This month we hear from Chris and Jessica Duncan…and Zakai, their 4 month old who chimes in too!

Chris and Jessica share insight into the importance of purity, how and why God designed sex for marriage, the power of soul ties while highlighting how God's redemption reaches our most broken, messy parts and pasts and the beautiful way He uses marriage to bind up these delicate parts of our pasts.

6:00- 11:50 — They talk about the first year of marriage and taking down the expectations they first had.

11:50-14:20 How they met. The actual greatest story! Jessica spotted Chris on a reality TV show and 4 years later, they connected.

14:20 - 17:40 Prior to committing their lives to Jesus, Chris and Jess dated for 3 years. They open up about what the basis of their relationship was — sex. But did they really know each other?

“Looking back I can’t figure out how or why we started having sex. Did we feel love for each other? Fast forward, to when we stopped having sex we found out new ways to love each other, to communicate beyond just the act of having sex. It’s not even a connection or intimacy, it’s really just empty pleasure. 
We didn’t even have a relationship with each other. It was just that. We didn’t know who the other was” — Jessica

“Before Jesus, we see sex as for yourself.

You get your self gratification, you get your sex, and that’s it. That’s what we know now, this wasn’t what we knew back then.” -Chris

17:40 Jessica let Chris go after a 3 years of dating because of what she realized as she began seeking a relationship with Jesus.

Finding Jesus became more important than any intimate relationship Jessica had with Chris when they were just dating and that’s what really spoke to him…he thought, “You’re willing to choose someone in some old book over me? I’m standing right here in front of you? You want to shut off this pleasure that’s going on?”- Chris

“It was a battle and it took time. Because there was a person in front of me. Jesus became real the more I looked…the more I sought Him. For a long time, I thought, ‘Okay, if something happens between us then I can fully dive into my relationship with God.

I knew that’s what I should be doing, but I kept falling into the same old, ‘But this is my boyfriend…’ and twisting the words in the Bible. And thought, ‘Well one day I want to marry him, so that means he’s my husband.’ But there was a point God said, “He’s not your husband, he hasn’t committed that. And I realized, my husband could have been somewhere else.” - Jessica.

“There came a point where I just said, Lord, take him. Take him away, this is my chance to just walk with You and not be distracted. If he’s not my husband, just let him be that guy that leaves it that way.” -Jessica

When he came back around, if I was going to allow him back in my life I had to be honest with him. I had to tell him I wasn’t going to pursue a relationship with a man that isn’t a man of God — and that means more than just putting it in your bio. It’s walking in his purpose, being convicted with what the Word of God says, leading her to Christ, not drawing her to you.” - Jessica

“It’s not just about saying “God first”, it’s actually putting God first and letting Him transform you.” - Chris

“Sex was what was stopping me from walking truly with hIm and the purpose he had for me.” — Jessica

22:00 God’s definition of a relationship.

It wasn’t until we talked about this, that the true purpose of our relationship finally started revealing itself.” - Jessica

“So we put Him first and tried to understand what His definition of a relationship was or is instead of our own understanding of what a relationship is” — Chris

“We’re fallen, we’re always going to define things. It’s so important to go back to the Bible, and what the Bible defines what marriage is, what a relationship is, how it should be, we can try to define it so many ways but it’s always going to be imperfect bc we’re imperfect people. The Bib