and because we'll see it, then it's become normalized and now our guard has come down and our hearts have become calloused. And I think that it takes discernment. I think it takes maturity and I think it takes a decision in your heart, premeditated decision in your heart of what you will and what you will not accept. I think the same is true with violence. I think the same is true with language, sitcoms and things like that. You have to, if you're going to view media, don't let media control your life. Use it as a tool or as a means of entertainment, but you know what, we got power buttons. It's like, hit that thing. Got channel changers for a reason. Change the channel, unsubscribe. You don't have to watch it. There are, in our house, just being honest, there are times when something will pop up on a show and it might be rare. It's not the predominant part of it, but a scene or a situation is on there and it's implied or something like that. You got to know how to use the fast forward button on some things or turn it off if your kids are in the room or be willing to not watch a show even though you might like it because you don't want to validate the sexual content that is on that show. What's more important to us, the condition of our heart or the entertainment of our minds? And we can't expect our kids to make good moral decisions if mom and dad aren't making good moral decisions. And trust me, your kids are watching you. Jane and I have raised three teenagers and they can't remember anything that we tell them about cleaning their room or taking out the garbage, but they will remind of it. I walked in that room one time and you had this movie on and you had this thing. Your kids know and they are studying your life. And so I love what the book of Job says that Job says, I have made a covenant with my eyes. In the book of Psalms, David said, no worthless thing will I set before my eyes. We need, if we want to keep pure hearts, we need to make sure that we're being guarded about what we're viewing. And so I just think one of the ways that you do that, how you know what's appropriate is if you're in a family context, husband and wife sit down and say, okay, what are the guidelines? What are we going to allow? What are we not gonna allow? What are we going to allow our kids to watch? What movies are we gonna go to? Because when we don't talk about them, we're just gonna default and we let ourselves get swept up in the moment and watching whatever and then it begins to shape you. One scripture that I would remind you of, I think it's in 1 Peter, it talks about lot. You guys remember lot, remember Sodom and Gomorrah and lot? It says about lot, maybe it's 2 Peter. It says that here he is living in Sodom and Gomorrah and it says in chapter two, verse seven. And it says that God rescued righteous lot who had been greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked for as that righteous man lived among them day by day, he was tormented in his righteous soul. You literally become tormented, vexed spiritually, not by something that only happens one time, but it's by what you allow to build layer after layer in your life day after day after day. It wears you down until it ultimately shapes you. So and the Bible describes him as a righteous man, righteous lot, but if you look at Lot's life, he pitched his tents and his people in the valley of Sodom and by the time God comes to rescue him, he was no longer on the outskirts of town in the valley, he was living in Sodom because sin has a gravitational pull. So we have got to have premeditated boundaries and guidelines about entertainment and about sexual content or else the world will just shape us, okay? Here we go, next question. This is Kim from Richland. In a dating relationship, do you lose your virginity with oral and anal sex? Thanks for asking that question, Kim. And the answer is yes, because both of those things are sex. I think an unfortunate thing happened in our country in the late 90s. We had a president who before Congress, first of all, allotted the American people instead of never had sex with that woman. And then under oaths, when they asked, did you have oral sex? He said, so therefore did you have sex with this woman? He said, it depends what your definition of is is. And we can laugh about that, but it's not funny because here's what happened. The leader of our nation, and I don't care what political party he would have been in, leader of our nation tried to self justify his actions of abuse of power and sexual expression outside of marriage by saying it really wasn't sex just because it was oral sex. And do you know what that did? It created a trend among young people where they wouldn't have sex because they weren't gonna lose their virginity, but they would just have oral sex. Because if the president says it's not sex, leaders say it's not sex, then it must not be sex. And you can actually see a trend in youth culture where there was an increase of oral sex that began to take place in elementary school, middle school, and obviously into high school. What we do as leaders and what we do as those who are out front sets a precedent for those who come behind us. And so all of these expressions, anal sex, oral sex, any expression, if you have to put sex onto it, it's sex. And virginity is not so much about the actions that we take, it starts actually with our heart. It starts with us making a decision that I'm going to keep sex sacred for the confines of marriage. Because let me tell you something about sex. Sex is nuclear. The way that, it's one of the most powerful gifts that God has given to the human race. That's why the devil works so hard to pervert it. Because sex is nuclear, what do I mean by that? Nuclear power can fuel and energize an entire city like New York. But if that nuclear reactor detonates or is used incorrectly, it can actually destroy the very people that it was designed to give energy and life to. And that's what sex does. Sex was created by God to take two individuals, body, soul, and spirit, and bond them together as one flesh. It's not recreational. It's not just fun. It's not just physical. It affects you spiritually. It affects you emotionally. It affects you physically. It's a bonding agent. That's how God created it. But what the devil has done is tried to compartmentalize it and get us convinced that, oh, you can just have sex with whoever, or you can just do these things and you keep your heart intact. Or it's just, it's done once the act is done. Or, and you move on from this person to that person and this person. And what we don't realize is we all know that when you live promiscuously or you do these things with more than one person, you run the risk of getting sexually transmitted diseases. But what we don't realize is that you also run the risk of getting spiritually transmitted diseases. Because again, it's a bonding agent. And so in our over-porned culture where it's now on our phones. When I grew up, like a lot of us, if you wanted to view porn, it was you had to find your crazy uncle's penthouse magazine, take it out in the woods and hide it in a crate. And maybe you're, my dad, he had stacks of magazines in his house. And unfortunately, as a six, seven-year-old kid, I was exposed to porn at five, six, and seven years old. And I'm not talking about penthouse or playboy. I'm talking about hardcore porn. And do you know, unfortunately, God has redeemed me from that. But do you know that there is never a time in my childhood that I can remember not knowing what sex was because of my dad's actions. And I saw things, pictures and images as a young boy that to this day, if I wanted to, I can still recall those pictures because the way that God creates sex to be a bonding agent is when a man especially sees something, it releases a chemical in your brain like the chemical reaction when you develop a photograph that imprints that image combined with that level of hormone that is released in your brain that emblazons that on your mind and creates a desire. And it shapes our sexuality. The reason why I'm saying that is we've got a lot of kids and a lot of young people running around doing things and they think just because you haven't had vaginal intercourse that that's not sex. And the reality is you're messing with fire because it's actually changing you. It is sex. It is bonding you. It is affecting you. And you lose your virginity doing those types of things. Now let me bring hope. Doesn't matter whether you've had one sexual partner, multiple sexual partners, whether you've had oral, anal, vaginal, it doesn't matter what kind of sex that you've had. And wow, we're talking about this in church. The grace of God is stronger. The most powerful force in the universe is God's grace and his ability not just to forgive you but to renew you. Let me read you one more scripture, okay? In light of this, First Corinthians. Paul's, in First Corinthians chapter six, Paul is dealing with a bunch of pagans. And if you know anything about Roman pagan culture, of people who got saved out of their culture, there is nothing new under the sun. They did all these things in crazier things. Bestiality was a big part of some of their temple worship and different things like that. And many of the Christians at Corinth came out of that background and they were struggling with a lot of these things. And here's what Paul said to them. In verse number 11 of First Corinthians chapter six, when he lists off adulterers, sexually immoral, idolatrous, homosexuals, all of these things. He said in verse 11, and such were some of you, were past tense, but you were washed, you were sanctified and you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit of God. Here's what that means. Doesn't matter what you've done in your past, how bad you've blown it, how far you've gone. If you submit to Jesus, that can be who you were, but not who you are, because God can renew you, God can wash you, God can sanctify you, and he does it by the power of the Holy Spirit. He can give you a renewed heart and he can give you a renewed virginity as you move forward into a covenant marriage relationship. When we submit that to Jesus, we repent for what we've done, we ask him to cleanse us, we get new hearts. And that's such an amazing gift. Aren't you grateful for the grace of Jesus in your life, even over your sexuality? Okay, thank you for that question. Okay, next question. May, how do we handle the guilt of lustful dreams when it is something that we can't control? That is a great question, May, and probably for being honest, every one of us at one time or another have those kind of dreams. And when you wake up, it's like, where did that come from, or how did that happen? Sometimes it's because of things you're entertaining, sometimes it's the enemy, just sowing a seed. Sometimes it ties into what we're watching or what we're viewing, and sometimes it ties into our temptations or our desires. Let me tell you, you're absolutely right. Nobody controls your own dreams, other than indirectly by the things that you intake. Sometimes it's not just sexual dreams, sometimes you just have crazy dreams. How many have ever had a dream where you woke up before it was finished? Now I'm not talking about sexual dreams, I'm just talking about like, you're riding on your bike and you run in with your friend and there's a tornado coming, and then you wake up and you try and go back to sleep to try and finish the dream, but you can't. Anybody ever done that? Okay, so we don't control our dreams, but here's what we can do with our dreams. We submit our dreams. We submit our dreams, because dreams are the theater where we engage with our subconscious, where we engage with the spirit realm, and we engage with things like fear and faith. It's also the arena that can be influenced by both the spirit of God and by the spirit of the age or even the demonic. So when you have God dreams, good dreams, scriptural dreams, encouraging faith-filled dreams, write those down and submit them to Jesus. When you have fearful dreams, nightmares, night terrors, write them down, submit them to Jesus. Rebuke the devil, submit to God, and he will flee from you. When you have sexual dreams that are inappropriate, don't allow shame and guilt to attach themselves to you. Confess those dreams. If you have somebody you can confess to as a brother or a sister in Christ and say, hey, I had this dream, I just need to get it off my chest, let them pray for you and help you with that, and then submit that to God. Just say, God, I had this crazy dream, I feel weird about it. I know that it's not from you, so I reject it, I submit it to the Lord Jesus, and I just pray that you would just cleanse my mind in my imagination from there, and God is faithful to do that very thing, okay? Next question. Your family believes God says the person you're dating is not the one, but you feel God is telling you different. What do you do? Okay, great question. So frame it. You're dating somebody, your family doesn't like them, but you do, and you feel like this is the person you're supposed to marry, but you have people in your family saying, no, this is not the one. Let me just say a couple of things, because it could be different in multiple different situations. I'll give about two different caveats to it. Let me just first and foremost say, God doesn't have a one for you, He commands you to choose the one and to choose the one wisely. As soon as you say I do to someone in covenant, that person is the one. You're not looking for La Fonda, your name's not Kip, you don't need a soul mate. God doesn't have the one and oh, I married the wrong one and I should have listened, and now I need to go and find the right one. No, as soon as you make a commitment to someone for life and sickness and in health or better or worse till death do you part, you are now in covenant with the one, the Bible doesn't talk about God just having one person for every one person. What He says is when you marry somebody, choose wisely and choose in the Lord. Okay, with that said, so you have to be the one that choose. The reason why that's important is the people in your life don't have to live with the choices that you make. Don't marry somebody because somebody else told you to marry them because they don't have to be married to them, you have to be married to them. So you have to make sure that it's your choice, that this is somebody that you love and somebody you're committing your life to. With that said though, some of the best counselors and advisors that we have that we should pay attention to and give heed to their counsel are the people who love us most and that oftentimes is our family. And we should pay attention to our family if we have healthy relationships, if they say that they have red flags or concerns about somebody that we're dating and we should at least listen to those concerns and we should give them careful scrutiny because let's just be honest. Sometimes our emotions drive us and are very subjective and you're feeling love, love, love, love, love. And it's like, well, I love Gary. Yeah, but he lives in a van down by the river and he doesn't have a job and he hasn't taken a shower in 18 months. He's been divorced 14 times and he eats kittens. Don't marry him. But no, but I love Gary. No, no, no. Don't marry Gary. Gary's scary. Okay. But if it's just, well, he's not rich enough. He's not good enough, those types of things. You know, well, tell me why. Or if I as a dad were to tell one of my kids, it's like, I have a real concern and here's why. There should be a strong enough relationship. A brother, sister, husband, or mom, dad, to be able to say I have major concerns. And we should really give that heed because sometimes we have blind spots when it comes to love and it's not till after the fact you're just like, I should have paid attention to that. And that has happened. The Bible says there is safety in the multitude of counselors. And so if it comes down to it where it's like mom and dad or family member are really digging their heels in, you may need a moderator. You need somebody to come in between that. And that could be a pastor. That could be a counselor. That could be somebody that you actually sit down and you say really go through all those extremes. Absolutely, there's not a more important decision that you're going to make with your life than marriage. So go through the motions and do the hard work. Don't just run away any lope with Gary. And then five years later when Gary eats your pet cat and has sold your van for meth and now you want to move back into the house with mom and dad and live in the basement, play video games till three in the morning. And mom and dad say, no, Gary's not moving in with you. Don't be shocked by that. This is not real. I'm just making Gary up, okay. Because maybe they saw something that if you had paid attention to on the front side it could have helped you. Okay, was that my last question or do I have one more? One more? Okay, here we go. Taylor in Richland. I've had sex in the past and have committed to purity since then. Good for you, Taylor. And now I am in a committed relationship where we have clear boundaries. Awesome. Sometimes I feel shameful when I desire for more with my significant other even though I'm not acting on it. How do I heal from the shame? Thank you for your transparency, Taylor. Thank you for your honesty. And here's what I would say to you. The desire is natural. The desire for especially as your relationship matures, that's natural. You don't, God doesn't want you to extinguish your sexual desires. What he wants you to do is sanctify your sexual desires which means submit it to the Lordship of Jesus and say, I'm not gonna act on that. Temptation and desire are not sinful. Therefore don't allow the devil to put shame on that. Ashame attached to that. Here's what I would say. If it depends on the level of your committed relationship but it always concerns me when people are all like, yeah, we've been dating for like seven years. It's like, if you are of marrying age and you've been dating somebody for seven years, you either need to break up or you need to put a ring on it. In the words of the great theologian Beyonce, if you like it, then you better put a ring on it. And then act on these desires, get married and go have sex. Have lots of sex. Have fun sex. And then when you have sex and then you have kids, bring them to church and dedicate them. Dedicate them, raise them up in the house of God, raise up a godly seed. Let's fill this place with lots of happy couples that are having great sex and having lots of kids and multiplying. Amen. Come on, I should have a standing ovation from every man in this house. You should be on your feet going, yes, yes pastor. Thank you, my brother. Instead of being like, I don't know what he's talking about. It's commitment. Get married, build families, have babies. All right, stand up with me. I know what all of you are gonna do when you get home. You're welcome. I don't even know how you pray after this. I honestly, I don't. Somebody is like going, I did not expect this when I came to church this morning. I was like, thinking this and you buy your heads with me. Pray for me. Want to invite our prayer team to come up, make their way up along the front if they would. Lord, today we just come to you and we're so grateful for your grace, your mercy, your love, your kindness, your plans, your purposes and your intentions over our lives. And Lord, very seriously and very honestly, we just say, we know we're broken. We know that we live in a broken world. But you are so good to speak truth, life over us, to redeem our lives from the pit. Just remember, reminded of David's word in Psalm 40 when he says, I waited patiently for the Lord. He inclined his ear to me, he heard me. He pulled me up out of a myery clay and he set my feet upon a rock. Lord, today some of us find ourselves in the myery clay. We find ourselves in a place where the enemy's abusing us with shame and guilt. Sometimes by our own actions, we put ourselves into quicksand where we just feel like we're sinking because our desires are overwhelming us. And our past just seems to be a shadow over us. Lord, today would you come with the light of your countenance, dispel the darkness, silence the accuser, remove the shackles and the chains of guilt and shame over our past. And Lord, would you release hope in our hearts? Hope in our hearts is found in Jesus. It's found in the Holy Spirit that does not disappoint us. And Lord, today we just recognize that we need you, that these areas are not off limits that we're talking about. We don't need to blush in your presence. Lord, it's because they were your design, they were your gift, it's part of life. And so therefore as a father, you're concerned about every area of our lives. Lord, I pray today for those who are listening, those who are watching online, those who are here who just feel stuck, just feel overwhelmed, those who need to be encouraged, those who need joy in the process of waiting. Lord, today would you come and would you meet us? For those of us who have sinned, Lord, release forgiveness, grant us repentance to change. For those of us who just feel stuck and don't know how to get out, Lord, we declare release to the captives today. Lord, I pray for those who can't see it your way, because they just want their way. I pray, Lord, that you would give recovery of sight to the blind. Pray for those who feel like there's a leash on their life, their desires are overwhelming them. Lord, today would you break the chains, bring deliverance. For those who are hurting, who are brokenhearted, Lord, would you heal the brokenhearted today? That's what your anointing was for, Jesus. You declared it in Luke four. The spirit of the Lord is upon me, has anointed me. To give good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, healing of the brokenhearted, deliverance to the captives and the favorable year of the Lord. We rely upon your favor, God. Today I'm gonna pray and then we're gonna dismiss and even while you're still praying and your heads are bowed in this place, what's the Holy Spirit speaking to you today? Is there something that he's highlighting in your life where he's saying, I want you to submit that to me? Are you struggling with being encouraged, maybe being single and believing for God's best today? The Holy Spirit today wants to encourage you. Are you struggling with shame and guilt? Today he wants to free you from that. I'm gonna pray and when we dismiss, if you're here and that's you for any reason, you need prayer for any reason. Just gonna invite you to come and receive prayer. We believe in praying for one another. Not that any of us are perfect, but because God meets us when we pray for one another. This is where heaven meets earth. This is where freedom is announced over our lives. Lord, today send us from this place as the light of the world, full of joy, full of peace, full of righteousness, into a lost and a twisted world. Help us to demonstrate that our God is good and your ways are good so that others will be attracted to following Jesus. Pray that you'd send us in the grace and the favor of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen and amen.