Focus on the Family with Jim Daly

John Fuller: Today on Focus on the Family, Pastor Sy Rogers continues a presentation about pursuing sexual purity and harnessing our basic human biology.

Preview:

Sy Rogers: But just because there’s a predisposition, what was it GK Chesterton and CS Lewis said very well about Mother Nature giving you a predisposition? 100 years ago they said this. Just because Mother Nature gives you a predisposition doesn’t make it natural nor normal to indulge. Because Mother Nature is not your mother, she’s your corrupted fallen sister.

End of Preview

John: You’ll hear more from Pastor Sy today in a presentation that is designed for a mature audience. And your host is Focus on the Family president Jim Daly. I’m Jon Fuller.

Jim Daly: John, as we heard last time, Sy Rogers suffered a lot of trauma by the age of six, and was sent to live with female relatives after his mom was killed in a car accident. Up until that time, he had been repeatedly molested by a trusted male in his mom’s life, and he fully embraced the homosexual lifestyle as a teenager. He even considered gender reassignment surgery, and lived as a woman for almost two years. But eventually Sy discovered that God wanted to be his heavenly Father, the Father he always wanted. And he embraced the sold-out life for Jesus Christ. And if you missed part one of Sy’s presentation yesterday, um, please get in touch with us. We can send you the entire message on CD or audio download, or you can get the Focus on the Family app for your smartphone.

John: And of course, we’re also on YouTube, so give us a call, 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. 800-232-6459. Or you’ll find the links at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Jim: Sy married his wife, Karen, in 1982, and they have one daughter, uh, he served for many years as a teaching pastor with Life Church in Auckland, New Zealand. Sadly, he died just last year at the age of 63 from kidney cancer, and our hearts go out to his family.

John: Yeah, I’m sure he’s missed. Um, let me note that we’re picking up Sy’s message as he explains why it’s so important for parents to push back against the cultural messages that our children are exposed to, especially regarding sexual intimacy. Now, with that background, if you have kids in the room, use your earbuds or listen later. Um, and here now is Sy Rogers at a Devoted conference that was held at Wave Church in Virginia Beach, on today’s episode of Focus on the Family.

Sy: We must be the ones to upgrade the conversation. Like the day my daughter came home from school, high school. She put her books down on the dining room table. I was in the kitchen cutting something up. So then she said, “What about masturbation, daddy?” I put the knife down.

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: And then I said to her as all fathers do in a moment like this, “Go talk to your mom.”

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: Actually, I talked with her, and then her mom talked with her. But here’s the deal. I’m hardly a perfect dad. I just hope my daughter doesn’t write Daddy Dearest one day.

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: But I felt like I had done my job, because I would have never talked to my parents. I would have let my culture tell me.

Audience: Right.

Sy: I would have let my peer group tell me. And I knew my daughter. She’s already heard what her peer group said, and she already heard what her sex ed curriculum in school said, but now she wanted my opinion to discern through the voices. That’s why maintaining the bond, even if they roll their eyes, is better than abdicating.

Audience: Yeah.

Sy: Because when you break through the awkward barrier, it says, “Hey, I love you enough to give this a try.” So I have to learn to discern the voices. And that means, what does it say, Romans 12? “Hey, Sy, who you been listening to? Don’t copy the pattern of your pagan culture. I’ve adopted you into God culture. Copy this path of wisdom.” ‘Cause you know, frankly, not living out God’s sexual advice, and it’s explicit and direct, over 30 standards. Not because God loves rules. He loves people.

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: And you don’t have to be a Christian or a rocket scientist to recognize that mismanaged sexuality brings terrible consequence. Oh, 50 years ago, the sexual revolution brought us all a lot of casual sex, but it also brought a lot of sexual causalities.

Audience: Yeah.

Sy: And God doesn’t love standards. He loves people. But thank God He has a history of redeeming sex, and he redeems everything we give to him.

Audience: Yeah.

Sy: That abuse, that abortion, that label, that boundary crossing. Those feelings and detractions. He redeems everything we give Him. That we can walk in health, wisdom, and freedom. And so discerning, so I don’t copy those things. That means I have to see what the things are the world is saying, and then find out what is God saying. I have to learn to discern truth from lie, healthy from unhealthy, wisdom from folly, beneficial from detrimental. I have to make those assessments every day in a world of many voices calling my name, wanting my mind, my loyalty, and my money. I have to hear the voice of the shepherd, and Jesus says, “My sheep learn to discerneth, so start to practice now.”

Audience: Right.

Sy: Your made to succeed in hearing Him. “And Sy,” 1 John says, “Don’t, don’t believe everything everybody tells you. Don’t believe that post. Or get the rest of the story from that article. And don’t just let your hairdresser tell you what your truth is, and don’t just allow your friend or cousin to tell you what you should think about this thing.” Instead, discern the spirits. Don’t just listen to the teleprompter reader on the news. That’s a show. Instead, what is God saying? What’s His path of wisdom telling you? Discern it. In Jude, verse four, beware of people who teach you the grace of God lets you do what you want sexually. Grace gives you room to grow.

Audience: Yeah.

Sy: It doesn’t give you license to do what you want. And therefore, you know, I look at a two-year-old, and I cannot expect a two-year-old to act like a 45-year-old.

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: I give them grace. They can’t help it. We understand their poopy diapers, and then when they’re 15, they can’t help it, they have poopy attitudes.

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: But, but when you’re 45 and acting like a self-indulgent boundary-less two-year-old, then there will be trouble, not grace.

Audience: Yeah.

Sy: Then we got biology. Good heavens. Who wouldn’t struggle? We got a setup within us. It’s not our fault, and we are not assigning blame. Certainly, God is not. We have the impact of biology upon sexuality and relationship. And sexuality is a struggle because our biology sets us up. Not our fault. But we have to reckon with it. So we have a DNA code, and there can be some predisposition within us towards sex. But just because there’s a predisposition, what was it GK Chesterton and CS Lewis said very well about Mother Nature giving you a predisposition? 100 years ago they said this. Just because Mother Nature gives you a predisposition doesn’t make it natural nor normal to indulge. Because Mother Nature is not your mother, she’s your corrupted fallen sister.

Audience: Woo!

Sy: Then we got hormones coursing through our veins. [foreign language]. These hormones-

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: … between the ages of 12 and 17, sex hormones increase 600%. I know. We’re trying to get a meaningful education during all of that.

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: And these hormones, they make you feel sexual. But they’re not released, these hormones, from your glands. They’re not released from 12 to 17 in a nice little IV drip, daily dosage for convenient management, but they’re released in waves and rhythms. And some days your hormonal tide is low, and you don’t feel any sexual pressure, and you think, “I’ve been delivered from that demon of lust.”

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: And then, yeah, of course, you can cast out all the demons you want, you cannot cast out your hormones. And so two weeks later, the urge to merge begins to surge in your b- thank you so much.

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: Anyway. I’m so glad you could relate. But anyway…

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: That urge to merge begins to surge, and you feel like a werewolf, and people will cry out-

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: They’ll cry out in some purity messages, or in some young adult group at the altar, “Oh, take away this battle with lust, God. Oh, oh, take away these feelings. Take it away, God. I don’t want to offend you.” And I think God would say, “No, dear, you have it wrong. I take away guilt, not humanity. And by My divine design, you are laced with hormones that make you feel sexual, and I don’t take that away. I give you grace over here, and guidelines over here, and in the middle, you will learn to grow up and become a responsible steward for what you think and feel. I will be with you to help you walk in freedom.” You see, a culture that says, “But I have to be true to my feelings. I have to be authentic.” No, dear, nowhere in the word of God does God suggest you be true to your feelings. He suggests you be true to Him in spite of your feelings.

Audience: Woo! Woo!

Sy: We all have feelings, and integrity, and purity are not the absence of feelings. It’s how we manage them.

Audience: Yeah. Yeah.

Sy: So you can own it. It’s good mental health to admit you’re attracted. But attractions prove to be temporary unless you keep reinforcing and indulging them.

Audience: Yeah.

Sy: That’s why we pick up a cross. That’s why we crucify flesh. That’s why we say no to this to say yes to this. And that’s why we become responsible stewards of mind and body. He doesn’t take it away. We learn to bow down and obey. But that may take practice, and that’s okay. We’re not earning love. We’re not earning salvation. We’re learning to grow up as responsible stewards for what we think and feel and do. Agreed?

Audience: Yeah.

Sy: He’s for our success. And so, Sy, don’t offer the parts of your body as instruments of unrighteousness as you use to, and the real members here that are sexual are not my private parts, it’s probably my imagination, the last bastion to surrender. In fact, you know that old song, I Surrender All, should be retitled, I Surrender Incrementally at Best.

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: But God will take that. He’s in it for the long haul. And then, 1 Corinthians, chapter six, “Hey, Sy, your body belongs to me. Uh, you claim my name. I claim your body for my dwelling place.” Therefore, he goes on to say, “Do not misuse it sexually.” So it becomes incumbent upon me to find out what is God’s definition of misusing my body sexually. Not what I think, not what my culture thinks. My culture changes its opinion all the time. But God’s got a transcendent truth of wisdom that if I walk on it, it will benefit me. I will not hurt you, and I will walk forward in a greater freedom, than if I bow down to my flesh.

Audience: Yeah. Woo.

Sy: You are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And finally Ephesians 4, “Put off your old, corrupted self, Sy.” The inference is, I’m not judging you that you have a corrupted self. We’re just owning the truth. Put it off, and then in its place, put on the new and better way. You see, part of this problem that keeps us struggling and limits our freedom is because we have trained our brains towards bent forms of pleasure. The brain loves pleasure. God made it that way. You like chocolate?

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: Even if you never eat it again, your brain will never forget you loved it.

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: And given a chance, you would return to it, because your brain loves pleasure, and sex is very pleasurable. Both physically and emotionally. And so your brain doesn’t care if you were naughty before Christ, sleeping around and crossing boundaries. Your brain only recognizes, “That brought me pleasure,” and so now that you’re wanting to walk seriously with God, you know morally you ought not to do it, but the want to do it remains in your brain, and this creates a conflict called the war with the flesh. But not this flesh, the problem is the pattern in your brain. Because the blood of Jesus washes away guilt, not chemically reinforced patterns. But if I can train my brain in ways that are self-defeating, I can retrain that brain in ways that work in my favor and take me down a path of freedom. So it’s kind of like this, if I built a freeway that takes me to a self-defeating destination, that freeway will never be dismantled in my brain, but I can take an off ramp called however, and not arrive there, but arrive at another location like this.

Audience: Yeah. Woo.

Sy: I’m so mad, I could slap your face off. However-

Audience: Woo! (laughs)

Sy: The Bible says not to give full bent to my anger.

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: That might even be more regrettable than being mad right now, so I’m gonna calm down. We’ll have a chat, and I’m gonna talk to my lawyer. Or-

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: I’m so scared. I don’t know what to do. I feel overwhelmed. However, God is with me. He will help me.

Audience: Yeah.

Sy: And he puts skin on, and I’m gonna call a friend, and I’m gonna get some reality check here, ’cause I’m not perceiving this very well. I may be afraid. However, I can reckon with it instead of it reckoning with me.

Audience: Yeah.

Sy: Or… All those years of theater finally paid off.

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: I’m so lonely and so horny, and I really, really hate this feeling. However, I am not gonna go to the bar and get drunk and hook up because that’ll make me feel worse. I’m gonna call God. I’m gonna talk to Him, and I’m gonna get a reminder that he loves me, and then I’m gonna call my accountability partner, and I’m gonna arrive at a better place, and not be exploited. That is how you put off the old, by putting on the new, through the powerful pivot called however. I get to own one truth, and then I pivot toward the bigger, better truth. Not too late to retrain that brain.

John: You’re listening to Pastor Sy Rogers today on Focus on the Family. And we have a CD of this entire presentation, both parts, yesterday and today. And we’re making that available to you as you donate to the work of Focus on the Family. Uh, make a monthly pledge, or a one gift of any amount, when you call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. 800-232-6459. Or you can contribute to the ministry and request that CD at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. Let’s go ahead and return now to more from Pastor Sy Rogers.

Sy: I remember the Christian who came to me one time, the married man who said, “Pastor Sy, is adultery always wrong?

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: I said, “You’re not wanting to be philosophical, are you?”

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: I said, “What happened?” And he said, “Well, you know, my wife and I don’t love each other anymore, but my secretary and I just have this anointed connection, and we’re in a relationship, and I wanted to know you’re thinking, that is adultery always wrong?” And I said, “Well, you know, uh, fair enough. Sometimes we have to chew through the word to kind of get to what God is saying, but I thought He was clear on this one.”

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: You know, it’s like, in the 10 commandments, don’t do that. And there’s no asterisk at the end of the command saying, “Adultery may be permitted under these circumstances.” (laughs)

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: Now, look. As you and I would agree, adultery is no laughing matter ’cause it hurts people. That’s why God has parameters around our feelings and our sexuality, ’cause He doesn’t want us to hurt ourselves and other people. But you know, at the same time, I have seen marriages burn to the ground that have been restored out of adultery, ’cause God can redeem everything we give Him. And even if the marriage doesn’t survive, the individuals involved can be plucked from the fire, and they can be recalibrated with newer, healthier foundations, and they can grow forward in God’s redemption because He redeems everything we give him. He writes redemption over mistakes. King David, Samson, sexual misadventure, anointing and appointing did not stop them, but they came to their senses, returned to the Father who restored anointing and appointing, speaking to us in the 21st century, that God’s ability to redeem our mistakes and misadventures is bigger than our ability to make them, so always run back to Him. In fact, that brings us to this idea about dealing with the devil. The real issue here, I said to this man, “I wish you’d just tell me the truth. Fact of the matter is, you’re willing to trade away the life you’ve lived, and, and your marriage because your heart and your flesh want this other woman. That’s the truth. But when you’re trying to rationalize it, I’m concerned. Because when you’re saying, ‘Did God really say I can’t have it?’ You’re hearkening back to a voice in the garden that got the mess started.”

Audience: Yeah.

Sy: “So there’s nothing wrong with using your good critical thinking skills to find out if what God said is true, but when you’re wanting to rationalize, “Is a God of love going to deny me something so satisfying and loving? And if love is love, and God is love, then how can this be boundary crossing?” And so you got to be careful who you’re listening to, and that’s why God invites us into a posture of submission. It is not a one-off event. When we get saved, that is the beginning of an initiated posture of bowing to Him instead of other things. So I’m not bowing to the voice of the devil, who lacerates me with the words of the bully that make me feel inadequate and inferior. Because they may call my name, but God calls my name, and I’m bowing to His words of life. I’m no longer bowing to the idea of a dysfunctional family trying to put qualifications above me so that I’ll ever measure up and be, uh, you know, adequate enough. Instead, God has given me a different standard, and He is backing me with His love, and I’m bowing to Him. And when Satan calls my name, in that dark garden, I am reminded of Jesus, who was the second Adam, in the second garden, called Gethsemane. And the first Adam failed in the first garden, but Jesus was under the pressure of his life not to bow down. He did not say in that garden, “Hallelujah, I’m about to be crucified and tortured for these things I did not do, but the will of God, bring it on.” He said, “Get me out of this. I don’t want my flesh to be persecuted.” But then he changed the history of the universe, your life and mine, when He said, “In spite of what my flesh wants, in spite of my fear, in spite of wanting to indulge my own interests, I’m gonna bow to God’s interest,” and you and I are in the room because Jesus submitted to God when He did not want to. And in a less dramatic way, I am not the Christ, but I am His follower, and there have been times when Satan has put a target on my back. Don’t you think? Don’t you think he’d love to trip me up? Don’t you think he’d love to rub my face in all of that failure, so that he could say, “Aha,” as could my critics? But instead, there have been those times under pressure, and yet, I have a 37-year-old marriage. I am a daddy and a granddaddy, and I have a global ministry, because in spite of my flesh and all of its vulnerability, to me the path of freedom and the key that unlocked that door of freedom was bowing down to my God in my own dark garden when I didn’t want to. Saying no to this, enables me to be here saying yes to you.

Audience: Cheering.

Sy:  “Sy, you walk by the spirit, you will then therefore not satisfy the cravings of your flesh. You walk in freedom. You may have cravings, but if you submit to me and my word, then you will walk above it.” In other words, don’t just try to stop it. That’s not your goal. Your goal isn’t the negative, it’s the positive. If I’m walking with God, then I am fulfilling-

Audience: Yeah.

Sy: … the path of freedom. And I can say no to it. Finally. And there is a finally. Here, I find the biggest reason why people struggle sexually is because of history. They have been starved of love, and they’re hungry. They’re hungry to be loved. And many times, people have been wounded. Can I tell you that when I came to Christ, I walked away from the only bread I had ever known. And I don’t know, you think I’m a strong cup of coffee today, you should have been in the skin of the men and women in that church 40 years ago. And they would have felt inadequate to know what to do, but they loved me well, and it was especially the men in my church. My problem wasn’t with girls. I understood masculine attraction to the feminine, but before boys grow up into men who have the capacity to rightly love women, they have to bond with their own gender to properly form secure identity, and I had missed out. One childhood robbed me. And I now had a new father in a new family with a new opportunity to have the blank spots filled, that I could grow forward. That’s why it’s relationships that save you. It isn’t going to be rules and rituals, it’s gonna be re- relationship. God and God with skin on. This communion and this communion. Jesus paid a high price that I could feed my need with the good bread.

Audience: Yeah.

Sy: And so the men in my church, they held me, they hugged me, they loved me, they touched me. They took me to the men’s camp, the ministry, the men’s Bible study, and the men’s breakfast, and they proved to me I had value to them, and it did not have to include exploitation, and it changed my life.

Audience: Woo.

Sy: Finally, the healing of the soul, God knows how. It took God 10 years before He put His finger on the issue of my childhood sex abuse. I finally grew to a point of maturity, stability, where that addressing could be productive. And I went to a therapist, and he helped me walk through, like God with skin on. I had the support of friends and family, colleagues too. But I had a professional help me map out the way forward, that I could walk in freedom today. And one day the Holy Spirit said to me, “Your Daddy sees this, and your Daddy’s sorry, and He wept and broke over what had been taken from me.” You know why that mattered, ladies? Out of a billion things God could have said or thought to do, I had never known that my suffering mattered to anybody. And when God let me know it mattered to Him because I mattered to Him, that was more powerful than being wounded, was being wanted, and given justice before him. And He wept over me, and no one had ever wept over me. He didn’t take away my history to make it painless. Instead, He entered into my pain and carried it with me forward up and out of a ditch of distrust. And there He turned a wound not just into a thing that had crippled my ability to love and trust, and He allowed me not just to survive it, but then I began to heal, and then I began to thrive, and He turned the wound into a great big wellspring for a global ministry that makes the devil pay for ever having conspired to rip me off, and He will let you walk in that freedom.

Audience: Woo! Woo!

Sy: He says in Psalm 1:07, “I satisfy your craving the right way.” And in Ecclesiastes, chapter eight, “It is going to happen for you that healing, but the wise will understand, there’s a time and a purpose for everything, even if right now it seems to weigh heavily upon you. That’s not the permanent condition. God will lead you in freedom, His way and time.” So on that night, I will conclude. But I will conclude it with this. In LA, I was doing a message, and we had a time for questions and answers, and people wrote their questions down. Remember that? On paper, with, like, a writing instrument?

Audience: (laughs)

Sy: And the question filtered its way up to me, and this is the beautiful thing in the question. He said, “Dear Pastor Sy, I grew up in a Christian family, but I did not want the faith of my parents, and I thought I knew what would make me happy. So I wondered away from faith, but now these years later, I find myself in a very dark place. What would you tell me to do?” I thought about it. And I said to him, kind of like an instinctive reaction as a daddy, I said, “I know what I’d say. If you were my kid, I would say, ‘Come home. We can figure all this other stuff out in due course. But first, won’t you come home?’”

Audience: Yeah.

Sy: Because that’s the path of freedom. This is the path of what it means to be a believer. You’re gonna depend on God to bring you through. You’re gonna discern his voice above all the others. You’re gonna learn to grow up and possess your mind and body responsibly. You will walk out a path of freedom through submission to Him, instead of submitting to other things, and therefore you will find greater connection and communion from Him and with God with skin on in the family and faith, and that will bring you through. In spite of all the risks out there, and the vulnerabilities in here, that will be the path of freedom for you, at least that’s what’s worked for me, and it’s been my pleasure to invest it. Let’s pray. Lord Jesus-

Audience: Woo!

Sy: Thank You for your faithful love to us. Thank you that You understand us. And that You have compassion on us, and that You are bigger than any vulnerability or weakness that is present in our lives. You would rather have us messy than not at all, and you won’t leave us messy. You are going to walk us, escort us, and live in us, and take us as the good shepherd to the good destination of greater freedom, beginning even this conference, and forward for the rest of the lives of these women. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Audience: Woo!

John: Pastor Sy Rogers has been our guest the last couple of episodes of Focus on the Family.

Jim: Wow, John, uh, Pastor Sy is really a great example of how the Lord can change a life. From molested child to promiscuous homosexual, to a 40-year ministry providing hope to those who struggle with their sexuality, Sy Rogers really made an impact on this world. And let me remind you, Sy talked about seeing a therapist to address his early abuse. That’s such an important step toward healing. And if you are in a similar situation, please give us a call. One of our wonderful counselors would count it a privilege to spend time with you on the phone, and even refer you to a like-minded Christian counselor right in your area.

John: And we have so much help that’s just a phone call away. 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. 800-232-6459. Uh, when you call, just, uh, request a call back from one of those counselors. You could also reach out via our website, which is focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Jim: Pastor Sy also addressed adultery, and how marriages can be saved in spite of that terrible situation. So if that’s your story, please, uh, let us help you. You can talk to one of our counselors, and we’d also strongly recommend our Hope Restored four-day intensives, which have an 80% post two-year success rate. Um, here’s a note we received from Sonia. She said, “I have been so blessed by Focus on the Family. My husband and I were at the end of our rope. But we attended Hope Restored, and it was a wonderful experience. We received a scholarship to attend, and I’d like to donate today because our marriage is better than ever. Thank you to the donors who make Hope Restored possible.”

John: I love hearing stories like that, Jim. And of course, they happen every week, it seems. Uh, folks whose lives were changed by Hope Restored.

Jim: Well, and I want to amplify what she said there so accurately, that it’s the donors that make that happen. It’s so true. Uh, but to keep going, we need to your help. Please consider making a monthly pledge to Focus on the Family. It doesn’t have to be a large amount. It’s the consistency that really helps us month to month. And when you make a pledge of any amount, I’d like to send you the CD of this two-part presentation from Sy Rogers, as our way of saying, “Thank you.” And if you can’t make a monthly pledge, uh, we understand that. We can also send you the CD for a one-time gift of any amount. The bottom line is, join us in ministry today.

John: And you can do that when you call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. 800-232-6459, or donate online, and request that CD at focusonthefmaily.com/broadcast. Coming up next time on Focus on the Family. We’re gonna offer help for parents when your child is ill.

Preview:

Dr. Scott James: And so if fear is the primary emotion that I’m communicating to my kids right then, I think I’m missing an opportunity to demonstrate God’s love to them. I’m missing an opportunity to show them the gospel.