“Surrendered Sexuality” with Dr. Juli Slattery
When you hear the words “surrendered sexuality,” what comes to mind—loss, shame, control? In this conversation, you’ll hear a different vision.
In this week’s episode, Dr. Dan Allender is joined by clinical psychologist and author Dr. Juli Slattery. Together, they open up a vulnerable and hope-filled dialogue about sexuality—one that goes far beyond rules or “right answers.”
Drawing from her new book Surrendered Sexuality: How Knowing Jesus Changes Everything, Juli shares how her own journey, through disruption, prayer, and deepening intimacy with God, led her to recognize the unspoken pain so many of us carry around sexuality.
Rather than focusing on behaviors, Dan and Juli invite you to see sexuality as a core part of being human: your body, your emotions, your longing for connection, and ultimately, your intimacy with God.
They also reframe what it means to surrender. Instead of shame or control, surrender becomes a gentle, ongoing invitation into the goodness of God—an opening to more pleasure in life, meaningful healing, and deeper trust in Jesus.
This isn’t an episode with tidy conclusions or quick fixes. It’s an invitation to step into the mystery of sexuality as part of your discipleship journey, and to discover that in surrender, you don’t lose yourself. You find life: a life that is more whole, more connected, and more deeply rooted in the goodness of God.
About Our Guest
Dr. Juli Slattery is a clinical psychologist, author, speaker, and the president/co-founder of Authentic Intimacy. Juli earned her college degree at Wheaton College, an MA in psychology from Biola University, and an MS and a Doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology from Florida Institute of Technology.
From 2008-2012, Dr. Slattery served at Focus on the Family writing, teaching, and co-hosting the Focus on the Family Broadcast. In 2012, she left Focus on the Family to start Authentic Intimacy, a ministry devoted to reclaiming God’s design for sexuality. In 2020, Juli launched SexualDiscipleship.com, a platform designed to help Christian leaders navigate sexual issues and questions with gospel-centered truth.
Juli is the author of fourteen books and host of the weekly podcast “Java with Juli.” Juli and her husband Mike are the parents of 3 sons; they live in Akron, Ohio.
Episode Transcript
Dan: When we talk about sexuality, there’s always a hint of the unknown, the uncertain, the elusive, the inviting. In other words, it’s a very complex but compelling topic. And I have such a privilege to be with a friend who I’ve only been with literally I think once or twice in our whole season of knowing one another. But Dr. Juli Slattery, it is a delight to have you here. I’ll introduce you in a moment, but just want to say it’s just a great honor to have you on this podcast.
Juli: Oh, thank you, Dr. Allender. The honor is really mine. We were just talking off mic, just how much I’ve learned from you. So this is going to be an interesting thing with you asking me questions cause I’d like to ask you questions.
Dan: Well, because I’ve had the privilege to be on your podcast a number of times, Java with Juli. I love that.
Juli: Yes.
Dan: I only wish that we actually had more time to have coffee, but as well, you are the co-founder and president of Authentic Intimacy. And we’re going to talk about a new book, even though, I don’t know the number, but you’ve written somewhere between 14 or 15 and about 200 books. And I know I’m pretty clear that it’s probably closer to 14 to 15 than 200, but I think the weight of your thinking and writing on sexuality gives me the right to say that in some sense. You’ve had hundreds of books that you have written, but this new one, we’re going to step into it very quickly, but it’s called Surrendered Sexuality: How Knowing Jesus Changes Everything. So as we jump in, I just want people to know just a little bit more about you. As you’re clinical psychologist. You’ve worked in various organizations, but I’m sure it’s a question you’ve been asked many times. How did you get engaged with the primary topic of sexuality as your calling and certainly as your gift to this community?
Juli: Yeah. I was more of a generalist for many years in my professional career in ministry just speaking to marriage and family issues. And it was around maybe 2010/2011, the Lord just started to stir me and take me to really deep places in my relationship with him for about nine or 10 months. It was just a very disruptive time in my life of realizing that I had been a Christian for as long as I can remember, but I really didn’t have the kind of intimacy with God that made me feel like his truth actually meant something. It was more theological. And so through this season, towards the end of it, I started to experience, I know this sounds weird, but a pain in my chest. And when I would pray, it would be predominant. It would wake me up at night and I would just get on my knees and just feel called to seek the Lord. And after a couple months, this pain was just still there. And so Linda Dillow, who is a mutual friend of ours, she was walking me through this season and she said, Juli, you need to start asking the Lord what this pain is about and what calling he’s putting on your life. And I was already in full-time ministry. I’m like, well, I think I know what I’m supposed to be doing. She’s like, no, God is starting something new. And so I began to ask the Lord and he began to reveal in a short period of time that he was giving me this pain that was all about sexuality and just the unspoken pain in the world, and even in the Christian community of people crying out, where’s God in this pain? Where’s God in my confusion and my trauma, in the betrayal, where’s God in my longings? And at the time, I was working for a large Christian family ministry and I just felt like we were sort of dropping care packages to this pain at a 30,000 foot view. And no one was in the trenches of really grappling with the real questions and issues that people were walking through. So I started the ministry with Linda as a woman’s ministry and over the years it’s become an all people ministry. And I have just learned so much over the 13 years or so of not just teaching but learning. I just feel like everything I learned, I just want to share with other people. So I really truly am still on this journey of learning and understanding how important it is that we talk openly about sexuality and we talk boldly about it. And you’ve been, I think, a real trailblazer in that and encouraged me to say the things out loud that need to be said out loud, even if we don’t have clear answers for some of our difficult questions.
Dan: Oh, thank you and honored. But I feel like equally I’ve learned so much from reading and interacting with you, and I love that some significant portion of the book rises out of Romans 12 and the notion of what it means for our bodies to be given as a holy sacrifice. And the fact that you actually felt in your body, the calling. Felt, maybe not directly the calling, but felt that there was something not well with where you were and what you were doing at that particular time, to me is a real reflection again, of a kind of view of sexuality. So what we’re going to do, just to lay it out sort of a direction, I want you to talk about the fact that you make it very clear sexuality is not merely a set of behaviors, a genital activity. It really has to do with the very nature of our embodied existence and how we receive and give pleasure, how we are part of union, not just with a partner, but ultimately with the person of Jesus. So I want you to talk about sexuality, what do you mean? And then to the difficult word surrendered because it is not a word that most people want to attach to the word sexuality because of all the implications of what that word has been, shall say, used and misused.
Juli: Yes.
Dan: But. Talk about your broad and deep view of sexuality.
Juli: Yeah, you are so right that it goes way beyond just our actions and our behaviors and the specific general act of sexuality. It is the aspect of our humanity, including our emotions and our spirituality and our sense of self, our identity and including our bodies that is wired towards connection and intimacy. And we’re seeing in our culture today, we talk about sexuality all the time outside of the context of what people are doing with their bodies, we talk about their desires and their longings and their sense of identity, and we talk about their brokenness and their pain. But I think often in the church we have only talked about it in terms of a physical act. And so it’s become very confusing for people because if you are a follower of God and you hear, oh, sex is reserved for marriage, you think, well then I’m not married so I’m not a sexual person. And you are absolutely a sexual person. What the scripture is talking about is not who you are as an individual, it’s what you are choosing to do with behavior. And so it’s so much broader, and you’re absolutely right that when you combine that word, which is already provocative for a lot of people with the idea of surrender, it’s like, wow, I don’t know if I can handle that title, which is why I think the subtitle is so important. And really my heart is in the subtitle: How Knowing Jesus Changes Everything. We cannot navigate this conversation outside of what it really is to know Jesus in such a way that we can begin to entertain the thought of surrendering our bodies and surrendering our sexuality.
Dan: That’s such a crucial, we’ll come back to that. But just to say culturally, for many people the word surrender is another word for shut up and do what you’re told and a kind of form of spiritual or emotional or physical or sexual abuse. And in that, I think you deeply and clearly disrupt something of the cultural misunderstanding, and certainly for many people, the Christian understanding of surrender. So I know we can’t cover every brilliant thought you have in the book, but at least I want you to take us into what you think we need to hear is what is the nature of true surrender and how that relates into the broader category, not just of our sexual behavior, but of our identity.
Juli: So surrender, you’re absolutely right, can have this connotation. Particularly I know the work that you do at the Allender Center is so around trauma and people who have experienced trauma, words like this can be very triggering. But let’s look at surrender in a different context. I think most of us would agree that good sex requires surrender. It requires surrendering to pleasure, surrendering to the pathways of our body, surrendering into the safety of another person. And so we see where it’s distorted and misused, but we can also see how it can be absolutely beautiful in the right context, that there’s a beauty that cannot be captured without surrender. And so when I use that word surrender, I am using that word in terms of, again, knowing Jesus in such a way that when we read that he calls us to bring ourselves to him, to offer ourselves to him. Jesus never demands anything. He never forces anything. Jesus is a God of consent, and he’s always inviting, inviting us to go deeper, inviting us to trust him more, inviting us to bring ourselves as weary as we might be. And he’s saying, this is a holy and acceptable offering that I receive. And so I think it’s critical to understand that our surrender to the Lord is never forced. That’s the last thing he wants. He is all about our free will, but it’s in the kindest way and in the purest way and the holiest way. When we know Jesus, we are wooed to him. And so we start to realize that the best life actually is a surrendered life. And I believe that people who have walked with Jesus for a time, they can identify pieces of their life like, yeah, I used to try to control this and it got me nowhere, but I’m learning to bring it to the Lord. I’m learning to trust his wisdom, which is the ongoing process of surrender.
Dan: Well, the fact is, and we can articulate, you’re trusting something and you’re trusting someone. And when you speak about the issue of control, ultimately you’re saying that in your trust of yourself, what’s going to be required is a surrender of, in some sense of the word surrender, of what you have learned to do, to manage your own heartache, your own harm and your own trauma. And in that, it feels, at least for me, virtually every level of surrender feels like an entry into death. And yet it’s an upside down world because the kingdom of God is a surrender to goodness. But in that moment of surrender, it feels anything other. Strike you as true?
Juli: That is true. But if we believe what the Bible says about death and life, there is no resurrection where there is no death. So there’s no way around it. We cannot maintain control and experience the resurrection power of God in the same place. And so again, God is in his kindness, He takes us on a journey where I don’t think any of us, no matter how many times we might’ve sung the hymn or said the word, I don’t think any of us in a moment are ready to truly surrender everything. We don’t even know what we’re holding back, but it’s a progressive journey of learning to say, okay, God, I trust you with this. I will let go of this. And we taste and we see that he’s good, and we start to experience that there truly is resurrection power in the places that we relinquish and that there’s no other way. I know so many people who have battled things like pornography for years, for decades, and they’ve tried to discipline themselves out of it, talk themselves out of it. They’ve given up in seasons, and it’s led to destruction until they get to the place where they’re like, I give up. I can’t fix this problem. It’s driving me mad. It’s ruining my relationships. God, I give it to you, whatever it takes, whatever it requires, I want to taste life. And those are the people who tell the stories about finding freedom after a decades long battle and have the restored marriages and are the ones with the most energy to say, listen, it is so worth it. Stop trying to do it on your own. But again, that’s a journey we all have to go on.
Dan: Well, and you’re speaking about a kind of simultaneity of the interplay that there often are very significant moments where we can say there’s a transition from death to life, but there’s also a kind of, even in the entry into life, there are layers of surrender that there will be this ongoing invitation to a deepened, more intimate, more passionate, more delightful relationship with Jesus and with our spouse, that reality is the interplay of we’re growing in our sexuality, but we can never separate that from the reality of what it means for us to be whole, knowing we’re broken into becoming more holy and whole in the process of what connection brings. So to step back and to go, well, what do you do with the reality of those people who’ve made the effort so-called to surrender and would say it didn’t work?
Juli: Oh, there are no people like that. No, just kidding. I think part of it is we surrender in a moment and then we need to surrender over and over again. And often we have preconceived notions of what’s going to happen. Like, okay, God, I’m going to give this to you and we don’t say it out loud, but within three months I expect that I will be fully free and I’m not going to wrestle with this anymore and my life is going to be better. That is just not how God works. He takes our surrender and then he invites us to this ongoing journey of learning to walk it out. And as you well know in all of your work this journey, whether it’s surrendering pain or it’s surrendering an unwanted sexual addiction or whatever it might be, it is a long journey of God I take the surrender back. It was easier before I even said anything. I think I want control again, or you’re not performing the way I thought you would when I surrendered. Or things are getting messier instead of cleaner. When we surrender, usually it means everything we’ve tried to control, we let go of and now we’ve got this mess to deal with. But again, as you know in all of your work, you have to go through that mess with the Lord in order to get to the other side. And so my encouragement for the person who feels that way would be join the club. It takes a long time. I love the Old Testament metaphor of the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt and then beginning with the Passover, Moses sets them free and they’re on the way to the promised land, but it takes them 40 years to get there. There are times in the Promised Land where they’re like, we’d rather be in bondage. I actually would rather go back and be a slave. The food was better. I knew what was happening. I think so often in our own surrendered journeys that the step out of bondage begins and we start the journey and we’re not quite in the promised land and we want to go back to where we were because it’s more comfortable and it’s known. And so you need those people around you that cheer you on to keep taking that next step, to keep realizing every step you take take is one step closer to the freedom that God wants to bring you to.
Dan: Well, I don’t think we have the ability to hold the both/and that there are huge moments. Many of us have had those truly significant moments of surrender where we can say deep change occurred and I’m not the same person that I used to be while still being able to say, I’ve got so much more to surrender. I was in a dental appointment in the last six months, and I love my dentist because he has not only the chair but handles on the side. Most dentists don’t have them anymore. I love that because then I have something to hold onto in my anticipation of the agony that’s about to occur. And my dentist, who I respect immensely, at one point said to me, the more you hold on to the sides of this chair, the more pain you’re going to feel. But I know it gives you a sense of control, so you do whatever you want to do, but my desire for you is that you would actually relax, that you would let the Novocaine do its work. And because I’m a really competent dentist, I will take good care of you. And remember looking at him going, you’re a lot like God. And he just, thankfully he laughed. But it really is. Surrender has to do with pleasure. It is not punishment nor an invitation to death, but it will be the experience of death. But as you do so, and again, I know everything he was saying to be true, and I finally let my body surrender. And the surgical process went, ablely. It wasn’t surgery, but it felt that way. So I come home and I tell Becky something of the story, and she starts laughing and she goes, you’ve used that metaphor a hundred times. When will you listen to yourself? And I’m like, I don’t remember ever using it yet. It’s just such an apt picture that we can know what’s true. But until we are actually called into that place of honoring our body as to we’re not meant to suffer pain, but in letting go of control, we’re actually letting ourselves be those who can receive something of the goodness of God. And you do go through surrendering our identity, surrendering our sexuality. There’s a brilliant chapter on surrendering our brokenness. And you write, I rarely met someone who battles with extensive sexual confusion, pain or unwanted sexual desire who doesn’t have a history of sexual trauma. And far too often their experiences of sexual pain have been buried with a “the past is the past” mentality. And honestly, I feel like that’s one of the primary things I feel like I’ve been called to do in the context of the believing community. And that is to say the past, like Faulkner, the past is ever the past. It’s a living part of the present. And in that, talk a little bit about what you mean by entering into surrendering our brokenness.
Juli: And again, this is the aspect of the book and just what I do that I’ve learned so much from you about a lot of my work is in the Christian Church, and a lot of my work is working with not just individuals, but also leaders who the only message they know to give about sexuality is stop sinning, stop doing these bad behaviors because God doesn’t want you to do this. Now, they may say it more eloquently than that, but that is a predominant message that people hear. And why a lot of people who struggle with sexual issues, they don’t even want to go to church, they don’t want to think of God because that just adds shame upon shame. And what I’ve learned over the years, and of course very well is what you just read, that you can’t separate our sexual wounding and trauma from our temptations and our sin struggles. And when you hear somebody who represents God or Christian community or faith, say, the way to fix your sexuality is to stop sinning or stop desiring sin, you can’t do it. And so it is so essential that not just as individuals but as communities, we begin to call people to say, actually the first step is addressing where we stop trusting God with this, where we stop trusting our own bodies, where we stop trusting other people in our trauma. And nobody ever tells us, God actually wants to be in our healing more than he wants to fix our behavior. And it’s out of really knowing him as the healer and knowing him as the one who doesn’t harm us and who doesn’t leave us and doesn’t forsake us, that we actually have the power to start behaving differently and desiring differently. So that’s kind of the context of what I wrote there.
Dan: Oh, it’s brilliant. And so still to this day, so radical and I think how you address the role of shame and Jesus is taking on shame is a radical gift to disrupt that kind of the past is the past. So how do you invite those who are indeed facing not just their own fear of judgment of God, but their fear of judgment of the community of God as to, if you knew, knew what my struggles were, I would be anathema and in one sense driven out of the land of the pure and the faithful as if I were a leper. And so not just shall we say our war with God, our war with the community, and then my gosh, our own inner judgment, fury, hatred in some sense, absolute loathing at times at least of what we know to be our own sexual desire. So how does shame engage all those worlds?
Juli: Yeah, it’s so complex, as you know, I mean, shame tells us to hide in a sentence. It tells us to hide from God. It tells us to hide from the people that actually could be life-giving to us. And we pretend instead of being honest and ultimately also tells us to hide from ourselves and from being integrated people where we accept and can hold our brokenness along with the things that are wonderful and beautiful about us, it makes us fragment. And the enemy just plays on shame. Like evil just plays on shame to what? To such an extent that you just end up alienated and isolated. And there are some people who physically are alienated and isolated from family, from community, from friends, and there are some of us who are physically there, but we’re so compartmentalized that we never show up as ourselves. And I’m sure you hear this in the therapy room all the time, and so do I, nobody really knows me and I don’t even know if I know me because we are just chasing the charade of trying to be who we think people want us to be instead of sitting with who we are. And we can’t heal in hiding ever, ever, ever, ever. We’ll be stuck and we’ll spiral. It always requires that courageous step of telling the truth and finding the people, the person learning to trust God in such a way that we take that step in telling the truth and realize that we don’t go up in flames and we’re not rejected. And actually a lot of times people will say, me too, my struggle might be different, but me too. I’m there too. And that’s where we truly begin that healing journey and that healing community.
Dan: Well, I wasn’t surprised that this occurred knowing that I had the privilege of being with you, but probably about a week ago, there were sexual components to my dream life that were clearly contrary to what my heart and mind believed to be good and true. And the particularities at the moment I don’t think are terribly relevant. But when I awakened, and it was Becky and I got up pretty much when the alarm rang, and as she turned over, I wasn’t planning to divulge anything about what I was awakening with the reality of. And she looked at me and she goes, “what’s going on?” And I remember thinking, I mean the first words were “nothing, nothing. I don’t know if I slept that well”. And thankfully after almost 49 years of marriage, she just looked, and I won’t say every particular word, but she essentially compared my disclaimer to what might help a field of flowers grow more effectively?
Juli: You got it.
Dan: And she said, you don’t want to tell me. And just that sentence of after what we have gone through in our marriage, I’m wanting to hide that there were sexually violating portions of my dream life. And so I finally just said, I have some sexual dreams that I don’t want to talk about, and there was no demand on her part. You need to tell me, I need to know. But her simple question was, I really want to know why and what’s going on for you that after nearly 49 years, you still hold shame between us. And just that phrase, you hold it, it’s not I’m a mere victim of it, but in some sense I’m holding on in a way in which I’m not willing to take the risk in that moment to let something of my inner world. I’m not suggesting every time you have sexual thoughts that are contrary to what you believe to be good, true, and beautiful, that you need to divulge and let your partner know. But in this case, there was something of the presence of shame she was calling forth. Again, I want to just go back to that question of what do you know and what do you write about that helps me engage and helps our listeners engage? What is the ongoing war with shame that at the core we need to address to be able to begin to make at least some movement toward wholeness?
Juli: Yeah. I think part of the ongoing war with shame is that we’re the only one. I think everyone has had dreams that they are like, where in the world did that come from? Or I’d never tell anybody this, or I need you to talk to my therapist about this. What’s wrong with me? And one of the things, Dan, that has really helped me over the years is most of the events that I do, the speaking events we do in a whole hour of anonymous Q&A where people text in their questions. And for the first few years everywhere I went, I would be surprised, pretty buildings, respectable people, it didn’t matter, young, old, whatever, church denomination, every single gathering would have these questions that told of trauma, that told of things they were ashamed of things they’ve done, things they still struggle with because they can text in them anonymously. And then when I start reading these questions out loud and addressing them, it’s like the place gets so silent because everybody’s like, I’m not the only one with that. I’m not the only one who’s done that or thinks that or struggles with that. And you and I have the advantage of being in therapy rooms where people tell their secrets. And I don’t know if you felt like this when you were a young therapist, but I remember holding that clipboard back then and just being like, I’m not the only one? And when you have this safe place for people to talk about what’s really happening sexually, it’s just like, okay, I’m not alone. But it’s interesting to me that you would share that story because you know this better than anyone, that we all have thoughts and dreams and where these things come from, whether it’s Freudian or I don’t know, there’s all kinds of ideas. But you also know Becky so well that as she was saying to you, we’ve been naked in every way possible. Why are you putting on a fig leaf now?
Dan: Yes.
Juli: And that’s the other part of it is, do we have people courageous enough in our life who know us enough to not let us hide without an invitation?
Dan: It’s one of the things that people presume of you, of me and others who in some sense are embedded in our calling addressing both the heartache and tragedy of how our sexuality has been violated by others, but also by ourselves, but also the stunning glory and beauty of what pleasure in the delight of the beloved, the one we have given the oath of our heart, mind, and body to, can bring, not just with regard to the lovely gift of dopamine, but to that sense of union with the purposes of God, this is good. This is working. And maybe not often, but I have a taste of what I think eternity will be like. So how could a errant heartbreaking presence of sexual thoughts and images and behaviors keep me from telling something of the truth that Jesus, I need you and also Becky, Jesus, I need to be able to work out with you some of what’s going on in my dream life that I need you to pray about, I need you to ponder with me and struggle with. And so in so many ways, I’m so grateful that I have a wife who will read my shame and not demand, but also not relent, knocking on the door. And I think of Revelation 3, that in so many ways it isn’t just Jesus knocking on the door as Jesus and Becky knocking the door, inviting me into an engagement. And I just grieve to think of what I brought to my wife. But I also grieve, grieve for those who don’t have partners, friends who are able to step into that. And I think that’s one of the things that I so delight about your work and your life. You’re inviting the body of Christ into this conversation.
Juli: Yeah. Well, thank you and thank you for what you shared there when you’re talking about the pleasure, really the pleasure of surrender to sex. It’s interesting to me because I don’t know if you’ve found this to be true, but for a lot of men, they will highlight the best part of sex is the pleasure. It’s the physical pleasure. And of course, women experience and should experience physical pleasure too. But the majority of women, the greatest pleasure for them is the pleasure of being known, of being completely connected, the bonding. It’s not the dopamine as much as the oxytocin.
Dan: Yes.
Juli: And I think sometimes we miss that the greatest pleasure of union isn’t just the physical. It is being in the full presence of another who receives you and who holds you and who knows you, and not just physically, but emotionally enough to see that you wake up and there’s something a little bit off. And to know that you gave them a bunch of BS when you gave ’em the answer, but who loves you enough not to demand, but just so you know, I’m safe. I’m safe for you to tell me all of you. And that is truly what I believe God created our sexuality to be about is not just the pleasure of the orgasm, which again is a very good thing, but the richer, more lasting pleasure of being known, which ultimately is a reflection of how he created us for intimacy with him, the ongoing pleasure of being truly known and loved and received.
Dan: Well. And it’s the genius of this beautiful book, Surrendered Sexuality. And it isn’t any less a book about sex to then say it’s really a book about Jesus and what it means at every level of our being, which is always sexual if we understand sex as the deepest desire for connection. What you’ve spoken brilliantly about oxytocin that in that reality of connectedness, there was a sense in which the conversation that ensued as my beloved disrupted my shame and invited me, we began as we got into the day. We usually have about 45 minutes before we take about a 45 minute walk. But that 45 minute walk was an opportunity to divulge portions of what the story held in my dream. But her willingness to begin to go, I’m heartbroken for you. Not I’m angry at you, but I’m heartbroken. And the question of what do you think might be going on at the level of spiritual warfare, but also at the level of what’s going on with you in your own body, with me, with your clients, with the world. So the meaning-making oftentimes we may not be clear, but the effort to understand the story of our body and our sexuality takes us as you have richly written into the story of Jesus. So before we end again, if you can just capture for us what’s the core of your own engagement with Jesus in this book, but particularly in the realm of recapturing, the beauty of our sexuality.
Juli: Yeah. I would say the first word that comes to my mind, Dan, is integrity and integration. So we know as therapists that we want to move people towards integration, which means wholeness, and that the opposite is disintegration, which is really compartmentalization. And what I’ve found for so many people, a lot of people faith, is that this is the one area of their life that they don’t know how to integrate into who they say God is and who they believe he is. And they’re sure there might be other areas like money or whatever it might be, but consistently because of our shame, because of our confusion and because of the historical silence in faith communities on these topics, we don’t know how to integrate God and sexuality. And so it becomes this massive wall for most people, a wall of shame, a wall of doubt, and in confusion, a wall of distrust. And so the heart behind this book and the heart behind what God has given me to do and really put in my heart, is to help people call out that wall and to begin to tear it down by saying, okay, Psalm 139 says, there is nowhere I can go from God’s presence that I can’t even have a thought that he doesn’t know about. And so why am I pretending that he doesn’t know about my struggle and about my questions and about my anger? Why am I pretending that he wasn’t there when I suffered trauma? And so I need to grapple with what was he doing if he was there? And so it’s not in giving answers, but it’s in encouraging people to ask the questions and to trust that God can handle the questions and to refuse to let that wall just stay there as we feel like divided people.
Dan: Oh, Juli, this is again where I wish we were indeed having coffee. And it is one of the gifts that people can have not only through the book, but through your podcast Java with Juli. So I simply trust that your great gift of inviting people to the depths of Jesus’s heart to honor and delight, and even bringing Psalm 139, that same passage that says “All your thoughts about me are precious.” It’s where we are indeed being invited to disrupt something of the fragmentation into the promise that maybe not full before we finally see him face to face. But there is a wholeness and a holiness that can become part of our way of walking in the world as a sexual being. And you have done great good on behalf of the body of Christ in addressing this in that way. So thank you so much.
Juli: Thank you. It’s an honor to share.