Ep. 307: The Battle With Sexual Sin

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the indoubt podcast, where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week, we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s word. For more info on indoubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Daniel Markin:

Hey, it’s Daniel Markin with indoubt. On today’s episode, I’m chatting with Garrett Kell and we’re talking a little bit about his book, Pure in Heart: Sexual Sin and the Promises of God. What we’re looking to discuss is what is sexual sin and what does it look like to walk in the promises of God? Meaning, as you think about being pure in heart, what does that mean and how can we walk well walking in the light and pursuing the Lord with a pure heart and seeing the Lord, blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. We spend some time talking about that today.

Hey, welcome to indoubt. This is Daniel Markin, and today I’m joined by Garrett Kell. Garrett, before I introduce you, why don’t you introduce yourself and give us a little bit about who you are and maybe some of your ministry, and the path that your ministry has taken to where you are now.

Garrett Kell:

Yeah, man, great to be here, Daniel. Thanks for having me on. Like you said, my name’s Garrett. I’ve been a follower of Jesus for about 23 years, got saved through a witness of a friend. I came to a Halloween party that I threw. He made a stand for the gospel and the Lord just used that to kind of change the entire trajectory of my life. I’m eternally grateful for that. I’ve got one wife, her name’s Carrie. We’ve been married for 15 years. We have six kids, most of them on purpose. It’s wild at our crib for sure. I’ve been a pastor for about 20 years and I’ve been at this church, Del Ray Baptist Church, since 2012 serving as one of the pastors here. I’m in Alexandria, Virginia right now. Looking out my window, I can see the capitol over there in Washington DC.

Daniel Markin:

So cool. I was researching you a little bit and I learned that you studied a little bit under Mark Dever. Were you one of his interns?

Garrett Kell:

Yeah. Man, I got saved out of a nominal kind of background. I was very much not a Christian, but then kind of went metho-bapti-costal, kind of mixed nondenominational was kind of my world, was at Dallas Theological Seminary, pastored a Bible church for a little bit. I was very eclectic and then I just always had a desire to learn more about the local church and struck up a friendship with Mark, came and did the internship. That’s where I say I got Baptist brainwashed. But for real, the brother really helped me to think well about what God’s word says about the local church. Yeah, I’m thankful for Mark. It’s been a blessing.

Daniel Markin:

So good man. I have kind of funny story about, so he has a little podcast that he’s been doing over the years and stuff. I think with maybe some of the interns and maybe you’ve been on this podcast before with him, but I-

Garrett Kell:

Yeah, it’s called Pastor’s Talk, I think.

Daniel Markin:

I think so. I was listening to an episode, it was an old one. I was going way back as far as I could on iTunes listening to it. Funny enough, well, kind of funny, I was in a car accident while listening to Mark Dever’s podcast.

Garrett Kell:

Danger.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, danger Dever.

Garrett Kell:

I’ll tell him.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, you should.

Garrett Kell:

I’ll tell him that.

Daniel Markin:

Pass it on him. But it’s hilarious because after the accident stopped, it’s like a five car accident and I was the third car, all I hear over the radio is Mark Dever just talking about friendship.

Garrett Kell:

Oh man, you had some PTSD next time you hear his voice. Yeah, I’ll have to tell Mark about that.

Daniel Markin:

Not relevant to this podcast, but what we’re talking about today is I want to chat a little bit about your book Pure in Heart, which is you’re talking about sexual sin and the promises of God. This is a pretty loaded topic and a lot of people have different definitions of what sexual sin is. I want to get into this with you and we’ll go around and spend time here maybe that we discuss and it takes us somewhere else. But where I want to begin is why did you write this book? I mean, you’ve been serving as a pastor, you’ve been in ministry for a long time. Why this book?

Garrett Kell:

I think twofold. One, my own soul and second, the souls of others. I am a shepherd, but I’m first always a sheep. My life before coming to know Jesus was marked with sexual sin. It’s kind of what I lived for. I wouldn’t have thought of it as sin at the time, but sexual pleasure is what I was about. Everything was oriented around that.

Then when I became a Christian, when you become a Christian, not everything changes. A lot of things change. Obviously, you’re a new person, new heart, new affections, but you still got that old man who doesn’t die easy and struggles with sexual and particularly, the sin of pornography just haunted me as a young Christian, and even in years after that, even while I was serving as a pastor and I include some of that in the book itself.

I needed something more than just I’ve got to do better or I’ve got guilt or shame, I needed something stronger than that to help me to fight sin for myself and as a pastor, to be able to help other people to grow. So yeah, God in his kindness helped me to fall in love with one of Jesus’ promises, Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” (ESV). That helped to reorient the entire conversation for me about what purity was and about what God was calling us to. By God’s grace, and there’s still a battle, but I’m not where I was, not who I was, and the Lord’s given grace. I want to help other brothers and sisters to do the same.

Daniel Markin:

I think you’re nailing it there too, because it’s other brothers and sisters because oftentimes, and you mentioned pornography, but the sexual sin is very broad as I understand it. It could be lots of things. Lots of men struggle with pornography, lots of women also statistically do as well. Then if you expand out of there, even if people aren’t watching pornography, but maybe they’re dating and they’re pushing the boundaries on getting a little too physical, there’re questions there about is that sexual sin?

I remember my wife and I, we made boundaries in our relationship and we had to ask ourselves, be like, hey, are we pushing these boundaries? Are we within them? That was an active discussion for us. But maybe let me ask you this, when you talk about being pure in heart, what is pure in heart and what isn’t being pure in heart? If someone was to ask me, hey, what does it mean to be pure in heart? Garrett, what does it mean to be pure in heart? What would it be and what isn’t it from a gospel perspective?

Garrett Kell:

I think that’s a great question. If it’s okay, let me just tell you a quick story about how I used to fight sexual sin and that might help to clarify a little bit. Right after I started following Jesus and I got in with this group of fellas, I don’t know, we call ourselves the Holy Huddle or the Bible Guys or something like that, and we would meet up on Saturday mornings and we had this circle where we would sit around in a circle and in the middle of the room we had a chair or a little table and on it, there was this big jar of money and we called it the pervert pot.

Basically every Saturday, you’d come in and you would get up and you’d say, hey, this is how I did this week. If you masturbated or you looked at porn or you messed around with your girlfriend or whatever it was, or you did something sinful you shouldn’t have done, you had to do the walk of shame up and put the money in the pot and then kind of walk back and everybody would be praying for you. Then, the next guy goes and you kind of go around the circle and you’d have some guys who would make that walk, and then you’d have other guys who would be able to stand up and say, hey listen, it’s been three weeks I’ve been walking holy and haven’t given in. What that cultivated in me and others in that group was well intended, but what it cultivated was this being tossed between shame and self-righteousness, shame when you’re not doing well, self-righteousness when things are going great.

That constant battle is not what God calls us to, rather he calls us to something far greater. Sexual purity, it’s an orientation of the heart that flees from sexual sin and flees toward pleasure in God himself. That’s kind of broad, but I think we need to begin the conversation about purity in heart. It’s not just lines in the sand of do’s and don’ts. There certainly are commands that we need to follow, but it begins in the heart that God desires us to desire him and pleasing him and trusting him in the way that we use our bodies and the way that we interact with our passions and desires, that it be oriented around what’s pleasing to him because we know that his ways are good and his commandments are actually guardrails for our joy.

Daniel Markin:

What are God’s desires for our bodies? What are God’s desires for the way we use them and maybe in pleasure, but also with him being the greatest pleasure, what does that look like? What does the Lord… How did he design us?

Garrett Kell:

Yeah, I mean I think the sexual drive is not for everybody in the same way, but it is across the board, it is something that humans have. We have these desires for intimacy, we have desires for the enjoyment of sexual pleasure and we have to understand that it’s actually a really good gift from God. A lot of times Christian circles will just be like, sex is bad don’t do it until you get married and then do whatever you want. I just think that’s a strange way to frame it. God has created us as sexual beings with good desires that are right, that we need a steward though, recognizing that he’s given it as a gift for a husband and wife to share within the context of marriage where they serve one another rather than just use one another.

Sexual sin, then, is anything outside the bonds of that, anything outside of one man, one wife in a relationship where they are agreed upon serving one another in particular ways that are sexual. Anything outside of that, which would include sex with yourself, which is masturbation, watching other people have sex, pornography, having some sort of sexual engagement with someone who’s not your spouse, whether it be somebody that you’re dating or engaged to, or if you are married, sex with somebody outside of that. Anything outside the design of what God has given for this really good gift to be used in a really particular way, that’s what sexual sin is, because it displeases the Lord because it’s outside of his design for what is actually good for us and glorifying to him.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, that’s so good. As you talk about design and the way you just framed it there, I think about how it’s such a helpful way of thinking about it and even discussing stuff with homosexuality or even perhaps all the different gender things going on. I think by just going back and saying, well, hey, this is what God’s design is. I find in discussions with people and discussions that might seem really hostile, I find people are like, hey, actually this is what I believe God designed us for, it tends to diffuse a lot of tension because what we’re trying to do is say, hey, we believe God created it this way and we’re trying to live that out as best we can.

Garrett Kell:

Yeah, I think that’s good. I think another thing that helps Christians in this conversation is to recognize that everybody is sexually broken, everybody. There’s nobody on this planet who does not struggle with what it means to rightly use our bodies in this way, how to steward these passions and desires. Everybody is in some way, shape, or form confused and wrestles with doing this rightly. Nobody’s not affected by default in this area. I think that can help us to have compassion with people who are struggling in this area.

The Christian should not approach this conversation as some kind of self-righteous, judgmental person who has it all together, but rather we are fellow sufferers on this planet. Some people may be tempted in ways that are different than us, but that doesn’t mean that we in some way are better than them in any way, shape, or form. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and everybody, regardless of who you are, needs God’s grace to help understand who we are, how our bodies are supposed to work, and what to do with these passions we have.

Daniel Markin:

Absolutely. Even people who they go through seasons of being really in a great place with sexual purity and then there’s seasons where that fades away, so for someone to be so self-righteous and be like, I’ve got this all figured out, circumstances change and maybe you slip on some disciplines or intimacy with the Lord and pretty soon, you’re not as righteous as you thought you were.

Garrett Kell:

Yeah, this is not some graduate thing where you’re like, oh, okay, I’m out of third grade now, I’m in fourth grade, I’m out of fourth grade, now I’m in fifth grade. It’s not how the Christian life works. It is very much more ebb and flow static. It’s a relationship. I often think of it as embers in a fire that if you have out in the wilderness and it’s a cold place, you’ve got to keep this thing fanned with prayer, with time with the Lord, with fasting, with good Christian community, with faithful observance of the ordinances, and all the things that God has prescribed for us.

Obedience to his word, that’s how we fan this thing alive. If you don’t tend to your relationship with God, it does weaken and your flesh strengthens. I think it’s a real battle. I think the way you talked about it right there is really important. There’s different seasons, circumstances, our bodies change, our circumstances change, the pressures and stresses of life change, relationships change. You meet somebody, you start losing your mind and you’re like, wow, they’re amazing, I’m willing to do anything when I never thought I would do this before. Yeah, I just think that’s why you need an ever ongoing relationship and abiding with Jesus to help you in whatever season or circumstance you’re in.

Daniel Markin:

Amen. How would you then counsel someone, let’s say you mentioned the ordinances there, which I love, so imagine someone who’s been a part of a local church, is a member, is taking communion, doing their best being at Sunday mornings, extracurricular bible studies, things like that, they’re baptized. Yet, they still find themselves in a place of falling into sexual sin and feeling defeated by that. Where would you direct someone like that? Because on the surface, they’re doing all the things that seem right. If you were to ask them, well, what have you done? Well, I’ve done all of these things and yet, I still am falling. I imagine there’s people listening and that’s their story. It is not for lack of trying. In fact, they’ve put themselves in community. Where would you direct them?

Garrett Kell:

Well, every person’s a little different, right? But I think first of all, I want to encourage them, hey listen, if you are following some of the typical means of grace, that’s good. Don’t stop doing that. Let’s continue to cultivate that. But let’s see, how is Satan getting at you? This is where you might want to start with, okay, you’re in community, but are you in honest community? I used to be in community with people, meaning I was around Christians, but people didn’t know me. I was wearing a mask. I wasn’t really being honest and transparent in my confessions. Let’s talk about are you really being honest in your confessions, and not just your confessions, but your temptations? I found it very helpful to reach out to people when I’m feeling tempted. Do you have somebody you can reach out to even then, even though temptation’s not sin, it gets light on it and light is sin’s kryptonite, right? It makes it lose its power. So, what does your community look like or what else are you cultivating?

Let’s say you’re doing all those things, but at the same time, let’s say you are watching Netflix every night and you’re constantly on social media and you’re always just listening to music and you’re just abiding in the world in a lot of ways with things that aren’t necessarily sinful, but you’re retreating to the world for refreshment constantly, that’s cultivating something in your flesh which actually weakens your ability to resist in maybe a particular area of weakness like with sexual temptation. I’d want to see what other patterns of life are going on right now for you.

There may also be some real issues from your past, whether it be unresolved sexual sin that you’ve never really confessed and repented of, or maybe there’s been some sort of abuse that has happened to you, that you’ve got scars that you never had the wells of God’s grace bring in and bring some healing and some help in some ways that are really, I think, necessary. I think everybody’s going to be a little bit different and that’s really where you’ve got to have people who know you around you to help really diagnose going on with you in particular.

Daniel Markin:

I think what you were getting at there, it reminded me of 1 John where John’s instructing the church and he’s talking about walking in the light, what does it mean to walk in the light? So often, I think I for a long time interpreted that as walking in the light means perfection. I’m getting this right, I’m now in the light. I’m not walking in darkness, I’m walking in light, I’m doing all these things right. The true light switched on for me when I realized that it’s actually not perfection, it’s honesty. Honest about yourself and honest for the need of God’s grace and the Holy Spirit’s power to move through us and to help us.

Garrett Kell:

Yeah, I think the Christian life should be more understood that it’s about direction, not perfection. We want to strive for holiness in all things, but the direction is leaning into Jesus, which always is going to be leading with weakness. Lord, I confess I need your help here. I’m weak. I desire this that I shouldn’t or whatever it may be. I think you’re right, the goal is not to just be perfect, yes, obey in the grace that God supplies, but the way you get that grace, 2 Corinthians 12:9, is through embracing and being bold about I’m weak, I need help. That’s both before God and before others, and leading with that weakness is really important.

Daniel Markin:

As you were writing this book Pure in Heart, what discovery surprised you the most, maybe as you were researching or as you were just digging more into this topic? What was the delightful discovery of this writing process?

Garrett Kell:

Yeah, two things I think in particular, the one is, I think it’s the fourth chapter where I talk about the positive view of sex that we talked about a little bit ago. A lot of people, they have found that to be a really useful corrective because a lot of the things that we hear in our church is just don’t sin in this way because it’s bad. I was really refreshed by just getting a positive view of what God thinks sex is. And then along with that, the centrality of Jesus and the centrality of his return, how much power there is in that. 1 John, chapter three, where it speaks about those who hope in being like him at his return, purify themselves as he is pure. There’s something about longing to be with him and being like him and being free from struggles and temptations in the worldly passion. There’s something liberating about getting your eyes up on him and desiring him.

There’s power in an eternal perspective that I think I knew, but I didn’t realize until I was writing this and kept finding myself drawn back to that. I love Pilgrim’s Progress. It’s one of my favorite books. I keep a bookmark in it. I read it all the time, and Christian in that allegory, he always has his eyes on the celestial city and that keeps him sober minded the whole way home. I think there’s some real power in that that is oftentimes untapped, so that was a great joy for me in writing it.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, so good. As you think about this topic, the book, but also your ministry, what breaks your heart the most as you talk to people in sexual sin?

Garrett Kell:

Two things. One is to see how sin ravishes people and how just crafty Satan is to get in on people who really love the Lord and then begin to make small compromises and to see if it goes unchecked, how destructive sin can be. Then also, just how that couples into hopelessness and despair, which is part of my own story. I remember a time when I went home from a Bible study, sat down at the computer and just fell out, I’m going to look at porn and I did. I looked at porn for hours on end and then finally, just shut the computer. I remember sitting there thinking, I guess I’m always going to be like this. That defeated picture just haunts me because I see it so often in so many people.

I think the good news of the gospel is the Lord says no, that’s what Christ died for and that’s what Christ is raised for and that’s what he intercedes for right now. To set you free from sin and its power. He really can liberate you, not again to perfection, but to himself and knowing him and he can really help you. That’s my hope and that’s part of the reason I wrote the book was there’s a lot of good resources out there, I want to say that. But I didn’t feel like I had one book I could hand to any man or woman, somebody struggling with same sex attraction or not, somebody who was either struggling themselves or wanted to help somebody who was struggling. I didn’t feel like I just had a resource that I could just hand to them, and that’s why I wrote it.

Actually in the back, all the discussion questions were written by members of our church. There were about 80 brothers and sisters who read it before we sent it off to the publisher and they helped write all the discussion questions to help facilitate convos for other people who might want to read it with somebody else. That’s been one of the joys in this particular topic is people coming together and locking arms and saying, listen, God’s grace is sufficient for whatever we need for this next step, so let’s not focus on being perfect forever in the sense of our own obedience between now when we see Jesus, but let’s focus on the next step. Let’s focus on the next three hours, let’s focus on the next three days, the next three weeks. Having that day-by-day, step-by-step, watching people do that together is one of my great joys. Any way I can help facilitate that, because I need it myself. I mean, I’m not some expert on this. I wrote a book, but I’m a dude who needs Jesus just like anybody else, so I love watching people chase him.

Daniel Markin:

So good. Yeah, we all need Jesus. We all need help in this area. It’s almost even more important for people who are in a really good place because of what you’re saying about it, if you make those little compromises, because it’s like, man, I’m shooting 98%, I’m doing really well and sure I can compromise in a few areas but it can slip fast. That is something where having community, and I like that your book is oriented around that with discussion questions, having that community and I can just imagine you have a group of guys or a group of girls who are working through this book together and being able to be that accountability for one another because the Christian life is not meant to be walked through alone, at all.

That’s why we say the local church is so important. Even in there though, within a local church, there’s going to be little friend groups that come up or maybe support groups kind of like whether it’s sexual sin or people who are just angry, people who have just severe anger. You need community to be able to walk through this and I really appreciate that your book focuses on the promises of God in that way. Briefly give us two promises of God that you find in this book and ones that maybe have really ministered to you and also have ministered to others in hard times.

Garrett Kell:

Well, I think the one that’s based on Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” I think what it reminds us is that purity is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Blessed are the pure heart, for they shall see God. The promise is that you get to see God and the way there, the pathway there, the means there is by saying no to temptation. I’m going to say no to looking at that thing on the internet because I want to see God. I’m going to say no to this compromise with my boyfriend or girlfriend because I want to see Jesus. I want to say no to whatever it is because I want to say yes to him. That promise is so liberating. It’s the way to see God and know him is by clinging, by faith to I’m going to resist this so I can see him. There’s so much power there.

Then, there’s the promise of help along the way. Just think about this 1 John 2:1, “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin, but if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense, Jesus Christ, the righteous one” (NIV) I wrote this book so that people won’t sin, but if you do sin we know where to run. We run to the righteous one who is righteous in our place, who loves to intercede for us, whoever lives to intercede for us. Every step of the way, both in hope of he’s going to be worth it to resist this sin and he’s going to be faithful when I don’t resist, both of that, that’s gospel. I need all of that. Those are the sorts of promises that I think you’ve got to mind God’s word for. Find what’s precious to you and cling to them until we see his face.

Daniel Markin:

That’s amazing. So again, that was Matthew chapter five and what was the second one that you had?

Garrett Kell:

1 John 2, 1 and 2.

Daniel Markin:

So good.

Garrett Kell:

And there’s a billion more. There’s a billion more in the Bible. That’s why we read it, man. Just if I can say, that’s why you read the Bible. You don’t read the Bible so you don’t feel guilty that you didn’t check off your box for today, right? We’re beggars looking for bread, we need life, we need his word, we need to hear from him. I think the more we can realize that’s what all of these means of grace that we’ve talked about with the Lord’s Supper and going to church and singing songs and reading the Bible, the reason we do all of that is because we want to see him and just don’t let religion be just an end in itself. That’s a pathetic way to use your time. But rather, let’s seek him. Yeah, he’s got to be the goal, man.

Daniel Markin:

I love that. What I’m going to take away from this program is we are beggars begging for the bread of life, who is Christ. That’s a good perspective to have and it humbles us and also puts Jesus where he ought to be, which is at the center, the thing and the one that we are chasing. Garrett, man, thank you for jumping on here with us and being with us today, really appreciate it and appreciate your ministry.

Garrett Kell:

Yeah, brother, appreciate you. I just want to encourage anybody who’s listening, who’s heard anything today like flee to Jesus, reach out to a friend. Now is the time. This is not luck or chance you heard this. Flee to him. God bless y’all. Can’t wait to see you do it.

Speaker 1:

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Daniel Markin:

indoubt is a ministry that exists to engage young people with biblical truth and provide answers for many of today’s questions of life, faith, and culture. Through audio programs, articles, and blogs indoubt reaches out to encourage, strengthen, and disciple young adults.

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