Authentic Intimacy | Reclaiming God’s Design for Sexuality

Aug 23

Sex. Our culture’s obsessed with it. Sex sells everything from cars to power bars. It’s the topic on everyone’s lips – the pursuit of it, the results of it, or whether a person’s pronouns change because they feel like they identify with the opposite.

What was designed by God to be a powerful representation of the union between him and his people has become something (all sorts of things) so far removed from the original intent it’s almost unrecognizable. In fact, sex rarely lives up the potential envisioned by its creator.

The emotional and spiritual aspects of human sexuality and its difficulties have been the specialty of Dr. Juli Slattery for the past 11 years of her decades-long counseling career. Juli is a clinical psychologist, author, speaker and renowned expert on sexuality and biblical truth. After spending time in counseling practice, Juli wrote, taught and co-hosted the Focus on the Family Broadcast from 2008-2012. In 2012 she co-founded Authentic Intimacy, a ministry devoted to reclaiming God’s design for sexuality, part of which includes weekly Java with Juli podcasts where no question is off limits. In 2020, Juli launched SexualDiscipleship.com, a site designed to help Christian leaders navigate sexual issues and questions with gospel-centered truth.

Juli has written 12 books with titles as diverse as 25 Questions You’re Afraid to Ask About Love, Sex and Intimacy, Sex and the Single Girl, Finding the Hero in Your Husband (recently revised and re-releasing in October), and her latest, God, Sex and Your Marriage, where she explores the wholeness that can be found when God is invited into one’s sexuality.

Juli realized while in college she was called to integrate the fields of psychology and theology to help people navigate real life issues. After earning her doctoral degree, she began a clinical counseling practice focusing on marriage and family issues and spoke at women’s events.

She saw the overwhelming tide of brokenness the church wasn’t addressing. If issues of human sexuality were mentioned at all, they were treated separately. Sexual abuse and trauma recovery, LGBTQ, dealing with sexual integrity and pornography, sexuality as a single person, infidelity, married sex — each topic was addressed individually.

“We tend to tackle the issues in silos,” Juli said, “and people feel alone. Your problem is same sex attraction, my problem is that I hate sex, and I’m married.” We found when we gathered women to talk about wholeness, biblical sexuality and the beauty of what God designed, we found common ground. There’s so much shame and hurt, and we want to help.”

Her experience leading a women’s conference in Ohio in the early days of her ministry illustrates her point. The audience of 800 included a section of women arrested for prostitution who were on a day pass from the county jail, a biological man who identified as a woman and a large group of Mennonites. “You couldn’t have put together a more diverse audience,” she said. Juli opened with the invitation, “We are all here because sexuality is a painful and confusing part of our life” She found “everyone was moved by the message; it wasn’t irrelevant for anyone. What’s the path for healing and redemption? Is there anyone on the face of the earth who can’t identify with that?

“All of us have pain around sexuality, and it makes sense. Part of the reason God designed it the way he did was to provide an amazing metaphor for God’s love for us. What would Satan want to tarnish more?”

Authentic Intimacy

As Juli felt God calling her to focus her work more intentionally on sexuality, she pulled back from Focus on the Family to start Authentic Intimacy (authenticintimacy.com). There she offers a blog (with posts also in Spanish), bi-weekly Friday 5 Newsletter, online studies, and the weekly Java with Juli Podcasts, which provide a safe place to ask questions and help people process delicate situations. “Podcasts are very intimate,” Juli said. “They are all real conversations, never scripted. When you are listening, you feel like you are the silent person at the conversation table. We talk about anything. There’s nothing that’s too personal or off limits. Hopefully, the tone is gracious and inviting, not triggering. We all feel like we’re on the same journey.

“We are not afraid to address the most intimate questions. To include things like, ‘Where was God when I was sexually abused? How can I trust him?’” she added. “It is important to give voice to things like that and have somebody ask with you. God will meet you in that question. The answer will be different for each individual, because God is very personal.”

Online Studies

Also at Authentic Intimacy’s site — online studies based on Juli’s books, led by the ministry’s trained leaders. The online platform allows people to find community and discuss sensitive topics like trauma, wounds from the past, intimacy in marriage, lies and legalism.

“Part of what we’ve created is a community because people don’t heal in secret,” Juli said. “You feel like you are the only one until you are able to talk and go through the resources in a small group. It’s amazing how close people can feel even if they are scattered all over the world.”

Online offerings at Authentic Intimacy include:

Passion Pursuit for the Married Woman (What's okay and not okay in the bedroom, temptation, forgiveness, and how and why to pursue passion.)

“Rethinking Sexuality” in separate groups for women and men (Clarity and hope from the sexual abuse, sex addiction, gender confusion, brokenness, and sexual shame that plague today's world.)

Finding the Hero in Your Husband – for wives (Explores work, home life, conflict, and intimacy with understandable explanations of God’s design, healthy expectations that reframe experiences, and relatable applications that women of faith can practice to influence their marriage and deepen their relationship with God.)

Sex and the Single Girl (Sex and the Single Girl presents a broader understanding of what it means to honor God with our sexuality instead of just the “don’t do it” message.)

Mama Bear Apologetics Guide to Sexuality (Understand God’s design for gender, sex, marriage, and family as a beautiful portrait that reveals the nature of God Himself to teach your children God’s truth.)

Freedom from Porn for women (Join other women struggling with unwanted sexual behavior and learn how to begin this journey towards healing.)

Surprised by the Healer for women (Healing for your deepest pains, hope for your biggest disappointments, and victory over your addictions, past hurts, and past failures.)

Grace Based Recovery – (Designed to help people suffering from addiction and those close to them understand God’s grace and why it is the only path to true freedom.)

God, Sex and Your Marriage for couples (God, Sex, and Your Marriage challenges the common assumptions couples have about sexuality and presents the richer biblical narrative of sex as a metaphor of God’s covenant love.)

Training for Leaders

Another of Juli’s resources, Sexualdiscipleship.com, trains Christian leaders in a biblical worldview of sexuality. Sexualdiscipleship.com addresses historical practices and trends of the day. Juli gives examples of how to have conversations to counter current cultural worldviews such as:

“God has given you as a married couple sexual intimacy as a way to regularly celebrate your covenant. Sex within marriage should be a regular party, remembering and celebrating the triumph of love over selfishness.”

— Juli Slattery

The most important thing a person needs to find happiness is to be their authentic self, which has been interpreted as discovering their true sexual self and gender identity.

“There is nowhere in scripture where anyone identifies themselves by their sexuality,” Juli said. “If the most important determiner of my happiness is having freedom to explore my sexuality, marriage becomes counterproductive.” She also helps leaders move away from the “purity culture,” which didn’t explain the why and can make God’s “rules” seem arbitrary and mean, she said.

God, Sex & Your Marriage

Juli’s work is firmly grounded on the word of God and a Christian worldview. She reclaims God’s design for sexuality in God, Sex and Your Marriage, published in 2022, beginning with transparently sharing her own struggles and story. Juli paints a picture of God’s overarching design for sexual wholeness experienced as an intimate connection and celebration of the marriage covenant between a husband and wife. This is not a book filled with basic information to improve a couple’s sex life like diagrams of anatomy or recommended sexual positions. Instead, Juli’s focus is on how sexuality should be draw us into greater intimacy with God.

“Sex and marriage go together because sex is the physical symbol of the lifelong covenant promise. It is how we celebrate and remember with our bodies what we have chosen to do with our entire lives. … By its very nature, sexual intimacy was created to draw you together in body, soul, and spirit as ‘one flesh’” She defines a word found in the Bible, yada, to describe the intimate “knowing” relationship of vulnerability and tenderness between husband and wife that, when practiced effectively, will mirror the intimate relationship between a person and God.

God, Sex and Your Marriage exposes myths and lies from the culture and from our churches and combats them with truth.

Common misconceptions

“God doesn’t care about our sexuality.” “I’m too broken to be healed.” “It’s your duty, you owe me sex.” “My sexuality is somehow tied to my value and worth, if I can’t perform or I’m not attractive, I don’t have value.” “Sex was only created for men.” “It’s not godly to feel sexual pleasure.”

She advises couples to invite God into their sexuality, reminding that God never leaves us and knows our thoughts before we think them. We can’t close the door and keep him out – even during sex.

“God has given you as a married couple sexual intimacy as a way to regularly celebrate your covenant. Sex within marriage should be a regular party, remembering and celebrating the triumph of love over selfishness.” She urges couples to allow God’s word to be the “true north” of their compass of their lives.

Juli also tackles how pornography hijacks a couple’s sexual connection as she describes sexual integrity that extends beyond the “purity” preached to singles. Sexual integrity as a married couple will be evidenced by a sex life that increasingly exemplifies the way God loves his people in: Faithfulness, Intimate knowing, Sacrificial Giving, and Passionate Celebration – what she calls the four pillars of covenant love.

“The four pillars of covenant love … are not meant to just be aspirational in your sex life but possible. Real-life people are walking the same journey you are,” she concludes. Have questions you’ve always been afraid to ask? Ready to go from hurting to hope? Find more at Authenticintimacy.com or Sexualdiscipleship.com.