Latest / truthunedited / Jay Stringer on The Journey to Understanding Our Behaviors _ The Jesus People Podcast Episode 58

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Jay Stringer on The Journey to Understanding Our Behaviors _ The Jesus People Podcast Episode 58 · truthunedited

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I really, really want to stick to this diet. I really,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: really want to not yell at my kids anymore. I
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: really want to stop looking at porn. Why is it
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: that people can't do it? Why can't they commit to it? Guys,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: welcome to the Jesus People podcast. We have the honor
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: of having Jay Stringer on the pod. Jay, thanks for
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: being here, man.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Ryan, thank you so much for having me.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, this is one that I've been really excited about
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: for a while because, you know, as you were just saying,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: people will affectionately refer to you as the porn whisperer
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: because of this book, Unwanted, but there's so much deeper
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: to uncover of really why do we make the decisions
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: we make? And you are a minister, you're a therapist.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: you're an academic, you've studied this. I would say that
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: you are probably the foremost expert on desire, on sexual desire,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: on understanding what's really underlying a lot of the decisions
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: we make. And I think a lot of people, even
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: as we were just talking before this podcast, I'm like,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: I want to know why I do the things I do.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people are in that
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: boat and so excited to unpack it.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's going to be a good conversation for sure. Yeah.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Well, this book's done phenomenally well, Unwanted. Um, I had
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: a friend send me this book and, you know, pornography
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: was a struggle of mine for over a decade. It
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: was one thing where in college, I shoot even after college,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: even when I was a pastor, I was struggling with it.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: I remember in college, I. told my buddies, my accountability partners, which,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: you know, we'd have this accountability group and it would
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: be the classic, like we'd all get together and be like,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: I looked at porn this week. Me too. Me too.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Me too. Okay. Let's pray. And then we do the
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: same thing next week.
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  Speaker 2: Rinse and repeat.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Rinse and repeat. But, um, I think where I healed
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: was understanding why I was looking at the porn. And
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: once I got to the root, it lost its appeal.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: And so that's been your study for a very long
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: time now. And I would say you are probably the
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: foremost respected Christian scholar on this idea. So I would
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: love to hear from you. Where did you come to
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: the point where you're like, hey, this is really what
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I want to dedicate my study and my time to?
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's one of those... When I think about my
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: middle school self talking about this publicly, my middle school
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: self would be horrified that these are the conversations I have.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: But You know, I would say like from a, you know,
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: brief kind of background, I remember when I was in
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: grad school studying counseling, studying story, like just really wanting
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: to understand like who are the stringers? Like who, you know,
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: where do I come from? I have both my grandfather's names,
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Jay and Elmer, but I knew nothing about them. Jay
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: died a couple of years before I was born, hence
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: my namesake. And then Elmer, I remember being at his funeral.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: And I'm not sure if you've ever been at a
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: funeral like this, but it was like, I felt angry,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: not at death, but the reality that I never knew
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: him in his life. And so I was like, I
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: need to get to know my grandparents, my grandmother. So
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: I took my grandmother out to this cafe on her
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: 90th birthday and I gave her these three skeleton keys.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: And I said, grandma, these three keys symbolize three lunches
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: that I want to take you out to, to learn
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: more about your life. That's cool. You know, at the time,
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking, that's cool. Like, this is such a great
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: grandson gift. But my grandmother looked completely horrified. And she
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: looked down at the table, looked back up at me.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Five seconds pass, 10 seconds pass. And then she pushes
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: the box back across the table at me and says, Jay.
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  Speaker 2: There are some doors you just don't open. There are
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  Speaker 2: some stories you just don't tell. And so I feel
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: that in my body. When it came to addressing this topic,
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  Speaker 2: it's like, yeah, my own sexual struggles, shame, pornography history.
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  Speaker 2: I should not ever talk about those things. There are
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  Speaker 2: just all these realms. So when I started getting into
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  Speaker 2: my story, getting a sense that Some of these behaviors
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  Speaker 2: that I was dealing with weren't random. So it was
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  Speaker 2: kind of a personal story. But then I became the
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  Speaker 2: sex therapist for the city of Seattle. So these were
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  Speaker 2: men that had been arrested for soliciting women in prostitution.
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  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 2: And one of my first clients, he said, Jay, don't
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  Speaker 2: get me wrong. I love the power of buying sex.
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  Speaker 2: I love the pleasure. But the ritual that brings me
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  Speaker 2: into that is getting in my SUV and just kind
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: of cruising around the neighborhood trying to find women's eyes.
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  Speaker 2: And he said, that's what I do more than anything.
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  Speaker 2: And so he tells me that in the first session.
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  Speaker 2: Then a couple weeks later, we're processing his story. And
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  Speaker 2: he starts telling me about how his parents.
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  Speaker 1: Worked a lot.
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  Speaker 2: And got him a Schwinn bicycle. And he said, Jay,
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: I loved my Schwinn. And I said, well, tell me
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: about why you loved it. And he said, I used
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  Speaker 2: to get on that bike and just cruise around the
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  Speaker 2: streets of my neighborhood, just trying to find girls in
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  Speaker 2: my class and my friend's moms. And I said, you
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  Speaker 2: use the same language of cruising as a middle school student,
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  Speaker 2: as you did for the exploitation of women. Like, what
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  Speaker 2: do you see the parallel? And it was kind of
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  Speaker 2: like that matrix like moment for him of like, Oh,
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  Speaker 2: it's always been about the eyes, like trying to find eyes.
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  Speaker 2: And he said, you know, in porn, that was it
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  Speaker 2: for him as well as like, he could scroll for
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  Speaker 2: hours just trying to find those eyes. And I think
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  Speaker 2: what was happening for him is that he felt some
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  Speaker 2: level of shame and judgment about what he was doing,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: but had no understanding that his behaviors were not random.
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  Speaker 2: And so, you know, coming out of, I would say
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: purity culture. I went through Southern Baptist High School when
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: I was going through puberty. It's not an experience I
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: would recommend on anybody. And so growing up in that
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: kind of lust management, and that's what I would say
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  Speaker 2: most people that are coming at this conversation in a
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  Speaker 2: Christian context are coming at it from lust management. And that's,
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  Speaker 2: I'm going to bounce my eyes. I'm going to slap
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  Speaker 2: a rubber band around my wrist. I'm going to get
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  Speaker 2: into some accountability or internet monitoring. But as my old
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: youth pastor said, Jay, when I've been having the same
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: conversation with my accountability partner for 15 years, something isn't working.
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  Speaker 2: And so that was kind of the defiance inside of
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  Speaker 2: me as I had all my own porn history and struggles.
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  Speaker 2: And yet so much of what I was reading, particularly
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: in the Christian space, was just not helping people. And
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: so it was just how do we manage this behavior
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  Speaker 2: rather than saying embedded within the behavior that we're trying
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: to get rid of are clues to our healing and growth.
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  Speaker 2: So that was kind of the background is there is
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: meaning in these sexual behaviors, in these sexual fantasies, and
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  Speaker 2: that kind of launched me into a lot of research
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  Speaker 2: and study into why do we look at what we
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  Speaker 2: look at? Why do we fantasize about what we fantasize? What,
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: you know, what do we search for when we go
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: to our favorite porn site? What are the videos that
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: really capture our attention? And what'd you find? We found
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  Speaker 2: some fascinating stuff. That's where some of my friends started
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  Speaker 2: calling me the porn whisperer because, you know, if you
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: tell me the type of porn that you seek out,
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  Speaker 2: I can kind of predict something of your backstory, something
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  Speaker 2: of the unaddressed realities of your life. So a couple
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  Speaker 2: examples of this would just be, you know, we found
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  Speaker 2: that this was true for men. Let's say that men
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  Speaker 2: sought out a sexual fantasy where there was a race
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  Speaker 2: that suggested to them some level of subservience or a
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  Speaker 2: petite body type or kind of that barely legal teen thing.
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  Speaker 2: college category, what we found predicted that porn search was
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  Speaker 2: three primary drivers. The first was a strict parent. The
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  Speaker 2: second was a high lack of purpose in your life.
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  Speaker 2: And then the third were high levels of shame. So,
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  Speaker 2: you know, if you just play armchair psychologist for a
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  Speaker 2: People often ask me, what's the difference between a strict
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  Speaker 2: family versus one that had good discipline? In discipline, the
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  Speaker 2: root word of discipline is disciple, which means to teach.
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  Speaker 2: So did you have a mother or father that helped
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  Speaker 2: teach you to understand your emotions, your anger, your sorrow,
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  Speaker 2: your entitlement, or did they begin to shame you for it?
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  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 2: And so most of us grew up in families that
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  Speaker 2: were much more strict, much more rigid. And when you're
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  Speaker 2: growing up in that type of environment, what you experience
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  Speaker 2: is a lot of powerlessness. Like it's kind of my
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  Speaker 2: way or the highway. It's kind of kids should be
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  Speaker 2: seen and not heard type of things. But it's all
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  Speaker 2: this context of powerlessness. And part of the question that
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  Speaker 2: I raise is where does all that powerlessness go? Like
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  Speaker 2: if someone shames you and humiliates you, That doesn't just evaporate.
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  Speaker 2: That gets stored in your system. And one of the
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  Speaker 2: appeals to porn is not primarily the issue of lust.
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  Speaker 2: It's also the issue of power. So in the world
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  Speaker 2: of porn, I can get exactly what I want. I
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  Speaker 2: don't have to feel powerless for seven or eight minutes,
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  Speaker 2: like however long most people are spending on porn. I
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  Speaker 2: can get exactly what I want when I want it.
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  Speaker 2: And nothing else in the entire planet offers you that.
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  Speaker 2: So if you're coming from a strict family, you've got
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  Speaker 2: to begin to work out the implications of where have
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  Speaker 2: you gone with a lot of the powerlessness. And that's
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  Speaker 2: where porn just becomes such a preferred way of going
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  Speaker 2: through life because it gives you that power. And kind
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  Speaker 2: of same thing with shame. Most of us think that
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  Speaker 2: shame is a response to doing something bad or sinful
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  Speaker 2: or unwanted. But what is even more true is that
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  Speaker 2: the more judgment and contempt you hold for yourself, the
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  Speaker 2: more that you will pursue behaviors that reinforce that judgment
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  Speaker 2: against you.
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  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: You are going to intentionally and maybe unwittingly seek out
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  Speaker 2: behaviors that confirm evidence, that confirms that core belief. So
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  Speaker 2: I think that these behaviors have some level of escape
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  Speaker 2: to them, but I think far more after you've looked
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  Speaker 2: at porn a thousand times, you know that it ends
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  Speaker 2: in judgment. And I think that's the point is instead
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  Speaker 2: of feeling good, true, beautiful, there's a sense of I'm
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  Speaker 2: a piece of crap. Um, and that confirms the core
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  Speaker 2: belief that you have believed in your trauma or in
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  Speaker 2: your heartache or in your sin. Wow.
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  Speaker 1: Um, so.
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  Speaker 2: Wow.
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  Speaker 1: So like, it's kind of like a, as a dog
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  Speaker 1: returns to his vomit type stuff, it's kind of like,
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  Speaker 1: why does that girl keep going after those dudes that
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: keep breaking her heart? Is that the same deal?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, you know, part of where I would back
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: up is to kind of say there's this kind of
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: realm of what's called attachment theory, which is basically, you know, it,
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: What creates thriving in the life of a child? And
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Dan Siegel says that kids need four core things to
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  Speaker 2: be seen, safe, soothed, and secure. So seen is that
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  Speaker 2: experience of like you had a mother or father who
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: knew your favorite slide in the neighborhood and they would
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  Speaker 2: bring you to that blue slide and just say, have
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: such a great day. We're going to get a hot
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  Speaker 2: chocolate and go down the slide.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: But as we age, there's also a sense that for me,
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  Speaker 2: middle school is always a prototype of hell. And so
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: that sense of like, when you came home from middle school,
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  Speaker 2: did you have someone that saw your face? Like if
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  Speaker 2: there was bullying, if there was some sense of abuse
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  Speaker 2: that was happening, if there was just some, like you
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: got a bad grade in algebra, or maybe there was
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: just some level of anger that was kind of emanating
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: out of you. Did you have a mom or a
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  Speaker 2: dad who, that saw that. And that's what we need.
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  Speaker 2: We need attunement to our joy and we need attunement
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  Speaker 2: to our sorrow. The next category would be safety. And that's,
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  Speaker 2: you know, digital safety nowadays, that's physical, sexual, emotional safety.
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  Speaker 2: And did you have someone that created a safe space
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  Speaker 2: for you to learn that you weren't learning because of
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  Speaker 2: trauma you weren't having to, but There was a safe
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  Speaker 2: place for you to understand who you were, why you
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  Speaker 2: wanted what you wanted, how to develop.
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  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 2: Soothing is, you know, we need a mother, a father
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  Speaker 2: to begin to kind of bring a sense of calm
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: to our body. When we are born, we are born
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: so vulnerable that we need our parents' bodies to regulate
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: our own temperature. And then when a baby is distressed,
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: they need to know that their mom, their dad will
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: hear their distress and hold them. And so that's what
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  Speaker 2: co-regulation is, is a sense of when I am distressed,
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  Speaker 2: I know that there is someone that is looking for me.
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  Speaker 2: And so we're always looking for that person that's going
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: to have eyes to see us, to bring calm. The struggle,
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  Speaker 2: the dilemma for many of us is that not only
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: was our parents not a place of soothing, they were
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: actually the cause of our distress. And that will wreak havoc.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: So for a lot of us, we grew up in
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: families where, you know, went to church every Sunday, but
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: somehow our hearts were never known or explored by our parents.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: How'd that come to be? Or we grew up in
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: a family where that rigidity and that strictness was actually
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: a source of distress. Well, you have to figure out,
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: like if I am made to be soothed and seen,
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  Speaker 2: and I don't have that in my family, or I
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: don't have that in my church community, that's where substances, alcohol, drugs,
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  Speaker 2: porn become something of In some ways, it's the first
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: experience of soothing. It's the first experience of like, there
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  Speaker 2: is a substance, there is a screen, there's something that's
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  Speaker 2: allowing my body to calm down.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And so that's what I'm always trying to get people
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: to kind of get a sense of is your porn
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  Speaker 2: struggle is actually telling a story. And most of us
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: try and fight against it rather than get really curious
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: about why is it that I'm drawn to this particular
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: sexual fantasy? Why is it that this particular night or
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: time of day is really challenging for me? Or why
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: am I drawn toward this archetype in order to have
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: an orgasm. And so that's what I'm always trying to
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: invite people into is your porn struggles and the unwanted
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  Speaker 2: behaviors that define your life are telling a story, but
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  Speaker 2: I don't think many of us are actually listening.
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  Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. I mean, I'm even unpacking some of my
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: stuff there as you're talking. I'm like, oh yeah, what
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: was I typing in the search bar? What was I
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: looking for? And how was that informed by some of
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: the wounds of my childhood, some of the sexual wounds
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: of my childhood, some of the sexual bullying, some of
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: the things that went on.
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  Speaker 2: Um, wow.
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  Speaker 1: That's fascinating.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because the sense of how do we invite people
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  Speaker 2: to get curious about those things? And like, when I
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: look at the Old Testament, like after Adam has just,
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: you know, eaten of the tree and the fruit that
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: he was commanded not to eat from, what does God say?
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Where are you?
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. To Hagar, who's just been traumatized by the first
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: family of our faith, like, it says that Sarai mistreated Hagar.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: And some scholars will say that's the same word that
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: the people of Israel experienced under Pharaoh. Some scholars would
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: even say it's a sexual assault. And so what we
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: know is that the first family of our faith has
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: traumatized an Egyptian teenager. And that Egyptian teenager has gone
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: out into the wilderness and is going to die there.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: But it's there where the angel of the Lord shows
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: up and asked, I think two of the best questions
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: any of us could ever be asked, which are, where
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: do you come from? And where are you going? And
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: I don't think we have that concept for the kindness
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: and curiosity of God that like, when God shows up
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: in our story, we're often like, we should get our
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: act together. How am I in seminary? How am I
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: a pastor and struggling with this? And I felt that
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: same way as well. I don't think we have much
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: of an imagination for The reality that God's voice is
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: kind and is drawing us in his kindness through his
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: questions to be more honest about where we come from
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: and where is it that we really want to go.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because the Bible is very clear that that's actually
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: what heals your heart. That's actually what leads you to change.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: It's the kindness of the Lord that leads us to repentance,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Romans 2.4. And so what I'm hearing you say is
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: a couple things. One, we need to kind of repent.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: We need to change our mind about what God's voice
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: sounds like. But that happens often through exploration of our
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: past and realizing that maybe some of those voices that
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: were spoken, those God figures, those fathers and mothers and
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: even siblings that had spoken things over us, that was
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: not the voice of God. But that has actually informed
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: the way we hear God's voice that leads us into
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: some of these behaviors and some of these desires.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely. Yeah.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Wow. And so you've kind of– obviously after writing the book,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: you've become known as the Porn Whisperer.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: And this is something you've unpacked. I probably shouldn't publicly
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: say that, but yes. Friends have called me that.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Friends have called you that. Because part of.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: What that was, was I think I was having a
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: coffee with some friends and they were asking, how's it
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: going with Unwanted? And what I said was, I am
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: stunned because people from all over the world are writing
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: in And saying, can you interpret my fantasies? Like, this
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: is what I looked at last night. Can you interpret
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: it for me? And some people were offering like five bucks.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, come on.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: You're like a psychic or something.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: And what I told my friends is I'm not trying
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: to create like an encyclopedia. This is your porn search
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: and this is exactly what it means. But I knew
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: that it struck a nerve because it's resisting two of
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: the problematic paradigms of our day. The first paradigm is
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: lust management. in the pathologizing of desire. The other one
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: is just like, let's normalize the use of porn and
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: sexual behavior because we don't want people to feel shame
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: and stigma. And so what I realized that this book
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: was doing was that it was allowing people to get
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: curious about their life and their behavior. And I think
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: that's really where learning takes place is why is it
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: that I want this? Why is it that, I'm drawn
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: to this, even though there's a part of me that
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: wants it. There's also a part of me that doesn't
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: want it. And so that's where the porn whisperer came
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: from was my friends were like, you're essentially.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you're unpacking it.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: You're decoding. And, um, I'll never forget. Someone said that
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: to me, like, Hey, like what's in the search bar? Like,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: what are you actually typing in? Cause that's going to
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: tell you your wounds. It's like, Whoa, that's, that's amazing. But,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: but what you're talking about now is you've kind of
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: moved into this realm of basically why do people do
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: the things they do? You know, you've written this new
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: book desire. Talk to me a little bit about that.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Like if I were just to ask you, cause there's this,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: this goes into food. This goes into habits. This goes
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: into how I treat my wife. This goes into what
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: job I take and how I treat my kids and everything.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: What is underlying the reason why we do the things
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: we do? That's kind of what you've been exploring. Yes.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Can you give me like, like a snapshot of that?
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Like if I'm curious, like I want to know, like,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: why do I do what I, cause, cause the Bible
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: is clear. Like, Even Paul says this, I do the
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: things I don't want to do. And I think so
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: many of us have that feeling like, dang, I really,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: really want to stick to this diet. I really, really
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: want to not yell at my kids anymore. I really
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: want to stop looking at porn. Why is it that
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: people can't do it? Why can't they commit to it? Yeah.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, so many different directions that I could go
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: with that. But I... again, I feel like part of
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: what we're in today is that no one is teaching
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: us how to want, like no one is discipling desire.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: So the conservative approach is that desire is selfish. It might,
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: God forbid, turn into something sexual or the progressive world
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: is kind of like, what do you want to do
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: with this one wild and precious life that you've been given? Eat, pray, love,
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: but no sense of how to actually form desire. And
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: so that was part of, when I was thinking about like,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: what do I write that follows unwanted was like, what
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: was the book I needed to write before unwanted was
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: out there. And then what do people need? And we
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: need help understanding our desires and to intentionally form desire
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: into something that can really lead us into the best
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: version of ourself, because that's what desire is. Desire can
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: turn you into the best version of yourself or the
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: worst version of yourself. Yeah. But there's been so much
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: fear in that realm that really hasn't allowed us to
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: really get through the full potential of what desire could be.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about food for a second because it's
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: deeply personal subject for me. So. I, when I was
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: like six, seven years old, one of the things that
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: would happen is my dad would like get out the
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: Weber grill and get the charcoal out to get the
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: fire going. And we would have a barbecue and I
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: would get so excited as a six year old that
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: I would have bowel movements because I was so excited.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: And I would sit on the toilet and I would
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: just sing songs about hamburger and hamburgers with ketchup and mustard.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: Like that was like, Six-year-old Jay was like full-on desire
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: barbecue community.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: But then by the time I got to middle school
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: and a lot of just the difficulties that I was
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: going through in my home, my nickname was Donut. And
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: so the reason for that is I showed up to
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: the first day of seventh grade with a jelly donut
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: and it dripped on my white shirt. Mm-hmm. And this
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: kid named Brian Mulroney kind of stuck his finger, his
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: index finger, into my belly and just did the Pillsbury
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Doughboy sound, which was, ah-hoo!
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: And so that became that sense of, you know, a
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: small T trauma for me of just being called Donut,
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: kids putting their index fingers into my belly.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: And then me just hating my body.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: And I remember just.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Flapping my stomach. I was a really obese kid in
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: middle school. And part of that conversation around being seen
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: is my parents weren't attuned to that sorrow. My dad
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: was a pastor, was very much attuned to the needs
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: of what was happening on Sunday. There's this notion that
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: our parents are often doing the best that they can.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: And all I can tell you is I don't believe
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: that anymore. I think I saw my dad give the
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: best that he could on Sundays. He did not give
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: his best to my family. And that's been a place
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: of like a growth edge for me of how do
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: I honor that? My dad taught me how to see
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: the world to integrate the world. Like so much of
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: what I'm doing in the world today with integrating theology, psychology,
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Like my dad taught me how to do that, but
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: I could tell the truth about that. I could never
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: tell the truth that he was more attuned to me
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: when I was performing or when I was doing kind
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: of good things that reflected well on the family. And
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: so for me, middle school was just a horrible experience.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: And where did I go for soothing? Well, it wasn't
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: porn at that time. It was a little Debbie thing.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: cream pies. It was hostess cakes. And so for me,
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: my gateway drug to porn was really that process of food.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: And so then I began to have all these desires
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: for food. And then by the time I reached my twenties,
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: I had a friend signed me up for a marathon
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: and it was like, oh, I can optimize my life
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: and I can run very long distances and get endorphins
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: and get into really good shape. And then it became
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: this kind of sense of like, I'm going to desire mastery.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: And so that was part of the question around desire
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: is like, how do I form my desire for food?
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Because when you go through trauma, what happens with trauma
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: is you have fragmentation, numbing, and then eventual isolation. So
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: fragmentation is the sense that like, how do I trust
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: the God of the universe when God put me in
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: a family or in a context where I knew abuse
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: or I knew bullying. It could be a sense of
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: how am I supposed to bring the difficulties of my
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: life to my parents when they care more about how
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: clean the house is or how the ministry is doing,
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: but not me. So whenever we experience trauma, there's that
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: sense of, I don't know who to trust. I can't
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: trust my body. I can't trust God. I can't trust others.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: That's what we begin to conceptualize. But then the Greek
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: word for trauma is wound. And so that sense of
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: when you go through the woundings of your life and
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: you don't have an attuned face, you don't have kindness,
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: where are you going to go? Well, that creates the
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: need to numb. And it could be porn. It could
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: be food. It could be anything. And then eventually, the
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: more that you choose that thing to numb, the more
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: isolation you experience, the more shame you undergo. And so
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: for me, that was part of what I had to
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: unpack with my desire is that my desire started in
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: a raw place that was good and true and beautiful
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: of food and bringing that food to the neighborhood and
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: to barbecues. But then in my trauma, food became a
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: place of profound isolation and numbing. And I began to
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: put my trust in that. But then the shame of
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: overeating and obesity became the new strategy to combat shame,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: which was I'll run a lot and I'll optimize my health.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: And so even that desire for personal growth, that desire
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: to get to the gym more, to go for more runs,
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: looks on the surface good. But all I'm trying to
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: say is that it's also informed by trauma. So that's
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: really what this new book is looking at is why
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: do we want what we want? And so one study
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: that I looked at early on was they gave– researchers
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: gave these people basically word pairing. So they would say, okay, Ryan,
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: you get the word pairing ocean and moon. And then
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: 10 minutes later, they would say, Ryan, what's your favorite detergent?
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: And the amount of people that would say– Tide detergent.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: What did you say?
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: I was going to say ocean. I don't know who
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: makes them up.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: But tide detergent was statistically significant. And what the researcher
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: said is that our desires and our preferences can be
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: built up without any understanding that those desires have been
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: primed into us. So that was just with two words,
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: ocean and moon, predicting what types of detergent. So when
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: we think about... kind of the world of the porn industry.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: When we think about greed, when we think about, you know,
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: even a desire for the kingdom, how have we been
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: primed to want what we want and to, and so
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: that's what I really want us to explore is where
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: do these desires come from? And instead of just pathologizing
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: them or normalizing them, Let's really think about where they're
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: coming from and what types of people they're forming us into.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Guys, I want to stop and tell you about my ministry,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Share the Struggle. I have for so long thought that
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: the mental health crisis is the missions moment of our decade.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: And if you're needing support for your anxiety or your
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: trauma or your marriage or relationships, we have coaches available
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: that will pray with you. That'll do inner healing prayer
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: with you. That'll go to the scriptures and then provide
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: the best in class therapeutic principles to help you move
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: forward in whatever God has for you. So check that out.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: We also have courses. You can go to sharethestruggle.org and
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: get the relief you're needing. And so ocean and moon,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: let's say ocean is a quote bad thing. I was bullied.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: I was told I was weak growing up. So now
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: I want to be the CEO because I want to
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: be in charge. I want to be strong. That's why
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: I go to the gym. Maybe moon was maybe, could
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: it be a good thing to like moon? I was,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: I was complimented in this certain area when I was
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: a kid. I was 10 that, Oh, you're really fast.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: So that's why I did track. Yeah. And so we're
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: basically mapping our past and understanding why we do what
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: we do now.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: That's a great example. Yeah. Yeah. So part of, part
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: of that would be, you know, when Jesus says, blessed
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: are those who mourn for, they will be comforted. Most
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: of us don't want to have tears for what we
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: went through in a formative season of heartache, whether that's
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: in your adult life or in your childhood. Usually we're
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: trying to numb or we're trying to kind of develop
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: some level of mastery in our life to avoid vulnerability.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: So that example of that kid that was shamed, bullied.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: made fun of, and then, you know, develops, loves the gym,
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: becomes the CEO. Like that feels better. That provides stable
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: ground underneath his feet from the fragmentation that he went through.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: So he begins to trust in the gym. He begins
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: to trust in being an authority, but that's all good thing.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: Like we're, you know, it's that classic chair. It's a
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: fire line. Like when I run, I feel his glory
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: or however it goes. Like, Those are good things to
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: be seen, to be complimented. But in the absence of grief,
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: anything that you're trying to have some level of mastery
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: around or optimization around, that's when it begins to get
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: skewed and you become over-indexed in a potentially good thing,
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: but you become disconnected from your story.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Got it. Can this become dangerous to you to a
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: certain point of just trying to understand your past so much?
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: That's like, I can't really move forward because I'm just like,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of people are going to
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: counseling today and it's just like, they just keep running
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: circles around. Like, here's what I did when I was
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: a kid. And, and I can't believe dad said this
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: to me. Does it get to a point? Like what,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: what is a healthy way to look at? Because processing
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: your past is very healthy. But I think a lot
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: of people today, they have traded in proper religion with
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Jesus for therapy. Yeah. And what would you say to that?
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: And like, what is, what is the balance there? What
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: is the proper way to see processing your past?
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question. And I mean, I think
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: there's something about, you know, story and processing that, like
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: part of what we're learning about trauma. And again, back to,
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: I know I'm going to go back to this and
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: then I'll come back to your point, but you know,
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: is that sense of is everything trauma these days, right?
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: So if I went through something difficult, is that a trauma?
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: And part of what we know is that trauma is
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: not just this event that happened to us long ago.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: It's the ongoing imprint of that event on you today.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: So most of us, yeah. So most of us don't
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: know our traumas through our memories. We will experience our
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: traumas through our reactions. So let's say that you are
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: someone who is more in the red zone. You're more fight, flight, aggressive.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: You're combative in your personality. Or let's say that you're
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: in more of the blue zone and you're just sad.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: You're prone towards despair, paralysis. Most of us look at
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: those as just adult traits. But in many ways, those
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: traits and our reactions, the way that we relate to
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: other people in our world, they are informed by our story.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: And so that's what I'm really trying to get us
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: into is, you know, these behaviors, these patterns in your
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: adult life are not random. They are clues. They are
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: trying to get your attention so that you can go
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: back so that you can eventually move forward. So an
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: example of this would be, you know, I live in
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: New York City, a lot of really great bakeries all over.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: I love apple fritters. I love donuts. I love pastries.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: And so for me, healing is not just about like, okay,
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: I was bullied.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: I was, you know, ridiculed.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: For me, it's the sense of I will, you know,
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: on weekends that I'm in town, I'll wake up on
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Saturday morning and I'll run five, 10 miles to a
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: great bakery out in Brooklyn. And when I'm running, I'm
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: thinking about I'm with the six-year-old boy that loves food
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: and loves food. the table. But then I'm also running
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: with this 13 year old who feels a lot of
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: shame and a lot of judgment. But then I'm also
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: running with this 27 year old that was trying to
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: optimize his life.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: In every way.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: But now I'm also 42 and I'm bringing what I
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: loved back to my family. And to me, that's like
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: what all that was about is like, okay, I'm understanding
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: my story so that it actually serves the process of
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: joy and allows me to move forward.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: So instead of saying I can't enjoy food or instead
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: of saying I need to hide my eating, it's how
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: do I connect these raw desires in me to the table,
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: to community, to what is good and true and beautiful.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: And so I think that's the importance of knowing your
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: story is that it shows you what themes matter. But
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: you always have to bring that sense of integration into
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: your life of how do I move this story forward?
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: So all of us have multiplicity of selves. We have
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: a six year old boy or girl. We have 10
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: year old boy or girl inside of us. And that's
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: part of the play that we get in moving forward
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: is to be able to say. I'm 42 and I'm
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: so glad I get to move towards that six year
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: old and I get to move towards that 13 year
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: old and bring some level of goodness and beauty to
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: these desires instead of just letting them be a traumatic
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: past or something that was more hidden and shameful. So
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: I think I'm, Yeah. Moving forward through that process of integration. Yeah.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I, I, I'm again, like this is like live therapy,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: but I'm thinking through moments in my life, especially in
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: marriage where, um, like we had this dresser when we,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: when we first had our first baby, we got this
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: baby dresser and this thing just would not move. I
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: like it. It was, it would get stuck. And so
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: I'm up in the middle of the night and we're
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: sleep deprived. And I couldn't get this thing to close.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: And so I would literally start donkey kicking this thing
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: so mad. And even after it was closed, I'd keep
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: kicking the thing because it was just anger. And my
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: wife would be like, what is happening? And then I'd
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: try to fix a doorknob or something. And I couldn't
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: get it to fix. And I'm not typically a rageful person.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: I don't have these outbursts of anger often. But in
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: these moments, I'd get so mad that I couldn't fix
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: this stupid thing. And I began to realize like, wow,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: I get really angry when I feel really incompetent. And
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: then I started kind of exploring that. I literally went
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: to therapy and I'm like talking through it. And then
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: we started exploring some of my past and how like, oh,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: there were moments where you felt really stupid. And that
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: stupidity was reinforced by people in your life. And so
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: when you feel incompetent, like even last night, like my
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: wife made a comment, which was a totally healthy, great
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: comment about something that may, I could have done better,
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: but I found myself in my body feeling like stressed
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: and feeling just like, I don't even know what the emotion,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: like shame. I think it was shame. And it was
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: just a total flipping comment. Shouldn't have been a big deal.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: Is that kind of what you're saying is like, now
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: that I can understand like, Oh, when 10 year old
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Ryan couldn't get his math problem. Right. And was yelled
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: at that's, that's informing me.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: That's playing out today. It's playing out with the doorknob.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: It's present. Yeah.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: And so it's, yeah. So that those, there's negative things there,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: but there's also some positive things potentially of like, why
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: do I like the things I like? Can you speak
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: a little bit more to that? Yeah.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: Uh, why do I like the things that I like? Yeah.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Like, yeah. Like, like, cause desire is healthy. It's a
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: God given.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: So a couple of places there, like there's this author
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: by the name of Annie Dillard and she says, I
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: never knew I was a bell until the moment I
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: was lifted up and struck. And so what she talks
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: about there is like, what are those bell like moments
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: in your life where like something is like, this is
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: exactly why I've been put on this planet. And so
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: like when you are processing this now, it's like, where
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: do you come alive? Like, where is the sense of like,
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: you feel utter delight and joy and just being able
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: to be a human being. And that could be deep
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: guttural laughter with a friend. It could be when you're
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: writing poetry, it could be when you're baking. Um, but
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: then also that, you know, the other side of it
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: is like, what enrages you? Like when you see something
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: happen of injustice and, Or someone relating to someone in
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: a way that just like pisses you off. How is
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: that really informing something of where you come from and
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: where you saw harm? So I think that's, those are
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: really good desires to act on is like, what brings
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: your heart life? And then also what are the things
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: that break your heart? And so for a lot of us, again,
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: I think childhood provides some really good clues of, you know,
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: it may have been like, I want to be like Mike,
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: or maybe you played electric guitar and you imagine playing
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: or you read novels. And then at some point in
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: your life, you realize I'm not going to be LeBron
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: James or Steph Curry. I'm not going to be you too.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: And so most of us begin to kind of suppress
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: our desires and we don't really move towards the things
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: that bring life. We just kind of like, you know,
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: I've got to get through, I've got to earn an income.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: And so a lot of us are engaged in, I
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: would say like a civil war of desire. That desire
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: is responsible for all the best things in our life,
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: but then also all the shame and sin in our life.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: And so we don't know what to do with how
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: alive we can feel with desire, but also how many
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: problems desire creates for us. And I think that's where
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: most people suppress their desire. And live with a level
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: of depression to be able to contain that life force.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Right, right. And you would define desire as like just
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: the things I want? Is that kind of how you
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: define desire? Like is that what I'm hearing? That can
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: be both informed by negative things that have happened, positive things.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's this like mysterious engine that is beneath like
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: why do we want what we want?
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: Or do what we do.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: And do what we do. Like what's motivating us? I mean,
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: we're making north of 30,000 decisions every day, most of
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: them unconscious. Yeah. So part of what the research is
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: showing is that a lot of those things are primed
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: into us. But I also think that that's where we
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: have to go back to like, what does it mean
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: that we are made in the image of God, that
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: the God of the universe has put desires in our
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: heart that are very different. Like in terms of, you know,
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: some of the work that you've done in Africa recently,
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: some of the work that I've done in the realm
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: of childhood sexual abuse, like God gives desires inside of
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: us to be able to honor. And so most of
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: the time we're looking at like, I need to not
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: have these desires because desire is selfish. But it's like, no,
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: if the God of the universe is full of desire
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: and wants goodness and beauty and truth everywhere, how are
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: we not also part of creating more of that everywhere
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: we go? So that to me is such a tragedy
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: with Christians is how are we not known as people
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: who love desire? It's so sad to me because desire
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: could unlock so much in our life, like a desire
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: to serve the poor, a desire to love others better,
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: a desire to come fully alive and to excavate all
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: the passions that God has put inside this heart for
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: me to discover. But we fear it and we don't
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: seek it out. We don't excavate what's been placed inside
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: of us.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And to me, it feels a bit ethereal. It
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: feels like I understand, I have this deep longing to
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: know why do I do the things I do?
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: Like, why do I spend my time, spend my money,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: choose the friendships, eat the food? Why do I do
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: all of these things? But what's ethereal to me is
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: that concept of desire. I guess I just don't have
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: a category for it. So like this is, you're creating
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: a category for me. And the category, I think based
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: on what you're saying is It has to live underneath
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: the action. There's a desire that's underlying every action. And
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: it sounds to me, maybe help me with this, the
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: call to action is just to get curious about it?
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: Or what is the call to action as it pertains
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: to that desire that's underlying?
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's to get curious about why do you want
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: what you want? So instead of indulging it, instead of
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: shaming it, I mean, this could save you tens of
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: thousands of dollars. It could also cost you tens of
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: thousands of dollars. And so, yeah, if you're able to
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: get curious about why do I want what I want.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: So an example would be like green grass. We don't
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: think anything about it. But like, why do people want
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: good green grass? Well, it dates back to 17th and
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: 18th century wealthy aristocrats in Europe. who had so much
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: extra money that they had people develop green fields for them.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: And we can draw a direct line to that. So again,
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: green grass, I'm all for it. It's fun. It creates
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: context to play. But what if you want like a
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: Japanese rock garden? What if you want something else? How
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: could you imagine if you weren't preoccupied by that? And
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: so part of what we're learning from the porn industry
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: is that, you know, things like, you know, just... abuse, assault,
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: even things like sexual choking have gone up significantly. I
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: don't have the exact data in front of me in
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: terms of percentages, but the amount of women that have
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: experienced some level of choking in an otherwise consensual sex
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: act has gone up dramatically. You can trace that to porn.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: So that sense of, you know, these things that we
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: are watching and experiencing in life, um, Some of our
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: desires are not random, that we're always kind of in
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: the words of Rene Girard, it's mimetic desire, meaning it's a,
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: you want that or you have that and I want
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: that too, is a lot of where desire can come from.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: So if we see someone else have something or want
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: something or doing something, that's part of the way that
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: we're wired is, oh, I want that too. And so
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: that can be unto destruction. I also think that can
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: be unto godliness and beauty. So that's a little bit
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: of the discipleship war that we're in today is that
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: we have a lot of examples of greed. We have
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: a lot of examples of sexual immorality. We have a
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: lot of examples of narcissism in our culture. We don't
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: have a lot of examples of people giving their life
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: To confront the Herods of our day. We don't have
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: a lot of examples of people who are serving the
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: poor and giving up everything of their life to be
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: able to find this one precious field. And so if
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: we had more examples, I think as a culture, we
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: would start desiring what is good, true, and beautiful.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah. Two random thoughts come to mind there as
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: you're saying that. One is, do you know Jamie Winship?
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Okay. He wrote a book called Living Fearless. Okay. And
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: he talks a lot about what you're saying. And it
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: was very like category breaking for me, like just to
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: get outside of these constraints, these boxes that I've lived
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: in and to just kind of pay attention to like,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: Why do I believe the things I believe? And another
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: example is like Kanye West. Kanye West is– I mean
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: the dude's– I think you could say he's crazy. He's
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: a genius. He's all of the things. At different points
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: in his life.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: All of them. All of the things. I just watched
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: his documentary and the one thing that I was really
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: fascinated and actually inspired by is the fact that he's like,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: I want to break all of this. To see what
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: is really good and what expression looks like. And I
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: think that that is a beautiful thing with the foundation
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: of the word of God and the foundation of the
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: kingdom of God. Because then you can look at things
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: and say, there are desires in my past and look
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: at them objectively and go, okay, good, bad, whatever. Those
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: are real desires that came from somewhere. Now let's order
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: them because desire informs behavior. is what you're saying. And
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: so you could say, I have a desired outcome for
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: my life. I have a, a kingdom that I want
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: to serve. I have a, the word of God that
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: I want to follow, but I do the things I
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: don't want to do. And that's informed by my desires,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: by the trauma of my past, by the things that
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: I was told were valuable when I was seven years old.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: And by just the God given, um, nature, he's, he's,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: he's made me in his image. He's made me like
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: certain things that he's made you not to like, or to,
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: you know, for you to be gifted in, And Richard
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: to be gifted. That's the body of Christ, right? And
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: so I think making sense of all of those things
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: together and saying, how do I really live in freedom?
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: How do I really understand my past and understand the
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: things that I want to properly order them in the
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: kingdom of God, to place them on the altar, and
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: then to say, okay, Lord, what is your way? And
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: how do I walk in that way? And how do
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: I walk in my lane in that way? And how
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: you've truly created me. Did that make sense at all?
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely. So part of what we would say as
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: therapists is that we are always trying to negotiate authenticity
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: and belonging. So authenticity is like this kind of drive,
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: this desire in us to be our most authentic, real,
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: genuine self. The dilemma is that sometimes the more honest
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: you are, the more that you live out there, the
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: less you feel like you can belong to a community.
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: And then sometimes in belonging to a family, belonging to
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: a church, there's a sense of like, I actually have
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: to give up some of this authenticity in order to belong.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: But I want you to think about like this category
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: of like a, let's say a symphony. Let me talk
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: about narcissism and then I'll go to the symphony. So narcissism,
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: at least when I was in high school, was like,
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: this is someone who was full of themselves. In my
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: high school, it was like they needed to have a
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: Ford Mustang Cobra. They wore Tommy Hilfiger. They had to
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: have the most attractive girlfriend in the county. And so
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: that was like the narcissist was someone that was full
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: of themselves. But clinically speaking, narcissism is not a fullness
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: of self. It's an absence of self. And so what
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: happens with narcissism is that I don't know who I am.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: I don't know whose I am. And so I look
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: to my success. I look to the amount of subscribers,
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: followers I have, how many likes I have, how many
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: books I've sold, what my 401k looks like, my salary.
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: And all of that is a reflection back to me
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: of my worth. So I don't know who I am,
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: but when I look in the mirror of these expectations, validations,
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: I have a reflected sense of self. And that's really
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: what destroys intimacy, that destroys passion, because the things that
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: you desire are about, I don't want to feel fragile.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: I don't want to feel small. I don't want to
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: feel insignificant. So I over-index in all these external desires
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: to validate who I am. And that becomes a lot
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: of people's desire in life is how do I not
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: feel that the symphony on the other hand, like if
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: you think about like a symphony in Dallas, a symphony
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: in New York, one of the reasons why that's so
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: amazing is because like your violinist is the best violinist
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: in the entire state. Probably, um, you know, you want
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: your clarinetist, your percussion team to be the very best.
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: You don't want them coming in with like broken strings
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: and like, I'm just traumatized and I don't know how
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: to play. It's like they have done the thousands and
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: thousands of hours of work to progress from stumbling to
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: struggling to working through boredom. And they are exceptional. But
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: the magic of a symphony is not just that this
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: violinist is differentiated and has an individual authenticity. The magic
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: of a symphony is this fully developed, stunning violinist is
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: able to play together with some of the other best
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: instruments in the city. And when they get together, they
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: create stunning music. That is a picture of the kingdom
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: of God. That's a picture of a good marriage. That's
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: the picture of a phenomenal friendship is we are fully
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: developed people. that get together and create beautiful music. And
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: so when you think about C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien's friendship,
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: it's not that they were crappy writers. It's that they
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: were both good writers that had different understandings of how
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: do you infuse the Christian narrative. And Lewis would say,
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: you put the Aslan character in there and that's the
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: way to do it. And Tolkien would say, no, you
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: don't need to be explicit about that. You just need
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: to be so immersed in the Christian story that of
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: course all the characters are going to have elements of
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: dignity and humanity, but also they're going to have a
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: shadow and sin and that's the goodness.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: So you have these two very developed writers coming together.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: And I think that's, what's being lost today is like
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: in a culture of narcissism in a church culture that
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: doesn't really encourage people to develop themselves because if you
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: develop yourself, you're spending too much time, resources and energy on,
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: And it's like, no, like the best artists, the best
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: creatives in our world have taken the hours and thousands
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: of hours to develop these gifts. And so to me,
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: that's what desire has the potential of doing like, yes.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: Desire can become dangerous real quick, but it's also, I
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: think the most stunning power that God has given to
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: us to develop.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: What do you do when your partner or your friend
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: just doesn't have a desire to be their best self?
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: Like you're saying, Hey, I want to understand why I
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: do the things I do. I want to conquer this addiction.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: I want to follow the word of God, but my
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: partner doesn't. doesn't, how can you help them walk into that?
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: In many ways you can't, but whenever we make a
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: unilateral decision to change, we influence the other person more
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: than we would believe. So I remember my, my wife
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: used to see her therapist on Wednesdays and on Tuesdays,
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: there was always a sense of like, Oh, I need
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: to be on my best behavior. I don't want to
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: be the subject of her therapy session. And then like
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: Wednesday night, kind of just like, How are we doing?
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: Kind of just uncertain. And part of what I realized
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: is that the more that my wife changes, which I
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: wanted her in therapy, I wanted her to grow. But
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: the more that she changed, the less she looked away
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: from family of origin stuff, the less she looked away
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: from difficulties in her own life, the more that she
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: was actually calling things out in me that I didn't
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: want to engage. So that was the dilemma that we
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: were in in our marriage for that year was, I
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: want you to change. I don't want you to change
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: because if you change, I have to change. And so
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: I think just even we profoundly underestimate the power of
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: just the desires that we move towards. And so even
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: if people are not joining us, I think that that
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: creates a level of disruption in people. So, you know,
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: I think of the Joseph story of, you know, this
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: man that had a coat of many colors and what
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: happens to him?
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: It's not good. Not good.
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: He ends up in a ditch. And so, you know,
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: even Ryan, like getting to know you, you, you have
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: a lot of colors to your, to your coat. There
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: are conversations in Africa and in LA and in Dallas
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: that you're wanting to have, like there's so much energy
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: in you. And yet the reality, if people were to
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: be friends with you and connected to you, there would
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: be a sense of, am I even doing anything significant
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: with my own life? And so there's a sense of,
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: You know, the envy that we bear through being a
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: person of desire is meant to provoke. It's meant to say, okay,
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: if Ryan has found his passion, where is my own?
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: And it doesn't have to go to another continent. I
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: can get a microscope out and discover a world there
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: that I don't know. But I think, you know, my
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: best friends are those that have allowed their lives to
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: be disrupted that actually want something. They want hospitality industry
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: to be disrupted. They want better work done for survivors
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: of trauma. So I almost don't care what it is,
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: but we're meant to provoke people into a type of envy,
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: a type of disruption. So I think we underestimate the
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: power of kind of living our most authentic self. But
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: I think any unilateral change that you make is going
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: to mess with the relationship. Yeah. Because that's what happens
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: where most couples or friends, we meet at a certain level.
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: And if you stay there, that's really when the relationship
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: begins to get really boring and begins to implode. So
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: there's always the sense of, I want more. And that's
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: a good thing. Wow. Yeah.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: And that's really the goal of this podcast too. When
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: I was praying about this podcast and felt like the
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: Lord said, this isn't going to be the Ryan Miller show.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: This is going to be the Jesus People podcast. Go
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: find the treasures of the kingdom. Uh, the picture he
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: gave me was, uh, when the four minute mile got
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: broken and then the next week, every other runner wrote
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: the form, right? Cause the category got broken in their minds. Like, Oh,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: if he did it, you know, I'm not that much
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: worse than he is, you know? And so what I'm
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: hearing you say is you can't change that person in
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: your life. It's up for them to change. What you
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: can do is start breaking some four minute miles in
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: your life and that's going to influence them.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: That's going to disrupt them. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. And that's,
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's part of what the Bible
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: is trying to say is like, if we are the
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: body of Christ, there's so many different expressions of that.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: And I think it's as we pay attention to the
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: fields that we're in, and that could be social media,
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: that could be science, that could be climate, that could
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: be politics, that could be baking. hospitality, hotels, like it
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: doesn't matter what you're in. Jesus people should be some
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: of those violin players that I mentioned earlier. Like Martin
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: Luther was once asked, like essentially like, how do you
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: become a good Christian cobbler? Like, you know, person that
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: worked on shoes and he would say, you just commit
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: to being the best cobbler in your city.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: And so it, you know, I think that's part of
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: what's missing in our world today is, Yeah, to be Jesus,
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: people should be people who love desire, who love serving,
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: who love hospitality, who love virtually everything there is because
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: all of this is God's world. And so I don't
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: think that we can ever become too desirous for God.
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, if God is the author of desire, which
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: I believe he is, we can never become too full
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: of desire. We can never become too fully alive. And
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: so that's what I would love for discipleship to look
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: like is how are you actually not sitting on these nine,
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: 10 talents that you've been given because desire are forms
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: of talents. And most of us have buried our talents
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: because we've buried our desires.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: I'm so excited for this book. Yeah. Guys, we're going
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: to put the link in the show notes to desire
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: and unwanted. Go check them out. Jay, this was an honor.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: Are there any specific ways we can be praying for you?
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I, you know, when I, when I wrote this book, um,
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: I came under kind of some investigation, um, just because
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: I was disrupting some of the porn industry that there
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: were people that came at me and just kind of
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: tried to ruin a lot of things for me. And
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: so just even that sense of evil comes to kill,
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: to steal and to destroy, um, And so I think
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: I've had some level of anxiety coming into this next
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: season as kind of like, yeah, if we're really getting
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: not just into an unwanted realm, but something that's so
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: core to the human heart, like at what cost does
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: that come? So I think just kind of pray through.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: Let's do it right now. Yeah. I mean our audience, they're,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: they're prayer people. Um, and I believe that you're, you're,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: you're charging one of the mountains of the enemy, which
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: is pornography and desire. He wants to keep us stuck.
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and to own the realm of desire so that
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: when we think about desire, what we think about is
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: things like porn or greed or all the selfish things
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: instead of the untapped potential of what God has put
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: inside us.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: Amen. Amen. Well, let me close this prayer. Guys, as
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: you're listening to this or as you're watching this right now,
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: would you pray with me? I just think there's so
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: much– it's just the firepower we could have as we–
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: where two or more are gathered, right? Well, we got
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: thousands gathered right here listening. So let's pray for Jay.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: Let's pray for your ministry. let's pray for your, your
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: book desire. And, um, I'm praying that God would see
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: a harvest of people who are not only walking in freedom,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: but walking in fullness, because when you can understand why
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: you do things and you can understand how God's created
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: you to be your core identity, like he's made us
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: in our image and we're all uniquely crafted in that
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: image to be the body of Christ, man, that's, that's
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: what's going to set the world on fire.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And one last note on that is like, this
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: book is not a Christian book. Like, you know, this
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: book was with a Christian publisher. And one of the
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: reasons why I did that is, you know, had this
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: conversation with Tim Keller before he died, who was a
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: famous pastor in New York city. And just remember asking
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: him one day, like, you know, are there any Christians
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: that are leading the world and desire or sex or longing?
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: And he kind of answered as he typically did with
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: regard to like the defeater beliefs of Christianity that, There's
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: things like the Crusades or the record of Christians on slavery.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: And he's like, we're split on that. Yes, we have
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: done horrible things in the name of God and religion,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: hence the Crusades. But he also says, who are some
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: of the first people in the entire world to raise
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: the idea that slavery was wrong?
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: It was the Christians.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: But then he said, when it comes to desire... I
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: don't know of a lot of people that have the
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: same respect as like a Bryan Stevenson or a Francis
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: Collins in the realm of health or science and Bryan
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: Stevenson in the realm of justice. And so that kind of,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: that really struck me and, you know, planted a seed
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: inside me of like, what would it look like to
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: create a book that is, Christians and non-believers could read
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: to be able to get a sense of how do
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: we form desire. Yes. And that's what I'm after. So
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: even if it's, you know, easier to send a book
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: out to someone that you think could really grapple with it,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: I want to change the conversation in the church and
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: in the mainstream world around this topic, because I really
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: think that desire could become... the apologetic that we haven't tapped. Um,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: and so would love to kind of just see Christians
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: be known as lovers of desire.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: Well, you need extra prayer then because you're right now
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: you're going into enemy territory, whether it's a Christian book,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: quote unquote or not. It's a kingdom book. It's the
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: truths of the kingdom. Yeah. So let's pray now. Um, Jesus,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: I just thank you for Jay. I thank you for the,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: the life you've given him to unpack these truths at
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: a deep level that you've given him to find, um,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: Insight from your Holy spirit. I pray for spiritual protection
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: right now. We cover him. Everyone watching this video, listening
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: to this, this podcast, we cover you right now in
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: the name of Jesus J with protection, with warring angels,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: with the blood of Jesus. We, we ask Lord that
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: you would go before him, that you would nullify any
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: attacks of the enemy against him and his family and
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: his life. And we ask that you do far more
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: than we could ask or imagine with this book desire
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: and that you would, not only allow people to break
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: free from the chains of bondage they've been living in,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: but you would give them their core identity, their understanding
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: of their core desire that you implanted in them, Lord,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: that you have formed in them, that you were sovereign
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: over their childhood, that you allowed those things to happen.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: What was intended for evil, you have used for good.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: And we can understand that moment of what was intended
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: for evil. We can unpack why we do the things
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: we do today. And so thank you that Jay is,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: is a forerunner in this, that he's charging us, the
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: gates of hell with this, that he is, you've just
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: given him the wisdom. You've given him the anointing to,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: to steward this message and to steward this truth. So
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: we thank you for that in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Amen.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being with us. Yeah, that was fascinating.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: I'm going to chew on that for a while. Guys,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: thank you for tuning into the Jesus people podcast. We
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: will see you next week.