Sup family, Embassy family, great to be here with you guys today, going live again in part
3 of the 7 Sacred Pathways to Intimacy.
Great to be here with you guys and if you can see me, if you can hear me say hello,
boom, I see Stuart there, I see a couple of you guys, give me a thumbs up, say hello so I know
who's there, I know who's watching and I know that you guys can hear me and everything, very cool,
sweet, Stuart my man, good to have you there and we are going to be, oh look at this, Jesse,
good to have you, this is going to be a fantastic dive into the foundational pathways and I'm going
to be sharing with you in this video why dealing with my secret sin as a single man set me up for
intimacy in marriage that is better than sex, so that's going to be fun, Stuart great you can hear
me loud and clear, that's excellent, if you are watching live just hit live in there so I know
you're joining me now, if you're joining us for the replay in the future then just hit replay,
yep, Jesse good to have you on board, so let me pray and then we're going to jump into this,
it is going to be a beautiful session today and I'm delighted to be with you, Ness good to see you
too, let's pray and then we're going to do a deep dive into the foundations and the foundational
pathways, so let's go, Trinity thank you so much for everyone who is a part of this live today and
for those that are hearing in the future, Papa, I thank you for your heart for us to know
divine romance in our relationship with you and in our romantic relationships, so Trinity I ask for
amazing grace to come on each of us and I just ask there be an impartation from heaven for divine
romance, so I ask that you would blow away our normals, I ask that you would get inside our
our current understandings and you would rewire them and you would redefine them and you would
give us a brand new blueprint of divine romance and that you would do the deep and powerful work
in our hearts that's going to set us up to participate in that divine romance, amen,
beautiful Aunty Pam is watching, great to have you Aunty Pam, great to have beautiful people,
I see people, I see Karen, I see Wilson, I see people from all over the world and John,
so good to have you guys and if you're excited about this let me know, just hit a thumbs up or
say I'm excited, if you've caught part one and part two or one of those just write in the comments
part one or part two and let me know where you're at in the journey so far, see if you've caught
those brilliant sessions, if you haven't caught them yet then boom they are going to be available
in the embassy for a little while longer but they won't be up forever, so make sure that you get
those while you can, so let's go over here and the first thing that we're going to do today
before I go deep on your story, if you want to hear my story say yes I do, here's the story that
I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you the story today after I've set some context,
I'm going to tell you the story today of why dealing with my secret sin as a single man
set me up for intimacy in my marriage that is better than sex, all right so we're going to
explore that concept, we're going to look deeper at each of these seven pathways today
and we're going to really focus in on the three foundational pathways of spiritual, emotional
and intellectual, we're going to watch and see how they all interact together to
set us up to experience the fullness of divine romance, we've got John watching from the
tractor that's genius and got some bible for you as well, we'll start, we'll start with our bible
reading which is Matthew chapter 19 verses 3 to 6 and we've also got a verse for you from John 17
So we'll jump into that and then we're going to explore these pathways.
Alright, I did a session with the youth group last week and the session with the youth group
was who does Jesus think you should have sex with?
We're covering some of this content with our youth as well, so this covers a little bit
about who Jesus thinks you should have sex with, Jesus has an opinion on who you should
be having sex with.
So let's just go and check this out, starting at Matthew 19 verse 3, here we go.
Some Pharisees came to him to test him, they asked, is it lawful for a man to divorce his
wife for any and every reason?
Wow, that's a big deal.
And so I just want to touch on that before we jump to the other verses, that first of
all, these Pharisees are coming and they're coming from a really low level perspective,
okay?
They're coming from a dysfunctional perspective where it obviously looks like these guys want
wives for different reasons, alright?
Chuck out there, oh I see a comment here, Matthew, very good, good to hear you.
So I just want to check in with everyone, are you guys doing alright hearing my voice?
If the audio is okay for you, give me a thumbs up, I've had some people saying okay, I just
had one person make a comment, so if the audio is good for you, just give me a thumbs up,
and if it's not, I will run and change the mic setup, but if it's good for you, just
give me a thumbs up, boom, I see thumbs up on the audio, so it might just be that one
person's phone.
So the question that they have is, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and
every reason?
Any reason.
So one of the things that this gives away for us is the fact that these people, they
have different reasons why they want a wife, alright?
So what do you think some of the reasons people might want a wife is?
When I've done this session before, people have said, well they might want a wife as
a maid, they might want a wife just for sex, they might want a wife for status, they might
want a wife for political reasons or networking reasons, all sorts of reasons why some people
want wives, and Jesus is about to address this dysfunction, because people have got
this low standard.
What they're not wanting in this perspective is they're not wanting divine romance, alright?
And so let's talk, let's look now at Jesus' replies to their dysfunctional perspective
with a divine blueprint, with a divine perspective on marriage, and intimacy, and sex, and divine
romance.
So, verse 4, haven't you read, he replied, that at the beginning, the Creator made them
male and female, and said, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and
be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.
So they are no longer two, but one flesh, therefore what God has joined together, let
no one separate.
Boom.
So, let's break this down a little bit, this is the divine perspective, the very blueprint
from heaven around intimacy, starts like this, the Creator, in the beginning, the Creator
made them male and female, so genders, he's addressing genders, he's addressing sexuality,
he's addressing sex drive even, the next part addresses sex drive even more specifically,
and for this reason, a man will leave his mother and father and be united to his wife,
and the two will become one flesh, and so that thing that's driving, right, so the initial
thing that's driving and moving a man towards his wife is a sex drive, now God put a sex
drive in you, and it can be really powerful, so, how strong, how strong do you think the
sex drive is that God created?
Sex drive isn't an accident, sex drive is something that God designed, now if you were
to look at a group of teenagers, say you were to assess a group of teenagers and follow
them around and do a survey, how high on a 1 to 10 do you think the average 17 year old
sex drive is?
This is specifically talking about the sex drive in a man, and it's the sex drive in
a man that's going to drive him towards intimacy, so if you surveyed 117 year old male teenagers
on a 1 to 10, give me a guess on how, uh, weak are they?
you think their sex drive would be? All right so just put it in the comments put you know 1 to 10
you serve a hundred 17 year old teenage boys where is their sex drive at on a 1 to 10 just
whack that in the comments all right and I would be thinking that it's going to be pretty much an
8 plus uh you know maybe higher you know an 8 plus maybe a 9 for most of those teenagers there
is a high sex drive now that's not a demonic thing that's a divine design that's the way that
God created in the very first place and it drives drives us especially drives men especially but
that sex drive and woman is uh you know it's just as strong that can obviously some of you guys know
that you know sex drive can change and fluctuate at different ages but it's strong and it's divine
and it's not an accident it's part of our divine design and the divine blueprint for who we are as
humans it starts with a sex drive but it leads somewhere and then Jesus goes on to say where it
leads for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two
will become one flesh so they are no longer two but one flesh therefore what God has joined together
let no one separate so this is kind of important because what initiates and begins with a sex drive
ends in something different and it cultivates and leads towards ultimately divine romance
that cultivates and leads towards an intimacy that is so much better than sex could ever be
an intimacy that far supersedes sex so let's go to John 17 and we'll touch on that John 17
just one verse very quickly here verse 22 and we're going to look at this whole concept of
divine romance Jesus says here I have given them the same glory that the father gave me
that you that they may be one as we are one now this is powerful here because he's talking about
this divine union the divine romance or the divine dance and this is flipping amazing because
if you look at the blueprint for the divine romance so you look at a blueprint for the divine
dance so you look at a blueprint for divine intimacy we always have to look at the fellowship
of the trinity and in the fellowship of the trinity we have the father and the son and the
holy spirit each of them receiving divine love perfectly and each of them giving perfect
expression to divine love so the father and the son are pouring out divine love perfectly over
the holy spirit in the holy spirits receiving divine love perfectly and the holy spirit
and the son pouring that out over the father it's beautiful divine dance where each member
of the trinity is receiving divine love perfectly and giving perfect expression to divine to divine
love now if we analyze that love for a moment that uh that love is not a calm love it's not
a withdrawn love it's not a held back love it's an extravagant outrageous supernatural love and
it's it's expressed in extreme delight it's expressed in this phenomenal dance in this
phenomenal romance of extreme divine delight this perpetual divine delight that explodes over
and in and through one another and there's this constant divine romance where the
the fullness this and it's like it just goes on it's an eternal dynamic of this constant
ever-growing explosion of delight you know we take delight on steroids and then it just goes
from glory to glory this delight is constantly received and expressed and enjoyed and delighted
and it just goes over and over and round and round and it's on fire and it's extravagant
and it's phenomenal it's mind-blowing it's unconditional it's wild it's this wild divine
romance and that's where like jesus what's that's what he's leading into that's what he's speaking
about in matthew 19 where they become one flesh they become one and in this oneness in this in
the perfect divine design for our marriages and for our romances what it's supposed to look like
is the same model that the trinity has where it's this explosion of perpetual delight in one another
at this dance of expressing and you're receiving and expressing wild wild wild divine delight
it's a level of intimacy that is way greater than sex so boom got a little bit of context
there so i hope you guys are driving with me um on the blueprint there of uh what divine romance
is about it's about so much more than just living in the same
in house. So we're gonna jump over here now and we're going to check out the seven sacred pathways
to intimacy which we checked out in the last video but we're going to do a deep dive on these now.
We'll start with 5, 6 and 7. So 5, 6 and 7 is financial directional and sexual and in marriages
that fall apart these are the big three makers or breakers right. These are the main reasons that
couples give for divorce, financial reasons, directional reasons or sexual reasons. Boom
the big three makers or breakers. Then over here these other three are the foundations,
spiritual, emotional, intellectual and that's what we're going to get into
today and then we've got sensual which could be tucked in here quite close to sexual but it's not
referenced specifically as one of the main deal breakers so it's kind of on its own
lonely here for a moment but really significant. So spiritual, I want to chat in this session about
how the spiritual, the emotional and the intellectual foundations all work together. So I've got a few
little diagrams here that I'm going to explain. Before that let me jump into my story though.
So when I started pursuing Jesus at 18 I really started to intentionally engage in a pursuit of
really going after Jesus. Let me know in the comments that how old were you when you made a
decision or where were you in life when you made a decision to start intentionally pursuing Jesus.
Love to hear from you. How old are you? Can you remember, can you remember a moment when you
decided that's it I'm going after Jesus. I want to know him. I want to be serious. I'm all in.
For me I was 18. Love to hear. Just whack that down in the comments. How old were you?
What was going on for you? What happened? When I was 18 I went all in like this is it I'm going
in for Jesus and I didn't really know that much of how to pray. I didn't understand it but I was
like I'm just going to take, just going to make a start and start pursuing Jesus. Start going after
him and what ended up happening for me is I started pursuing Jesus. He started tidying up my life so
drinking. I started cutting back on drinking and that changed and I started getting rid of
all sorts of music that was no good for me. I started making some significant changes on
parties and things like this. Some structural stuff started changing around my life
and this went on for I don't know maybe about a year or so of Jesus just tidying up stuff and he
was kind of tidying up like almost the peripheral stuff but then it got to a point where boom
Jesus got right into the very core of who I am and he started going after my secret sin. So he
started going after the stuff in me that was the biggest sense of shame. The biggest source of
shame. The biggest source of self-hatred in my heart. The biggest sense of inadequacy that I
carried around. So he went straight, he went right in there to the things that had taken place that
caused me to think that I was not enough more than anything else. He went for the core stuff and that
was, that stuff for me was as deep, as secret, as personal as things could get and so he goes right
into the very core of my being. He's like right I want you to start dealing with your secret sin
and I was like no way. In fact I made a deal with Jesus. This is kind of my, this is how my deal
went. I made a deal with Jesus and I was like I will confess this to you but after that I'll take
it to my grave and you shut up. That was my deal. Have you ever made a deal? Let me know if you guys
have ever made a deal with Jesus where you said, you know, you just, you just made a deal with him
that was never going to happen. So this deal was never going to go down. It wasn't, Jesus wasn't
on board. I was just like this is how it's going to be and it didn't turn out like that. So
it kind of got me to this awkward position right where I was all in for Jesus but there was this
one area of my heart, my secret sin stuff, where I was totally ashamed and felt completely inadequate
and I was absolutely terrified and I wouldn't, I didn't want anyone to go there and I definitely,
it was crazy, even though God knew everything about it, I just definitely wouldn't want to
have that conversation. I would just like emotionally freak out. I couldn't handle anyone going there
and
Haha, hi, um, hi Daisy. Oh
Hey, what was that? Okay. Sorry guys. I'm just I don't know what happened to see
My video just turned sideways
Before
Crikey little technical detail here
Sorry guys something weird is happening here
Give me a thumbs up if the video is the same for you guys or if it's changed
Can someone just make a comment and just let me know? Hey Jeff good to see because not so much make a comment
And let me know if your video has gone
Sideways
Things seem all right to you. Okay
Might just be my might just be my view which is crazy
It's okay, right? Oh, so that's good sweetness Jeff my man. It's all good from you guys. Okay, so
I was in this awkward position where I was all in in the pursuit of Jesus
I'm all in the pursuit of Jesus
But at the same time I didn't I was trying to avoid it because God was trying to have this conversation
with me about
About the secret sin and so I'd go and I'd be going and I'd be praying
I'll be spending hours every week going and praying and pursuing him and going after him and I'm having all this time pursuing God at
The same time I'm trying to I'm trying to avoid him because all he wants to talk about is my secret sin
And so ultimately I did the most terrifying thing that I've ever done in my life
And it wasn't something adventurous the most terrifying thing that I've ever done in my life was to address
my own secret sin issues, and I had to go into my past and
Really for a lot of people what what my issues were what my secret sins were
Wouldn't have been an issue for you at all, but for me when I was a kid
Doctors and nurses and just mainly curious stuff when I was a young fellow, you know five six years old and I was like
Oh my gosh
the devil just got on me about that and I was feeling so inadequate that I've been playing doctors and nurses as a kid and
There was just something on the inside of me. I was so so scared and terrified of this thing and
anyway, I had to go and address all these people from my past and
Ultimately was amazing and to be honest
that was a
that experience lead to the greatest sense of
personal freedom personal breakthrough that I've ever done when God started addressing and dealing with my secret sin, but
Here's why and I'm going to show you now. Here's why that
decision why that action ultimately lead to set me up for
Intimacy in my marriage that's better than sex
Okay
So I'm going to start utilizing these diagrams now you guys are familiar with the five love languages
So quality time acts of service touch words of affirmation and gifts
now I have turned those five love languages into five love tanks, all right, and
this particular diagram and set up represents my love languages in how
So the one that is that the
emptiest is
My highest love language. Okay, so touch and then after that words of affirmation
Then after that quality time the next of service and gifts. I'm going to show you how this interacts
With the spiritual side of things and this spiritual dynamic in the spiritual pathway
This consists of everything you know, like our image of God and like God's love
Image of God our identity our values our vision our level of wholeness
But it's all about belief. So everything that you everything that you believe your whole life everything that you have learned now
If there's anything that you've learned in your life, that's a lie
That's not true how it ultimately affects you in your area of your
Love things is this it's like someone every lie you believe it's like someone goes boom and shoots a bullet hole and one of your love
tanks, so you believe a lie boom you get you get another hole and your love tank and
Mate we believe
Thousands of lies the amount of lies that we believe it's just crazy. It's random. So for me, this is what this is what?
How it impacted my love tanks all these lies in my belief system. It's like someone's taking a machine gun
And just like gone to town blasting my
Love tanks
It's taken an absolute hiding, it's like a war zone.
So every lie that we believe ultimately leads to our love tanks being shot up, which means
boom, they start leaking, you know, start pouring out, start gushing love all over the
place.
And so the result of that is that we become really needy, dun dun dun, we'll get to this
a little bit more in a moment.
We start becoming really needy.
On these three pathways here, the spiritual, emotional, intellectual, as we start nailing
that, oh thanks Stuart, as we start really developing spiritual, emotional and intellectual
those pathways, what they determine is they determine our capacity to receive and express
love.
One of the reasons that I talk about sonship all the time, and I love talking about identity
and I love talking about sonship and revealing the father, is because the art of sonship,
or when we're mature in our sonship, the art of sonship is the ability to receive divine
love perfectly and the ability to give perfect expression to divine love.
How's that?
Let me say that again nice and slowly, but the art of sonship is the ability to receive
divine love perfectly and give perfect expression to divine love.
Oh, I love that.
So for me I was in an interesting place, right, and I think this applies to all of us, like
let me know if you think you've believed some lies, you know, if you've believed lies, or
even some of the key lies that you might have believed.
One of the huge ones for me is just that I was inadequate, I didn't feel like I was enough,
I had carried around that sense of shame and inadequacy, and let me show you how this dynamic
of shame and inadequacy ends up impacting us, and how it ends up ruining our capacity
for intimacy.
Okay, so we'll go with it like this, okay, so first of all you believe a lie, boom, and
that lie, every time you believe a lie, especially if it's to do with inadequacy, you know, or
identity, the lie will usually lead you to believe this, that you're inadequate, somehow
you are inadequate, boom, and whenever you believe that you're inadequate in any way,
it automatically produces shame, which is a toxic, a substance that is totally toxic
to humanity, and shame is toxic to intimacy, shame destroys intimacy, because as soon as
we have shame, it also leads to self-hatred, but where it leads us to, is it leads us to
isolation, leads us to isolation, we end up putting up walls, we end up just hiding
the exact opposite of getting vulnerable, the exact opposite of intimacy, and so every
lie that we have ultimately starts creating these walls of separation, these walls of
disconnection, and they restrict and inhibit our ability to receive love, whether that's
with God in a spiritual dynamic, or whether that's with someone else, and so in this beliefs
dynamic, this is huge, we have lies, which lead to inadequacy, which lead to shame, which
leads to isolation, and then also in that isolation place, which we're not going to
talk about, we end up having coping mechanisms, and that coping mechanisms could be all sorts
of addictions, unhealthy emotions, unhealthy behaviours, in that coping mechanisms dynamic.
Alright, so I've got another diagram here as well, that we're going to look at, this
is the stress-o-meter, so we've covered that spiritual dynamic, the spiritual dynamic is
really one of the most influential dynamics of what
What enables you to receive and express
divine love or receive and express love in any type of human relationship and
That's where our beliefs are. If you believe a lie, it leads to inadequacy, shame, isolation, coping mechanisms
Which could be really unhealthy emotions and behaviors and ultimately it puts holes all through our love tank. So why was it
Why was the most terrifying thing that I ever did as a single man?
The thing that set me up for intimacy in my marriage that was better than sex
Here's why because this shame, this lie
inadequacy, the shame, the isolation and
The coping mechanisms were ultimately became these huge holes in my love tanks
Now I wasn't aware of this at the time, but it had created these huge holes
Making me believe things like I'm not worthy to be loved
Yeah, why would anyone love me? So my value went right down. So I've got these huge holes in my in my love tanks
I've got these huge issues with putting up walls and distance and facade and hiding and that just causes me to be an individual
that
Let's put this in a context. You can have an encounter with God one night and feel like radically filled and baptized and love of God
So wow, that's amazing. And then BAM the next day you feel dry again. Oh my gosh
What's going on with that? Like I had this love encounter and now I feel
Unloved, now I feel distant, now I feel disconnected. Does God even love me anymore?
And oftentimes that's because we've got these big holes in our love tanks
Which drain us out and also make us really really needy. Now
God's less judgmental on us when we're like that, but it becomes harder in romantic relationships
All right, so I'm going to jump in here now to the emotional pathway
What I'm going to say about the emotional side of things is that
The emotional pathway is totally dictated by the spiritual pathway
Under the emotional category, we've got the five love languages
This is also in the emotional category where spiritual issues start. They first begin to start showing up
These identity issues they start cropping up in our emotions. It's the first place that we start to see them and
The emotions, our emotional pathway, it dictates our ability to actually to have to communicate with people to
to actually communicate and have
have healthy conversations and
Healthy communication. Let me let me show you with this diagram here on the stress-omitive
Let me ask you this for a question
How was the stress levels for you over the last say five years? In the last five years have you had high stress?
Medium stress, low stress or no stress?
Interestingly
Stress produces chemicals through our body. One of the main ones is cortisol. Cortisol is one of the main stress
chemicals and it doesn't like when you have a stressful situation that you're going through a stressful period that
chemical cortisol which impacts your you know, it actually
Your brain releases it when you're in a stressful time
But cortisol can build up in your system and actually builds up
So if you've had a season where you've had a lot of stress this cortisol will actually build up in your system and
It impacts your ability to handle stress. Now some people who've been in stressful situations or
You know over a long period of time or they've got a lot of emotional stuff going on or
They haven't mastered, you know, especially if we haven't mastered the ability of such we haven't mastered or gone on this journey of mastering
The art of sonship which is receiving divine love and expressing divine love the more you could even say the more we are in this
orphan state of being
The more stressed out we're going to be so let's just say that someone here on the normal day
Their stress level will just this is a made-up machine. You can't go and buy one of these from my tent
But let's just say that this person's stress level is at 95
Percent. Okay, so they've only got
5% capacity so something small happens for them and then that small thing that happens for them
Because they're already at 95% so just a small thing happens and boom. They are gonna have a meltdown
So meltdown goes on. It's a big explosion a big meltdown happens
You guys know people like that
Like you have to walk on eggshells all around them because if you don't walk in if you're not like super super careful around
Every word you say around that person if you're not super super careful around exactly how you act that person's going to become
Dysfunctional they are going to have a serious issue something that's going to go down
Then there's other people
Yeah, they might have more capacity to handle. We'll just say there's someone else here. They're a 50%
But the more pressure that comes on
Yeah, obviously they've got more capacity, but as pressure comes on boom they can come to this place where they have
An emotional freak out one of the scientific names for it is an amygdala hijack, and we touched on that briefly
last in the last session in part two about how the
The brain is broken down into a few different areas so one at one part of the brain is this the fight flight or freeze
Survival instinct which is called the amygdala and the amygdala part of your brain
It's not there's not there's no one tapped out intelligence here. It's not about being smart. It's not about being intelligent
It's just about survival which means the amygdala is really really fast
It's one of the fastest parts of your brain to work, but it doesn't carry any
Intelligence so the intelligent part of your brain is the frontal cortex
And what happens when your stress level reaches a hundred is boom an explosion takes place it kicks off
You have an amygdala hijack and that amygdala hijack results in
shutting down
your access
Shuts down your brain's access to your frontal cortex where that's where all your you know
All your good learning is all your great skills your communication skills your boundary skills all of those things are in your frontal cortex
and if you have an emotional
Freak out you've no longer got access to your frontal cortex so even if you wanted to you could not
You could not be accessing
the
All the good things that you that you've learned so under intellectual
So that's why I have under here. It says the emotional it dictates your ability to communicate
Let me just put something in here as well for you around emotions
Is that Jesus is the model?
I
Love this. I love this verse John 14 12 Jesus said
Anyone who has faith in me will do what I've been doing and they will do even greater things than these and for me
I mainly
Attributed that to the supernatural dynamic of Jesus ministry. I'm like oh, yeah anyone who?
has faith in Jesus
Will be able to do supernatural things, but it's that faith that word faith there
It's all about bliss and it comes under the spiritual
Pathway, so anyone who it's not so anyone who thinks the same way that Jesus thinks
Will be able to operate and function the same way that Jesus functions
Let's apply that here as well to these love tanks
I'm gonna share with you soon how that
How these love my specific my love tanks specifically impact my relationship
but
Let's look at this John 14 12
And
How that actually applies to our emotions. Jesus said anyone who?
Thinks the same as as I think will function the same as I function
When we apply that to the stressometer
Another way you can look at it is that Jesus is saying he is the model. He's the model for what normal
Sonship looks like he's the model for what normal
Christianity looks like if you want to see what the model looks like what's the blueprint for your life under stressful conditions?
Well, Jesus is the model. So how did Jesus operate?
Under stressful conditions did Jesus have an amygdala hijacked and he did Jesus freak out
How did Jesus handle stress and all those things
this is one of the things that really really helped my marriage when
Things were really under pressure for me when I was feeling like I had those questions of all my goodness
Can I sustain this marriage now?
I want you to ask that question if you ever had that question pop through your mind at a time of stress when
Emotions are you know, I'm building up for you a stress is building up for you. Have you ever asked yourself that question?
Can I sustain this?
Marriage, so when I was having that and the pressure was was was growing and building
this is one of the things that really changed like actually empowered me to keep on going is that I
Was growing in sonship and the more you grow in sonship the more capacity you have to actually deal with stress
in a healthy way the more capacity you have to have healthy emotions and not have an emotional
freak out even under extreme stress so bearing in mind that Jesus is the model so say with me
Jesus is the model boom just type that in there say Jesus is the model so Jesus is the model
and here's what we're going to look at we're going to look at the fact that when Jesus is
on the cross right when Jesus is on the cross uh think about the the stress levels he's had there
i don't know about you guys but if you experienced uh someone stripping your clothes off in public
how would how would you feel if someone came up to you a group of guys came up to you in public
they stripped your clothes off and they gambled them away uh where would the stress level be for
you in that i i personally i'd be um i'd be that'd be pretty stressful for me what if they
stripped your clothes off tied you up and gambled you gambled your clothes away or if you just look
at that in the context of Jesus they stripped his clothes off him they whipped him they beat him
flogged him and they're crucifying him naked in front of everyone and even in the midst of that
he doesn't at one point he doesn't have an emotional freak out he doesn't have an amygdala
hijack because when you walk in your sonship you really understand your identity
this changes your whole mode of operation so your capacity to handle stress it all radically changes
which is huge in the context of a of a relationship so Jesus he demonstrates here
that the that the model for our sonship is to walk stress-free boom
and we walk when we walk stress-free and when our emotions
uh are free from being freak in that freak out level we've got full access to our intellectual
pathway so the things that uh i would put under the intellectual pathway for you um that are
really significant things under the intellectual pathway i'll just say to you as well i was even
just having a conversation with alana about this today i believe that it was this this pathway
right here that of all the pathways in the process it was probably the intellectual pathway that
actually saved uh that saved our marriage when we were going through all those like when we were
going through our most intense times and we were struggling the most and when we're trying to
figure all this out without without knowing it but when we're trying to figure it all out and
trying to understand um how to make our marriage work one of the most valuable things that we had
done is before we even got married we spent a lot of time really focusing in on the intellectual
side of things so we learned we did a lot of training with danny silk so we did the communication
dance we um which i really recommend that series bike by danny silk and the best book that i'll
recommend for you on how to develop intellectual intimacy it doesn't say that but it's all the
skills that you need it's really i think the best book in the world on it is danny silk's
book keep your love on all right let me write that up because it's such a genius book keep your love
on keep your love on by danny silk now that book there um that book hadn't come out yet before like
that came up came out after we were married but developing all those skills um how to set healthy
boundaries developing those skills of how to communicate making i statements under under
pressure it kind of seems like it might not be the most important but for us it was one of the
areas that because we spent time on that as uh before we got married it became one of the things
that really really helped to save our marriage when like i shared in in part two last week
uh when we when i was in that place of being really needy um these communication skills
that we learned man they saved us so let me um let me transition now and show you how
these love tanks how this kind of works for us and why i've got them at different deals
boom what's your top love language um why don't you drop in the comments what's your top love
language uh owen good to see you my man um so what's your what's your number one love language
all right let's um let's explore that for me touch boom straight away straight up number one
love language is touch and so on this chart that's why touch actually is the least full okay
um now the interesting thing here just in terms of how the devil will try and ruin your life
or how things one of the reasons why things
impact different people differently say for example you grew up at home where
you never had enough right you just there was never enough money for gifts
there was never enough money you know for Christmas if you grew up in a family
like that then that would really damage you that would actually have a real
impact on you because your number one love language is gifts and if you're
number one love language is gifts and not getting that when you're a kid that's
going to have a real real bad effect on you for me gifts is my least so that
wouldn't impact me at all but if your love language like me if your love
language is touch and if someone abused you in a way whether it was physical
abuse or sexual abuse if they abuse you through touch that would have a huge
crushing devastating impact on your life which would open up this enormous wound
which would cause cause you know just your love things to be draining really
quickly on the other hand if you're a gifts person and you had that
tragedy of experiencing physical or sexual abuse but because you're white as
a gifts person that abuse won't impact you as a much as much as it would if
you're a touch person so that's just something just to be aware of I found
that really interesting when I learned that but this is how it is for me on my
love tanks my number one love tank is touch my least is gifts so that means
that my need for touch is way higher my love tank and the two in terms of the
touch one that drains really quickly naturally even without even if it hadn't
have didn't have all these bullet holes in it even if it was in a healthy
context let's just imagine that those bullet holes from our beliefs aren't in
there plus and just think that our our love tanks are really healthy even a
healthy love tank whichever is your number one it will drain faster so for
me if we go a month and we haven't had any sexy times for me I'd be like oh my
gosh it's been a month this is crazy like what's going on and I would be I
would be like whoa there's big issues going on you know for me that would be
crazy for Alana she'd be like oh really it's been a month I had no idea you know
but for me if it was gifts if I went a whole year without Alana ever giving me
a gift it would be completely irrelevant I wouldn't even I'd be like oh really
Wow unfortunate so to the degree that it's your love language impacts how your
level of need in that area and this is one of the things that for us was really
really helpful to break this down and negotiate and this is the skill of
negotiation in marriage is so huge because you know and it's to assume it's
to make an ass out of you and me and assumptions are so dangerous assumptions
are so destructive that's why it's it's literally in your marriage and we did
this in our marriage we just sat down and said well what do you need because
these healthy needs and unhealthy needs but these are healthy needs and you need
to just sit down and figure out if you haven't figured out where your love
languages are sit down and figure out map out your love languages for each of
you and then figure out what your needs are and then bring them into the table
and just bring them into the equation of your whole life actually map out what
your needs are and so you can come up with a scenario that's going to work
well for you where each person is getting their needs met in a really
healthy way there we go so let's bring this bring this towards a landing now on
the inter like the intimacy that is the divine design for our for our lives the
intimacy that divine romance if we're in this when you know when things start
getting healthy for us in our marriages and when we're stepping into that
pathway towards divine romance then it's the nature of love to meet a need so if
you're in that place of actually really understanding your sonship and when your
identity starts we are really working well one of the mindsets that you're
going to have and I just think that this this is the nature of God is it because
he is love the nature of love is to meet needs and we have been created with
health a healthy level of need and
In our marriage there needs to be this dynamic of negotiating and understanding exactly what each other's needs are
and then finding a compromise and I just want to say compromise, negotiate, what do you need in all of those areas?
Where do you need to compromise and negotiate in the spiritual areas, in the emotional, in the intellectual, in the sensual, the financial, the directional, the sexual?
Where do you need to negotiate?
Because directional was such an issue for us, we've spent lots of time negotiating around that.
Sexual, we've spent lots of time negotiating around that.
Financial, we've spent lots of time negotiating, planning, strategizing around that.
Sensual, we've done the same.
Intellectual has actually been, you know, we haven't had to negotiate those so much.
But I just want to say for the big three, these are the big three makers or breakers.
If you haven't got a plan and a strategy and an agreement in those areas, be very careful.
And I would highly recommend of any of the ones that you're going to come up with and negotiate a healthy agreement where you guys have got total agreement,
it would be in the sexual, directional, financial because those are the three big makers or breakers.
But ultimately, when we start coming into this place where we're actually in pursuit,
we leave behind this dysfunctional mindset of just trying to survive in our marriage.
We step into a divine dynamic of what God really has for us, the real divine design for our relationships and our marriages.
It looks like the Fellowship of the Trinity where it is off the charts, extreme levels of delight.
It's this perpetual divine dance. It's the perpetual divine romance happening of each of us receiving divine love perfectly and giving perfect expression to divine love.
Oh, so beautiful.
And that, when you actually start experiencing that intimacy in marriage where you're just really receiving each other's delight in this amazing way,
and it's just this perpetual sense of delight taking place in your relationship.
And that delight, you know, it's extravagant, it's extreme.
And I really want to hammer this point home for a moment because I feel like it's so common that the model for marriage
and the model for what a Christian marriage is, it's like dropped.
The standard has dropped where the divine standard, the divine blueprint for Christian marriage is absolute divine romance.
And I think that divine romance is one of the most powerful ways to reveal and to establish heaven on earth is divine romance.
So through divine romance, oh my gosh, there's so much power in it.
I just want to say that that's God's plan for your marriage is divine romance where it's exhilarating, it's mind-blowing, it's heart-exploding, it's emotionally,
like there's bombs, there's explosions, there's awe, there's wonder, there's bliss, there's ecstasy.
It's like, wow, you're left undone, you're left overwhelmed.
I just really want to hammer that home that the blueprint, the model for our marriages is divine romance.
It's not just survival, but divine radical romance. That's the blueprint.
And as we start stepping into our sonship and start stepping into that place of divine romance,
then meeting needs becomes the desire of our heart.
It loses its sense of obligation and it becomes a total delight.
And this is something that in marriages gets really unhealthy is that when the meeting of healthy needs becomes obligation,
if the meeting of healthy needs in your relationship has become obligation,
it's just time for maybe just reassess what does love really look like.
And probably time to reassess as well the stress levels.
You need to figure out where all the stress is coming that's causing love and delight and meeting healthy needs to become an obligation.
So I hope that's been a blessing for you guys.
I know that for us, this process of discovering this content has ultimately revolutionized our marriage.
So let me pray a blessing for you and whether you're single, whether you're married,
these three foundations, the spiritual, emotional and intellectual,
are what's going to set you up for an intimacy in marriage that is better than sex.
Last thing I want to say is that sex can be cheap.
You can acquire sex or get sex. It's totally cheap, but intimacy is priceless.
This intimacy, the intimacy shared and the intimacy experienced in divine romance is absolutely completely priceless.
It's worth fighting for, it's worth pressing through whatever your struggles are, it's
worth going and getting some counseling, it's worth going, you know, whatever it takes for
you to pursue and acquire this dynamic of divine romance and reincorporate that into
your marriage.
It is worth it 100% and if you're single it's worth doing the hard yards right now, it's
worth doing the hard yards of repentance, because every time you repent, right, so this
dynamic of what I went through when I dealt with my secret sin, when I dealt with my secret
sin, boom, I wiped out so much of these things that were causing my love tanks to drain so
that meant that it was just so much easier and so much more organic for me to be a great,
you know, to love really well and the more that we embrace this journey of repentance
and transformation, just love becomes our native language, delight becomes our native
language and our capacity to receive and express love becomes an organic indigenous native
language for us.
So I want to pray for you now, let me know what were some of the things of value for
you in this, let me know as well, like, you know, where are the areas where you're experiencing
the biggest pressure and where you want the biggest breakthrough.
Massive love to all of you guys, see a couple of comments coming through and going to just
wrap up with a blessing for you.
Trinity, I thank you so much for your model of divine romance, I thank you for getting
inside of each of our minds and reshaping and restructuring the blueprint for what our
marriages are supposed to look like, for what our romantic relationships are supposed to
look like and I just thank you for recalibrating those and bringing them into alignment with
absolute extreme ecstatic blissful divine romance and I ask right now Jesus that there
would be grace and there would be wisdom and there would be anointing and there would
be divine appointments and there would be breakthrough released over marriages right
now and over singles, Papa, those that are in that process of right now setting themselves
up, they're in that process of transformation, they're in that process of repentance, they're
in that process of dealing with secret sins and allowing you to go deep in their hearts,
Jesus I just ask right now you release grace upon grace on those lives, that you release
freedom on those lives, you release breakthrough on those lives and Papa for those that are
married already, I just ask that divine romance would come like a flood, that intimacy that
has, it's just priceless, that intimacy that is beyond words, that intimacy that has, Lord,
that has just, that intimacy that is just beyond anything else, it's more priceless
than anything we know in this world, I ask that that type of intimacy, that type of divine
romance and bliss and ecstasy begin to flood marriages in Jesus' name, Papa, I thank you
for your grace on these people, I thank you for your love with them, I thank you for fresh
supernatural outbreaks of your love right now, your overwhelming love just to fill people's
hearts and lives and marriages and minds right now, in Jesus' name, Amen, sweet guys, we'll
bless you, I'm gonna sign off, have an amazing week and look forward to great things happening
in all your marriages and in all your romantic relationships to come if you are single, see ya!