You Are Not Your Desires

Jeremy MacDonald · Tidal Church Moncton · January 4, 2026 · love, sex, relationships series

Jeremy MacDonald teaches from 1 Corinthians 6 and Paul's three calls for love, sex and relationships: don't be mastered by anything, run from sexual sin, and honor God with your body, since the Holy Spirit lives in His people. Freedom is found in Christ and community.

More from Jeremy MacDonald · The love, sex, relationships series

Topics: Holy Spirit, Identity, Discipleship

Transcript

[0:00] All right. If we haven't met before, my name's Jeremy, and we talk about sex and church because the Christian Scriptures actually talk about sex. And when we get a chance to stand here, our, our hope is that we can open the Scriptures and be able to talk about them and to talk about what they talk about and to read them and to preach from them. And so that's the nature of that. Now, we also said this is a PG-13 message because there are parts of the Bible that I will not read yet to my 6-year-old daughter because there's parts of the Bible that require a level of developmental understanding and knowledge of the world and how life works and, and so on. And that's just a part of reality as well. But when the time's right, it's wonderful that even something as significant as our sexuality, the Scriptures have lots to say.

[0:53] And when I grew up, I grew up here in this church actually. And so as a grade eight student, I will never forget the fact that every February in our youth group, we would gather around a message and it was called the 12 Steps to Sex. And the 12 steps are forever etched in my mind as a way to have this kind of conversation. Now, they're not 12 steps that you do during sex. It's to show a bit of a progression that happens over time. Lemme just kinda give you a sense of it so you get a clearer picture of what I'm trying to say. Step two, as an example, was making eye contact. And step seven was like kissing on the cheek. And so each of the steps was meant to kinda like build on each other and show a progression that happens that eventually can lead to sex.

[1:44] It's not to say every person you make eye contact with, you want to have sex with. Just to be clear, if that's the case, let me introduce you to a counselor. But the, but the point is the progression gives you a chance to ask a bigger question. Now, just before we go to that, there is a point though. Sex is a bit of a progression. You should have a few steps at play. And so you only have one play. Lemme just say one takeaway is add a few other plays to the whole process. It's a process. But that's besides the point. The point is that the steps to sex were designed to ask the bigger question of high schoolers, middle schoolers in our youth group. You can imagine I'm grade eight, I'm furiously taking notes, like, oh, this is really helpful stuff. And the ultimate goal was to ask the question, where do you draw the line?

[2:29] And drawing the line was the way to kind of say, is there a spot? Is there a place that you would say, I'm going to stop with someone? And as a grade eight student, it was a wonderful, perfect question. It was an important one. And what I've realized over the years is that where do you draw the line isn't something that you just apply to your sexuality, but it's actually a question that you apply or you can apply and you probably have applied to all sorts of parts of your life. Like, where do you draw the line when it comes to the drinks? You know, you're out at the party, you're at the bar, you're out at the game, you know, is it zero? Is it one, is it two? Is it three? Do you have a line? You know, where do you draw the line when it's late at night and you're doing the scroll? How many more scrolls until it's bedtime, right?

[3:16] When you're watching the show, and man, you've seen this so many times, but Netflix is, they know what's happening. They get to the end and they're like, we'll show you the next one. Where do you draw the line? Where do you draw the line with your betting, young guys, especially sports betting these days is huge and they'll suck you in. The whole goal of that thing is to disconnect your brain so that you just continue on without recognizing that you should have drew the line a ways back. And the idea of drawing a line is to get to the point of saying, hey, there is a sense that on one side we have our desires and our appetites, and those are the things that are just, we're drawn to. And you've heard me say this before, if you've been around, the idea of following your desires, following your heart, wherever your heart may lead, just doing whatever your appetite says, that's crazy advice.

[4:05] And the way you recognize it is you think about any 12-year-old boy or girl, and would you give them the advice? Just follow your heart and do whatever it says. No, you would never do that because you recognize that our desires and our appetites don't always serve us well. And so at some point when it comes to our desires and appetites, we have to draw a line to say, our actions and our behaviors will look different than our desires. And that's what happens at night when you realize, I'm gonna stop scrolling even though one more, I think, is gonna feel wonderful. That's why when we do the 12 steps, you recognize there's a line you draw somewhere and creating your moral boundaries so that you operate in such a way that as you go through your life, you're actually living into the way that you would hope your life would look like and not just be carried away by your desires.

[4:55] Now, the fun part about this conversation is, the reason we get to have it here in this kind of setting with these kinds of people, and you kind of watching or you listening, is the fact that 2000 years ago, there were a group of people asking these same kinds of questions. How do you build not just a moral framework, but how do you build a Christian framework around these kinds of decisions? How do I take the truth that Jesus Christ was resurrected, defeated the power of sin? I get to ascribe my whole life's authority, give it to Him and follow Him with my entire life. Okay, now, what does that mean for these parts of my life? What does this mean for the way that I operate? How do I understand my own sexuality through the lens of a Christian faith? And there's a group of people at a church in Corinth who were wrestling through these questions, and the Apostle Paul actually writes a letter to them that we have as a part of our New Testament, where he walks them through a number of different situations.

[5:53] And if you didn't connect the dots on this, the idea here is that as Paul writes a letter to this church in Corinth, he's actually trying to help respond to questions and even situations that were cropping up. And what I hope you kind of catch is that when you have questions, when you're wondering, how do I apply this faith? And you're dealing with like some of the curiosities to it, you are actually in the same vein and the same, you know, expression of faith as the New Testament church, they were asking and wrestling through all sorts of things as well. That's a wonderful thing. That's why we gather in community, That's why we open up the Scriptures and submit our authority of our lives over to them. That's why we do these kinds of things in preaching from these Scriptures, so that we can apply to our everyday kind of life.

[6:40] And for Paul, when he writes 1 Corinthians, he actually walks through different scenarios you can take a look at for them on your own. But if you look, for example, at the start of chapter 5, he starts it off by saying, "I can hardly believe the report about the sexual immorality." And he goes on to explain the situation that was happening in Corinth that they were talking about, wondering what should they do about it, you know? In chapter 7, "Now, regarding the questions you asked in your letter about marriage and about intimacy." And then he goes on to apply the truth, the Scriptures, and what it means to live into Christ in this way through the lens of those questions. And then in chapter 8, "Now regarding your questions about food that has been offered to idols." And he gives some, so these specific situations is what Paul has in mind as he writes these. These aren't abstract thoughts. This is tangible, real, practical advice that you and I take and apply to our everyday life.

[7:30] And so in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, he starts this new section, and it ends up being something that I think is gonna give us three key things to take and apply to our lives, and that will influence the way that we think about love, sex, and relationships. Okay, 1 Corinthians 6, Paul's words in the New Living Translation in verse 12, Paul writing, "You say," speaking to the Corinthian church, "I am allowed to do anything." And what Paul was doing was he was actually quoting maybe a common saying for the people in Corinth at the time. They might have recognized this as like the current meme of the day. And so like, you know, you say "six, seven," everybody knows, "Oh, I've heard that before." I don't know what it means, but like, it's a thing. It's like, "Oh, this is a common language that is out there that people are repeating."

[8:19] And probably the Christians in Corinth were using it to kind of frame up their life a bit. And so Paul says, "Hey, you've said, or you've heard it said, or you, this, here's this saying that I'm allowed to do anything." And Paul sets that up to offer the counter argument, the Christian approach to life and to moral decisions. And this is what he says in this particular instance. He says, "But not everything is good for you." Not everything is good for you. You may be allowed to do it, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's good for you. And I wanna apply this new moral understanding so that you catch the way that you make your decisions might be different than the people around you. The way that you make decisions is not just about what's legal, but about what's beneficial. Because just because it's legal doesn't necessarily mean that it's good for you.

[9:07] Now, we're fine with laws and we think laws are helpful and they govern our society. And there's, you know, repercussions to breaking a law. But the law isn't the high bar that we're meant to live up to. The law is like the low bar that you're not meant to descend beyond, right? And so instead, what happens is, and you've heard people say this before, if you're talking about decisions, what they're trying to articulate, if they say, and you've said like, "Well, I make my decisions and I just kind of do whatever I want," that's "I'm allowed to do anything." And then they add a tag just to be careful here, right? I do whatever I want, or you can do whatever you want, as long as no one gets hurt. Yeah, that's the line. As long as no one gets hurt. And what Paul's saying is like, "No, no, no, no, no. That's the bottom of the barrel for decision making."

[9:53] If you apply that to your life, anywheres, like, you're gonna miss out on so much of what God wants to do in and through you. You're gonna miss out on the flourishing that could come if you set a different standard for yourself. And not only that, but like, this is flawed from the start. "As long as no one gets hurt" is terrible, terrible, terrible advice to give to somebody. Because the issue is, it misses out or forgets the fact that there's all sorts of people that are in the category that can still get hurt. For example, you are one. As long as no one gets hurt, well, you are one of the people. So if you get hurt, somebody got hurt. All of a sudden, it's not that no one got hurt, somebody got hurt, you made a decision. And even if it only impacts you, you are a person.

[10:38] And then for some of you, this is not all of you, but for some of you, you gotta remember your kid is one. So like, I've got three kids at this point in my life. All of my decisions impact my kids. There's nothing that I could do that wouldn't have a dramatic impact on my kid. And the reason I know that is because all you have to do is think about your parents and the decisions that they made and the things that they did, and you recognize it's made an impact on you. So like my moral choices, sure, I've hopefully are gonna have much higher ones than just what I'm allowed to do. But I also have to recognize that the decisions I make around my own life's moral decisions, around my sexuality and my intimacy and how I live my life in life and, and, you know, things around me will have an impact, not just on myself, but on my wife, on my kids.

[11:29] And if you don't have kids, the connection you could make is, how about this? Your mom is one, you're really young and you got a mom, don't break her heart, please. And just this nice shadow, 'cause moms' hearts are always broken when you make difficult, wrong, bad decisions. So Paul's saying, listen, do things that are beneficial to you. This is a new framework and the way to think about it or the way to frame it up. And he gives a line that doesn't quite make it through in the English translation. And so we'll see it a kind of the different understanding of it. But this is what he says in 1 Corinthians 6:12. He says, "I'm allowed to do anything, but not everything is good for you. And even though I'm allowed to do anything, I must not become a slave to anything." This is the different framework. This is more than just "as long as no one gets hurt."

[12:16] This is a high bar. I must not become a slave to anything. I must not give up my freedom to anything. And if you're trying to catch the wordplay that he was offering in the Greek, it sounds something like this. It says, "All things are in my power, but I shall not be overpowered by anything." I shall not be overpowered by anything, even if the thing is innocuous, or even if the thing is kind of neutral, if it overpowers you, it moves into this category where it's wrong. And so before we even talk about, you know, inappropriate decisions or sexual immorality, let's set the standard at not becoming a slave to anything. Now, I legitimately, as I was kind of rehearsing this morning, I'm like, "Oh, this happened to me just a couple, like, this last week."

[13:07] And I legitimately, as I was prepping for this message and thinking about this text, it didn't clue into me that I was making a decision last week that is an embodiment of this verse. Now, this is an easy example 'cause it's not super embarrassing. And so what I would say to you is when you acknowledge sometimes even the easy things that have overpowered you, it can be helpful to unlock and to recognize the more significant things that have overpowered you. So it's not wrong to offer something kind of simple because it at least opens the door for you to recognize how easy you are to be overpowered by something. And for me, I was overpowered by the game on my phone called Brawl Stars. Now, this game is not a big deal.

[13:53] There's nothing wrong with the game. You've got games on your phone probably, and you know, you probably, maybe you play the games when you go to the washroom or, you know, whatever, and like, "Hey, there's nothing necessarily wrong unless you're in there for a long time, in which case your wife gets upset because the kids need you." And so, like, there's some things you gotta put into context here for sure. But I recognized all of a sudden I had this game on my phone that I have played almost every single day for I don't even know how long. And all of a sudden this, as I was looking into 2026, I'm like, "Oh, why do you think I got overpowered by this game? I just gotta delete it off my phone to see if, if I was overpowered, do I still have, can I still get rid of something that has clearly caught me?" And so I did. And that was great. And so it's off. I haven't played in a few days.

[14:38] I'm a few days clean from it. And you laugh, and it's right to laugh 'cause it is kind of silly and funny. But what do you have on your device that has overpowered you legitimately? Like, what's the thing? Don't shout it out. Sorry, this is not public confession time, but, or private confession time. I don't necessarily, you don't need to come and tell me everything. But if that's helpful, I mean, by all means. But the point is, when you recognize something that's overpowered you, the right thing to do is to take a step back and to disconnect from it because the act of it overpowering you is wrong. And the act of becoming a slave to something is wrong.

[15:26] And what Paul wants to set in motion here is a different kind of ethic that offers you the freedom that Christ brings to all of us, not to do anything we want, but to do the things that will offer the best chance at our flourishing and our benefit. And so for you to take count of that, and if you're ever nervous or if you're ever not sure what you're overpowered by, you turn to the person next to you and you say, "Is there anything that I've been overpowered by?" And chances are they can tell you. And it might be embarrassing at that point because you've been playing this game for too many years and can't believe I didn't catch it earlier. Okay? Now, Craig Blomberg writes about this, trying to explain again this sense. He says, "Paul explains that Christians still must submit to moral principles, not because they obey all the 613 commandments of the Mosaic law, but because many things simply are not beneficial and not truly liberating."

[16:20] And the interesting thing about the Mosaic law is those 613 laws that we discover through the Old Testament, those were designed for human flourishing. Those were designed to try to paint a picture of what it meant to live life in a way that would honor not just the best that God has, but that the best He has for you and for me. And so that was the sense of it. But then the law becomes this thing where I'm trying to find the loophole through the law. And so what Paul's doing is he's coming back, he's like, "No, no, no. Remember the heart of what God is inviting us into. It's freedom." Let's close these loopholes and let's ask this question. Instead of "Where's the line and how far is too far?" we ask the question, where have I been overpowered by something? And all of a sudden things come into sharp focus. Or put this way, William Barclay about this verse. He says, "The great fact of the Christian faith is not that it makes a man free to sin, but that it makes a man free not to sin and even free not to again be overpowered by neutral things."

[17:16] And so for David Garland going back, he says, "Sin and slaves and embodied humans easily become hostage to their bodily appetites," and some of your appetites. Again, they're not necessarily wrong. You need to eat. But when you become a hostage to your appetite, it becomes sinful, it becomes wrong, and there's freedom that can come from that. And so Paul sets this out as, let's gather as a first framework for understanding our love and our relationships: We shall not be overcome by something. And I know already some of you are recognizing some of those deeper things that have caused issues in your heart and your life, the things that you've become addicted to, the things that are less easy to acknowledge in a broad setting.

[18:05] And you're like, "Ooh, I can see where my addiction does run deep. I can see where I have been overpowered by that website." By those websites, by those books, by that narrative, by that item that I keep going back to purchase. And when that happens, you gotta recognize there's something deep at play that Christ wants to free you from. So Paul says, verse 12, "I must not become a slave to anything." And then he kind of uses a couple examples. He uses a food example, and then he uses trying to offer an understanding of what's even happening inside of Christians. He uses this example of prostitution, that is, carrying us through to kind of point two and three. And so I just wanna jump ahead, but you can kind of read through to catch the tenor of it.

[18:54] But what he's trying to then move us towards is recognizing if you're not meant to be mastered by anything, if you're not meant to be overpowered by anything, the other thing you have to carry into your decision making around love, sex and relationships is that you have to be able to run from sexual sin. You have to be able to run from sexual immorality. And what's happening here is that even in the church in Corinth, 2000 years ago, before the internet, before the apps, before you, you know, it was easy to find, like, there were, this was an issue. And not only was this an issue, but culturally there was a sense that it wasn't an issue and it was worth talking about. For example, David Garland, again, one of these commentators on this and understanding the context says that most Corinthians would've thought that expectations that males married or otherwise should practice sexual fidelity, you know, only expressing their sexual intimacy inside of their marriage were somewhat peculiar.

[19:48] And you see this with writers in those days, even, you know, you read, I think it was, I think it was Plato, and he's basically trying to write an ethic, you know, from a more secular perspective and basically is like, you can't really deal with it. And so just try not to hurt anybody and do it in secret. And they're like, oh, that's kind of weird. But like, that's the sense, is that this appetite, this sexual appetite is so easy to entangle somebody that culturally and most places, like, it just runs rampant. And so for Christians, there's this unique thing where the Christians and the Christian ideal is to operate your sexual intimacy inside of a marriage between a man and a woman. And like, that's it. And everybody's like, that's crazy. And you're like, maybe, but like, this is the human flourishing way.

[20:36] And so for Paul, he's like, when you experience and see anything outside of this, you gotta run from it. Why? Because it's gonna entangle you and it's gonna trip you up and it's gonna pull you away. And it's not even that, it's just the action, but it's actually the desire and it's actually the appetite. It's actually the thoughts. You see, Jesus taking the call around sexual morality to like this intense level where He is like, even your thoughts, and you're like, what? How do you do that? Well, Paul's gonna give an example. He's gonna explain, he's gonna give you the power around this, but like, this is the invitation of the New Testament: flee sexual immorality. And the way that he describes it, you know, Craig writes about this very simple text. He says, it's a strong present tense command suggesting this ongoing action.

[21:21] This isn't like you just like, oh, you run away from it and then it's way over there and you never experience it again. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. This is an all skate, this is for all of us. This is for you, this is for me. This is like, this is an ongoing fight. It's an ongoing battle, it's an ongoing, I wanna move in this direction away from this thing. And so for you and for me, part of it is identifying and recognizing what we run from. What is it that you've had as a challenge or a struggle or an issue? What is the sexual immorality that keeps popping up in your life? The thing that attacks your mind, the thing that pulls you into its grips, and how do you plan and run away from it? And for Paul, as he writes this, he says to flee sexual immorality, which is the Greek word porneia or porneia, where we obviously get pornography.

[22:09] And obviously if the stats are right, that's clearly the major one thing. If we were all to take stock of what we need to run clearly away from, it's that one thing. Protect the kids from it, keep them from it, build them into a discernment to understand what it is and how to run away from it and how to disengage from it. How to rewire your brain. All of the expectations that we have around intimacy have been completely warped by the way that pornography has reshaped and changed our world and our culture. And so as the people of God, the people that are Christians, we run from that and we recognize it as a fight and we recognize it as an ongoing struggle that we have to deal with. And that's the deal. That's the thing. This is what Paul's inviting us into and the reason for it, and then the power that we have for it, He gives to us.

[22:57] And He explains. So he says, run from sexual sin. Reason: no other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does, for sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. And you would think, like, there are some other sins that seem to affect your body, but what Paul's trying to describe is there's something deep that happens with our sexuality if we let it run askew of what God has asked us or invited us into. And so he says, don't you know, and this is his explanation, both of the reason for the intensity of this, but also the power that we have for this fight. Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? It, you know, back in those days it would be more easy to understand, like you would see, like, there's a temple over here and there's a temple over here to this god and this god and this god. This is where people worship things.

[23:43] And so for those days, it was really shocking to be able to say to the group of Christians gathered, hey, do you know where your God lives? Where's the God that of the Bible? And the answer is, the God of the Bible is in you and you and you and me, that the Holy Spirit resides in His people. And that comes with this beautiful nature of the power of the Holy Spirit that's accessible to the Christians, that we could allow the Spirit of God to actually work through us. The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is the same Spirit that we have living inside of us, if you have chosen Christ as your King, if you've surrendered your life to Him and asked for your forgiveness of your sins. But on top of that, that's this incredibly important reason why we treat and live differently, because God resides inside of us.

[24:33] And so what we do with our bodies matters deeply because our bodies is where God resides. And so back in those days, you would say, like, we treat these temples, you know, we sweep them up and we make them look nice and we clean them and we, you know, presentable and all that kind of stuff. And that's true. And so all the more reason why in these days, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the Christians, we have to deal with our bodies in a much different way because of that. So Paul says, who lives in you and was given to you by God, you do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So the way that you live and the way that you express yourself is different because God has actually purchased you. He's, by His death and resurrection, has actually decided that you can now live with the full freedom that He's intended for you as a human being.

[25:23] But it changes the nature of the transaction. It's no longer you but Christ that's meant to live in and through you. And so Paul says, because of all of that, honor God with your body, with your body, not as a separate entity, like, this is the things that I do for my body and the things that I do for my soul. It's like, no, no, no, you are one and the same. This is the altogether unified thing. Or put this way, David Garland says, Paul does not view human beings as simply having a body, but we're embodied, and using this Greek word soma. He directs attention to their bodies, not to this wholeness of their being, but that the way that you act with your body matters deeply. And kind of as this ultimate thesis, he says, Christians have freedom, but that freedom should orient them toward doing those things that are beneficial and away from doing these things that can ensnare them and then so dominate their lives that they lose their freedom.

[26:23] And so this is the invitation. Paul gives us these three things to care deeply about and to set as a starting point for this longer conversation on love, sex, and relationships. However, what happens when Christians talk about sexuality is that those in the room, and there's lots of you probably here who don't ascribe to the Christian ideals and the Christian values, get a little defensive. And rightly so, because over the years, Christians, my people, the Christians, have sometimes struggled to articulate our ethics in a helpful way. And it's interesting because 2000 years ago, this was actually still an issue. And so if you're in the room and you're not a Christian, you don't believe all that we believe, you haven't ascribed to these kinds of things, you haven't signed up for this, you know, you're here because somebody invited you.

[27:15] We're glad that you're here. You're always welcome here. This church is always free. You should come, and we think you should give your life to Jesus. Let's be clear on that. But until you do, you should also know that you're in a different category of expectation from our perspective as a person of faith. And so what Paul does, before he actually even articulates all of these things about sexuality and explaining these situations, he explains how we're supposed to act and interact with the Christian sexual ethic. And so 1 Corinthians 5:9, he says this, Paul writing, "When I wrote to you before, I told you not to associate with people who indulge in sexual sin." Exactly what that means, the context of it, you know, we could go into the details, but that was kind of like the call.

[28:02] But he says, "I wasn't talking about unbelievers who indulge in sexual sin," and then he adds this list, "or are greedy or cheat people or worship idols. You would have to leave the world to avoid people like that." 'Cause the people that haven't ascribed to the Christian ethic, of course, they're everywhere. You work with people like that, you know, they're in your school classes or you're, you know, on your street and that. And we're here to hopefully bring the hope of Jesus. That's true. But like all of these folks that haven't ascribed to the Christian ethic and ideal, of course they haven't. And so Paul says, "I meant instead," he said, "I meant that you are not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer, yet indulges in sexual sin or is greedy or worships idols or is abusive or is a drunkard or cheats.

[28:48] People, don't even eat with such people." And here's the bottom line, he says, I'd say, here's the bottom line. He doesn't say that it isn't my responsibility, Paul speaking, to judge outsiders. And outsiders are the ones that haven't ascribed to Christian ideal, of which there's lots, but it certainly is your responsibility to judge those inside the church who are sinning. And so what happens is that for you and for me, for those of us that are Christians, you know, you perhaps have heard this line like, "Hey, do not judge." The Bible says, "Do not judge." That's true. The Bible says, "Do not judge." And even in the judging passage in the Gospels, "Do not judge" is true. Do not judge who the outsiders, but we are called to judge ourselves as insiders.

[29:42] And there's some outsiders that are inside right now are like, "Yes." And here's the thing, it's worthwhile because I understand and recognize that at our worst, we've tried to perhaps judge those outside the church and have neglected our own internal challenges, problems, sinfulness. But here's what we need to operate under, and this is me speaking to the Christians in the room, is you have to work out these three things from Paul for your own sake and for the sake of this gospel ministry, for the whole world to know that the way we follow Jesus changes and transforms us. And so when Paul says, and this is the first Corinthians 6, here are the three things. I must not become a slave to anything. I have to run from sexual sin, and I honor God with my body.

[30:30] These three things we have to do, and we do them in community. You have to open yourself up to somebody and say, "Hey, help me understand and see and know." You have to have somebody close enough that could even understand that somebody that you're in community with, somebody that you're opening the Bible with, somebody that you're in group with, somebody that you trust enough to say, "Hey, I need to know because I have to do these things. I have to not be enslaved. I have to not be overpowered by something. Have you seen something in me that's overpowered me?" And let somebody in to be able to expose and to show that so that you can experience the freedom of God. You run from sexual sin, and where you recognize that sexual sin's got a grip on you, you reach out and you ask for help. And you come to CR on Tuesday night or you, you know, you chat with one of us as pastors and we connect you with a counselor, or we give you steps, or we give you tools, or we give you resources, or we give you community so that you can authentically run from the sexual sin that so easily entangles, and you honor God with your body.

[31:32] And what does that look like? Well, the loopholes close out as you wrestle through, okay, in 2026, what would it mean for me to honor God with my body? How do I change the way that I eat or the way that I exercise or the way that I present myself in such a way that would be honoring to God as if God was actually living inside of me? Well, it starts to get convicting, and that's the point. And as a community, we work together on this so that we are the kinds of people that embody and represent this ethic to the world and show how the freedom of Christ is actually worth experiencing and having. And then what happens when you start talking about these things, the Spirit will actually kind of lean in and start kind of whispering to your heart. It'll point out some of those things.

[32:18] "Hey, you know those bets that you've been placing? Hey, you know those websites that you've been visiting? Hey, you know that relationship that you're in where there are no boundaries and there are no lines, even though you're not married?" The Spirit will start pointing those things out. And what you have to decide to do is, are you going to allow the Spirit of God to bring conviction so that you can show up in prayer and ask for forgiveness and then reach out for help? Or do you ignore all of that and walk away from what God has for you? And the problem is that most often we miss the fact that we're trying to turn off the Spirit of God in our minds. And when this happens, this is so dangerous Because your soul ends up being like corrupted.

[33:05] You end up getting dragged out and your life ends up getting entangled into all these things that entrap and enslave you. And you've clearly missed the hope of the gospel. And you're like, "Well, I made that decision. You know, I made it three years ago, and Jesus has made the difference." And you're like, "Yeah, He made the difference three years ago." But He wants to make a difference now. Like, He wants to give you freedom right now. He wants to offer you the hope that the gospel has for your life right now. But it means that you have to recognize it. It means that you have to draw the line. It means that you have to step out in faith. It means that you have to open up and at least be honest. You have to be honest that you've been entrapped. You have to be honest that you haven't fled. You have to be honest that it hasn't been honoring what you've been doing. And yet, from this day forward, you can make a new decision.

[33:56] You can come to the altar, you can come for prayer during this next song. You can come and just, you can pray, you can pray anytime here. You can pray in your seats, but you can come forward and pray. Our prayer team at the end of the service, they're here to help you honestly show up before God. We'll launch groups so that you can be in community. All this kind of stuff is so that we can live out this 1 Corinthians call that God has invited you and invited me to, and let it be the nature of our community, that this is what we do together. We look out for each other. We challenge one another, not to be angry with each other, but to help each other find the freedom that comes from Christ, so that all the people that are far from God in this place and in our city, that they would say, "These Christians, they've experienced the kind of freedom that I wish I had," and they would be drawn to Jesus because of your life and your example.

[34:50] You're not your desires. You're so much more, and the God of the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit that resides in you, empowers you to that end. So let me pray for you and for the way that God wants to work in your life. Heavenly Father, I'm grateful that it's You that does the work in each of our hearts and that You remind us of what You want to do even in these moments. It's that thing that You've consistently dragged before our consciousness. It's that thing that we've thought about lots before. It's that issue that keeps cropping up. It's that thing that we're just not sure, but it's still there. Lord, would we deal with that even today, Lord, as we bring it towards You?

[35:35] Would You offer Your love and Your forgiveness? But Lord, would You offer us the way forward? Would we have the confidence, the conviction, to come to prayer at the end of the service, Lord, to come forward during this next song, to talk to the pastor in the lobby, to reach out during the week? Whatever it is, God, get into group, talk to somebody next to us. Ask the hard questions. But Lord, would we not be trapped anymore? Would we be people of freedom? And would You free us by the power of Your blood? In Jesus' name, amen.