Parenting, Cultural Shifts, and God’s Design for Sexuality w/ Dr. Juli Slattery

Aaron Smith (00:47)
Julie, thank you for coming on the Marriage After God Podcast. I’m super happy to have you. Welcome to the show.

Juli (00:51)
Yeah. thanks. Good to be with you. It’s been a while since we’ve had a chat, so I’m looking forward to this.

Aaron Smith (00:57)
Yeah, it’s always awesome. When you came across my email, your publicist was wanting to have you on the show and I was like, that’s so awesome. I haven’t heard from Julie in a long time. And I’ve always loved what you do because this topic of sexuality is probably more pertinent now than ever. so I just pray that all those that are listening today that you guys would tune in for the whole episode and really enjoy.

our conversation because we’re going to just we’re going to get into Julie and her story and also this new book that she’s written. It’s called Surrendered Sexuality, but it’s a topic that all of us as Christians should be really considering. And you know, it’s something that we already always consider. It’s probably privately considered or just internally in our heads even. But it’s something that really matters. So, Julie, why don’t you share with our audience who you are, your background and your family and just get a little bit get our audience a little bit.

to know you better.

Juli (01:51)
Sure, yeah, absolutely. So I am Julie. My background is I’m a clinical psychologist from the time I was a young adult. Always had a passion just for helping people apply biblical truth to their lives, which in some sense is psychology. So from a biblical perspective. And then around 2012, just the Lord put it on my heart very kind of clear that He was calling me to

full-time address sexuality, so topics of sexuality. So that’s been my ministry and really my heart for the last 13 years. Personally, I’ve been married to my husband Mike for 31 years and we have three sons who are between the ages of 22 and 28. So empty nesters, learning how to enter into this next stage of parenting.

adult children. So yeah, that’s a little bit about me.

Aaron Smith (02:47)
Any grandkids yet or not yet?

Juli (02:49)
No, not yet. We have one son who’s married and we have two grand dogs with them. So I don’t know. They’re trying out on dogs first, but yeah.

Aaron Smith (02:56)
Okay.

Okay, yes,

that’s so cool. 31 years is amazing. I always just want to highlight that when I hear about marriages that have been married for so long because it’s so unique these days. I think it used to be more common. Just wonderfully, he has been trucking along and you have three grown kids. My son is, my oldest son is about to be 13, so I’m just about to enter the teenage years. So I’m a little bit behind you, but I’m getting there.

Juli (03:14)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Okay. That’s

okay. That’s good. Yeah. You’re, yeah, go ahead.

Aaron Smith (03:28)
So are you a good, I

was just gonna ask, are you a practicing clinician? Do you do actual clinical psychology or are you full-time authentic intimacy?

Juli (03:39)
I’m full-time authentic intimacy, so I haven’t been in formal practice since about 2008, but I do a lot of like just mentoring and discipling just to be with people, but not in a clinical format.

Aaron Smith (03:54)
Yeah, you’re able to help a lot more people in this more public format, huh?

Juli (03:58)
Yeah, yeah. just without the barriers of needing to be there every weekend on office and you know, like all the stuff that comes with that, just there was no way I could do that and do ministry at the same time.

Aaron Smith (04:12)
I want to ask about your background as a psychologist. I just had an interview a while ago and they were bringing up how this couple were looking for therapists or therapy or counseling. And they had a hard time finding because they didn’t just want to go to anyone. And I know a lot of believers feel the same way. I felt this way. There’s been times that my wife and I have been wanting to see a professional for various reasons.

And it’s like, who do we go see? And is that person going to have a biblical mind about what they’re telling us? are they going to have… Like, often it’s very separate. like we have psychology over here on one hand, on a shelf, and then we have the Bible and spirituality over here on another shelf. And you come at it from a perspective of what, like you just said, like, yes, it’s on some sense, it’s psychology. It’s the way our minds work. It’s the way God designed our minds and bodies and chemical systems and all the things.

Juli (04:48)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Aaron Smith (05:04)
How would, do you see that this is an issue? there a group of clinical psychologists that are strong Bible believers and that’s, and they start from a foundation of the Word of God and then they apply the other things to that? And how would someone find that?

Juli (05:19)
Yeah, I would say there aren’t a whole lot, honestly, Erin. I think we have a growing field of what we might call biblical counseling, and that’s different. That’s people who would take scripture passages and apply it to everyday life, which is important. But then you enter into the kind of nuance of, okay, well, what about medication for depression and sometimes prayer and

faith doesn’t cure everything or what about like eating disorders? Like there aren’t Bible verses for everything. And so that’s when people kind of say, well, what about psychology? What about all the science behind psychology? And by and large, a lot of the people who are trained in psychology would say, I’m still a Christian, but the bedrock of what I practice and teach is psychological principles, which unfortunately many times

are kind of exercised through more humanism. So it’s very difficult to find somebody who is trained in psychological principles and research and all of that while maintaining a biblical worldview. And God has just been gracious to me from the time I started getting my training to be able to train under some people that really taught me how to integrate and not feel limited to just Bible verses.

while also staying very grounded in a worldview that’s not humanistic but is glorifying to God and centered in scripture. there are some people like that around. I think it’s not just looking at their training but also meeting with them and asking questions that help you see, do they have the clinical training? But also what comes first?

psychology or honoring God and God’s word. And so that might take a meeting or two to figure out, but it’s important to have both.

Aaron Smith (07:12)
Yeah, I feel like this is, especially in today’s society and just the world we live in, I personally believe like psychology, science, all of the sciences, the more you understand the Word of God and who God is, like they actually fall into place better. You know, you start seeing creationists now and like scientists and just in other areas of learning and understanding and finding the truths, not

Juli (07:28)
Right.

Aaron Smith (07:40)
saying, let’s find out the answer in the Bible and then work backwards. they understand the Bible and they look at the things and they ask the right questions using the same methods to get to those answers. And I personally believe the same thing. think psychology, like any other science, founded on the Word of God, is going to real fruit because I think about things like positive thinking, right? That is a biblical concept. Like we’re told to think on

Juli (08:05)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (08:06)
of not have our minds on evil things and not have our minds on bad things. But when we separate the Word of God, then we just end up with, like you said, a humanist like, here’s a magic pill. Here’s a better way of thinking. You can better yourself in this way without God at all. And God says, no, the reason I want you to have your mind like this, the reason I want you to be walking this way, the reason I want you to think like this is for your good. And so I just feel sad when a lot of people want help.

and they don’t know where to get it. so you have people that maybe aren’t trained well enough or they’re afraid to go to someone who’s professional because they think, I’m one of those. I would be afraid to encourage someone to just go talk to specifically, you know, just a psychologist or a therapist. Cause my fear would be like, they going to remind them of what the Bible says is true while giving them tools that they’ve learned? And I don’t know, I felt the same way. I’m like, this just going to, you know, are they just going to try and

Juli (08:34)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (09:02)
use things that I don’t believe in, use things that they want to encourage me to go do. So I don’t know what the answer is. And it sounds like, like you said, going and asking questions and exploring thoughtfully with wisdom and patience rather than just jumping in and saying, okay, here’s the first person that has a degree. I’m going to go talk to them.

Juli (09:20)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s tricky.

Aaron Smith (09:24)
So you, 31 years married, three kids, you’re a writer, you have a ministry that you’ve done, you’ve done tons of speaking. You endorsed, not just endorsed, you did the forward for one of our first books. So we really appreciate that. What is it that currently you’re seeing in the world and all you’re doing, because you get to talk to a lot of people, you get to go lot of places. ⁓

Juli (09:36)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (09:49)
And I’m sure we can point things out, but what are some major issues that you’re finding in marriages and families around sexuality? are they anything new or is it just a bunch of the same stuff or is it just amplified what’s going on? Are you seeing new trends?

Juli (10:04)
Yeah. Boy, I would say yes and so both of those and the things that were always there like unfortunately sexual trauma, like pornography, like disconnect between a husband and wife sexually, those sort of things are still there, but they’re worse than probably they’ve ever been. But I think the reason why that’s true

and it’s because we’re seeing something different. And the thing that we’re seeing that’s different, and I would say this has really been increasing over the last maybe decade or so, is we’ve changed our assumptions about the purpose of sexuality and marriage and romance from being, the purpose of all this is so that we would enter into family, we’d enter into marriage and covenant, sex is about

marriage, it’s about procreating, it’s about intimacy between a husband and wife. Like if we were to pull Americans 20, 30 years ago, even though the majority of people wouldn’t be Christians, they would still have sort of that Judeo-Christian understanding of the purpose of romance and marriage and sex. Now, we have fully embraced kind of the postmodern humanistic

perspective of, actually sex and romance are about me finding the greatest fulfillment I can find and about me having the free expression of who I am as an individual. And we’ve seen that rapidly increase with social media and the internet and pornography. But instead of the majority of Americans looking at that and saying, you know, those kinds of behaviors are wrong,

Aaron Smith (11:36)
Done!

Juli (11:45)
we now have debates of whether they’re wrong. Like lot of people think there’s nothing wrong with pornography. A lot of people believe that if you’re not sexually satisfied in a marriage, you shouldn’t stay in it or that you should live together first to see if you’re sexually compatible. And so these are really beliefs that are based in a worldview that says it’s all about me, it’s all about my individuality, my self-expression.

my feelings of finding somebody who satisfies me and completes me. And so that again, those assumptions are so common today that we don’t even think to question them. And we start with those assumptions, Erin, that is just going to really multiply the complexities that we’re seeing in marriage, the sin struggles we’re seeing, broken marriages, confusion around sexuality, not really…

even knowing what wholeness looks like. So if I were to summarize it, that’s kind of the evolution of what I’ve seen over the last 15 years.

Aaron Smith (12:45)
Do you feel like this, we’re seeing a, essentially the culmination, the fruit of what kind of began in the 70s, a lot of the sex dragon elks at all, like free love moving forward and just a full embracing of our younger generation of sex as a means to an end, a means to self.

Juli (13:04)
Yes, yeah.

Yeah, and it’s not just me who’s seeing it. When you look at the research, like some of the research that’s done by the Barna Group or Gallup poll or Pew Foundation, like all of that research is saying that we’ve had a shift in the way we understand marriage, sexuality, romance, love, and it’s progressively increasing, particularly among the younger generation that these things are not about family.

family happens, if marriage happens, if kids happen, then great, but that’s not for everyone. What’s more important is that you figure out who is the true you and you find whoever it is that satisfies you. Whether that’s a threesome like the younger generation, like over 20 % of the younger generation thinks there’s nothing wrong with polyamory, which is in relationships with multiples.

And so we’re increasingly seeing that what we view as the purpose and the foundation of our sexuality is self-expression. And that’s just going to warp everything, including how a man and a woman approach marriage. If it’s about self-satisfaction and self-expression, that’s going to warp how you approach your sex life and marriage.

Aaron Smith (14:24)
So did, it’s probably hard to pinpoint, like it’s easy for me, like the 70s, there was this big movement, right? But we have like, on so many fronts, digital media, social media, news, books, movies over the last 50, 60 years.

Juli (14:30)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (14:43)
probably

forever actually. I think about Roman Empire and the kinds of things that they entertain themselves with. I think like sexuality, it’s been under attack since the very beginning. But like you said, just a handful of years ago, decades ago, even if they weren’t Christian, they would have had a Judeo-Christian perspective. Like the definitions would have all been the same of everything, of gender, sex, of marriage. We all kind of operate in the same, whether we believed

Juli (15:04)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (15:10)
in God or not, whether we believe the Bible or not, we believe the premises that were in the Bible. So we can’t necessarily pinpoint the exact things that did all of this. It’s clearly spiritual, clearly multifaceted. But how much, and I want to emphasize this because I have a premise I’m starting with and I could be wrong, but how much of this do you feel like falls on the parents?

Juli (15:23)
Yeah.

Okay.

Aaron Smith (15:36)
and how we have the royal we, our parents, my parents’ parents, stayed silent on these topics while the world didn’t. So the Christian parents, and not just Christian parents, the reason I said, well, Jennifer and I started our unveiled wife years ago, 13, 14 years ago. She wrote an article, this was all new to us. were newly, we were only four and a half years married, but we were like, let’s just share what God’s teaching us.

Juli (15:37)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (16:05)
And she wrote an article on the struggles of intimacy in marriage. the pain and didn’t use it. Even to this day, she won’t write anything. She won’t even use the word sex. She uses the word intimacy. doesn’t like, she wants to make things very, I don’t know the word is, appropriate. And I’m okay with that. So she was very careful in the kinds of words she used. She didn’t give details of anything. Just generally, this is, you know, there was pain, this was hard, I had to trust God. And we got an email from a

Juli (16:17)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Aaron Smith (16:35)
quote unquote Christian. I can probably find it to this day. I think I kept it, but it was super long. And it was this woman just waiting my wife for like, how dare her talk about these things. These should remain in, you know, private. No one should ever know any of this stuff. And essentially just challenged our, our belief, our Christianity that how can we have Christians talk about these things. And I think it was so vanilla, so appropriate, so clean. was nothing vulgar. It was not.

Juli (16:43)
Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (17:04)
Like nowadays, Christians that are okay with talking about this stuff, they’ll talk about, they’ll literally say anything. Back then it was like, we were being very careful and there was this assumption that you’re not allowed to talk about this stuff. This is not okay. Now, thank God we didn’t stop because she was the only email we ever got like that. Everyone else was like, thank you, I wish more people were talking about this stuff because I feel like we can’t talk about it. I feel like it’s got to be private. So how much of what we’re seeing today is a direct result of

Juli (17:11)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (17:34)
silence of reading these uncomfortable conversations. We don’t talk about sex. We don’t talk about sex. Keep it to yourself. What you do in the hall is yours. What you do behind closed doors, I don’t want to

Juli (17:34)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Some of the other factors that you mentioned are certainly at play when you think about like the 1970s, what happened? Birth control and abortion where sex was no longer tied with the potential for life. So we can look at those changes. We can look at the internet. We can look at social media pornography. Like all those things have contributed, but what you’re saying is really key.

Where did we play offense, not just defense? Like I think initially purity culture and the things the church was saying or the family was saying, was these things are bad, don’t do these things. But there was no offense of actually here’s what God’s plan for sex is and this is why he created us as sexual people and here are the places we have to pursue truth and to work out our struggles. And it was crickets for that.

And it’s, when you look historically, it’s been generations of parents and Christian leaders who have been silent and they pass on a heritage of silence. And so you talk to pastors and you ask them, how many classes did you have in seminary on sexuality? And a lot of them will say, none, maybe one class. And then they’re instructed to disciple their people. Well, they haven’t.

been taught or discipled. it’s been a heritage of this and like you said with that email that the woman sent and I’ve gotten emails like that too, there’s the shame that is attached to sexuality. There’s almost an instinctive, we have to separate God and sex kind of reaction to these things. Whereas when we look at scripture, if we read it faithfully, people

can blush when they read how honest God was about sexuality in the Bible. So it’s not biblical. It’s not a biblical tradition. And to the question that you’re asking, I think that is a huge component of this because the world owns this conversation. Even within churches and Christian families, we’ve been discipled in how to think about our sexuality from the world, even if we know the biblical rules.

and the biblical rules don’t make sense if you just tack them onto a cultural worldview related to sexuality. And so I feel like we’ve got a lot of work to do in regaining that ground, which is part of the reason that I wrote Surrender to Sexuality and why I do what I do, because we’ve got to be actively discipling and taking back the conversation for people who have an interest in where’s God in the midst of all this.

Aaron Smith (20:24)
Yeah, I think also in the 70s, maybe it was in 80s, isn’t that when no fault divorce also was legalized? And yeah, and so we just had like a conglomeration of things that just gave easier allowance to things where there was boundaries before. And now it’s like, those boundaries away and see what happens. But you mentioned defense and the church and purity culture. I’ve had so many interviews and so many conversations and

Juli (20:31)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Yeah.

Aaron Smith (20:52)
purity culture in a sense. It was the churches. It’s very similar to prohibition in the United States. It’s just alcohol. That’ll fix the problem. And then everyone just found ways of getting alcohol other ways. But instead of actually having, like you said, a biblical view of sexuality, instead, we just took a different posture of what the church had been doing for a long time of what’s proper, what’s appropriate.

Juli (21:14)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (21:14)
You we don’t talk about certain things because that’s not proper. Rather than, no, we should talk about the things that the Bible desires us to talk about. We should have conversations about the that the Bible desires us to have a conversation about. You know, why, how do you have your child, you know, encourage them to read the Bible and then want to block out all of the things in the Bible that reference sexuality? You just can’t. It starts from the very beginning throughout the whole Bible.

And I think the purpose behind that is so that there’s a healthy conversation about a healthy understanding of it. You can see good and bad all throughout the Bible with sexuality. And God’s first commandment had to do with sexuality. It was be fruitful and multiply. And so the defense, I feel like, wasn’t even a good defense. was more of a bandaid that actually caused more hurt when it’s been ripped off. A lot of people were trying to rip off the bandaid of instead of understanding, like you talk about in your book, that

Juli (21:53)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (22:08)
sex is actually a good thing that God gave us. The church said sex is bad, sex is evil, sex is sinful. that was essentially what the period of culture was. then all of a sudden, like me and my wife would get married. We’re like, now we’re supposed to feel good about this. This has been a shameful thing growing up. This is an ugly thing. And now we’re supposed to be excited about it. And it’s supposed to just be beautiful all of sudden.

Juli (22:15)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Aaron Smith (22:35)
because now it’s in the right context rather than actually know it’s a good, beautiful thing. That’s why you protect it. I try and tell my kids, like, sex is a beautiful thing. It’s an awesome thing, but it’s, that’s why we protect it. It’s why you protect yourself and others because you don’t want to ruin that good thing. You don’t want to get up. And we’ve, we’ve, we’ve been too afraid as a church. We again, I say, I always say we, but it’s the idea of leadership has been to avoid the conversation altogether and just.

Juli (22:41)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Aaron Smith (23:04)
Just don’t do it. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. That’s easier than actually discipleship. So what are some steps that like I personally believe this goes back to mom and dad, me and my wife. Like I can’t rely on my pastor to be able to discipleship my children well enough in this topic. What are some things that parents need to start doing right away in this conversation?

Juli (23:08)
Right. Yeah.

Hmm. ⁓

Yeah.

Aaron Smith (23:28)
Talking is one of them, but what some

of the things, what what what are, what are you going be doing to fight this battle better?

Juli (23:33)
my goodness, praying is a great starting place. And I’ll answer your question, but I also want to bounce off something that you said around purity culture. I know it’s painting with a broad brush and there was some good work that was done in the 80s or 90s and people were, I think, doing the best they could responding to what was happening in the cultural moment. And we look back and we’re like, okay, here’s where it felt

has fallen short, but there were some good things. And I know some of the people who were sort of on the front lines of that and I know their hearts. So, but it’s just like, what have we learned and how can we do better for this generation? And let’s also acknowledge that the conversations and issues have become way more complex and it has forced, the complexity of the conversation has forced us to go deeper. So for example, if you say,

know, save sex from marriage. Okay, that advice might have made sense in the 1990s, but now you’ve got the question, well, what about marriage between two men? Like, what if you’ve got a kid who’s same sex attracted or bisexual or struggling with gender? Like even that advice doesn’t resonate with their particular struggle. Or what if I want to save sex from marriage, but I’m addicted to pornography?

And so the realities and complexities that our kids are facing today are exposing how limited our messaging was. And so that means that we as parents have to go much deeper in our own understanding of biblical sexuality. And it can’t just be, this is a great gift, wants you to enjoy the fullness of it, so save it. Because when we look at the research, we’re seeing

that in this generation, some of the research is showing that 20 % of teenagers and young adults identifies LGBT. So if you just say to them, this is a good gift, save it for marriage, you’re missing one out of every five teen or young adult in what they’re currently experiencing. Or you look at the research about the use of pornography among that same generation for

guys, it’s in the 90s as far as percentile and for girls, it’s like 70%. And so we have to, as parents, start with understanding that this is a much more complex conversation than what we ever thought it was. And so I think that’s the first step for a lot of parents is our pastors aren’t gonna do this, our youth pastors aren’t gonna do it, and so we have to first be

equipped to have that broader worldview, that depth of biblical truth so that we can engage with our kids in conversations and feel equipped when the complexity and the pain of all this comes to the surface.

Aaron Smith (26:19)
I want to bounce something back off what you said. Also, I have been encouraged lately, I feel like in the last handful of years, a strong, I don’t want to say resurgence, but just pastors stepping up and actually being told to talk about these topics. And I want to see more of it, know, pastors not being afraid to say what the Bible, what God says about men and women.

and marriage and be bold for that and say, is the truth and you were made in God’s image and this is what’s real about you. Now, we know you feel this way, but here’s what’s true. So you’re so right. And in our homes, something that I’m constantly confronted with, because even if I wanted to like, and I try, we try and avoid certain shows because they’ll have a LGBT bent in it, so I’ll have a character.

Juli (27:05)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (27:06)
And I see these things and I’m like, my gosh. Okay. So I try and avoid it. And so we can try and avoid as much as possible, but we get in the car and drive anywhere and we’re at a parking lot and this person walks by and it’s, my kids are not, they’re so smart. They’re like, why is that guy a girl? They just, they, of course you could tell. And I’m like, well, you know, and I’m trying, my wife and I try to not slough things off as bad. I mean, in the moment we’re like,

Juli (27:20)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (27:35)
I don’t want to talk about this right now. I don’t want to have to explain this. But, you know, we try our best and we want to tell them the truth and also teach them that they can still have love and empathy and compassion for these people. And so we say, you know, some people these days, think that they’re a boy, that God made them a boy, but they think they’re a girl. And they’re like, really? And I’m like,

Juli (27:36)
Yeah

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (27:58)
you know, but they’re still made in God’s image and we need to love them and pray for them. like having this balance of the truth of what’s going on and a biblical perspective on how to perceive that, not just accept it and say it’s okay. We say, that’s not okay. It’s actually wrong. God doesn’t like that. God wants them to be whole and healthy and wants them to see themselves the way he sees them, but not teach them to be afraid or hate. And so saying that that’s why we need to love them and pray for them. And, that

Juli (28:10)
Right.

Right.

Aaron Smith (28:26)
That is so hard to do these days. no avoiding it. It’s everywhere. But you’re right, having that, having a biblical foundation, lots of prayer. starting with our kids just from Genesis is like, how did, what’s God’s design? Let’s start there.

Juli (28:30)
Yeah.

Yeah,

and I think even going a step even before that, instead of just saying some people think they’re a boy when really they’re girl, like the step before that is the question, how do we know what’s true? And this is a conversation you can have with a five-year-old. How do we know what’s true? And in our world, a lot of people believe we know what’s true by looking at how we feel.

Aaron Smith (28:57)
Yeah.

Juli (29:09)
and what we experience and what we want. The Bible tells us that if we love God, we’re gonna look to God to find out what’s true. Okay, now right there in those few sentences, you’re distinguishing between the postmodern worldview that we live in and the biblical worldview we wanna be rooted in. And so when we begin to teach our kids

at a very early age something that foundational, now we can start to say, do you remember how we talked about how some people believe they find what’s true by how they feel? Well, that person’s dressing like a girl because they’re relying on what they feel. But as people who love God, how do we know what’s true? You know, we know it’s true by what does God say? And God says that he created us.

boy or girl and that either one is good but that’s who we are. We look at our bodies, how God created us. So I think it’s critical, Erin, that we distinguish between the worldviews that fuel this. And it’s not just with LGBT, it’s also why do we stay married? know, mommy and daddy sometimes get frustrated but we don’t make decisions just on how we feel. When we’re angry, we make decisions on what God says.

Aaron Smith (30:16)
Yeah.

Juli (30:24)
And God says that when we get married, we make a promise to each other to love each other, not leave each other. So it’s giving them a framework for how we make decisions. And it’s creating a distinction between our culture and every TV show you see and why we keep going back to God’s word, why we go to church, why we pray, because we want to make sure that we make decisions and find truth from God.

That’s one of the core foundational things that I talk to parents about is you have to distinguish the worldview because otherwise these Christian kids are growing up with a postmodern worldview and they don’t even realize it’s not biblical.

Aaron Smith (31:04)
The devil hates what Yuri just said, by the way. It’s been his strategy. is, you know, did God really say, you know, from very beginning and he’s doing that? I would imagine, I know this for a fact because I think we all do it. I do it because there’s times when we operate in our feelings. I know it’s true, but what I feel feels way more true. I think it’s hard.

Juli (31:07)
Yeah. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Aaron Smith (31:33)
There’s been a lot of teaching and discipleship over the years of that’s exactly how we should decide what’s true. We’re going to, you know, as a Jesus of the Bible, going to put ourselves into, like, how does that make me feel? How does that apply to me? And so I think it’s very hard for parents to be able to help their children distinguish truth because they themselves have a hard time understanding truth from the lie. And they’re like, well, it doesn’t feel

Juli (31:52)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (32:00)
A perfect example for me for so long with my addiction to pornography over the years. I’ve been free for like 10 years now. I mean, I definitely have temptation every day. I have issues periodically, but my addiction is gone. God’s freed me from that. But for a long time, I would read the truths in the Word of God. know, 1 Corinthians 10.13, with every temptation, God will provide a way of escape that you might…

Juli (32:11)
Hmm.

Aaron Smith (32:28)
you rise up underneath it. I’m like, yeah, that sounds great, but that doesn’t work for me. I don’t feel like I have a way out every time I’m tempted. And what’s interesting is that just what I said, I don’t feel like I have a way out. And what had to change for me was I had to stop believing what I felt about myself, about my addiction, this sin in my life, and start believing what God had said about it.

Juli (32:35)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Aaron Smith (32:57)
that he has set me free in Christ. That’s why he came, set me free. That I am no longer a slave to sin, that I am set free from the bonds of sin and death. Like these things are true now, not later. But if we’re taught to rely on our feelings and our circumstances and our emotions, those things that God says, they’ll never match up. And every once in when they do, they’re cool, right now it’s working. But like,

Juli (33:18)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (33:22)
That’s not how life works. I think you’re nailing something, Julie, with this, starting with how do we understand truth? Where do we find truth? And I think that is a major theme that’s happening in our world right now. People are a truth. don’t know where to get the truth, but they’re seeking a truth because we’re tired of the lies. And so I think it is going to potentially lead to

Juli (33:22)
He

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (33:48)
revival it is for sure in many lives, but bigger so when people realize like, wait a minute, truth is in Christ. We need to find Word of God. What are some strategies as parents to help our children? I say this, how can we, me and my wife, other people listening, start with that practice of balancing? Am I relying currently on my feelings and emotions to guide my thoughts and my actions?

Juli (33:51)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Aaron Smith (34:16)
Or am I relying on truth and where do I find that? How can we start making those changes today so that we can actually pass it down to our kids?

Juli (34:16)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

yeah. Well, a lot of what you said is so good there. The reality is that the lies feel more true than the truth a lot of the times, which is why we can read our Bibles and nod our heads like, yeah, that’s true. God forgives me. My sin is separated from me, but we don’t really believe it because it doesn’t feel true. We don’t live like we believe it. And so that is why

God says without faith it’s impossible to please me because if you’re going to please me, you have to believe by faith that God exists and he rewards those who earnestly seek him. And so I think even acknowledging to our kids that our feelings can feel a lot more powerful than what we believe is true and validating that in them and feelings matter. Feelings inform us about what’s going on, but they don’t define what’s true.

And I think even using everyday examples like a compass, you know, how we get lost sometimes and it feels like you’re headed towards this way, but if you’re not looking at something like a GPS that reroutes you, you’re going to get lost. So looking for those kinds of examples and again, it doesn’t have to start with sexuality. It can start with anger and jealousy and you know, all the things that kids do and they talk about lying and again, how do we

How do we define what’s good for us? How do we know what’s true? Well, we go back to the Bible and in family devotions, having those kinds of conversations that kids can identify with. Another thing that I remember hearing a pastor say like 10 years ago, and this particular pastor ministered in San Francisco. So you’re on the West Coast as well. And I feel like cities like San Francisco were way ahead of the game in terms of wrestling with culture.

And I remember this particular pastor saying, I’m teaching my kids that every single time we step out of our house, we are entering a mission field. And that gives the framework that we’re going into a space where people don’t see the world the way we see it. And God loves everyone, God loves these people, and he wants to show his love to them.

And I think that’s key. That’s a shift from my generation to the generation that’s being raised today. Again, when I was being raised, we had sort of a Judeo-Christian community or ethic, and now we don’t. And so walking into a parking lot and, you know, in a mall or whatever, even online, the shows, let’s remember that people don’t think the way we do because we’ve been changed by God.

change to think differently about everything. Money, how we treat people, telling the truth, and sexuality. So I think that’s really key. then another thing I’ll say that I think is really sort of a touchstone is having the goal to be like surrender, integrity, not purity, not perfection. Okay, so I think you said your oldest kid is 13, is that right?

Aaron Smith (37:26)
This video is about to be 13, yeah.

Juli (37:28)
Okay, all right, so this is gonna bother you and I’m sorry to say this, but like every single one of your kids, the kids being raised in this generation are going to be impacted by some kind of sexual sin. Like almost without fail. Gonna be exposed to pornography, gonna engage at some level in sexting, know, going to be asking questions about what is marriage and why can’t it be between two men and I’m feeling

confusion about these things. Like it’s just so rampant, Erin, that if we have the goal of we don’t want our kids to ever have to engage with any of this stuff, we’re going to feel like they failed and we failed when that happens. And what I’ve had to learn as a parent is the goal is not to raise pure kids. The goal is to learn to raise kids who need Jesus and who know Jesus. And so really looking for those opportunities of

bringing them back to the gospel, bringing us back to the gospel of this is why Christ died. And we can’t do it in our own strength. And we will get our lunch eaten by the world and by the enemy and by our flesh. And so having that sort of posture that we are going to fail towards Jesus and not try to keep them in a pristine box that they’re not gonna be impacted by these things.

And again, I’ve walked through this as a parent and it’s a hard shift to make because none of us want to think that our kids are going to see porn or struggle with some of these things. But in the reality, the vast majority of them will.

Aaron Smith (39:02)
Well, I’m really frustrated with the way the world’s gone, especially with social media. These are all very spiritual things, and I don’t feel like parents realize how spiritual the algorithms of social media platforms are, of YouTube, of what’s popular. And when I was a kid, I was first exposed to pornography.

Juli (39:08)
Yeah.

Yes.

Aaron Smith (39:26)
And I’ve actually so in doing a lot of prayer about my past, because you talk about this in your book, talking about healing from past wounds and traumas. for me, I didn’t have any anything happen to me by other people. But I for sure now looking back, realize that I was definitely targeted spiritually. And I mean, that is I think about all these super random occurrences that just don’t happen to everyone.

Juli (39:34)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (39:53)
That happened to me, you know, walking home and seeing a, it’s so funny because we didn’t have cell phones or anything back then. But just a, it was like a playing card on the ground, little street with three houses. And it was a pornographic playing card. I was by myself. It was random. And that was like my first experience, I believe. And I have, I almost remember almost nothing about my childhood. Not, I don’t believe it’s cause of trauma. just.

Juli (39:54)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (40:19)
I don’t think my brain’s built that way. I don’t know why. But I can remember nearly every occurrence with pornography. And I look back at all these situations. I had a TV that wasn’t even hooked up to cable. And I don’t even think cable existed back then. It was like the 13 channels back when I was this young. But there was a TV in that room that we used just for Nintendo that we had. The original Nintendo. But I remember in the middle of the night,

Juli (40:26)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (40:46)
only it would have static and there would be a pornographic channel on my tv i haven’t talked about this much but i just i’m trying to point out how spiritual these things are like you said the exposure it’s not like my parents exposed me to any things not like they i had a tv that had no channels and yet somehow got something from a from a signal okay and if i look at these things i’m like this is that was clearly the enemy okay

Juli (40:53)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (41:15)
Now

I look at social media, my wife’s flowers, gardening, all these things that has nothing to do nothing. My feed, you can’t even scroll for half a second until something pops up. I didn’t search for anything, I didn’t look for anything, I didn’t say anything, and then stuff shows up. And so I’ve had to get rid of all the apps off my phone and really minimize my use just in general because it’s so bad. And I just feel for…

Juli (41:20)
Next.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (41:42)
like you’re just talking about, they’re not looking for it. They may, maybe, but they may not even be looking for it. And it’s going to be, they’re going to be exposed. What are some safeguards with social? I’m talking about this because, I hate cell phones. I hate social media. hate all these things. I know there’s use and good in them, but they’re so destructive. Are you seeing a huge trend with, cause you said 90 % of, I would imagine it’s probably closer to a hundred percent with guys.

Juli (41:48)
Yeah. No.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah,

it’s in the 90s depending on the survey you look at or the research. It’s somewhere between 90 and 100. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (42:15)
Well, I

would imagine nowadays pornography is defined very differently than it used to be. You you watch a TV show and there’s a full on sex scene in it. And like people would probably consider that pornography. And you have all this less than pornography stuff on social media. It’s pornography. It’s definitely sexual nature. It’s meant to entice. It’s meant to engage those parts of our brains and hearts, I should say.

Juli (42:22)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (42:42)
What do you have to say about social media? What’s your, what are you seeing? What’s your heart on?

Juli (42:45)
Yeah.

Yeah, boy, it’s everything that you said. It’s got demonic threads into it. It’s just, and not just social media, but we look at what’s coming, Erin, and the integration of AI, artificial intelligence with pornography, like some of what’s being created now where you can essentially create your own fantasy through

using artificial intelligence and that’s only going to, with virtual reality, get worse. So some of the things that we’re starting to see are even more terrifying. And the research that’s giving recommendations to parents right now is not even coming from a Christian perspective, but just brain science of how anxious and depressed our kids are, how detached they are. And the research says that

really in some ways as much as you can delay cell phones and pornography delay because the brain in those young teen years like tween years, teen years is wired to learn so rapidly that exposure to pornography and things on social media have a greater impact at 13 than they will at 18. And they’re still going to have an impact at 18, but the

but the neurology and the way the brain is wired to learn at those ages is so profound that if you can keep those devices away from your kids longer, the longer the better. And so kind of the standard that I think a lot of people are putting out there right now, no cell phones or smartphones until high school age and no social media until at least 16. And they’re also really recommending that

you do training with your kids on these things. So I think they’re creating apps and devices where you’re more capable of doing this now than you were probably five years ago, like mirroring their devices to your devices so you can do some training. I know some people believe in like even creating with your kids a contract of how we’re going to use technology and what’s having them come up with what are the consequences if

Aaron Smith (44:40)
How did you do this?

Juli (44:54)
you’re misusing this technology, like for your own good, what would be some consequences? you think about it like a driver’s permit. Nobody just says, oh, you turned 16, here’s the keys to the car, have fun. You have a whole year of teaching and training and driving with them. And so approaching technology that way. And I think it’s critical that those years of like 14 to 18, we are doing a lot of introducing and training because some families

Aaron Smith (45:05)
Yeah, you to.

Juli (45:22)
try to protect their kids from all these devices and then they leave the home at 18 with zero exposure, zero training and they don’t know what to do with what they’re exposed to. that’s some of not just what I’m seeing but what I’m learning from people who are experts in these fields.

Aaron Smith (45:28)
Yeah.

If I I know the effect that pornography had on my own mind something that I like I said I have to deal with every single day of my life at 41, you know, and it’s and I I Could only imagine How much worse it would be if I had what is available today back then? ⁓ It scares me so I think what you’re saying is It’s probably more important than people realize

Juli (45:49)
Hmm, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Aaron Smith (46:07)
Having specific intentional training of how to use these things rather than being used by them. Understanding how they work. Explaining to my, my son’s so inquisitive, he’s just always curious and we try and answer all of our kids’ questions and if we don’t want to answer it, we don’t say we don’t know. We or we say we don’t know if we don’t know, but we say, I want to answer this, but you’re not ready for me to answer this. Wait until you’re a older. We always let them know that we’re willing to answer, but.

Juli (46:15)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (46:34)
I wanted to wait, but like when it comes to devices, we may not be doing this perfectly, but we try and always do supervised, like they’re around us. It’s limited. So an hour a week, know, half hour a week. They don’t get free rein to anything ever. When it comes to the TV, like we have to turn the TV on. if I go to the adult set, like there’s like the adult account and then the kids account.

Juli (46:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (47:01)
But you can’t always get stuff in the kids’ accounts. When we go to the adults’ account, like, hey, you guys, we don’t know what’s going to show up on this front page. It could be anything. Please turn away so we can find the show for you that we want you to watch. But we explain to them why they can’t look. Because there’s all sorts of stuff up, and we can’t control any of it. It just shows whatever it wants to show. We don’t want you to be. And so they’re starting in a osmosis way to understand how some of these things work and why we have concerns about them.

Juli (47:15)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (47:29)
But yeah, we’re getting very close to that time where I’m gonna have to be very intentional about, know, the only time I give my son a phone is if we’re gonna leave him with the kids for a minute, you know, and we’re like, you can text us. But other than that, they don’t have phones. I’m, are we allowed to wait until they’re 18 to give them social media? And we’re once you move out, social media once you move out.

Juli (47:38)
Yeah.

Yeah, and see what’s

so difficult about this, Erin, is that this is how kids communicate now. So it becomes increasingly difficult as they age where you get to a place where all the kids are like, oh, I’ll DM you. Like, well, I don’t have Snapchat or I don’t have Instagram or I don’t have YouTube or I don’t have TikTok. So that’s where parents really feel pressured to even like gaming for

for boys. Like that’s how lot of boys connect with each other is they game together and they talk on I think a switch or there’s a few discord, like a few of those things where that’s how they talk to their friends. And so as you get into these teen years, you’re going to find like this, how do we keep our kids safe? But yet this is the world they live in. This is where all their friends are communicating. And I think another piece of this

that is really key is again, not just playing defense, but playing offense because what the research is showing is that not only are kids being gobbled up by these devices, but they’re not experiencing the things that give them wisdom and resilience like eye contact, like interpersonal relationship skills, like being in person with people, facing hard things in real life, know, facing…

in real life, a teacher that doesn’t like you or a conflict that you have to resolve. And so the research on what’s making kids so anxious and depressed and alienated is not just the devices, but how kids are cloistered from the real world, things that help them build relational skills and intimacy and connection and resilience.

Aaron Smith (49:25)
That’s something that is very difficult, but you’re right, it’s so important. I’d love for you to touch on. So your book is called Surrendered Sexuality, and I love how you broke the book into the different things that were to surrender. I love the word surrender, and I’d love for you to give me a little synopsis, because we talked about some of the stuff that’s in your book just in roundabout in this conversation.

Juli (49:28)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (49:53)
But the power of surrendering our preconceived notions about all of this, surrendering our sin, surrendering our idols, surrendering our shame, surrendering the things that have built our identity in, you know, around sexuality. What are some of these? What’s your number one thing that you feel is the most important thing in your book to recognize in what it means to surrender our sexuality?

Juli (50:07)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (50:19)
how that helps us find healing and ultimately brings us to a closer relationship with Christ, a closer relationship to understanding who we are in Christ. again, the end result, I think for everyone listening is like, well, how does this help my marriage? How does this help my family?

Juli (50:25)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so if you just picture in your mind, you’ve got you and you’ve got Jesus standing in the room and you’ve got a wall between the two of you where you can’t see him, you can’t talk to him. And for a lot of people, sexuality represents that wall. So it’s a wall like even you described with your struggle with pornography.

You haven’t said this, but my guess would be during that season of struggle, there is a wall of shame. God can’t possibly love me because I keep doing this. You know, a lot of people even wonder, am I even saved if I can’t stop sinning sexually? Is God powerful enough? Like, if he’s not helping me. So it can be a wall like that. It can be a wall of confusion.

Why would a good loving God not let me have this relationship? Why would God make me this way and not let me be sexual in the way that I feel is natural for me? Or trauma and abuse, like how would a loving God have allowed this to happen to me when I was a child? And so what I found is that the vast majority of Christians have some kind of wall like that related to sexuality, like a question, a doubt, a sin struggle, a shame.

cloud of shame they carry. so the idea is surrendered sexuality is acknowledging that that wall is actually imaginary. Because what the scripture tells us like in Psalm 139 is that there’s nowhere you can go from God’s presence. He knows when you get up and when you lie down, He knows a word before you speak it. He knows your thoughts. He knew you before you were born.

And so we construct those walls thinking, I’ve got to get this sexuality thing figured out before God will really embrace me. Or I don’t know if I can trust God because of this lingering question I have. When Jesus is like, I know all that about you. I know what you’re struggling with. I know what you did this morning. I know the question you have that’s plaguing you. Would you invite me into this? And surrender is…

when we stop trying to figure it all out and we stop accusing God of things and we just say, God, like here’s the mess and I want to trust that you’re big enough to walk me through it. And so it’s a posture of the heart of instead of compartmentalizing sexual struggles or trying to control them with their own willpower, taking God seriously is word that he knows us, he loves us.

Aaron Smith (53:08)
What?

Juli (53:17)
He’s powerful enough to save us and help us. But we have a part to that where we bring ourselves to Him and we put our trust in Him. So that’s kind of what I wrote the book about is sort of that journey of that is a lifelong process. It’s yes, one time decision that you have to keep making over and over and over again, that God, I want to give this to you. God, I want to learn to trust you in this. I want to take you at your word that you don’t condemn me.

that you really have forgiven me and you really can cleanse me and you really can give me freedom.

Aaron Smith (53:49)
You said these walls are imaginary. Are they imaginary as in they just don’t exist? is there because you said we have to surrender and come to him and know that he’s there because those things are all true. what is it that’s building those walls? Because we feel shame and we keeps us away. We have questions, so we think that makes us different. But.

It’s one of those things that sounds easier said than done. It doesn’t feel easy. Shame doesn’t feel, like it’s not as simple as like, oh, okay, I’ll just stop feeling shameful now. You know, stop having these questions. What is the defining factor between being on this side of the wall and being on that side of the wall?

Juli (54:14)
Yeah, yeah.

No. Yeah.

Yeah, so the walls are imaginary and then they’re not. So you mentioned sort of the spiritual battle around your sexuality. And Paul writes into the Corinthian Church, he writes, like, we don’t fight the way the world fights. He says we fight with spiritual weapons that tear down strongholds that are there in opposition to the knowledge of God. And I’m sort of paraphrasing there.

paraphrasing what he says there, but what he’s saying is in the spiritual realm, there are real walls called strongholds and their lies and thought patterns that build themselves up to keep us from the intimate knowledge and fellowship with God and that Satan camps out in their strongholds. Like you said, why did I see that playing card? You know, that playing card was just an object, but Satan used it.

to start developing a stronghold. And that’s real in the spiritual realm. And so when we look at it from our side of the wall, there’s something that keeps us from knowing God. But when God looks at it from his side of the wall, it doesn’t exist. He’s there right there with us. And so some of it is engaging in the spiritual weapons like prayer, like faith, like…

pursuing the knowledge of God through the scripture and through the fellowship with his people that begin calling out those strongholds and tearing them down. And so we are doing something. It’s not just saying, yeah, here’s a verse. I no longer have shame. It is a journey to go from that feels like a very far off thought that doesn’t apply to me to actually being like, no, I know that I know that I know that Christ has set me free.

And of the last 13 years of ministry, I’ve been so blessed to see people on that journey, like find freedom from every stronghold you can imagine. But it doesn’t happen in a day. It happens with the progressive journey of keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus and learning to surrender instead of trying to ignore or control things ourselves.

Aaron Smith (56:43)
My, the thing that changed my perspective on.

sexual sin was not finally, you know, getting the right app on my phone or finally getting the right accountability partner. What it was was a change of belief. And everything you’re talking about, you know, we’re

Juli (56:58)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (57:00)
Pursuing the scriptures, it’s a pursuit, it’s a daily effort moving towards what’s true and like the spiritual battles of tearing down strongholds are tearing down everything that stands against the knowledge of God. It was a matter of belief. I believe this is the truth in everyone’s life. The thing that the word of God warns us against over and over and over again throughout scripture from the beginning of the Bible to the end.

Juli (57:12)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (57:27)
is what do we believe? know, it’s just don’t fall into the sin of the Israelites in the desert when they were in unbelief. And that’s what they were in. They did not believe the Word of God. They believed something else. And for me, I did not believe the things that the Word of God says about me. Doesn’t mean that it was like if I would have believed it, I would have been healed instantly and never have struggles again, never be tempted again. But, you know,

Juli (57:29)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Aaron Smith (57:55)
We’re reminded in scripture, we’re told in scripture to remind each other of these things, to encourage each other with these things, to constantly reinforce these things because we’re so prone to disbelief. We’re so prone to believing you brought up lies. We have these lies built up. The reason those lies have roots in us is because we believe them. Because if you heard a line you didn’t believe, it doesn’t matter how good the lie is. You’re like, don’t believe that. It’s not going to affect me because it’s false.

Juli (58:06)
Mm-hmm.

Nah.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (58:19)
So for me, when like I said, when the Bible says you have been set free by the blood of Christ and Christ came to set the campus free and you’re no longer a slave to sin and death and all of these things that aren’t someday true, they’re not kind of true. They’re not true for you, Julie, but not they’re false for me. They are true now. And that’s how we encourage a believer, like when they’re walking in something that they feel trapped by. You don’t say, if you just did X, Y, Z, then you’ll be free.

Juli (58:37)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Aaron Smith (58:49)
The response is, well, actually the Bible says you’re free now. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but it’s true. Let’s move towards that truth. Let’s agree with it. Let’s believe it. I think what you’re saying is that that’s where that imaginary wall starts to, the bricks start to come down as like you say in your book, as we start to believe what’s true, as we start to surrender to the truth, then those lies lose their power. Those bricks start to come down.

Juli (58:53)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (59:18)
And that was the biggest thing for me is I believed too many lies. I believed I wasn’t healed. I wasn’t free. I believed I was not loved by God. I believed the things that the Bible says about me weren’t actually true. Even though it’s say they, believe them. didn’t actually believe them because there was no fruit of that belief. Ownership of that belief. So I don’t know. that, is that, do you feel like that’s premise of your book that you’re trying to get people to?

Juli (59:22)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah,

it’s sort of the premise of my book is found in the subtitle, How Knowing Jesus Changes Everything. Okay, so truth is not just what Jesus said. Like he didn’t say, I came to just speak truth. He said, I am truth. And truth is not just a concept that’s in competition with the lives of the enemy. Truth is the incarnation, the person of Jesus.

Aaron Smith (59:49)
Loved it, yeah.

Juli (1:00:09)
And in my own walk with God and in a lot of discipling over the years with other people, what I’ve found is that people cling too much to the words of scripture without realizing that the words are meant to point to the person of Jesus. There are a lot of Christians who don’t know Jesus in a powerful enough way that what he says actually makes a difference. And so the journey is

What obliterates the lies is when you start to know Jesus personally. Not just what he said, we can start with what he said, but when it comes down to it with these issues, you trust the person of Jesus? Do you trust God? And you can’t trust somebody you don’t know. And so it really is that progressive journey of fellowship with God abiding, being rooted in him like a branches with a vine.

that gives us the strength to actually believe the things that we read that Jesus said.

Aaron Smith (1:01:09)
Yeah, so rather than just having an academic like, I’m reading these and these sound good. These words sound good. It’s truly believing in spiritually seeing what those words are that Jesus is the incarnate Word of God. you know, it’s first John and John one. He is the Word made flesh. That’s actually a really powerful distinction.

Juli (1:01:21)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Aaron Smith (1:01:33)
I’ve never, I mean, I know that, but I’ve never connected those two. like, this is, you know, Jesus incarnate, like that we have the words made flesh, we have Christ himself and his words. So when we read them, we’re engaging with the incarnate Christ and believing and that’s coming from the coming to the word of God from a relationship point of view, not from an academic point of view.

Juli (1:01:37)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (1:01:59)
That’s super encouraging. I just want to show a picture of the book right here. Great cover, by the way. I don’t know if it’s blurry or not. Yeah. I think it’s so necessary. I mean, you know it is. You see all the statistics. And even if people don’t know the statistics, they see it and feel it in everything that we experience nowadays. That sex is the god of today. some people’s perspective on sex is going to be good. Some people’s going to be bad. But just sexuality in general. Identity.

Juli (1:02:04)
Thanks. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (1:02:28)
It’s all wrapped up in this carnal thing and God’s like, man, he’s like, I want my, I want your hearts. So thank you for what you’re doing. Is there, where can everyone find your book and where can everyone find you online?

Juli (1:02:35)
Amen.

Yeah, I think you can find the book, any online bookseller, wherever you buy books, it should be there. You can find me online at our ministry, AuthenticInnisfuture.com. We have a podcast called Job with Julie, lots of blogs, resources, as well as online book studies that are going through this book, go through some of our other materials. So just really hoping to provide that community as well as the content.

So, AuthenticMC.com.

Aaron Smith (1:03:11)
Everyone listening, check out the show notes. I’ll have links to all of these things. All the things we talked about that we need as parents, authentic intimacy helps with. Your ministry is literally geared towards this very thing, is helping people to understand what the Word of God says, who they are in Christ, our sexuality in a biblical way, in a God-honoring way. I thank you for just opening up about stuff with our children. I think it’s so important.

I’m getting into that phase with my kids that it’s more and more important every single day So I appreciate it’s been helpful for me, and I know for sure it’s been helpful for my listeners So Julie, thank you so much for being on the show

Juli (1:03:47)
And thanks so much for having me.

Aaron Smith (1:03:49)
God bless you.