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[0:00] of one and two just going to draw a little okay so right well verse 1 okay so there you've got the mention of body and mind within the space of a couple of verses and the perspective of those verses is very different to what the world is saying so maybe you've grasped this already from what we've just been saying let's just get this nailed down if we can so what the world is about mind and body is that your mind is to be trusted right always right do you agree with that?

[1:16] that's what we're kind of saying if you feel something that's right okay and as a result then your body needs to be changed in order to accord with your feelings and your mind so your body which needs to be changed that's working on the basis your brain can be a wall of your body now the bible agrees as we've been saying in lots of ways your brain can be a wall of your body but it's saying the opposite thing you see in remnant 12 it says offer your bodies as living sacrifices to God right it doesn't say change your body it's offer them as they are to be offered to God but then it goes on to say Paul says do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so what's in you to change?

[2:16] the mind right so that's what needs to be changed so you see then that actually the bible's view is is actually kind of the opposite really of of what the world says you know it's right yes okay we can agree so far as to say that your mind might be at war with your body but what does the bible say?

[2:38] well you probably can't trust your mind so much okay so that which needs to be changed be transformed by the renewing of your mind now that has various kind of permutations there may be more questions that arise out of that but but that's the basic kind of principle I think and come back to Q&A perhaps later for things that arise out of that okay now we're at 25.2 so we're not going to be covering all of the rest I think I think what you've come up with there and what we've kind of covered there is helpful so far so in a way we could almost just say good and we don't need to I don't need to fill fill you up with even more things in one sense but just let's think I was going to get you to look at Romans 16 and see about that famous list of co-workers of Paul who he thanks God for and just to get you to see I'm not going to get you to do it now get you to see there's a very even split between men and women there and it's not like the men do all the work in the church and the women are kind of oh well they're there too and they look nice that is so not what the New Testament teaches okay they do look nice but that's not what the Bible teaches right the men might look nice as well

[3:49] I suppose but there you go now I'm just digging a hole so keep going thanks yeah okay I can make a hole deeper and deeper that's fine so there's that balance there even in just a simple list of names of co-workers and then well this next bit was like an exercise in stereotypes really just shout out rather than getting into the group shout out what do you think of this men are stronger women are weaker is that true never met my sister I've never met your sister okay physically or mentally well exactly that's the question is it physically or mentally there are different kinds of strength aren't there there are different kinds of weakness and men are stronger in some respects normally in their bodies men are bigger stronger more muscular it's not always the case there are plenty of women in the world who could beat me up I'm sure or beat me in a 100 metre sprint okay so it's not all across the board always weaker and generally that's the case and generally it's the case that women are stronger in other areas so does anyone want to think of maybe an area where women might be stronger

[5:04] I'm not going to put my foot in it this time yeah I'm not going to repeat that for the tape yeah okay patience with bringing up children patience with bringing up children or with comments like they should be in the kitchen yeah yeah compassion perhaps and again these are again generalisations it's not always the case but generally there are things where women are stronger and we should recognise that and the two should work together not in competition but to be in partnership and to recognise okay I'm weak here and I need your help that's how the church is set up to be functioning and marriage is set up to function as well let me pick on another one men should teach women should serve what do you think of that what context I'm not asking I'm asking the questions okay all of the answers will depend on exactly right okay right so give us a context where you think that that isn't true everyone should serve and not all men should teach and not all men should teach not all men should teach like what I'm doing now perhaps yeah but is there a sense in which all men should teach somehow teach by their lives women are told to teach yeah women are certainly told to teach other men in a sort of sorry other women in a church setting and women can teach men very valuable things as well in certain contexts as Aquila and Priscilla the example of teaching a policy in the book of Acts for example yes Jake yeah good was there a hand up over there no okay so all these things

[6:55] I want to encourage you to get away from kind of stereotypes and I think you guys are fairly switched on to all this already and you're already by reacting to the statements you show that you are but just to think these things through and we can't just accept what often is is the world's kind of blue toys for boys and pink toys for girls that can be often reinforced actually by the whole transgender movement of saying if someone feels like a man feels like a woman they have to change their body so much to look like a really kind of dolled up feminine woman which isn't actually true femininity at all it's just reinforcing the stereotype of pink toys for girls isn't it so yeah it's really interesting that it kind of undoes itself in a way okay and then onto this section of sort of applications which we've already been looking at in one sense let me just touch on a few of these things we have some more likely missteps that we might take as Christians and I want to concentrate on those maybe the world's most likely questions you might want to pick on one and ask it for the question time for example will you attend our wedding a gay wedding or something like that you might want to ask one of those so I'm not going to deal with that right now but I do want to maybe pick up on some things which we might get a bit wrong number one it's wrong to expect wholeness in a broken world we've looked at this already in the scenarios case studies life studies that you've looked at that people will be broken and we're not to react like oh my goodness you're broken how did that happen but rather to think people are going to be broken

[8:32] I'm broken you're broken and that's okay but we have a saviour who came to bind up the broken and heal brokenness and we shouldn't be shocked then by that don't ever be shocked by immorality that's what we're expecting in a world where sin has corrupted and broken so many people and that means that we're ready to help I hope people who need our help and we could get the balance of courage and love wrong we could say I'm being courageous about this but not realising that in that kind of yes I want to be courageous for the truth that we're not being as loving as we should be or we think we're being loving by just saying oh everything's fine oh it's okay be as you are without saying hold on a minute the bible says that human flourishing is according to this pattern and if you're outside of that pattern you're not going to flourish you're not going to be happy you're going to be going against Christ's good design for you so you've got to get that right balance of courage and love together not always easy but easy to make a misstep perhaps further it's important we don't equate godliness with heterosexuality that's not true you can be a very godly person who's attracted to some of the same sex and you can be a very ungodly person who's attracted to someone of the opposite sex so it's not that somebody who experiences same sex attraction needs to be kind of healed of that attraction they need to repent of acting upon it and not pursue that as a lifestyle but that doesn't mean that they're ever going to be kind of changed out of that before they can be godly that's not the case and there's an increasing number of books being written by same sex attracted Christians showing how they're living in ways which are honouring to God even while they feel that attraction to members of the same sex so for example books by Ed

[10:26] Shaw I've mentioned already books by Sam Aubrey books by Vaughan Roberts or a woman Jackie Hill Perry Gay Girl Good God is a fantastic book talking about her experience as a lesbian who became a Christian or Rosaria Butterfield another woman in the states so there are increasing numbers of books like this to help us think through how someone who's same sex attracted can live out their lives in a godly way without necessarily losing that sense of attraction they continue to battle with that but honour God in the way that they live coming out of that it's another misstep to think that intimacy equals romance or sex that there can be true intimacy that is closeness of relationship in friendship and perhaps we've lost something of that Sam Aubrey in his recent book about singleness talks about this a lot to say the church has fallen for the lie the only place you can be really close is in marriage actually there's something to be said for the real closeness of true friendship we should work harder on that and not just think that intimacy is only expressed when you have sex with somebody there's something godly about a relationship like

[11:41] David and Jonathan's in the Old Testament that they were so close even David says your love for me was greater than the love of women he had that kind of real heartfelt bond with someone of the same sex it wasn't a sexual relationship at all and yet there was that we need to work on and realising that that we can have those sorts of friendships and openness to each other that doesn't have to make marriage the be all and end all you'll never find true happiness you'll never be really intimate with anyone you'll never be able to enjoy life unless you're married that's not true and people who are married often say well I wish I was single that's wrong to say that but they often find that actually marriage isn't all it's cracked up to be that that has its challenges too and it's hard you have to work at it just like singleness is hard and you have to work at it and it has its challenges neither is kind of the some kind of utopia of wonderfulness because we're still going to be in a broken world so don't hold anything up as wow when I get there heterosexual marriage that'll be it no and we'll still be in a in a broken world which needs work in our lives and then we've talked about that last one cultural stereotypes equal the biblical pattern well they don't but the penultimate one their failure to provide true community that's so important in churches particularly people may often who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria may feel very lonely and need to find that there is real family in the church and our churches must be places where we show that I was very struck by example of a young man I was I was speaking on a camp this year early this summer and it was one of the the adults who were on the camp saying that their son struggled you know had professed faith in

[13:28] Christ I think for some time and then really struggled with the I his his feelings of same-sex attraction and had said to his mum you know the thing which I just really want is a family so I just need to get with this guy I want to build a family with him and that will always be denied to me if I if I don't follow my same sex desires and that's tragic because actually the place he should and can find true families in the church where there are brothers and sisters and children and parents of a spiritual nature like nowhere else and that's so important for us to realize and get to grips with and you growing up you can be fathers and mothers to to children who are not your biological children and you can be children to spiritual parents and that that is where family is in fact that's the true family which all our biological families are just little pictures of because that family will last forever and that's the family to be part of so we need to to work on realizing that so there's some of our most likely missteps but just to close with this then the church's most certain promises for all that might be broken in the world and all that our society might be sliding down to Jesus says surely

[14:36] I am with you to the end of the age we need to think about this from a good historical perspective the world into which the gospel was born was a lot worse than the world today actually and when Paul was traveling around the Mediterranean society was even more openly immoral married Roman men kept male slaves simply for sexual adventures and that was completely approved of public buildings and even household articles like the mug you drink out of were plastered with incredibly graphic images things which people would in the world would shy away from today you drink your juice and you don't want to even I don't even describe what's on the mug it's that bad and then there were the leaders of the empire the the the emperors themselves the equivalents of our queen or presidents across the world all but one Roman emperor had same-sex partners and they often had quite a few at the same time that was the world they were in Caesar Nero you've probably heard of

[15:37] Nero as the emperor during Paul's day he married two different men in public and for one of those marriage ceremonies he dressed up completely as a woman with veil and everything as a bride that was the leader of the the empire doing that and Christianity was born then into a society that was incredibly messed up morally and yet do you know what the gospel did just fine we're not to worry about the power of the gospel it was born into a society worse than ours but Christian flourished then in their faith they were bright they were vibrant they were firm through opposition they led many people to Christ because Christ was their Lord and he still is to be encouraged same is true today let's pray together Heavenly Father we thank you for what we've been able to talk about today and pray that at least some of it would be really helpful to these young people thinking through these issues treating others with dignity and Christ-like respect and love and compassion being clear like Christ on the truth and what is good for human beings and to be a bright witness for Christ in their lives so watch over the rest of our time together we thank you for the food that we're about to eat we thank you for all your provision pray you bless our conversations and watch over us the rest of our time together we ask in Jesus name Amen

[17:01]  Amen Thanks genres SPIENGES you