Sex, Jesus and the Conversations the Church Forgot

Author: Mo Isom
Genre: Christian Living/Self-Help

In a world obsessed with sex, why is the church relatively silent about it? While sex is twisted, perverted, cheapened, and idolized in popular culture, we leave young people drowning in the repercussions of misinformation, misunderstanding, and worth-robbing mistakes that could have been avoided.

Enough is enough. With raw vulnerability and a bold spirit, Mo Isom shares her own sexual testimony, opening up the conversation about misguided rule-following, virginity, temptation, porn, promiscuity, false sexpectations, sex in marriage, and more, calling us back to God's original design for sex--a way to worship and glorify Him. ​

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Reviewer: Laura J. Davis

You have to appreciate and be thankful for people like Mo Isom who bares her soul and worst secrets in Sex, Jesus and the Conversation the Church Forgot. She clearly has a compassion for young people and a concern for Christians who have jumped on board the secular idea that sex before marriage is okay. It isn't, and Isom gets to the heart of the matter by bravely sharing her own sexual testimony and pointing out why.

The secular refrain that "It's our body, our life, and our choices" is, as Isom points out, what everyone, especially Christian young people, have been conditioned to believe and therefore it has affected their behaviour and beliefs in regards to sex. As Isom says, "We compartmentalize our faith from our actions to serve our own desires. We often disregard the rule list and act according to impulse." And this is one of the main problems with sexuality promiscuity in the church today. The church says to its young people, "Just be good. Don't have sex until you are married." But they do not emphasize the reason why! It isn't about keeping yourself pure for "the one" it is so much more than that and until our young people (and older unmarried Christians as well) realize that, they will continue to fall into sin.

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Sex is God's invention. It's comprised of physical, mental, emotional, and above all spiritual acts of connection designed by the Creator for the unity, pleasure, and reproduction of the very lives He created. Sex is a holy gift purely designed by a God who delights in lavishing His creations with every good and perfect blessing. It is a pure act given to us as a gift to enjoy and delight in under the divine guidance of the appropriate context, circumstances, and boundaries.

The author says, "When we exalt virginity as the goal and disassociate how purity plays any role, it's way too easy to lose ourselves in that gray area in between. I had missed the three most beautiful layers of purity. I had missed (1) the purity in God's design and design of me, (2) the purity in His redemption of me through Jesus, and (3) the true purpose of His call to purity in my conduct as a vessel He desired to use. . . Because of God's perfect and unobstructed purity, impurity and immorality simply can't exist in His presence. He is too holy. Too faultless. Too righteous to coexist with darkness. So impurity in our lives separates us from a perfectly pure God."

The church needs to stop emphasizing that sex is wrong and instead emphasize the purity of God and that as Christians we are now part of that purity, "called to be the very vessels responsible for reflecting God's truth, His love, and His instruction and design to the world." 

I believe this is an important book for Christian parents to read with their teenagers and for Youth Leaders to use as a discussion guide on sexual morality and purity. I gave it four stars because the author tended to repeat herself and her point was made early on so that it seemed like the rest of the book was just filler. But I still believe in its message and that it should be a book in every Christian home.

Book provided courtesy of Baker Publishing and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.