The March Isn't Over: Reflections on Sacred Sexality
At the end of Cadet Basic Training, new West Point cadets complete a 14-mile ruck march from Lake Frederick back to campus. It is called the “March Back,” and new cadets carry 35 to 50 pounds in their packs. In 2016, I had the privilege of participating in this event while serving as a Chaplain Candidate in the Army Reserve. I was there to provide religious support to a company of new cadets.
That March Back was intense. The miles were long. The weight was real. Everyone was tired.
But the most memorable part came near the end, when we finally arrived on the outskirts of West Point. As we approached post, we were joined by the West Point Band, who led us down streets lined with family members, people from the local community, and other service members. We were met with applause and shouts of encouragement. People were cheering for these young men and women who had endured the long march and finished Cadet Basic Training.
Those new cadets were exhausted, relieved, and proud to have made it to the end.
In a small way, that is how I feel after finishing our Sacred Sexuality series: relieved.
If I’m being honest, this series was hard. I desperately wanted to present God’s design for sex and sexuality faithfully, clearly, and compassionately at a time when so many people have been deceived by the enemy’s lies. Our culture has been severely corrupted by our embrace of sexual sin, which has led to broken families, exploited children, confusion about identity, and deep wounds in the bodies and souls of men, women, and children made in the image of God.
My hope was to present biblical truth about sex to anyone sitting in our congregation, or watching online, who is struggling with temptation, shame, confusion, or sexual brokenness. I also wanted to equip others to speak both boldly and graciously about the goodness of God’s design. The bottom line was this: I didn’t want to keep quiet about something God’s Word speaks about so clearly.
Responses to the series have reminded me just how personal this topic is.
Many of you have been deeply encouraging and supportive. You recognized that preaching on sex can be difficult and awkward, and your encouragement helped reassure me that this series was important. It gave me courage to keep sharing the truth of God’s Word openly and honestly. In many ways, you were like the crowd cheering us on as we carried a heavy ruck through difficult terrain.
Others took issue either with the manner in which I presented the material or with the material itself. I cannot apologize for the truths revealed in the Spirit-inspired Word of God. The same Bible that has shown me the grace and love of God in Jesus Christ also calls me to sexual holiness. We cannot embrace one while ignoring the other.
However, if I said anything in a way that felt inappropriate, careless, or unnecessarily offensive, please know that my goal was not to be provocative. My goal was to be honest. I wanted to be genuine and real. I wanted to show that this topic affects our daily lives, our relationships, our marriages, our families, our temptations, our wounds, and our discipleship. I wanted to confront a corrupted culture with the holiness of God while also offering the grace of God to those who carry sexual brokenness from the past or the present.
I also wanted us to see that celibacy in singleness and sex within marriage are both gifts from God.
I didn’t want to spend four weeks simply telling you to avoid sexual sin without also encouraging you to embrace God’s good design. My hope was for unmarried believers to see singleness not as a lesser life, but as a meaningful and holy calling before the Lord. My hope was also for married couples to build a healthy, intimate, and joyful sex life with one another.
That kind of intimacy is not automatic just because you got married. It takes effort, intentionality, tenderness, patience, repentance, forgiveness, and a lot of communication to learn how to lovingly give yourself to your spouse. I hope this series gave husbands and wives an opportunity to reflect, talk, pray, and grow together.
One final thought: please don’t stop having these conversations.
This sermon series has not solved humanity’s struggle with sexual sin. Four sermons cannot do that. What we need is ongoing discipleship, honest confession, wise counsel, loving friendships, strong marriages, faithful parenting, and the courage to bring every part of our lives under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
As I said before, sexuality “is not a problem to be solved, but a territory to be reclaimed.” That line comes from Juli Slattery’s book, Rethinking Sexuality, and I think it captures the task before us well.
Below you will find a list of Christian resources that may help you think more deeply about this challenging topic. I hope you will find them helpful as we seek to live in sexual holiness, not because we are trying to earn God’s love, but because we have already received his grace in Jesus Christ.
Thank you for your patience, your encouragement, your honesty, and your grace as we have walked through this difficult and sometimes awkward topic together. I love this church, and I am grateful for the privilege of opening God’s Word with you, even when the subject matter is heavy.
This Sunday, we will hear from guest speakers about their ministries and missions. After that, we will begin a new series on the book of Ezekiel. I hope you will come and worship with us.
BOOKS: BIBLICAL SEXUALITY, IDENTITY, AND CULTURE
Holy Sexuality and the Gospel: Sex, Desire, and Relationships Shaped by God's Grand Story
Author: Christopher Yuan
A clear evangelical framework for sexuality centered on what Yuan calls “holy sexuality”: chastity in singleness and faithfulness in marriage. Helpful for thinking about identity, same-sex attraction, discipleship, and the gospel.
Rethinking Sexuality: God’s Design and Why It Matters
Author: Dr. Juli Slattery
A practical and pastoral resource that helps Christians think biblically and compassionately about sexuality, sexual brokenness, and sexual discipleship.
Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age
Author: Rosaria Butterfield
Addresses several cultural lies related to sexuality, faith, feminism, gender roles, and modesty from a strongly biblical and countercultural perspective.
Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was, and Who God Has Always Been
Author: Jackie Hill Perry
A testimony-driven book in which Perry reflects on sexuality, identity, conversion, and the grace of God. Especially useful for readers who benefit from personal narrative alongside biblical conviction.
Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution
Author: Carl R. Trueman
A shorter, accessible version of Trueman’s larger cultural analysis (The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self), helping readers understand expressive individualism, modern identity, and the roots of the sexual revolution.
Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality
Author: Nancy Pearcey
A worldview-level book that helps Christians understand how modern culture separates the body from personal identity, with implications for sexuality, gender, abortion, and human dignity.
BOOKS: SEXUAL INTIMACY IN CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE
Married Sex: A Christian Couple’s Guide to Reimagining Your Love Life
Authors: Gary Thomas and Debra Fileta
A practical Christian guide for married couples who want to grow in emotional, spiritual, and physical intimacy. Helpful for couples in different seasons of marriage.
A Celebration of Sex: A Guide to Enjoying God’s Gift of Sexual Intimacy
Author: Dr. Douglas E. Rosenau
A frank Christian guide to sexual intimacy in marriage, written to help husbands and wives grow in communication, understanding, pleasure, and marital closeness. Best suited for married or soon-to-be-married couples.
Intended for Pleasure
Authors: Ed Wheat, M.D., and Gaye Wheat
A long-standing Christian resource on sexual intimacy in marriage, combining biblical teaching with practical and medical information. Best suited for married couples or engaged couples preparing for marriage.
Sheet Music: Uncovering the Secrets of Sexual Intimacy in Marriage
Author: Dr. Kevin Leman
A candid and practical guide for Christian married couples, written with warmth and humor. Helpful for couples who want to grow in communication and sexual intimacy.
WEBSITES AND ONLINE RESOURCES
Fight the New Drug
Organization: Fight the New Drug (not Christian)
A secular, non-religious, non-legislative anti-pornography nonprofit that provides research-based education on the harms of pornography. Useful because it does not rely on Christian assumptions and can supplement biblical teaching with broader cultural and scientific arguments.
Authentic Intimacy
Organization: Authentic Intimacy / Dr. Juli Slattery
A Christian ministry focused on sexual discipleship, intimacy, sexual brokenness, and God’s design for sexuality. Includes articles, podcasts, small group resources, and resources for married couples.
Harvest USA
Organization: Harvest USA
A Christian ministry that equips churches and individuals to address sexual struggles, sexual integrity, pornography, same-sex attraction, gender confusion, and relational brokenness with gospel hope.
The Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender
Organization: The Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender
A resource ministry that helps Christian leaders, churches, and organizations engage questions of faith, sexuality, and gender with theological faithfulness and courageous love.
CURRICULUM AND VIDEO RESOURCES
The Holy Sexuality Project
Author / Teacher: Christopher Yuan
A video-based home discipleship resource for parents and teens covering identity, temptation, desire, singleness, marriage, gender, and related topics from a gospel-centered perspective.
Christian Sexuality
Organization: The Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender
A video-based resource designed to help Christians understand God’s design for sex, sexuality, relationships, marriage, singleness, shame, abuse, pornography, same-sex sexuality, and gender-related questions.
That March Back was intense. The miles were long. The weight was real. Everyone was tired.
But the most memorable part came near the end, when we finally arrived on the outskirts of West Point. As we approached post, we were joined by the West Point Band, who led us down streets lined with family members, people from the local community, and other service members. We were met with applause and shouts of encouragement. People were cheering for these young men and women who had endured the long march and finished Cadet Basic Training.
Those new cadets were exhausted, relieved, and proud to have made it to the end.
In a small way, that is how I feel after finishing our Sacred Sexuality series: relieved.
If I’m being honest, this series was hard. I desperately wanted to present God’s design for sex and sexuality faithfully, clearly, and compassionately at a time when so many people have been deceived by the enemy’s lies. Our culture has been severely corrupted by our embrace of sexual sin, which has led to broken families, exploited children, confusion about identity, and deep wounds in the bodies and souls of men, women, and children made in the image of God.
My hope was to present biblical truth about sex to anyone sitting in our congregation, or watching online, who is struggling with temptation, shame, confusion, or sexual brokenness. I also wanted to equip others to speak both boldly and graciously about the goodness of God’s design. The bottom line was this: I didn’t want to keep quiet about something God’s Word speaks about so clearly.
Responses to the series have reminded me just how personal this topic is.
Many of you have been deeply encouraging and supportive. You recognized that preaching on sex can be difficult and awkward, and your encouragement helped reassure me that this series was important. It gave me courage to keep sharing the truth of God’s Word openly and honestly. In many ways, you were like the crowd cheering us on as we carried a heavy ruck through difficult terrain.
Others took issue either with the manner in which I presented the material or with the material itself. I cannot apologize for the truths revealed in the Spirit-inspired Word of God. The same Bible that has shown me the grace and love of God in Jesus Christ also calls me to sexual holiness. We cannot embrace one while ignoring the other.
However, if I said anything in a way that felt inappropriate, careless, or unnecessarily offensive, please know that my goal was not to be provocative. My goal was to be honest. I wanted to be genuine and real. I wanted to show that this topic affects our daily lives, our relationships, our marriages, our families, our temptations, our wounds, and our discipleship. I wanted to confront a corrupted culture with the holiness of God while also offering the grace of God to those who carry sexual brokenness from the past or the present.
I also wanted us to see that celibacy in singleness and sex within marriage are both gifts from God.
I didn’t want to spend four weeks simply telling you to avoid sexual sin without also encouraging you to embrace God’s good design. My hope was for unmarried believers to see singleness not as a lesser life, but as a meaningful and holy calling before the Lord. My hope was also for married couples to build a healthy, intimate, and joyful sex life with one another.
That kind of intimacy is not automatic just because you got married. It takes effort, intentionality, tenderness, patience, repentance, forgiveness, and a lot of communication to learn how to lovingly give yourself to your spouse. I hope this series gave husbands and wives an opportunity to reflect, talk, pray, and grow together.
One final thought: please don’t stop having these conversations.
This sermon series has not solved humanity’s struggle with sexual sin. Four sermons cannot do that. What we need is ongoing discipleship, honest confession, wise counsel, loving friendships, strong marriages, faithful parenting, and the courage to bring every part of our lives under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
As I said before, sexuality “is not a problem to be solved, but a territory to be reclaimed.” That line comes from Juli Slattery’s book, Rethinking Sexuality, and I think it captures the task before us well.
Below you will find a list of Christian resources that may help you think more deeply about this challenging topic. I hope you will find them helpful as we seek to live in sexual holiness, not because we are trying to earn God’s love, but because we have already received his grace in Jesus Christ.
Thank you for your patience, your encouragement, your honesty, and your grace as we have walked through this difficult and sometimes awkward topic together. I love this church, and I am grateful for the privilege of opening God’s Word with you, even when the subject matter is heavy.
This Sunday, we will hear from guest speakers about their ministries and missions. After that, we will begin a new series on the book of Ezekiel. I hope you will come and worship with us.
BOOKS: BIBLICAL SEXUALITY, IDENTITY, AND CULTURE
Holy Sexuality and the Gospel: Sex, Desire, and Relationships Shaped by God's Grand Story
Author: Christopher Yuan
A clear evangelical framework for sexuality centered on what Yuan calls “holy sexuality”: chastity in singleness and faithfulness in marriage. Helpful for thinking about identity, same-sex attraction, discipleship, and the gospel.
Rethinking Sexuality: God’s Design and Why It Matters
Author: Dr. Juli Slattery
A practical and pastoral resource that helps Christians think biblically and compassionately about sexuality, sexual brokenness, and sexual discipleship.
Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age
Author: Rosaria Butterfield
Addresses several cultural lies related to sexuality, faith, feminism, gender roles, and modesty from a strongly biblical and countercultural perspective.
Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was, and Who God Has Always Been
Author: Jackie Hill Perry
A testimony-driven book in which Perry reflects on sexuality, identity, conversion, and the grace of God. Especially useful for readers who benefit from personal narrative alongside biblical conviction.
Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution
Author: Carl R. Trueman
A shorter, accessible version of Trueman’s larger cultural analysis (The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self), helping readers understand expressive individualism, modern identity, and the roots of the sexual revolution.
Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality
Author: Nancy Pearcey
A worldview-level book that helps Christians understand how modern culture separates the body from personal identity, with implications for sexuality, gender, abortion, and human dignity.
BOOKS: SEXUAL INTIMACY IN CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE
Married Sex: A Christian Couple’s Guide to Reimagining Your Love Life
Authors: Gary Thomas and Debra Fileta
A practical Christian guide for married couples who want to grow in emotional, spiritual, and physical intimacy. Helpful for couples in different seasons of marriage.
A Celebration of Sex: A Guide to Enjoying God’s Gift of Sexual Intimacy
Author: Dr. Douglas E. Rosenau
A frank Christian guide to sexual intimacy in marriage, written to help husbands and wives grow in communication, understanding, pleasure, and marital closeness. Best suited for married or soon-to-be-married couples.
Intended for Pleasure
Authors: Ed Wheat, M.D., and Gaye Wheat
A long-standing Christian resource on sexual intimacy in marriage, combining biblical teaching with practical and medical information. Best suited for married couples or engaged couples preparing for marriage.
Sheet Music: Uncovering the Secrets of Sexual Intimacy in Marriage
Author: Dr. Kevin Leman
A candid and practical guide for Christian married couples, written with warmth and humor. Helpful for couples who want to grow in communication and sexual intimacy.
WEBSITES AND ONLINE RESOURCES
Fight the New Drug
Organization: Fight the New Drug (not Christian)
A secular, non-religious, non-legislative anti-pornography nonprofit that provides research-based education on the harms of pornography. Useful because it does not rely on Christian assumptions and can supplement biblical teaching with broader cultural and scientific arguments.
Authentic Intimacy
Organization: Authentic Intimacy / Dr. Juli Slattery
A Christian ministry focused on sexual discipleship, intimacy, sexual brokenness, and God’s design for sexuality. Includes articles, podcasts, small group resources, and resources for married couples.
Harvest USA
Organization: Harvest USA
A Christian ministry that equips churches and individuals to address sexual struggles, sexual integrity, pornography, same-sex attraction, gender confusion, and relational brokenness with gospel hope.
The Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender
Organization: The Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender
A resource ministry that helps Christian leaders, churches, and organizations engage questions of faith, sexuality, and gender with theological faithfulness and courageous love.
CURRICULUM AND VIDEO RESOURCES
The Holy Sexuality Project
Author / Teacher: Christopher Yuan
A video-based home discipleship resource for parents and teens covering identity, temptation, desire, singleness, marriage, gender, and related topics from a gospel-centered perspective.
Christian Sexuality
Organization: The Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender
A video-based resource designed to help Christians understand God’s design for sex, sexuality, relationships, marriage, singleness, shame, abuse, pornography, same-sex sexuality, and gender-related questions.
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