Special Patreon Re-Release: God, Sex, and Your Marriage: Interview with Dr. Juli Slattery

Special Patreon Re-Release: God, Sex, and Your Marriage: Interview with Dr. Juli Slattery    *DISCLAIMER* This interview includes some adult themes and is not intended for young ears.   **Transcription Below**   Matthew 9:37 (NIV) "Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few."   Questions we discuss: For many couples, sex can be a difficult area of marriage and you encourage people that is normal, but you also warn us not to confuse normal with healthy. What is normal for married couples and what is healthy, as it relates to sexual intimacy in marriage? What is God's genius chemical cocktail that we experience during sex? Will you give a brief overview of your four pillars of intimacy?   Dr. Juli Slattery is a clinical psychologist, author, speaker and broadcast media professional with over twenty-five years of experience counseling, and teaching women. She’s the president and co-founder of Authentic Intimacy, a unique ministry devoted to teaching God’s design for intimacy and sexuality. In 2020, Juli launched SexualDiscipleship.com, a platform designed to help Christian leaders navigate sexual issues and questions with gospel-centered truth. She hosts a weekly podcast, Java with Juli, where she answers tough questions about relationships, marriage, and spiritual, emotional and sexual intimacy.  www.authenticintimacy.com    Other Episodes with Dr. Juli Slattery on The Savvy Sauce:   Passion Pursuit with Dr. Juli Slattery   Patreon 26 Holy Sex with Dr. Juli Slattery   Life-Giving Marriage with Dr. Juli Slattery   Thank You to Our Sponsors: Chick-fil-A East Peoria and The Savvy Sauce Charities (and donate online here)   Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website   Please help us out by sharing this episode with a friend, leaving a 5-star rating and review, and subscribing to this podcast!   Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)   Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”   Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”   Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”    Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”    Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”    Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”    John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”   Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”    Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”   Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”   Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”   Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”   Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“   Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“   Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”   **Transcription**   [00:00:00] <music>   Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.    [00:00:18] <music>   Laura Dugger: Today's message is not intended for little ears. We'll be discussing some adult themes, and I want you to be aware before you listen to this message.   I'm grateful for today's sponsor, Chick-fil-A East Peoria. Check them out online to place your order for dining or catering, or to fill out an application to join their friendly team. Visit cfaeastpeoria.com.   Hey friends, I wanted to share some exciting news with you. Savvy Sauce Charities has officially received our confirmation from the IRS that all donations are tax deductible. I know that we have super generous listeners, so we wanted to let you know you can now mail your check to Savvy Sauce Charities, P.O. Box 101, Roanoke, Illinois, 61561. Thanks in advance for supporting Savvy Sauce Charities. [00:01:24]    And now I'm pleased to share this episode with you that used to only be available to paying patrons. Dr. Juli Slattery is my returning guest today. She has written another fantastic book entitled God, Sex, and Your Marriage. And now she's going to give us a healthy vision for sexual intimacy in marriage and share actionable ways that we can grow in maturity and delight and health in our relationship with our spouse.    Here's our chat.   Welcome back to The Savvy Sauce, Dr. Juli.   Dr Juli Slattery: Oh, thanks so much for having me.   Laura Dugger: Well, even from the get-go on the dedication page of your book, you dedicate it to your brothers and sisters in Christ, some who have labored before you, and some who now work alongside you in reclaiming God's design for sex. You quote the last part of Matthew 9:37, when you say, "The field is ripe for the harvest, but the laborers are few." [00:02:28] Will you elaborate on what you mean by this?   Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah. I think within the field of Christian sexuality, there are things that we can disagree on. Some of those conversations can be characterized by looking back at what people have written before and being critical of that or looking at the ways that we disagree today on different topics and how we apply the scriptures.    So as I was wrapping up this book, I just have such a heart for unity in the body of Christ and recognize that there are so few people that really want to see God reclaim biblical sexuality, that I just want us to link arms and to work together, to learn from each other, to give honor to each other, and just to be in the trenches, like encouraging one another, instead of focusing on maybe where we differ. [00:03:25]    So that's kind of the heart of it, as well as just a gratitude for the people that have gone before us, the people that were speaking and writing on this topic over the last few decades. Again, I think we're looking back and saying purity culture was horrible and, you know, like just be with more of a critical eye, which we need to learn from the past. But I think, you know, I just really want to have a spirit of graciousness and unity as we say, Hey, we're kind of working off of the shoulders of the people who have been really pioneers in this field.   Laura Dugger: I think that goal of unity is such a worthy one. For so many couples, sex can be a difficult area of marriage. And you write that this is very normal, but you also warn us not to confuse normal with healthy. You go on to write, and I'll just quote it here, "Just consider that the normal American is overweight, overstimulated, exhausted, and lonely." [00:04:29] So, Juli, from your perspective, what is normal for married couples and what is healthy as it relates to sexual intimacy in marriage?   Dr. Juli Slattery: I would say normal is a lot of conflict around sex, frustration, unfulfilled desires, lack of communication. They don't know how to talk about sex or navigate conflict around just differences. I think it's normal for there to be some level of pornography in a marriage. One or both of the individuals bringing in a history of pornography and a struggle with pornography. I think it's normal to have a lot of confusion and shame just around being a sexual person.    So those are all sort of the normal barometer of what I see as I talk to married Christian couples. Again, I think there's peace in knowing, okay, we have good company around us. We're not the only couple struggling with these things, but I also don't want that to be a message that things should just stay the way they are. [00:05:35]    Laura Dugger: I love that. Can you elaborate then on what is healthy?   Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah. So healthy is sort of the opposite of what I've mentioned. Healthy is that there's healthy, regular communication around sex. So a couple can talk about not just how often they want to have sex, but the deeper issues of what does sex represent for me as an individual? What does it represent for us as a couple? Being able to talk through things from the past, past wounds and shame, and being able to seek the Lord together. It's healthy to honor each other in their sexual relationship, honor the differences that they might be bringing of sexual desire and what they're hoping for in their sexual relationship, navigating together the challenges that they face, but navigating as a team.   So the challenges of we have no energy because we're exhausted with little kids or the challenges of one of us might be working through some trauma from the past, the challenges of how do we address the pornography in our marriage and how do we learn to enjoy each other within our own covenant? [00:06:46]    So those are kind of the markers of a healthy sex life. I don't think there are many couples who would just say automatically, we were there when we first got married. But unfortunately, I think there are also not a lot of couples who would say we're actually working towards those goals. Instead, we have a tendency to just kind of stay stuck where we are.   Laura Dugger: I think an obvious answer would be that communication is going to help us move in that direction of health. But if this healthy vision sounds wonderful, how do people actually engage in this? What are a few of the first steps they can take?   Dr. Juli Slattery: I think one of the first steps is just really broadening your horizon of what God created sex to be. And really, it's taking a step back and asking yourself the question, what do you think a good sex life is actually supposed to look like from a Christian standpoint? [00:07:45]    I think it's fascinating for couples to have that conversation and, first of all, to see where they differ in their understanding of what a good sex life is meant to be, but also where they struggle to flesh it out because there just hasn't been a lot of great teaching on, how do we as a couple even have the same goals related to our sex life.   That was the main reason why I wrote God, Sex, and Your Marriage was to give Christian married couples a vision for what God created sex to be and to have them together agree on, here's what our mature sex life is meant to look like and we want to start working toward that. But if you don't know what you're working toward, then you're just going to stay stuck.   Laura Dugger: I appreciate resources like this. If anybody's listened to any of our other topics on sexual intimacy on The Savvy Sauce, you know that we recommend reading a book, ideally with each other. But even if it's just you reading it yourself, there's so much to glean. [00:08:49] And like you said, Juli, you're casting this vision.   But then even as you read this aloud to one another or you each read a chapter and then come together and discuss, it gets you comfortable talking about this language and it brings up even more questions like you just mentioned that can be natural conversation starters.   Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah, that's a great suggestion for every married couple, including myself and my husband. I guess something that we've tried to do throughout our marriage is to be reading a book on sex together, preferably, as you mentioned, out loud, because it really does get you comfortable in terms of just what language to use and what it's like to have a conversation around sex.   Laura Dugger: Absolutely. So just really, I've thought this so many times, but thank you for the labor and the work you put into putting this resource together so that we have an option that we can trust.    Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah, well, I think we tend to write the books that we would want to read. So, yeah, a lot of it has just come out of our own journey. [00:09:49]    Laura Dugger: Well, and I agree with another point that you make in the book when you talk about sex being so important to God and so we can expect it to constantly be under spiritual attack. So will you just tell us more about that idea?   Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah. I think the average Christian, as you look at the cultural landscape, there's no question that sex is under attack and that we see it distorted and we see it being such a confusing topic for our kids, for just our culture. We can recognize that and we can look at different ways that sex is being used against us in our world today, but we're less likely to see how that's happening within our own marriages.   But I think just being aware of the fact that Satan hates everything God made as beautiful, and sex is such a powerful picture of God's covenant love, of the fact that he created us for intimate unity. That Satan really wants to twist that. And he'll do it any way he can. [00:10:56] He'll do it through shame. He'll do it through us even having a very limited perspective of what sex should be. He'll do it through dividing you and having sex be the main source of conflict in your marriage. He'll do it through pornography and marital affairs and betrayal.    I think we have to be on the lookout and say, hey, this really is a spiritual terrain, not just in the world at large, but it's a spiritual terrain within my own heart and within our marriage.   Laura Dugger: But then you don't leave us there with that message of attack because in that same chapter you conclude with this quote: "God's power to redeem is greater than Satan's power to destroy." So, Juli, how have you seen that practically played out in couples' lives?   Dr. Juli Slattery: Boy, I've just been so blessed to see that played out over and over again. In the ministry that I run, Authentic Intimacy, we've been doing this for a decade now. [00:11:56] I can't explain it, but all I can tell you is that when an individual or a couple begins to really get God's perspective of sexuality, when they alone or together begin to surrender this area of their life to God, you just see change, you see healing, you see redemption, you see freedom where there once was shame and lies.   It's commonplace in our ministry to see that, which is amazing because every life that's redeemed really is a work of God. But the scripture says that His word doesn't return void, but it accomplishes what it's sent out to do. And I get to see that. I get to see that as couples are healing and recovering from betrayal, as people are looking to get set free from pornography, as people are trying to navigate the impact of past trauma and what that's done to their sex life, as couples are confronting some of the anger or bitterness or selfishness that have developed over the years because of their differences and sexual desire. [00:13:03] I've just gotten to see all those sort of things redeemed by God's power, and sex starts to become something that really does unify a husband and wife together.   Laura Dugger: Well, that makes so much sense because I've been convicted so many times and had to be reminded when God will gently call me back to Himself where I've shared a struggle with my husband, or if I'm questioning something in parenting and I'm just thinking on it and ruminating on it, God will gently remind me, come to Me with this, share with Me. And in the same way, with the topic of sex, you're encouraging us in this book to invite God to fight for us, and it's really His strength and power that can heal us in this sacred space.   Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah. It makes so much sense, Laura. But in reality, I think most of us kind of bar God from our sex lives. We don't realize we do it, but we never praise a married couple about our sex lives.[00:14:07] We never invite God into our shame. We never even think or want to think about the fact that He's present with us in the bedroom because that sort of creeps us out.    But if you're trying to fight a spiritual battle with your own strength and you're barring God's presence from that place, then you're not going to win it. I had to confront this in my own life in marriage many years ago. I didn't realize how much I was doing that, but I think because the church has been so silent on sex over the years, we just naturally have this sort of separate category of sexuality where God doesn't enter. So, boy, what a powerful thing to begin surrendering this to the Lord and asking for His wisdom and His help.   Laura Dugger: Powerful indeed. I remember one wife shared with me they don't pray together about sex out loud, but she has prayed before, even when they're in the act, and just shared real-time, Okay, Lord, I'm having a really hard time experiencing orgasm, and I would love to experience that today, so can you help me get there?" [00:15:16] And she said the results have been incredible. And I just think He cares so much about every detail of our lives that I love that story and what she shared because I think it shows His heart that He wants to share delight with us, and He's created this.   Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah, it brings God honor and pleasure when a married couple enjoys sex to the fullest because that's what He created it for. I think somehow we've bought this lie that God's embarrassed of our sexuality or it's a necessary evil, instead of it being something that we clearly see in the Song of Solomon and Proverbs chapter 5 and other places in Scripture that God delights in this. He created sex for this purpose.   And part of fighting the spiritual battle that we face in our world is reclaiming the ground of what sex looks like in our marriage. And so there are a lot of people who are frustrated at what's happening to their kids or what's happening to our culture, but at the same time they don't fight for godly sexuality within the space of their own bedroom. [00:16:22] And that really is where the battle begins, is in our own hearts and our own lives.   Laura Dugger: Well, let's now discuss the four pillars of intimacy, and hopefully you can just give a brief overview of each. Beginning with faithfulness and specifically, why do you write that holy jealousy is good?   Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah. If I can back up just for a minute, the whole premise of this book is that God created sex within marriage to be a form of revelation. Like through marriage and sexuality, the Scripture says God is revealing to us what his covenant love is like. And we see that in the Old Testament in God's covenant relationship with Israel and how often He used language of marriage and sexuality as a metaphor to explain His love for Israel.    Then in the New Testament we see the same thing happen with Jesus' relationship with the church. We see all this bridal language, intimacy language, sexual language to express what covenant looks like between Christ and His bride. [00:17:35] And I know for a lot of people that's sort of a mind shift, but if you can think about it this way, God creates the physical world in order to reveal Himself to us. So God has created marriage and sexuality as a form of revelation to reveal for us this special relationship of covenant.   So what I did with these four pillars of covenant love is say, OK, if God's love, if His covenant love is like this, then this is what defines a healthy sex life. So I broke down these four aspects of God's love for His covenant people and then applied it to sexuality.    So the first pillar that I talk about there is faithfulness. That faithfulness is the very foundation of any covenant. That a covenant isn't a relationship that's based on what feels good or what I feel like doing in the moment. It's a relationship based on your character, on your promise.    Part of that is that within covenant you have a sacred sense of belonging to each other. And so there is a holy jealousy within covenant. [00:18:43] And we see this in God's relationship with Israel where God actually says, My name is jealous. I am jealous for you. I'm a jealous God. And when you worship other gods, I'm angry.    That seems to be true within the covenant of marriage, that sexually we belong to each other exclusively, and there should be a healthy anger, protectiveness, and even jealousy if that exclusivity isn't honored. So, Laura, for example, I was talking to a woman who her marriage was in bad shape. There had been conflict over many years, there had been pornography addiction, and her husband cheated on her. And she said, "I was so dead that I wasn't even angry. My love for him was so dead that I didn't even get mad." [00:19:43] You'd be like, "Why would she not get mad? Is that a sign of health to not get mad when your husband cheats?" No. That's a sign of a very dysfunctional relationship, of a covenant that's dead.    So a healthy marriage means that we fight for each other and we protect our sexual relationship and that if there is a violation, then there is reason to be upset,there is reason to be angry. I think this is so key that we talk about you really can't build anything else in your sex life if you don't have faithfulness. That's the bare minimum foundation.   Laura Dugger: And now a brief message from our sponsors.    [00:20:25] <music>   Sponsor: I want to say thank you to our longtime sponsor, Chick-fil-A East Peoria. I hope that you've already downloaded the Chick-fil-A app. Because did you know that with the app you can skip the line and have food ready for you when you arrive? This is one of my favorite options when I'm taking my four daughters to Chick-fil-A East Peoria. Download the Chick-fil-A app today and start earning points toward free rewards that are fully customized to your preferences and tastes.   Chick-fil-A was named as one of Glassdoor's best places to work in the nation. That's a huge honor. And one team member even wrote, "No comparison. This is a great job for a first job, extra money, or for career advancement. Such a loving environment, great management, and fair pay." Chick-fil-A believes that the local and involved ownership ensures fostering an environment where you are known, challenged, and cared for.   So if you're looking for a wonderful place to work, visit Chick-fil-A East Peoria or fill out an application online today at cfaeastpeoria.com.    [00:21:31] <music>   Laura Dugger: We are so excited to celebrate with you that The Savvy Sauce Charities received our IRS confirmation that all donations are officially tax deductible. We hope that you're going to take action to partner with us.   There are details laid out on our website, which is thesavvysauce.com, and they're going to walk you through the process to donate, and it's also going to share our tax ID number. The donation process is as easy as just filling out a check for Savvy Sauce Charities and mailing it to P.O. Box 101, Roanoke, Illinois, 61561.    If we've contributed to your life in any way by resourcing you to grow closer in intimacy with God and others, would you now contribute to us financially? In this way, we are so excited to partner together and hopefully meet each other's needs. Our team wants to continue producing these podcasts, and we're expectant that if you're listening right now, you value The Savvy Sauce Charities enough to make a donation.    We view this work as ministry, so we happily spend thousands of dollars each year to record and produce these episodes. And our ultimate prayer is that your experience with Savvy Sauce Charities will make an impact for eternity. So if that is true for you, if you've ever received a blessing in any way from this nonprofit, would you prayerfully consider donating to Savvy Sauce Charities? Any amount is greatly appreciated.   And in fact, you've heard me say before, if every listener gave only $1 per month, it would completely offset all our costs. Again, we have all the details listed on our website, thesavvysauce.com, if you are interested in making a donation. We look forward to partnering with you.   [00:23:32] <music>   Laura Dugger: Can you elaborate about the chemical cocktail and why God is so genius in this creation?   Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah, sure. You know, I think one of the reasons that we really struggle with faithfulness is because we believe at a heart level that marriage is more about attractiveness and getting our sexual needs met than believing that marriage is about covenant. And one of the ways that I explain that is just to show, you know, God has designed new sex and a new relationship to elicit different kinds of chemicals in our brain than a long-term relationship and long-term sexual interaction.   So the new relationship is going to have adrenaline and a neurotransmitter called PEA. And together, adrenaline and PEA make you feel like there's this huge output of dopamine, which is the pleasure hormone of the brain. [00:24:34] And so it makes you feel intoxicated. It makes you feel like you're on a drug.    This is why pornography is so addictive. But God has given that cocktail in the beginning of a relationship, in the beginning of seeing each other naked for the first time, so that it would be a cementing kind of experience for a husband and wife. Unfortunately, our world has really hijacked that with pornography and other sexual offerings. But God's design is that you shouldn't be able to forget your honeymoon. Like it should be like a cementing experience for you.   But then as you're married for a while and you have sex regularly, you don't get that same adrenaline and PEA unless you're doing something kind of fun or new or exciting. But in general, you'll get just kind of output of oxytocin, which is a bonding hormone. It connects you to your spouse. And you also get endorphins, which is sort of a feel-good, all-is-well-with-the-world kind of neurotransmitter. [00:25:39]    And so God has designed a married sex life to have elements of both of these, of new and exciting things, say, for example, on your anniversary or you go away for a vacation and you're really focusing on your sex life, but also to have these bonding and feel-good chemicals to take place just in the normal course of life.    But, Laura, what happens is we get addicted to that new and exciting, and so we kind of begin to neglect the sexual relationship and instead are tempted by what's going to make us immediately feel good in the moment. So that's kind of just understanding how God wired our sexuality and, again, why He's a genius, but also understanding how, if we're not wise, that wiring can be worked against us.   Laura Dugger: That's so helpful to be wise in all of that. Just the incredible amounts that He gives us. You had cited another source that says men can have their oxytocin levels raised more than 500% after orgasm. [00:26:49] That may be why they're able to open up more emotionally after they've connected sexually. You also talk about the bonding agent of vasopressin. Would you like to share anything about that?   Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah. So the two hormones, oxytocin and vasopressin, kind of go together. Vasopressin is kind of more, from what I understand, like the male form of oxytocin. But these hormones have been shown, as you mentioned, to bond people together, to make a man feel more connected and more likely to be vulnerable.    And interestingly, there's even some studies that show that a man whose body is rich with this oxytocin and vasopressin is less likely to be attracted to another woman. So some people will call it the fidelity hormone.   But when you begin to understand this as a wife, that regular sex with my husband is helping him feel emotionally closer to me, is fostering vulnerability and connection, is helping him to focus on me and me to focus on him, it helps with temptation that comes from the outside. [00:28:02]    And that's not at all to put pressure on a wife to say it's your job to keep your husband faithful. But it is to recognize that God has created sex to be a very powerful experience that is meant to bond you together. And you want to use that for the advantage of your marriage instead of allowing the enemy to use it as something that could tear you apart.   Laura Dugger: That's so good. There's so much there in that first pillar of faithfulness. But for the second pillar of intimate knowing, what separates that intimate knowing from what you call a sanctified hookup?   Dr. Juli Slattery: I think, again, we have to go back to God's covenant love to understand what we're working towards. And if you have been in a covenant relationship with God through Jesus Christ for any amount of time, hopefully you've learned that one of the goals of your relationship with God is to know Him more intimately, to say, Hey, I know God and Jesus more intimately today than I did five years ago. [00:29:07] And through the struggles of life, through the highs and the lows, I've developed intimacy with the Lord.   Jesus talks about this when he talks about, you know, being so intimately connected to Him, it's like a vine in a branch. Like we're in communion all the time. So when we apply that to our sexual relationship, the goal of sex is not just to have our bodies exchange fluids, but it's to be on a journey together of deep knowing of sharing with each other.   Just like in our relationship with God, the valleys, the difficulties, actually are when intimacy can be forged even greater than when things are going well. And I think this is really important because for most married couples, they're going to experience some real challenges in their sex life.   Dr. Juli Slattery: challenges in their sex life and instead of just saying, well, we can't enjoy each other or we have different desires, looking at that as an opportunity of, how do I know my spouse more intimately because of the challenge that we're experiencing? [00:30:12]    When I work with couples who are going through difficulties like infertility or somebody's struggle with pornography or somebody's struggle with healing, what those couples will say is now we're beginning to talk at a deeper level than do you want to have sex or not. Now, we're talking about my shame underneath my sexuality or my frustration that I walked into marriage with these expectations and now I feel like they're not being met. So you're beginning to communicate about your heart, you're beginning to share the sexual journey.   Unfortunately I think there are a lot of married couples who don't see this. All they think of is sex. It's just what our bodies are doing instead of really looking at it as an opportunity to forge intimacy at a much deeper level.   Laura Dugger: The third pillar is sacrificial giving. I'd love for you to share your personal story about God calling you to sacrificial giving. [00:31:15]    Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah. One of the things that I've shared in my own life is that I'd say for the first 10 or 15 years of marriage, sex was one of those things that I wasn't very interested in, my husband was more interested in and particularly when we had three little boys running around the house, you know, I really avoided sex. I really didn't want to engage with it. I would always look for sort of the opportunity in the evening to say, “Hey, I need to do my devotions. This is my time.”    I remember going through that period of marriage where I would spend time with God usually in the evening and there would be times where it was like the Lord was really asking me, like if you really want to love Me and serve Me, why haven't you surrendered this area of your life to me?   And He began to just really prompt me to look at what it is to say, how do I love my husband sexually? How do I look at the conflict that I have within my own heart around sexuality and really begin to ask the Lord to heal that and to help me to enjoy what He has given me in marriage? [00:32:27] But during that season it was a lot of, how do I lay aside my own agenda and really understand my husband's sexual drive? How do I understand what would please him?    And Laura I just think a lot of us go into marriage and we think the sexual aspect of marriage will be something that won't require anything from us, that we just get to get, we get to receive. And for sure God has designed us to receive sexually, but He's also designed us so that we have to give sexually.   Why would he do that? Like people are like, why is God so cruel to make sex so difficult to navigate? But what God began to show me is He wants me to learn to love as Christ loves. Christ's love for us has always been sacrificial. And our love for Him in covenant is called to be sacrificial. We're called to lay down our own lives and take up the cross and follow Him. [00:33:30]    So I think there's something beautiful when we begin to understand that part of a healthy sex life is both the husband and wife approaching this with the attitude of, how do I serve you? How do I love you well? And when a husband and wife both have that attitude, the level of intimacy and even the level of pleasure has such a greater capacity than when we approach sexuality with just the mindset of what can I get from it.   Laura Dugger: Will you go even a little bit more specific with one of those quiet times with the Lord? What were you praying about? And what did he lead you to do?   Dr. Juli Slattery: So I was praying, you know, Lord, I just really want to know how to love You more and serve You. Like it was a time in my life where the Lord really was calling me deeper. What I just felt the Lord prompting me to do is to initiate sex with my husband.    I remember just kind of arguing with God in that moment, like, this is my time with You. You know, I think sometimes when we spend time with the Lord and we're studying the scripture, He wants us to actually put the Bible down and walk out what He's called us to do in his scripture. [00:34:45] And it was during that season of life again where God was just prompting me.   That night, that evening was the first time just prompting me like, hey, if you want to love Me more, if you want to know what My love is like, then go up and engage with your husband, because he's the one I've given you to love and he's the one I've given to love you. That really started us on a journey that didn't happen immediately, but over years of really surrendering this to God, we've learned what it is to serve each other and love each other well sexually.   Laura Dugger: And I'll just paraphrase from page 108 when that evening you sheepishly shared with your husband, when you came up and kind of surprised him and just said, "I was praying and it was like, God told me to come up here and initiate sex with you." And I love his response. He said, "No way! I was praying, asking God to tell you to do that." [00:35:44]    Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah, that's a true story. That really happened. So yeah, it's amazing how God works.   Laura Dugger: I love that so much. I want to make sure that you're up to date with our latest news. We have a new website. You can visit TheSavvySauce.com and see all of the latest updates. You may remember Francie Hinrichsen from Episode 132, where we talked about pursuing our God-given dreams. She is the amazing businesswoman who has carefully designed a brand new website for SavvySauce Charities, and we are thrilled with the final product.So I hope you check it out.    There you're going to find all of our podcasts, now with show notes and transcriptions listed, a scrapbook of various previous guests, and an easy place to join our email list to receive monthly encouragement and questions to ask your loved ones, so that you can have your own practical chats for intentional living. [00:36:45]    You will also be able to access our donation button or our mailing address for sending checks that are tax deductible, so that you can support the work of SavvySauce Charities and help us continue to reach the nations with the good news of Jesus Christ. So make sure you visit TheSavvySauce.com.    I just appreciate those personal stories, even how when you were meeting with the Lord, having your quiet time, how He called you to go and seek your husband. There's a part of Matthew 5:23-24, that illustrates this as well. It just says, "Therefore, if you're offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them. Then come and offer your gift."   I just appreciate how the Lord even values that horizontal relationship first and the restoration there, and then you come back and reconnect vertically as well. [00:37:49]    Dr. Juli Slattery: Boy, it's true. Like that's the living out of our love for a God, for sure. There's also scripture that talks about like, if you say that you love Me, but you're not loving your brother, then your love for me isn't genuine. So I'm paraphrasing there. But you know, the scripture that I think has really gotten me over the years that I don't think many people apply to sexuality, is when Jesus is teaching at the Sermon on the Mount, and He says, even pagans know how to be kind to those who are kind to them. Like even pagans know how to greet those who greet them. But I say to you, love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you.    Not that my husband is my enemy, or was persecuting me, but the attitude of even a pagan wife knows how to love her husband well, when he's doing everything she wants, when he's attractive to her, when he's bringing her flowers, when he's attentive. But it requires the supernatural love of God for us to reach inside of ourselves and love in a way that is sacrificial. [00:39:01]    God wants us to become great lovers. He wants us to learn to love like He loves. And that's not a natural love that the average husband or wife can accomplish on their own strength. It's something that comes through intimacy with God and through saying, Lord, I want to become more like you in every area of my life. And again, our sexual relationship is not excluded from that. It perhaps can be the most challenging and vulnerable aspect of showing us how to love like God loves us.   Laura Dugger: Just one more thing to draw out of your chapter. I appreciated your balance between encouraging us to ask ourselves, are we being a cheerful giver? Then you also quote our mutual friend, Michael Sytsma, who is a pastor and also a certified sex therapist and author and speaker, that he says, the Bible does talk about fasting, but speaks far more about the feasting. [00:40:06]    Dr. Juli Slattery: Dr. Sytsma is just a wealth of wisdom on this topic. I've learned a lot from him. And that really sort of ushers in that fourth pillar of covenant love. So we've covered faithfulness, intimate knowing, sacrificial giving, but the fourth pillar is passionate celebration.    God has designed sex to be a passionate celebration of our covenant with each other. It is the way in our bodies that we remember, and we rejoice together that we've covenanted our lives to one another. God created sex to be pleasurable. He created the climax, He created the dopamine centers in our brain that go off with great delight when we experience sex with each other.    This is an important pillar. If you're looking at your sex life, and you say, okay, we're faithful to each other, and we're building intimate knowing, and I have a servant attitude, but I experienced no pleasure, then something's wrong with your sex life. [00:41:10] That's something that you need to work toward as an individual and as a married couple. There are a lot of Christian women who would identify with that, who would say, yeah, I do this primarily for my husband. I don't really love it. I don't really know how to enjoy it.    I would say to that woman that that's not the fullness of what God has designed for your sex life to look like in a marriage. He may be challenging you as he's challenged me over the years to really work on what does it look like for me to enjoy this gift, not just to be a giver of it, but also to be a receiver of it.   Laura Dugger: If anybody has their book, I'm thinking specifically, there is this part on page 133, where you draw out some fascinating discoveries about passionate celebration even in our relationship with the Lord, what that looks like, but how that transfers to the marriage as well. [00:42:10] Just things that we wouldn't think of: prayer and singing releasing certain bonding hormones.   Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah. Yeah. So when you think about like our gatherings as a church body on Sundays or whenever you gather, what you're doing is you're gathering as part of the Bride of Christ. Usually we think of our Sunday services about the message. Yeah, the message is an important part, but it's not the most important part of our gathering. Our gathering is to express our love to our Savior and to our husband, to our heavenly Father, to all of it. We're rejoicing in Him. We're worshiping him as a collective group.    And what the research has shown is that when people gather together and they sing together out loud and when they dance, the same kind of chemicals are released in their brain as are released during sex. So they're getting the dopamine, they're getting the endorphins, they're getting the oxytocin. [00:43:15]    So when God's people get together and sing together and worship the Lord together, they're actually getting that same bonding hormone that unites you as the family of God, as a husband and wife would get together as they celebrate their covenant. So it's been really cool for me to study and to see these parallels of what God designed His relationship with us to be like, and then also what He designed marriage to be like. And to see that in many ways, even our bodily and neurological response will mirror each other.   Laura Dugger: It's just incredible to learn more about those relationships. Juli, as we seek to apply this conversation now to our own lives, what's an example of a possible next step forward?   Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah, I think, Laura, a lot of us as married Christians, we think about biblical sexuality in terms of morality. In other words, let's keep the rules, let's obey God. And as we talked about in the faithfulness pillar, that certainly is a very critical part of how we honor God and each other within our sexual relationship. [00:44:30]    But the other pillars are all about maturity. I think you can be married for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 30 years or more as a married couple and never considered, what does it look like for us to mature in our sexual love? How can we say five years from now that we love each other more deeply sexually than we than we do right now? What do we need to work on? Which of these four pillars requires our immediate attention?    The book God, Sex, and Your Marriage can be helpful. We also are releasing a video curriculum and workbook for couples to go through this material that can be really helpful that you could do as couples or do in a small group. But things don't change unless we become intentional about changing them.    And so, you know, I think for all of us, we need that challenge to not just settle for the way things are, but to really ask the Lord to begin redeeming sex within our marriage, again, as part of that larger spiritual battle of reclaiming God's design for sex within our world. [00:45:42]    Laura Dugger: If part of this plan of ours for intentionality includes learning more from you, where can we go to do that?   Dr. Juli Slattery: You can find everything that we do at AuthenticIntimacy.com. So there's a podcast, blog, this book and other books and workbooks and small group opportunities. So you can find all of that at our website, Authentic Intimacy dot com.   Laura Dugger: Wonderful. We will link to that, as always, in the show notes for today's episode. Juli, you have been on multiple times, so you know we are called The Savvy Sauce because "savvy" is synonymous with practical knowledge. And so is my final question for you today. What is your savvy sauce? [00:46:26]    Dr. Juli Slattery: Well, I would have to go back and listen to the episodes I've been on before to see if I say the same one all the time. But my savvy sauce is just really spending time with the Lord and really trying to make sure I reserve that first hour of the day for connection with Him, for surrendering to Him, learning from Him, just wanting to do what he calls me to do. So that's my savvy sauce right there.   Laura Dugger: Well, you are always a calm and steady and helpful guest. As we opened this discussion, we talked about that passage from Matthew 9:37, where Jesus is saying the field is ripe for the harvest, but the laborers are few. So I just want to say thank you for being a willing and skilled helper. I'm so grateful to get to have you as my returning guest.   Dr. Juli Slattery: Oh, Laura, thank you. Thanks for giving me a chance to share. It's always a joy to talk to you. [00:47:31]    Laura Dugger: Likewise.    One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term "gospel" before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news. Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves.   This means there is absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved. We need a Savior.   But God loved us so much, He made a way for His only Son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with Him. That is good news.   Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. [00:48:31] This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us.   Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.    So would you pray with me now? Heavenly Father, thank You for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to You. Will You clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare You as Lord of their life? We trust You to work and change lives now for eternity. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.    If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring Him for me, so me for Him. You get the opportunity to live your life for Him. [00:49:31] And at this podcast, we're called The Savvy Sauce for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So you ready to get started?    First, tell someone. Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision, my parents took me to Barnes & Noble and let me choose my own Bible. I selected the Quest NIV Bible, and I love it. You can start by reading the Book of John.    Also, get connected locally, which just means tell someone who's a part of a church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps, such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you.    We want to celebrate with you too, so feel free to leave a comment for us here if you did make a decision to follow Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read Scripture that describes this process.    Finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." [00:50:36] The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.    If you've already received this good news, I pray that you have someone else to share it with today. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.