Healthy Touch

We are designed for hugs and holding hands and more. Touch IS a good gift from God. Healthy touch! 

Maybe this truth has you clenching your jaw but don’t be too quick to run away from this conversation. Your current sexual addiction or your past sexual trauma may have twisted the idea of touch into dark confusion and shame. 

If so, please stay. Perhaps you’re one of the many people during this pandemic going long stretches of time without an embrace, please stay. Touch and longing are not easy topics to bring up in conversation. 

So, let this episode with Josh, Kit and Kyle be a starting point for you. We pray you won’t stay stuck in the messages about sexual desire from the world or how your family of origin framed it. We pray you will learn to understand basic desire as good and avoid the dangerous turns of shame.  

For now, quiet the other messages on desire and invite God to tell you His truth for you and your body.

Highlights:

God created us for touch. Touch is actually really important and very good.

We paint people as the danger. What we want to do is untwist the misdirected desire away.

There’s a narrative in our culture that limits us in our thinking on sexual arousal. The cultural narrative on sexual arousal tells us, limiting us to “This is who you are. This is who you want. This is pointing you towards utmost satisfaction.”

Homework:

1. Inviting God into your moments of longing creates an ongoing conversation. So, when you do need Him, He can say; “Oh we know what that is. We’ve talked about that before. I’m here for you. I’m in this. Remember, here’s how we think about it.”

Here are some prayers:

Lord, I’m sensing something that in my heart I know is not appropriate for this moment. Lord, help me to redirect. Help me to see this person through your eyes and not my own. Help me to recognize this is one of your image bearers and to see them as You see them.Lord, I know that at the heart of this is my desire to experience beauty and so this is the reaction I get when I see your beauty but Lord I want to be able to see beauty in a way that doesn’t defile.

2. You’ve heard our conversation on Healthy Touch. Now, we encourage you to find safe places to keep talking about these things- mentor, spiritual director or spiritual coach.

Resources/Extras:

John 13:25 tells us the apostle John was resting on the breast of Jesus.  That was a place he went to for comfort. God gave us imaginations. He allows us to insert ourselves into Scripture so maybe that’s a means of comfort in times of longing.

Transcription:

Full Transcription Available here

Original music by Shannon Smith. Audio engineering by Gabriel @ DelMar Sound Recording.

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