Becoming a Godly Sexual Man: What the Church Never Taught You | Guest: Sam Jolman

Transcript

Welcome to the Shameless Podcast, where I help Christian men kill shame, stand strong, and live on mission. I'm your host, Ken P, and I'm bringing you real stories, practical insights, and biblical truths that equip you to break free from your sin, shame, and live a life of purpose. Let's step out of the shadows together and into the light of Christ. What if everything you were taught about sexual purity missed the bigger picture? Or why do so many Christian men feel more shame than freedom when it comes to their sexuality?

What if your struggles with sexual sin aren't just about discipline, but something far deeper in your soul? And how can a man be both godly and sexual without guilt and shame? These are the questions that we are going to be talking about today. And today's topic is becoming a godly sexual man. What the church never taught you. And today I have a phenomenal guest, Sam Joelman. He's a therapist, counselor, and the author of The Sex Talk You Never Got. Sam has spent years helping men heal from shame, understand their sexual design, and reclaim a healthy view of masculinity.

Sam, welcome to the show, man. Ken, thanks for having me. Such an honor to be here. I know, man. We've been talking back and forth through text and email and stuff like that and before this uh podcast. And I think we have such likeminded spirits of wanting to help men and uh I want to know from you. Yeah, man. I I just want to know from you. I told you this, too. I read your book and I was like, "This is such great stuff." Just the angles you hit and all the stories on them.

There are several that are hilarious, dude. I was dying and I was like, I want to share all of them. I know we don't have time to share all of it, but uh I I want to know from you what actually inspired you to write this book and why this topic is so crucial for men today. Yeah, you know, I would say a couple things. The first is as a counselor, as a therapist, sitting with and having the honor of sitting with so many men over the years and hearing men approach their sexuality with only one tool, which was, am I sinning or not sinning?

Right? That was kind of the only metric they had when it came to their sexuality is I'm behaving or not behaving. And it felt like, man, there's this whole other world of desire and what God created good in you and your lover heart. And it felt like men did not know how to even begin to talk about the integration of sexuality in their body or the things how to process even parts of their own story. So I would say first of all just feeling this deep ache to help men find a deeper conversation about their sexuality both with themselves and with their community and really as a way to find freedom.

Along with that obviously is my own journey sexuality. I think of the young man I was and how sexuality has been such a place of some of my core struggles in life. Sure, sexual struggles, struggles with pornography, but just even my own embracing of desire in marriage and how to integrate with my body and being a sexual being, all of that has, you know, been a part of my journey. And so I in some ways I'm writing to that young man, right, wanting to give other young men or men who didn't get any meaningful sex talk or who have struggled as they enter midlife even right in their sexuality or beyond just a greater conversation, greater way to approach their sexuality.

And then obviously is the larger conversation our culture is having. Honestly, one of the final kicks for me was the Me Too movement. And you know, as we all bore witness to stories, story after story of, you know, anything from, you know, the sexual o overt sexual harm from a man, just the simple cat calling, right? And I call it simple, but that the the struggles that women have suffered in the name of male sexual desire. And you know that I think the cultural question was are men just fundamentally monsters?

Are they just sort of animalistically sexual? You know, will boys just be boys as we say, right? And obviously as a Christian I know, right? Like male sexuality is the artwork of God. There must be a bigger vision here than just this sort of animal lustful slap on the hand to men of you just need to uh behave. So all of that came together and I finally had the motivation to write the book and here we are. It's out in the world. Yeah. Well Sam, you know, and that's what brings us to today, right?

Because when you and I started first talking about this, I remember you were like, "Hey, obviously sin is an aspect of it, but there's so many more aspects that the church has failed to talk about." And you and I both grew up around that purity culture phase. And we could talk about that a little bit, but what were some of the issues that like the church kind of missed? And let me put this, I love the church. I love the local church. I don't want to bash it like I'm a hater and don't go, but there are times where we just miss the mark on certain things.

We're imperfect. So for most men, many of them report receiving that guidance on sexuality from their parents in churches and they missed it. So what do you think are those areas that Christian communities have neglected? Well, you know, you mentioned purity culture and purity culture being this attempt and I love the church too. I you know it is the bride of Christ and I so I say these things as a lover of the church but you know purity culture was this attempt to create some sort of se sexual ethic a response to the sexual revolution right how do we have a how do we invite godly sexuality and it was latching on to this one word purity right that that purity is the aim of our sexuality and I think what ended up happening is this hyperfocus on purity as virginity and sexual purity as the only point of sexuality.

For women that there was a hyperfocus on modesty and not tempting men. But for men, you know, the lesson or the message, the primary message is right, you're largely a lustful being, and you're going to just always be on the brink of lust. And so, you need to really be hyperfocused on making sure you're not acting out with sexually with lust. And it ended up creating this, I think, an over identification of sexual desire with lust or sexual feelings with lust, right? that anything that moves in me is suspect, right?

That I I am largely an animal and I I am, you know, oh, near to the brink of falling into lust or sexual sin. I think it made enemies of our bodies, right? in the in the name of killing the flesh, we repented of having a body and we didn't know how to sit well with sexual desire or even bless sexual desire to notice that it's a gift given to us. And that, you know, obviously within relationship, within marriage, in courtship, but it's also a gift in the sense that it mirrors who we are as um sensual beings, right?

The church has struggled with how do we honor healthy pleasure? Like, you know, even just the design of our bodies. You have 4,000 taste buds roughly in your mouth. You know clearly God is saying you know I want you to enjoy the pleasure good right not just survive and take in food as nutrition although that's true but also to enjoy all the pleasures I've created of a mango right or a strawberry or chocolate right that all of those pleasures were meant to lead you to worship God you also have 8 to 10,000 nerve endings in your genitalia Right.

Again to mark and not that everyone will be sexually active but your body needs to be witness that you were created for pleasure. You were created for good embodiment. And I think you know the church has wrestled with making the body an enemy in a certain way and overidentifying sin with what moves in the body. And you know, I think that has made men suspicious of themselves or you know, it's over brought shame or burdened men with shame about things that are just natural to your body.

Yeah. You know, I I'm trying to remember if it was uh Gnostic philosophy or Platonic philosophy. I can't remember when they started separating the sacred and the secular, but part of that was the body, right? Yes. Like, oh, the body is secular, right? So because of that it's it's bad. Everything about it is bad. Only the spiritual is holy. Right? And I find that so much. I found that in my journey where I was like, "Oh, I have this sexual desire. I got to like kill every single desire I have." And it's like, "No, there was a part of my life cuz we all live in a fallen world that things are corrupted." Yes.

But just because it's corrupted doesn't mean it's completely destroyed and it's completely evil. Right. It just means that we can reorient it back to God. Right. Right. I mean, we have examples of church fathers, right, who literally maimed their body, right, castrated themselves or threw themselves into thorn bushes or, you know, one man who said he he he threw his body against the rocks until he was black and blue, right? This physical, I would say literal self-hatred, right? That against God's design of your body, you know, and we've marked them.

I mean there are we venerated them. There are stained glass windows of I I can't remember the guy's name who one of the you know one of the church fathers who threw himself into a thorn bush because he was afraid of experiencing lust, right? He had recalled a beautiful woman he saw and so in response threw himself into a bush. And you know again we might say well that's you know that's outdated. We don't do that. My goodness, I have sat with so many men who in the midst of their own sexual struggles have, you know, sex addiction recovery groups that will invite men to snap their wrists with rubber bands, right?

I had been a part of that long ago. Sorry to interrupt you, but I remember uh one counselor I was doing, they're like, "Just snap this rubber band every time you have the desire." And I'm like, "I'm snapping all day, dude." Just like walking around like snapping, but my wrists hurt after a while, right? And you know again it's it it is attempting to I would say rid the body of something it was created for. Meaning arousal sexual arousal is different than lust. And when Jesus talked about lust, right, in let's say the sermon on the mount, you know, there there's a sense that he he's saying, yes, lust exists, but it's something that you participate in.

It's something the best translation I've heard of that passage, you know, any man who looks lustfully at a woman is guilty of adultery, right? is that there's a sense he's saying someone who goes on looking for the sake of lust. Meaning you're intentionally cultivating something of fantasy. It's not simply, oh, I noticed a beautiful woman or a beautiful person and I felt something. That's not inherently lustful. Um, but we treat it as such, right? And I know men who have literally punched themselves, right? in the name of trying to, you know, rid themselves of their own sexual struggles or, you know, uh, will take cold showers or, you know, create punishments for themselves to try to associate pain with lust.

And, you know, my sense is God's invitation is to something far kinder, right? You know, Paul's words in Romans, it's the kindness of God that leads to repentance. So, you know, again, your question, what has the church done? I think it's made an enemy of the body inadvertently and in the name of trying to create sexual a sexual ethic. Yeah. So, let's redeem that in this conversation as we're talking about it. And you brought up something really profound that I don't want us to skip. You said that there's a difference between sexual arousal and lust.

And I think that's one of the things that the church has done is they just made it where all sexual arousal feels lustful. I know sometimes we would use the line, well, if you look at a woman once, you're fine, but if you look at a second, all of a sudden it's lust. And you're just like, man, that that trigger can feel so fast that it feels like it's the first time anyways. How do you redeem that? Give maybe uh an explanation of the difference between sexual arousal and lust for those you guys who are listening.

Yeah. So arousal is a body term and it it it's a statement of just the body's response to sexual stimuli and it is you know it's something that was codified by a couple of researchers Masters and Johnson in the 60s and they there's a very sat arousal cycle that we go through and it's uh it's the same for men and women. The only difference is men have a refractory period after orgasm. But other than that, our bodies will track the same arousal cycle. And arousal again is a body statement.

It is as one researcher says, Emily Nagoski, you know, arousal is just like sexual radar. It's just telling you something sexually relevant to you is happening whether in the room with you or connected to something you were thinking about or something that you saw or something that somebody said right that something sexually relevant is happening. It makes no statement about desire. So, and interestingly, by the way, men and women are equally sexually aroused visually. So, we often have this sense that men are more visual. That is a lie.

Men are not more visual than women. There was a meta study done on that. Meaning women are gender was the least indicator of arousal in the study they made. meaning like age or sexual orientation and etc etc. Gender was least indicative of arousal. So arousal again is a body term and it's a response to sexual stimuli and men and women are equally sexually aroused by visual stimuli or relational stimuli or emotional stimuli whatever is happening. Desire is the part where we get to participate. So desire happens in the heart.

So again, you can have desire as a response to arousal or not. And what you do with desire, meaning you see a beautiful person and you feel arousal, you now have a choice, right? Are you going to carry it into a fantasy? Certainly, you could cultivate lust or you could say, "Wow, that's a beautiful person and thank God actually, wow, thank God for beauty in the world." Right? that that you could honor that person's beauty and move on and not take it to lust. You know where again this is called arousal non-conincidence which is a big technical term just to say that arousal and desire are not the same.

Yeah. Uh I think the overlap for women is 10% and for men it's around 50%. Meaning that arousal becomes desire or desire leads to arousal. How often does that happen? And so, you know, as a therapist, I I ran into this most often work with sexual abuse victims where it is not uncommon for a sexual abuse victim to experience physical arousal in abuse, right? And and of course we would say, you know, is is that a statement of they wanted to be abused? No. Right? And this is often the confusion of a sexual abuse victim is it feels like my body betrayed me.

Right? Why did my body experience sexual arousal in something that was terrifying or harmful to me? Right? And that can feel very accusing. But it's simply this. Again, the body registers sexual stimuli. It's not a statement of if you want it or don't want it yet. It's just naming the body's radar. So again, you know, we tend to burden, you know, this can be a place where again victims in particular can feel burdened with shame or even accusation. Right? Sometimes somebody who has abused or perpetrated abuse can actually use arousal to blame their victim and say, "Well, you wanted it.

You enjoyed it. You seem to experience arousal." Right? And again, arousal is not a statement of desire. How do you know if you want something? The person will say it. I want this. I don't want this. Right? Desire is that simple in a certain way. And again even here maybe it'd be worth naming like we often associate you know sex as a drive in the body that it's we call it a sex drive right and but sex is actually a desire it's not essential for living as other drives are like oxygen food um and even love.

So again, the the goodness here is you get to participate in desire. You get to shape desire, right? That's where we get to live out a sexual ethic and have choice and be curious and walk with ourselves in our desire. Yeah. Say, you just said something that I think a lot of guys are going to listen to and be like, whoa, hold on. You're saying my sexual desire isn't a need. I feel like I need all the time. That's why I run to pornography or I run to these women.

I run to these things because I feel this intense emotion and the desire to go pursue that. How do you help them understand that that's actually not that a need but a want? Yeah. You know, two things I would say. You know, desire can be very powerful in the body, right? We can experience very powerful desire, even powerful sexual desire. And that's a good thing. It's just marking, you know, you're not going to die, even though you might feel like it, right? You're not going to die without it.

You will survive. The other thing I would say is most times when men experience it as that powerful of an urge, I would say most times um what's probably going on is actually emotional dysregulation that you know a man can get very stressed out and men can in particular can come to rely on sexual release for stress relief, for emotional regulation, for soothing, right? So, you know, I had a client say to me, I always knew what kind of day my husband had based on how he had sex with me that night.

And there were nights where it was obvious he had a bad day because I became the thing it felt like he was driven to conquer something. And so you know and she said it felt terrible. It was not love making. I I felt very tangential to the process. I didn't even feel like he was connecting to me. And what I would mark there is right this this man obviously had a bad day and she could note that and probably was emotionally disregulated, stressed out. You know, I had a client that said to me, he was a high power attorney, and he would say in the midst of my hardest days, I I would use pornography, you know, to manage stressful days and go get release and I would feel better and feel like I was level-headed again and I could keep going.

So, what's going on there? There's an a body confusion happening where stressed out emotional dysregulation, numbness or shutdown even, right? It might be high stress or it might just be like boredom or numbness like I just feel numb. But either way, sex or sexual released is being used to try to emotionally irregulate your body. either get calmer or get more activated somehow like awake yourself up and I would say actually you know there are far healthier more beneficial ways to emotionally regulate yourself sex is a stress reliever and that's okay but it was not meant to be the end all be all an end all be all right like this is the one thing and this is my only way there's actually highly more effective ways to regulate yourself.

Meaning like I think about that husband with his wife, right? And I wonder what it would have how much better it would have been if he just talked to his wife about his stressful day, right? Like that could have been a far more regulating experience and actually connecting for him to talk out what was hard about his day. And again, if it led to sex, great. But it would have been more connected and relational and and probably sex would feel less necessary, right? And more free in their lives.

And you're not talk and again, you're not saying they shouldn't have it or that they can't have it, but you're just talking about a healthy way to regulate besides just coping with sex, right? I think that sex is best it it's best when sex happens when both partners are some level of emotionally regulated and present right to where it's actually a relationally connecting experience. Um, there's a woman, author Alexandra Katahus, I think, and I'm probably slaughtering her name. She says it's possible, don't worry, she probably's not listening to this podcast, so you're good.

You are, that would be awesome. She's a researcher and she said it is possible to have partnered sex that's actually just autoerotic. Meaning you are just simply using the person to get release. You're not actually bonding with them. You're not actually connecting to them. Right? It's not a relationally playful process. And so what I'm inviting is yeah again I'm not saying don't have sex when you're stressed. I'm saying, are you able to be relationally connected in that? And have you brought yourself or done what you need to do to be present and able to relationally connect with with your partner?

Yeah. So, Sam, you know, let's turn the corner because we're talked a lot about the the like here's the problems that we see, right? And here's how men are trying to cope with their sexual desire. But there are a lot of guys who are like, "I want to become a godly man, but I want to become a godly sexual man." And I've had all this baggage. And they could walk away listening to this and be like, "Wait a minute. So now I can't even have sex." And we're like, "No, no, no.

That's not what we're saying." You know, what does a good sexual ethic and a good sexual man look like? Yeah. Well, let's just start with right the idea of associating good with sexual. Yeah. Right. Like to say, "Oh, that man is so sexual," is always a pjorative right now, right? You know, we associate that as like, "Oh, that's sleazy or or or dirty or something, right?" But so, yes, like how do we fight to recover the goodness of our sexuality? Well, at first I you know, I think at one level it's honoring you were made to be moved.

And so to begin to reclaim the sensuality of your own body, which is you were made to be moved by beauty. And so can you honor that it is good and God's design in you that you're moved by a beautiful person? And meaning if you see a beautiful woman, it's not lustful that you feel something. Now again, what you with that certainly could take you into lust, but it could also take you into just gratitude to God, right? That he's made beauty, similar to how you would feel moved by a sunset, right?

Or, you know, I think of men who love a good cigar, right? What is a good cigar all about? It's all about sensuality. It tastes good. It feels good, right? the ritual of sitting on my deck with a a fire right in in the fire pit, right? Can you just hear all the sensuality to that? The smells of the smoke, right? Or you know, like the feeling of ruggedness, you know, like almost because you brought the fireplace in and you're just like nighttime and you're just like I'm living out my best manliness kind of feeling.

Yes. Right. There's a good verility. I am in soaking in sensuality right now. The mood of the night, the fire, the smoke, the cigar, right? Like all of that is sensuality again. And so beginning to learn how to bless good sensuality in your body. Can you take in the beauty of a good sunset? And can you see that as similar to taking in the beauty of a person and learning how to reverence that? That is I think one way to integrate with our sexuality. Well, meaning like you know if you think of this is my opinion but two of the most viral men good sexual veral men in scripture.

You know, I think of Adam in the garden who experienced sexuality, sexual arousal, the only person who experienced it along with Eve pre sin, pre-shame. And what did he do when he met Eve in her naked glory while he was also naked? Well, one of the very first things he did is break out in poetry. It moved her to become a poet. Or you think of Song of Songs, right? I mean, clearly a portrayal of lovers who are um escaping to make love in the countryside, right?

Who can't hardly keep their hands off each other and very descriptive language around their sexual engagement. But again, it's in poetry, meaning these are guys being moved not just to get release, but there's something about their poet, what I've called the poet lover, right? This like they know how to be confident sensual beings, right? Like the lover in Song of Songs is comparing his bride, his the woman he's making love to to all the other things in his life, right? like good wine or the flock of goats coming down Mount Bashan, right?

Like he's he's connecting it to all these other sensual experiences in his life. And so again, I think being a good sexual man means learning how to integrate with healthy sensuality, meaning not falling into addiction, right? So, like uh the difference between tasting a good bourbon and throwing back 12 beers, right? You're probably not tasting anything. Yeah. At that point, you're trying to cope with something, right? Right. Like something has switched to a bad place. But there is a way that you can enjoy the sensuality, right, of a good bourbon without it becoming an abuse of your body or or an abuse of your sensuality.

Yeah. You know, so that's the picture is can you reverence beauty? Yeah. And Sam, I think in you do a really great job in your book of talking about how do you go from reverence to worshiping God? And I want to talk about, you know, as you pointed, Adam, you know, Song of Solomon, but there's also Jesus, right? And Jesus, he fully embodied his sensuality. And he was single. And one of the ways he did that was through worshiping his father. Yes. And seeing the beauty in his father.

For men who might be single, and they're like, "Well, I don't have a wife right now, and I don't have these things." How do you guide both married men and single men to a place where they're worshiping God and that's part of their good sexual ethic? Yeah. You know, I would say, well, one of the stories I would point out that I share in the end of my book is the story of Jesus with the woman who bathes his feet, right, with the the the alabaster jar of pure nard and and weeps over him and and literally is bathing his feet with her hair, right?

And and tradition has said that this woman an ex prostitute, right? And we don't know. It's just says she was a sinful woman or was known for being a sinful woman, right? And so, but the senses she's quite possibly an ex-p prostitute and the men in that setting are like, Jesus, what are you doing? Do you not know who's touching you right now? Like, what are you what is going on? I I would say it's a very sensual scene, right? Like Jesus experiencing touch from a woman and she is pouring an alabaster jar of pureard, right?

Like the sensuality naroma of that moment and the physical touch happening and obviously the passion of her love for him which was not sexual, right? Was just his her gratitude for him. But I I would say Jesus knew the line between that healthy sensuality and connection and sexuality and violation. Um and so I would say he's experiencing lots of sensuality but he's not taking it to lust. So again he's allowing for connection with women that is bonding but it's not going into something violating. So that would be just one example I'd give of Jesus' life.

But what I would say to a single person is, you know, cultivating the capacity for beauty. Meaning, can you be undone by symphony? Can you be undone by um a beautiful sunset? Like fill your life with beautiful things. Learn how to take in good art, right? that will teach you reverence beauty because it's the arrogant who can't be moved by beauty because it actually takes a secure person to let yourself be overpowered by something that's that moving. So I would say cultivating the capacity for beauty or sensuality.

The other thing I would say is let me just jump in here real quick. Sorry Sam before you go in. You know, one of the things I have found sometimes with men, especially as they're digging into like the word of God, sometimes it could be so tactile, right? They're like, "Oh, I found this principle or this truth and I'm gonna walk into it, but they don't see the beauty of God throughout scripture." So, like, if you can't see beauty in nature, you can't see beauty in life.

It's so much harder when you're reading a book. Yes. Right. And yes, it is God breathed. It is the word of God. It's sharper than any two-edged sword. It's active. Right. But what I have found is that when you can all of a sudden start to see how good God is. And I love how you were even talking about Jesus like, "Wait a no, no, there was a central moment." I'm like, "Yes, there was." You think about that all throughout scripture of how our bodies are connected to what's happening.

I think about like Zephaniah 3:17 where he says that he delights in you and he dances over you. Yes. Like if we can't just stop and just see like, "Wait a minute, God delights in me. He enjoys me, right? Most men don't even like to dance, right? So, the fact that he's dancing like he's celebrating about how good we are, man. That's the beauty of God. Or just even the cross where he's like, "We deserve the wrath of God." And it's like, "No, no, no. I shed my blood for you." Yes.

And there's a beautiful thing there that's happening. Yes. But we don't equate. What we tend to do many times is like, that's a good doctrinal statement. It might move us a little bit, but we don't sit and I love how you said it, just to be undone by those things. right to name that God likes you. Yeah. Right. And as you're saying the the language of delight and you know I would say even you know what you're inviting is can you learn to dance in your body right you think of David as a lover or David as a worshipper right I mean here is a very prolific poet David even you know most of his answer to things in his life was to write poetry even when he was caught in this horrors of his own sin in his own sexual sin with Basheba.

What does he do? He writes Psalm 51, right? We He wrote a poem. He's there was something about his repentance that involved returning to his lover heart. And you know, you know, obviously where I think Michael cast shame on him for dancing as the ark is coming back into Jerusalem, right? He's dancing. Um, you know, I think some wonder if he was even maybe dancing naked. I think the language is that he was dancing in like an undershirt. Yeah. His undergarments. Yeah. Yeah. His undergarments, right?

Like he is dancing vigorously. And and I think, you know, I make the connection stronger in my book, but the connection between sexuality and play is I actually think sex was meant to be and is in its essence its healthy form a form of play. And so, you know, as a single person, do you know how to play well? Have you ever danced to worship music in the privacy of your own home? Maybe right because of the vulnerability, but can you let your body be animated?

Can you learn? And I will say that like that was probably one of my favorite chapters in your book, that whole play chapter. I mean, there was a lot of guys that, by the way, I'm just going to do a shameless plug on this. Sam's book, I'd recommend it. Go read it. But it was one of my favorite books cuz I've read a lot of books on this topic, but just the angle you took on just playing and just having fun and just like all these different angles.

I I'm just sorry to interrupt you again, but it is fascinating. I would say this book is worth it for that chapter alone. Oh, thank you. That was a fun one to write. I loved that chapter. And you know, one of the things I say towards the end is even just cultivating healthy play in your life. So, when you're dating, one of the best things you can do to set up your sex life well, I think, is not just have good boundaries, but learn how to play well with the person you're dating.

And that could be as simple as a card game, right? Or learning to dance or, you know, I think of like just times I've been lost in play, right? There's something about play that really sets the stage for healthy sexuality cuz sex is love at play. Yeah, I would say. And again, it's not the only place our love plays as a married couple, but it's one of them. Yeah. And I I think, you know, as we wrap up here, one of my favorite parts that you said about play was that when you were a little kid and you were playing, you were just lost in time.

Yes. And you just forget about what's going on cuz you're so living in the moment. And that's what sex is supposed to be about, right? You're in that moment with your spouse, connected in this beautiful dance of intimacy. And I just remember that's what a good sexual ethic look like. I I remember thinking as a sexual man being like, "Oh, it's when I'm lost in the moment and just being present and enjoying life and being who God created me to be. That's what a godly sex sexual man looks like." I could use all of my desires to worship God and to help others.

Yes. I I I love that chapter. I read it and I listened to it multiple times because it was just so much fun. That's awesome. Sam, as we wrap up here, man, guys who are listening to this, what's the best way to get your book and also to just reach out to you if they're like, I love the way Sam's thinking and they want help from you. H I'd be so honored. You know, the book you can buy it wherever books are sold. My publisher is actually still offering a BOGO copy.

So, if you buy the audiobook, the Kindle version, you can get a paperback copy free from my publisher. They're going to mail it to you. You can get that deal at my website. Just go to samjolman jolm-.com to get that. And I would love to connect to you. The place I'm most active right now is on Substack. So, I'm writing an ongoing conversations on sexuality, masculine sexuality, the Bible, this Christian story, how that all comes together over different topics, and then I'm I do a regular Zoom call with readers, and I'd love to have you guys jump into a conversation there with me.

Awesome. Sam, you have been delight. Uh, I've loved our relationship and how it's been growing and hopefully can continue to grow. Yes, I would love that too, Ken. Because very mutual is huge, man. And I I tell men, you know, lots of times when we talk about overcoming sexual addiction, overcoming shame, it's always about like what you're running from, right? Like you're trying to get rid of this, but not many people talk about what you're going towards. Yes. And I think your book does an excellent job of focusing on like going towards a plan and a vision for what men should actually look like and how to walk out in their God-given giftings.

So, final encouragement that you could give to those who are listening to this if they're just like, "I get this. I need this, but I want to embrace my God-given sexuality without shame." What would you tell them? You know, I I would invite you to sit with evil hates your sexuality. The realm of evil hates your sexuality. The very first thing the realm of evil sought to attack with Adam and Eve is their sexuality through shame, their nakedness, right? The vulnerability of their nakedness and introduce shame.

So, you know, if what you're feeling is gosh, I've seen too much. Uh, I'm too far gone. I don't even know how to begin to feel anything like freedom here. I just I want to invite you to be mad, really pissed off at some level at the realm of evil for holding sexuality in your life. And I want to invite you to turn the tables on your shame to begin to see shame as the primary weapon of evil or perpetuate cycles of sin in your life.

That evil wants to keep you stuck in shame. But your father Jesus wants to invite you to kindness and curiosity about your sexual journey. That his invitation is, you know, again, he is slow to anger, rich in love. And as Paul says in in Romans 2, it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. So, I want to invite you to begin to turn the tables on shame, to question it. What is it that evil keeps accusing you of and whispering to you? Because you have a very kind and curious savior who wants to have a conversation with you about your sexuality.

Sam, that's powerful. I love it. Thank you so much. Uh, and thank you for the ministry of what you're doing. Again, if you guys want to reach out to Sam, it's at samjelman.com. I'll make sure it's in the show notes uh so you guys can reach out and grab a copy of his book. Excellent book. I've enjoyed it thoroughly. Sam, thank you once again for being here and for all the men who are listening to this. Listen, I want you to stay focused, kill shame, stand strong, be on mission, go delight yourself in the Lord, and go enjoy beauty this week.

Hope you guys have a great day and God bless. Thanks for joining us today. If you found this episode helpful, make sure to subscribe and leave a review. Remember, killing shame isn't just about breaking free from the past. It's about walking boldly into the future God has for you.