Episode 37: Christian Taboo Topics with Mike Novotny

In this episode of the Eyes on Jesus podcast, Tim welcomes guest Mike Novotny, a full-time minister and host and speaker for the Time of Grace television program. Mike shares his experiences serving God’s people and his journey tackling complex and often ‘taboo’ topics within a Biblical perspective. This includes his personal struggle with pornography addiction, which led him to understand that discussing uncomfortable issues can lead to healing. Mike’s latest book, ‘Taboo: Topics Christians Should Be Talking about, but Don’t’ attempts to address difficult issues such as depression, suicide, sexual intimacy, marriage, LGBTQ+ identity, racial justice and addiction, among others, from a compassionate, Christian point of view. The duo also delve into matters of faith, forgiveness, discipleship, and the importance of bringing to light things that are often kept in the dark within church settings.

Below is the transcript from the show, the transcription may not be completely accurate

For the video episode of the show, go to https://youtu.be/Y2k6QmXczhE?si=GgKkFCWqWakNHV60

You can find the Eyes on Jesus Podcast with Drew and Tim on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Episode 37: Taboo Topics with Mike Novotny

[00:00:00] Tim: Welcome to the Eyes on Jesus podcast. This is Tim here. My cohost Drew is unable to make it, but I am joined by Mike Novotny. Mike served God’s people in full time ministry since 2007 as a pastor. And he’s also served as a host and speaker for Time of Grace television program and contributes to the written resources of Time of Grace ministry.

Mike is also married to Kim and has two daughters. Mike, welcome to the program. How are you doing?

[00:00:24] Mike: I’m doing great, Tim. Thanks for having me

[00:00:26] Tim: back. Yeah, absolutely. We were talking you know, you were on season two, episode 31 of the podcast, which was about two years ago. And for my count, I think you’re the only returning guest.

So quite the prestigious honor. So many people have been asking to come back and you’re the only one that I’ve been able to slide slid through. So no, I really enjoyed our conversation the first time. And we’re going to talk about your new book. And before we do that, is there anything else that you’d like people to know about you before we

start?

[00:00:57] Mike: No you got the big parts follower of Jesus married 20 years now. So man, I don’t know how that happened. I blinked and we celebrated 20 years. Girls are 15, 14. So I’m in that phase of driver’s ed and first dates. And do you get a hard phone? So yeah, I would appreciate all the prayers and wisdom that anyone has out there,

[00:01:16] Tim: my son’s 15, any advice on driver’s ed so far, have you gone through that

[00:01:20] Mike: or.

I feel like it goes better when my wife helps. I’m I don’t know what it is, but yeah, I seem to be the more law, not gospel oriented driver’s ed instructor, which I didn’t know about myself until I’m figuring that out.

[00:01:35] Tim: Teen years are time of grace. Time of grace. Yeah. Awesome. Well, yeah, let’s jump right into your book.

You know, I was able to get a preview copy of this and was able to endorse it, which I was honored to do. So, I think that The short version of my endorsement of it was basically that I think not only does everyone need to read this, but also it needs to be on the desk of every pastor. Cause there’s so much in here that, you know, you read through it, but also like I need to go back to this chapter for reference when it comes up, you know, in, in the real world.

And when I face it and have to counsel someone or when someone has a question, but just give everyone a high level overview of the book taboo that’s out now and kind of what the book’s about and why you wrote it.

[00:02:17] Mike: Yeah. Yeah. So the full title is taboo. Topics Christians should be talking about, but don’t.

And on the front cover there’s topics like depression, anxiety, suicide, sexual intimacy marriage, divorce, sexual orientation, gender. Man, what else do we have in there? Pornography, addiction, infidelity, race, politics, you know, all this stuff, my my deodorant budget has gone up a lot since uh, and, and a lot of it comes actually out of my own story and experience.

It’s kind of where the book begins that I for many years was addicted to pornography and I wasn’t addicted because I was skipping church. I was an every Sunday kind of Christian, and I wasn’t addicted because I wasn’t repentant or sorry. I’ve never felt as sorry or convicted or ashamed about anything in my life as I did for that.

It wasn’t because I didn’t read my Bible. I was a teenager who was one of those rare kids that just read the Bible for fun on his own. And so, I prayed and worshipped and sang and repented. But I doubted my own salvation and I didn’t change. And I think here’s why, because I didn’t talk about it. You know, I wasn’t talking to anyone but God.

I was trying to protect my own reputation and avoid the awkwardness of all that. And I didn’t talk about it. And what do you know? Nothing changed. I’m not trying to discount the power of church or the word or prayer, but I really just learned, and I’ve seen this as a pastor in so many areas of life, that the thing that helps the most is talking about uncomfortable things.

You know, it could be the alcoholic. How do alcoholics turn the corner when They sit around with people and talk about it. How do people that come back from war, like, process PTSD? They get together with other veterans and they talk about it. How do you fix a marriage that’s like stuck and stale and you’re, you know, you don’t feel respected, she doesn’t feel loved.

I’m guessing just like buckling down doesn’t, and white knuckling, it doesn’t make the marriage better. And so, you know, talking is just God’s built in way of helping us deal with those things. Yeah. And so, that’s kind of where the book comes from because Infidelity or gender dysphoria or political tension or racial issues or a pornography addiction or you’re having too many beers at night because that’s awkward and it makes us feel embarrassed.

We tend to avoid it and just hope we can pray and it goes away. But what I’ve actually seen is from a church standpoint and a family standpoint, when we have the uncomfortable, awkward conversations on the other side of that awkwardness. Is healing and forgiveness and truth and growth. And so that’s what this book is all about.

Like you might be terrified to talk about a, B, or C. I’m gonna try to get you over that little bump of awkwardness. So that you can get to the blessings that God wants you to have.

[00:05:08] Tim: Yeah. It’s really about exposing what’s in the dark. And once you bring it to light, it’s either not as scary. Like you thought it was a monster in the dark and you look and it’s like, Oh, that was just a shoe.

You know? It’s kind of that way with some of these topics, I think. But why do you think the church does not talk about them in general? You know, in general, why do you think that, you know, if someone’s struggling with one of these, they might come to somebody and they’re just pray and repent.

Right. And you’re like, well, I’ve done that. What else is there? You know, and sometimes they’re just not talked at all. It’s just you get your basic salvation message and you’re encouraged to maybe go to a small group or something, but I don’t have time for that. So I’m just going to keep coming Sunday and keep.

Getting resaved, you know, it seems like sometimes is the only message, sometimes bigger churches hear, but anyway what would you say in general? Why are these topics avoided? And you know, how does the church kind of start to maybe invest time and resources into these real issues?

[00:06:05] Mike: Yeah,

What’s kind of give me a glimpse into who’s listening to our voices right now?

[00:06:10] Tim: Yeah, you know our are obviously with eyes on Jesus where we’re dedicated to Christians we’ve had people that listen that kind of are curious but for the most part where we’re trying to disciple people that are trying to get closer to Jesus and you know through The craziness of daily life on how they can just focus on him

[00:06:26] Mike: Yeah, I would say then as I’m talking to people at our church and especially in our small groups that we have, I think the reason we don’t talk a lot about this stuff, not to over spiritualize it, but is because the devil is really good at his job.

Yeah, he’s the father of lies. And I think one of the biggest lies that he tells that we believe all the time as Christians is if I said that people would be so disgusted. And mortified and they’d run the other direction and they gossip about me and talk behind my back and while that’s certainly possible I mean we in the church as followers of Jesus are still sinners tempted by those things what I’ve actually seen is when someone has the courage to talk about something the reaction is almost always the exact opposite I’ve been in my living room with dozens of people in group where we talk about the ups and downs of life.

And people will, they’re so nervous to confess. And then after they do, everyone’s like, Hey, thanks for being real. I’ve been through that. Oh, this Bible passage really helped me. I’m going to pray for you. Hey, let’s connect coffee on Tuesday. I’m going to tell you my story. So I think the devil kind of convinces us like he catastrophizes the conversation.

So we keep it quiet and in reality, who would have thought God’s people can actually be nice and helpful and loving and pray for each other and encourage each other on the journey. So that’s, this all starts to dynamics. If you’re a pastor, it’s kind of weird talking about pornography in front of an 85 year old woman and that three year old coloring, you know, in the chair.

So there’s dynamics that I think make this tricky, but more than anything, I think it’s just that fear that we assume the worst. And God has a. A long history and habit of doing much better than that. Yeah.

[00:08:09] Tim: And I think you mentioned in the book, you tackled a lot of these subjects through sermons over the years, which kind of led to this book.

Cause you had a lot of resources. Like I need to put this together in a resource. But what caused you to start preaching about some of these topics? Was it your own struggle that you mentioned, or was it, you just seeing that it wasn’t being mentioned around or all of the above?

[00:08:29] Mike: Yeah.

Yeah. So all 29 chapters in taboo actually come from sermons that I preached. Live here at our church. So they’ve been kind of test run. And, uh, man, Tim, every time we tackle something hard, that’s the stuff people thank us for. I had an abortion 51 years ago and we never besides just don’t do it. That’s all I heard at church.

I never heard like a scriptural compassionate. Hey, if you’ve been there, if you’re thinking about that right now, I was abused. 17 years ago. I never told anyone. I think it was safe to talk about in church. So I think what happened was as soon as we started talking about something taboo, there was just this rush of gratitude from people.

There weren’t like angry emails filling the inbox. You shouldn’t talk about that in church. That’s too. For every one of those, there was a hundred like, Oh my goodness. Thank you. My family was, my nephew just came out. We don’t know what to do. Or my daughter has gender dysphoria. What does the Bible say? So they were just grateful to have some scripture.

Some guidance and a message that was, this is really important to me, not just biblically true and faithful, but also as full of grace and compassion as Jesus was. I think there are some churches, maybe some of us as Christians, who we like, we’re not going to back down from what the word says about these tough issues.

But sometimes you, you know, you want to stand by the truth because you see culture being so crazy that you forget to have a compassionate heart for people who are struggling.

[00:09:58] Tim: That comes through in your chapters, you know, a lot of these topics, people might hear them, you know, and be like, oh, I know the answer to that.

I know that’s a sin, you know, and it’s so cut and dry sometimes in our own minds. But what you do so well in these chapters is you just. You humanize it. You make it much more compassionate, much more hey. Let’s understand both sides before we just label it a sin. Because if I tell someone they’re sinning and they don’t have a relationship with God, that what does it matter?

Like, okay, so I’m sinning, yeah, I know I’m going to hell. So many people just claim that because they don’t know that there’s even a way out or they don’t understand the love of Christ, or they’ve been told a Christ that’s just. you know, just condemnation and judgment and not the love as well. And so we need a balanced approach to it.

And I think a lot of these issues, if people don’t hear the truth of the Bible from the church, they’re going to find answers to them somewhere else. I mean, you think about 30 years ago, you didn’t have the resources you have today in the overflow of knowledge. You can just Google anything, you know, you probably were limited to either your parents, the library or a local pastor, you know?

And so now if. If I want validation for what I’m feeling, I can just google it. I can find a whole chain of quote resources that tell me I’m not living in sin because the church is silent about it. And so I think there’s a very real danger in the church not talking about these topics because these are real issues that people are facing and the church should be the place that people go to.

To get answers for life and hope and truth, which you can find in the Bible. But a lot of people need that interpreted in a way they can understand. Also, some of these topics are not, you know, explicitly stated in the Bible. And so how do you handle some of those topics? You know, people are like, Oh, well, abortion is not in the Bible.

And we know the answer to that. But oftentimes these topics are like, well, the Bible is silent on them. And you make an awesome case for why the Bible is actually not silent on these topics.

[00:11:50] Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Well said. Almost every chapter, maybe I can’t say every, but almost every chapter and almost every sermon came out of me researching to my best to understand both sides of an issue and if at all possible.

I tried to arrange interviews and conversations and coffee talks with people who didn’t share my faith. So let me reach out to the pastors in my community who promote gay marriage and don’t think that’s a sin. Okay. I’m not. I don’t think that’s true. So just sitting down and say, Okay, we got the same Bible.

How’d you get there? And I learned so much from those conversations. Okay, you’re thinking about transitioning your gender. Tell me about, Tell me, I’ve never been tempted to do that for a second in my life. What do you think? What do you feel? Help me understand where you’re coming from. And I think out of so many of those conversations is where I’m kind of more of an intellectual thinker than a feeler.

So for me, the instinct is to quote chapter and verse boom, end of discussion. Right. So when you see face to face someone who is like. Man, I feel, I feel trapped. I look in the mirror and I feel one guy who deals with gender dysphoria said, I feel like I got caught in a rainstorm and I have a soaked t shirt that’s like stuck to my body.

You just want to like, it’s so uncomfortable. That’s how I feel in my male body every day. Like, wow. Okay. It’s not going to change my theology that in the beginning, God created us male and female. He’s the one who decides such things, but man, that takes my empathy and cranks it up about 17 notches that.

I’m not going to make any crude jokes about, you know, you just want to be a boy today, or I’m identifying as a whatever today. I think that’s easy to do for conservative Christian people, but when you’re just face to face with someone who’s lived what might be an unbiblical lifestyle and you see the anguish and the wrestling and the reasons, those things affect why, why does someone get an abortion?

Just because they don’t care about life in the womb. No, it’s often much more complex than that. And so I hope, you know, taboo and as a wider Christian culture, we cannot get soft on biblical truth, but we also won’t forget the real people who are challenged by biblical truth. It can meet them where they’re at with compassion and grace and forgiveness.

[00:14:02] Tim: Yeah, that’s a really good point because. When you humanize these issues, you know, there’s trauma that comes up, there’s hurt. There’s maybe people that feel like God wasn’t there for them. There’s a lot of things that come to the surface and many times things that were out of their control. And so some of these issues.

Are a way to feel like you are in control. Let’s say pornography or alcoholism or any addiction really, you know, is your way to kind of control your own narrative when you feel like life’s out of control and, you know, to meet people in a place where saying there are other options and this is not bringing you life and this is not, you know, let’s play this scenario out the next 10, 20 years.

Like. You know, helping people process through that, I think is important. And, maybe this doesn’t come, I mean, maybe it is just reaching out to people and saying like, Hey, let’s go have coffee because, too often we use whatever influence we have on social media to kind of blast people in the comments and there’s no love in that.

And we’ve stated on this podcast before, you know, unless you have a seat at the table of someone’s life and can actually speak to that, then most of the time you just need to. Not share your opinion because it’s not being asked. No one really cares about your opinion. You know, when they post on social media, they’re not inviting you to a debate and oftentimes it’s an angry back and forth, not a civil debate.

So anyway, all that to say that, you know, we need to. Find the relationships with people and for people listening, you know, it’s like, well, I really hope my pastor preaches about this because my church doesn’t talk about these, like, what can they do? You know, what they have a voice they have even on social media or even in their own sphere of influence, like what can people start doing with these topics?

Maybe they’ve experienced them in their own family or maybe they know friends. But if. If the church they’re at just won’t tackle these on Sunday, which many won’t, you know, what can they start doing?

[00:15:56] Mike: Yeah. Great question. I think the same thing that I would do in my calling is, you know, you might be a parent, you might be in a small group, have the courage to bring the topic up and try to do it in like a safe, empathetic way that people can feel like it’s not a test.

Like I got to say the right thing right now. James chapter one, I love that verse says everyone should be quick to listen and slow to speak. Yeah. So, I think if you’re a parent can just ask, hey, you know what, at your school, what do you learn about sexuality? Yeah, tell me more about that. Okay, we should love his love.

Yeah. What do you think that means? Huh? Do you think that’s a good idea? Do you think Jesus agrees with that statement? Just let people wrestle kind of those kind of things. I think when we can tell our own stories for me, what has been. I think it’s weird to think about like I have an addiction in my past but to see how God has turned that for good so that so many people are like, okay, well, that guy, he can’t judge me.

He did. He did it worse than I did. So, you know, if there’s something messy that you’ve been through to lead with that, I think. Just takes the safety of the conversation up about five notches. Yeah. So I would just encourage people, pray, have the courage, and put it out on the table. Ask God to give you compassion and gentleness and kindness.

Be quick to listen. And you’ll slowly, whether it’s just with one friend or in your own home, Or in a small group or in a wider church community you’ll start to just expand the circle of safety so that we can talk about taboo things and grab our Bible and have really healthy, robust, biblical conversations, but if we’re too nervous and we just all stay silent.

Let’s not be shocked if 10 years from now, the world has educated us in its doctrine and discipled us. Yeah. Instead of real Christians who have a real truth from Jesus.

[00:17:47] Tim: Yeah, that’ll preach right there is that, you know, how do we stop the bleeding, right? It’s something that, you know, even just us growing up, you look back at the 80s and 90s and like, people were calling out sin and stuff like that, but it’s like, man, that was.

tame compared to today. And then, but I think that’s just our Americanized version of things because you know, these issues of sin are nothing new to humanity. It’s, you know, look at the Roman culture, the Greece, all these cultures that had just blatant sin everywhere. And I like how you talked about this because Paul had to deal with this in Athens.

Like he was, Athens was a moral mess, you say in your book and, but that didn’t cause him to run away and hide. Instead, he talks to people, you know, and I think that. That’s oftentimes, we’ll just say, well, the world’s going to hell in a handbasket. And instead of saying, okay, I’m not going to obviously go to like a strip club.

I’m not going to go to places where I know there’s blatant sin, but I can be involved in people’s lives where. I might see someone that’s transgender and just be like, Oh, avoid, you know, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna reach them. We just write them off immediately without even trying. And I think that’s, like you said, you know, if we play this scenario out over the next 10, 20 years, like these issues are not going to go away.

And you can probably write a version two of taboo in 10 years with a bunch of new issues that will come up. Because. Sin always escalates. Somebody famous said that. And so sin always escalates. It doesn’t just, take pornography. For example, it starts with, , just a small glance.

It starts with, you know, looking at magazine cover. And then before you know it, you’re in some deep seated mess. And so that’s why we do have to stop the bleeding. And like you said, if people can’t find truth in the church, then where are they going to go? And so, as Christians, as people that Call yourself a Christian.

And it’s not just that, okay, I’m all set. Like my eternity secure. I’ve got no work to do know that Jesus said the harvest is plenty. The labor is a few. And so that means we need to step up where we’re at and ask God, you know, that this is a bigger issue than any one of us can fix. Right. But. But you can do something.

I was talking to somebody on Facebook comments, I believe. And he’s like, well, you know, just the whole question of God of suffering in the world and people going hungry and where’s God and all that. And it’s, it goes back to I think I said, you know, if you pass by a homeless person who needs food and you don’t feed them or help them, do you blame God?

You know, and you look at this big problem of sin and everything but it comes down to what specifically can you do today? And if you wake up with that mentality, I think, you know, God will show you, God will highlight things for you to do. God will show you a strategy for your community. And. To not feel like I only helped one person today.

That’s a win. That’s huge. ,

[00:20:30] Mike: Yeah, that’s what I said. I, I love how you you mentioned before Paul and his culture and just the messiness of that. Yeah. I think when, I think a scary thing about being a Christian right now in America is that things have changed relatively quickly and because the culture is shifting away from those, you know, identifying as Christian or going to church or.

All those kind of things that there’s this a little bit of fear and frustration and anger. And so our tone is one of it’s slipping through our fingers and we’re afraid of it. And sometimes because of that, we react, I think, in a more kind of blunt biblical way instead of a winsome way that lets our light shine.

So to me, going back to Paul and just thinking, man, when he walked into these cities. Did you ever study like they, I just um, this was last week, I know how I got on this. I was studying the graffiti that they found in Pompeii, Italy after Mount Vesuvius erupted. So if you remember the story in like what, 79 AD, it just kind of gets frozen in time and we uncover it.

And here’s like this first century Roman city. And they’ve, one scholar had tracked. All the messages on all the walls from theater walls to home walls to bathroom walls, and I will not send you the link because they were vulgar people just like you thought, like a truck stop bathroom with these like, and to think of, yeah, that, that was the culture Paul walked into where.

Grown men having sex with boys was a common accepted practice where prostitution, no one, of course, men visited a prostitute on the way home from work. So, I mean, Paul is walking into a culture that is so far away from Christian family values. And yet he comes in, instead of dropping bombs in anger he’s winsome.

He’s trying to meet people where they’re at. He goes into Athens, he, and this is what Christians did without compromising the truth. Yeah, when they showed up with sacrificial love and they cared for the sick and the poor and they raised other people’s kids who had been abandoned and it’s really unique combination of who loves like this.

And wow, these people are convicted about their beliefs. They’re not Roman culture for sure. There was something about that just led to an explosion of growth. So, I think shifting our mindset away from, okay, I think we’re all saddened that Christianity has lost some of its influence, but if we can be like Paul, approaching America as a mission field instead of Street corner fire and brimstone like we’re in ancient Israel calling people to repentance.

I think there’s something to think about there. Yeah,

[00:23:05] Tim: absolutely. And I think to, , studying revivals over the last 2, 3 years personally, , you see a lot of these revivals were. In response to the wickedness of the time. And I think there’s, even going back to the Bible, , the the culture during Pentecost, the culture during King Josiah, , experiencing revival and bringing back the word of God and more to more modern day revivals to, it’s either a precursor to something like before civil war before world war two, or it’s in response to a culture that’s just been so So sinful and so degraded.

And I think there’s cycles too, with younger generations too, that these things are more acceptable now at a younger age. And so I think that they’ll start asking questions and, you know, we see things like Asbury, , we’re just younger generation on their face before God, just wanting something different than what this world offers.

And so that’s the hope I see is that, yeah, you know, the world’s, we’re not going to get rid of sin until Jesus comes back, but there are pockets of. Revival. There’s pockets of people that will see truth in the midst of a culture that is you know, we just see all the problems and that’s why watching the news is not going to bring you closer to Jesus because it’s just, you know, it’s going to be troublesome for your soul.

But find Christian news, find stories of seeing God at work in the world and choose, you know, when you see like a celebrity come to Jesus and you have one of two responses, you’re like, praise God. They’re seeing Jesus or the response a lot of times Christians have is like, I don’t believe it.

You know, let’s wait five years before I start giving thanks for that and we need to choose to be optimistic on the fact that God is moving and it’s not always going to look like. We think it should.

[00:24:49] Mike: Yeah, that’s so true. There’s always going to be something to lament or grieve. So I hear you kind of pushing us towards, but there’s opportunity and God is at work with a small, even if it’s a small remnant.

Yeah. If the shepherd rejoices over one sheep, then I don’t need to convert all of America to be happy today. If I see one person coming back to Jesus and finding forgiveness that’s right. It’s enough for me.

[00:25:12] Tim: Yeah. What was the hardest of all these issues? What do you think is like the hardest one to write about or preach about that you found?

[00:25:20] Mike: Yeah, you sent me this question a couple of days ago and I just I have it just says in my notes. Yes.

[00:25:26] Tim: Yes. All of them. All of the above.

[00:25:29] Mike: Yeah. I mean, think of the complexity of it. Take a topic like anxiety. People wrestle with, should we call anxiety a sin or is that cruel to people who regularly battle it?

Same with depression. What about suicide? I mean, if you had a relative that committed suicide, was that an act of unbelief that sent them to hell? Or can a person who is down in the darkness actually take their own life and end up seeing the face of Jesus? Think of sexual intimacy, where, okay, a couple’s not intimate, but she doesn’t feel respected.

And he’s like, why would I respect her when she never wants to hold my hand or make love to me? Think of politics, all of that. Think of racial justice. Think of an abortion. Like who, should I as a man, you know, I could be telling women. What to do with their bodies, like so much of it was like, please, God, please, God, like, there’s so many people listening right now who have unique stories and know different bits about your word, like, help it be clear and winsome.

I will say, though, with that as a preface, the topic in the book that when preaching it made me the most nervous after having studied it was abuse. So there’s three messages, three chapters in the book. Week one was what does God say to people who’ve been abused? What does God say to people who have been abusive?

Because if the church isn’t going to close its doors to some kind of sinners, we’re actually inviting abusive people to become Christians. Follow Jesus, right? And then finally, what about the church? What about all of us who maybe no people have been abused or no people who have been abusive? And I think what’s, what scared me the most is I wanted to speak really specifically to say, Hey I’ve, I’ve studied, I’ve talked to many of you.

I know here’s what abuse looks like, but the more specific I got, the more triggering I feared it would be. One woman afterwards after the first sermon, she said Pastor Mike, do you know how many um, screws are on the back of our church chairs? No. And why? Yeah, because I think as I’m talking about what abuse sounds like, she just heard the voice of her father.

And her brain just to not melt down, you know, distracted itself by let’s look at all the details on this chair in front of me in church. So I’m happy we did it. I think in the long run it did convince abuse victims like, okay, this isn’t a church isn’t a place where I have to hide this part of my story and there is healing and God does hate abuse and he takes the side of the oppressed and the victim.

But man, that one. Tim was like, God, I don’t want to hurt people with your word. They’ve been through enough. I want church to be a safe place. So those are the ones that you still like, I think this is the right thing to do, but I’m not a thousand percent sure.

[00:28:12] Tim: Yeah. Wow. Just hearing you say that, I’m like thinking, man, I’m glad you wrote the book because it seems daunting to write something of that, you know, complexity of each topic, and it’s such a great resource for people that like, yeah, I want to know.

What do you have to say about that? Because, , even reading it myself, , I think like, Oh, I know the answer to this. Right. And maybe I did as far as like, is it a sin or not, but there’s so much more depth to these topics cause I’ve not, , counseled people for each one of these topics.

And so, it really helps me understand people’s perspective is that I can’t. put myself in a position of someone that’s been abused, for example, since they were five, right? I don’t know what that’s like. I don’t know the the mental, you know, Thing you’d have to do just to kind of find protection or detach yourself from it or to ask God to take it away and he doesn’t and what that does to your overall perception of God or thinking like, you know, if your father abused you and then hearing you have a heavenly father and it’s like, well, I don’t.

Yeah, I don’t relate to that. Right. That’s something that sounds scary. And so there’s just so much more to these issues sometimes than we like to address. And so that’s why I think, you know, resource like this is so important for or just, , reading it ahead of time because you never know when you’ll have to speak a word of truth to somebody or love.

And Even if you don’t understand every detail, the complexity, you can kind of know how to respond. Cause like I said before, people that walk around with signs saying, gays are going to hell. It’s like, you’re not, you’re jumping to the end. You’re not going through the process to get there.

, even if you have to talk about that at all, , there should be a draw of not just what you’re avoiding, but what you’re running to, right? You’re not just getting out of hell. You’re getting into the loving arms of your savior. So, I want to go back to when you talked about abuse and sometimes bring people into church.

I think you were saying, and we don’t really change the their behavior doesn’t change. We kind of cover up. Sometimes churches do some of these issues. And I think there’s something to be said for when people just, you know, we talked about just the salvation message, which is the first step in your Christian race.

It’s not the end all be all because it’s, you have a now you have to be a disciple. Now you got work to do. Now you got to clean up. But I think sometimes We do a bad job of saying, okay, just say this prayer and you can continue to live however you want without addressing these issues and same thing goes back , with your story of pornography is that, well, I read my Bible.

I’m a Christian, but then I still struggle with this, but then I’m already saved. So then what is, what am I doing wrong is our approach. So maybe what was the breakthrough for you with that? You know, to To go from like the cycle of sin you know, kind of rinse and repeat, feel guilty, go back to God and then go back because you never maybe dealt with the source of it.

And I’ve been there too. But what is the difference with breaking free from that cycle?

[00:31:00] Mike: Oh, man, you’re in your own words. I think you’re asking one of the most important questions in Christianity Why am I the way that I am?

[00:31:12] Tim: I do what I don’t want to do and Paul says,

[00:31:14] Mike: yeah. Yes. Yeah. Wow I was just about to quote that.

To me. That is so vital that Paul when he writes Romans chapter 7 I think he’s 25 years post conversion. So he’s not brand new and he’s still saying why do I do this stuff? I don’t want to do this. I hate this stuff. I love God. What a wretched man I am. So I want to answer your question and say that there’s real things we can do to grow and mature and leave patterns of sin, but I also never want to get the impression that, well, until you get past that pattern or after five years or seven years, Like the battle against the devil, the world in our flesh is going to exist until our last breath.

So there’s people who are battling right now and they’re legit followers of Jesus. That doesn’t disqualify you from the kingdom. So we’re saved by grace through faith and not by works. So that no one can boast so yes, let’s keep, let’s let the salvation message be not just the beginning, but the beginning, middle and every stage in between um, to me, that’s important every, this isn’t just like the introduction and conclusion of taboo.

I want every chapter. Hey, you might have been divorced and maybe you shouldn’t have gotten, or maybe you battle with. Trusting God instead of worrying and being anxious all the time. Yeah, let’s change that. And here’s a Jesus who isn’t waiting for you to climb up the ladder and be good enough for him.

Right. He came down to die for this and make you good enough for God. So that’s vitally important for me as a Christian because I know how much I need it. Whether it was the pornography story or the million other things that I’m like, ah, shoot again. Come on, Mike.

[00:32:46] Tim: Yeah, I know. We can all relate to that.

And I think too, with Paul’s testimony, he had the amazing encounter on the road to Damascus, but then he was discipled for 10 years or something, right? He didn’t just rush out into ministry. Yeah. He stayed behind, he learned he had a trade for a while, but Like, you know, the Paul we know in the new Testament was not immediately.

Okay. Just cause I met Jesus. Now I’m going to go and preach. took time to be discipled. And I think often now with social media, you know, we see kids on Tik TOK that are 18 that have 2 million followers, which is more responsibility than anyone needs, let alone at that age when you don’t have the maturity to back it up, especially you know, I saw this in 2020 where there’s a Tik TOK explosion of people it was just a crazy time because you’d have so many people with the platform and immediately started just saying whatever was on their mind or interpreting the Bible wrong. And it was crazy. And I think we have to be careful to is that not to rush out into, okay, God’s calling me to this.

Maybe that’s true. But also that sometimes God gives you a vision that might be 5, 10 years down the road or more. So maybe you’re in a season of just learning, just serving, just growing, just being more intense in the word than ever before and having a commentary and writing and journaling. Maybe that’s your season.

Understanding the season you’re in is so important. I find this the older I get too, is that, when you try to rush God’s timing, you’re just going to. Be disappointed instead of waiting. And there’s a lost art too in waiting and in patience and the culture we’re in of just go.

And there’s just a lack of intimacy. I think with our heavenly father of just listening, you know, we come with our requests and we have our laundry list of prayer and like, okay, I’m done. I’m going about my day now. God bless it.

[00:34:31] Mike: So. Yeah, you’re spot on. That could be a whole, yeah, 10, patience, God’s process.

Discipleship. Yeah. Those are worthy topics.

[00:34:40] Tim: Yeah. I want to end with talking about taboo. You say that there’s nothing we can confess that God cannot forgive. And that’s a good message of hope that comes from the book is that all of these topics that are crazy and all these topics that are woven with Intricacies and in detail and some things we don’t understand and some things we do at the end of the day.

There’s nothing we can confess that God cannot forgive. And I think for someone listening now who might be, struggling or has struggled or just feels like, yeah, I asked for forgiveness, but I don’t believe it. You know, I just can’t believe that God could forgive what I did in the past. You know, we have, we bring our own guilt and satan loves to use it against us, loves to use our past against us.

Yeah. How would you just end our discussion with giving people that message of hope that, forgiveness to know your identity in Christ and to move forward into the future and not get stuck in the past.

[00:35:32] Mike: I’m so grateful that Jesus doesn’t let my feelings vote. Right. It’s not like, well, I say you’re forgiven.

But your feelings keep out voting me. So I guess you’re no, he’s like, I was pictured Jesus like flying the plane, like a master pilots and I’m like shaking in the back, like worried I’m going to crash and burn in a big hunk of metal. And he just he gets me there. So that’s so great. The gospel is just emphatic and extensive and immersive in the scriptures.

God loved Peter who was a mess and James and John and the apostles who argued, he loved the. The woman at the well who had a lot of taboo in her life. He loved the Corinthians and the Ephesians who are worshiping many breasted Artemis of the ancient world. He loved the Romans who visited prostitutes. He loved man, read, pick it, pick a Testament, pick a book and pick a chapter and you’ll see a God who can forgive some pretty taboo things.

Yeah, so he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And unless you’re living on some other planet from some other species, that means you. So fall in line with me and Tim and Paul and Peter and James and John and Mary and just realize that Jesus isn’t picking and choosing who to forgive.

Like he, he said it’s finished and we can take that to the bank.

[00:36:53] Tim: Yeah. And along those lines, you know, repentance is not a one time thing at the altar. It’s not like I repented 20 years ago and I’m good. , it’s a James says, confess your sins one to another. And so there is power in confession.

 I think the Catholics do it really well. And somehow in Protestantism, we oh, that’s we don’t have to do that. But I think we still have to. I think we still have to have community. We still have to say, okay. You know, confess to God, confess to one another when we mess up. It’s not a matter of if, but when we mess up to just be humble and transparent enough to say, yeah, I messed up.

This is not who God’s calling me to be. This is not what is best for me in my future. And so I want to get this out in the open now, because. I know as well when you sweep stuff under the rug and you try to hide it it will come out sooner or later. And it’s better to do it before it grows into a, whatever it’s going to grow into.

So, yeah. Awesome. Well, Mike, thanks for coming on. Let everyone know where they can connect with you and get your new book taboo.

[00:37:44] Mike: For sure. , I’m excited for everyone to pick up this book if they can, but if there’s one person I would love to have this book on their shelf, it’s the person who’s about to graduate from high school and is going off to college.

I was thinking that a lot of times we grew up in Christian environments. We’re going to church a lot with our family or, you know, our parents have certain beliefs and values, but I’m picturing that young man or young woman who’s in their dorm room and now for the first time they’re face to face with fill in the blank.

Yeah. You know, they come back after a party and now they’re not a virgin or um, wow, I have a professor who’s transgender. What do I. And I’m out of the bubble of the safe, you know, biblical community I used to have. And I’m just thinking, I’m going to do this actually this spring, is I’m going to buy some taboo copies.

For people that I know are going off to college. And so you don’t have to read the whole thing. But I just want this on your shelf so when that moment comes, and you’re embarrassed to call your mom, or you don’t want to reach out to your pastor, like there’s a ten page chapter that’s going to give you a crash course.

What does God say with grace and truth about that? Yeah. So if you’re listening and you know someone who’s graduating, maybe that’s a good, simple gift to give to them. Put God’s truth right there on their shelf within arm’s reach so that they can connect with Jesus when they need it most. Yeah, that’s great.

I love that. Yeah. Yeah. So if you want to find out more, you can go, you can find the book on Amazon. It’s probably the easiest place to find more info on our ministry is timeofgrace. org. That’s the media ministry that I

serve with.

[00:39:13] Tim: Awesome. We’ll put links to that in the show notes. Thank you again Mike for coming on and until next time, go with God, grow in discernment and keep your eyes on Jesus.