Christ Community Brookside

Title: Lust | Chastity
Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8
Speaker: Bill Gorman, BillG@ChristCommunityKC.org


“I’ve finally come to see that every game has rules and sex has rules, and that unless you play by the rules, you’ll find that sex can create a depth of loneliness that nothing else can.”— George Leonard, The End of Sex: Erotic Love After the Sexual Revolution.

“Lust...pretends sex and sexual pleasure are a party for one. Lust makes sexual pleasure all about me…. In lust sexual pleasure is divorced from love and mutual self-giving. And when we lust we certainly want nothing to do with giving life and the future commitments that might bring…”
— Rebecca DeYoung, Glittering Vices

“We Christians don’t want to — cannot — accept the culture’s story about sex: that sex is only for fun, that sex has no consequences, that what I do with my body is none of your business, that the goodness of sex is evaluated by the mind-blowingness of the orgasm. But nor we ought to err on the side of a Gnosticism that tells us sexual desire is bad, that bodily longings are to be stamped out of existence. Neither of these is the Christian approach, for the Christian approach is neither hedonism nor obliteration; it is discipline” — Lauren Winner, Real Sex

It is a “pro love” lifestyle and, therefore virtue one needs whether single, married, old or young. Chastity is not something you need only when you’re dating or surfing the Internet; it is a quality of one’s character, evident in all areas of life. ... Chastity’s fundamental question is not, “How far can I go on a date without crossing some invisible line of ‘sin’?” but rather, “How can my life – my thoughts, my choices, my emotional responses, my conversation, my behavior – make me a person who is best prepared to give and receive love in relationship with others?”
— Rebecca DeYoung, Glittering Vices

“Singleness instructs the church in other lessons just as vital [as those taught by marriage]. … Singleness reminds Christians that the church is our primary family.… Single people witness to the Christian hope that the kingdom of God unfolds not principally when we nurture our nuclear families, but, as theologian Stanley Hauerwas explains it, when we show “hospitality to the stranger.”— Lauren Winner, Real Sex

>> Chastity is better than it sounds
*Fight shame
*Set boundaries
*Cultivate friendship
*Be disappointed

I’ve been with my spouse for almost 15 years. In those years, I’ve never been with anyone but the mother of my son. But that’s not because I am an especially good and true person. In fact, I am wholly in possession of an unimaginably filthy and mongrel mind. But I am also a dude who believes in guard-rails, as a buddy of mine once put it. I don’t believe in getting “in the moment” and then exercising will-power. I believe in avoiding “the moment.” I believe in being absolutely clear with myself about why I am having a second drink, and why I am not; why I am going to a party, and why I am not. I believe that the battle is lost at Happy Hour, not at the hotel. I am not a “good man.” But I am prepared to be an honorable one.
— Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Violence and the Social Compact” in The Atlantic

“The best advice, then, resisting lust is not to get an Internet filter (although you should do that too!), but to have good friends. If we have genuine friendships in which we learn to give and receive love in a healthy and satisfying way, we will be less inclined to wander off looking for sham substitutes and quick fixes.”— Rebecca DeYoung, Glittering Vices

Conversation Starters – Brookside Campus
Date: June 18, 2017
Text: 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8
Title: Lust and Chastity
SCRIPTURE: Read 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5.
Based on this passage, how would you describe the relationship between self-control, lust, and sexual immorality?

TAKEAWAY: How would you summarize this sermon to a friend who hadn’t heard it?
THINKING BACK: Bill made it a point to say that sex is a gift. However, many of us may have grown up hearing and believing not that sex is a gift but either “sex is gross” or “sex is God.” Which would you say you’ve heard more: “sex is gross” or “sex is God?” And in what ways do you struggle truly believing that sex is a gift - neither gross nor God?
DRAWING CONNECTIONS: If lust makes sex selfish, then how would you explain to someone how lust diminishes the gift of sex?
QUOTE: Rebecca DeYoung says that cultivating chastity is “to empower ourselves to love.” How exactly do you think chastity empowers us to love?
LIVING TOGETHER: Cultivating friendship was named as a key to growing in the virtue of chastity. How do you think our community group can be intentional about cultivating friendship both among ourselves and with others in the church?
PRAYER: Pray for each other to be able to take the necessary steps to grow in the virtue of chastity and to experience the freedom of a sexually pure life.