Within moments of Mo Isom taking the stage, her easy-going, bold, and compassionate personality has already disarmed an eager audience. It’s a good thing because she’s about to start an uncomfortable conversation—about sex. But for Mo, it’s a topic she couldn’t be more comfortable talking about. She believes passionately that it’s our responsibility to talk about it, because for too long the church has been silent, leaving a sex-saturated generation drowning in sexual sin and its damaging consequences. “It’s a topic fiercely close to God’s heart,” she says in her second book, Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot. A topic that flows from the pages of Scripture. So it’s a topic that we all need to be talking about—in the church, in our families, and with our peers.
Having a broken sexual past herself—Mo could have never imagined that God would use her mess to start the conversation to become a light in the darkness—but He has. Mo was raised in a Christian home, but it wasn’t until college that she had a conversion where she encountered the love and mercy of Jesus. God got a hold of her life and began healing her from a porn addiction that started at eight years old and a lifestyle of sexually destructive relationships. At one point, she remembers telling God, “I’ll speak up as a pilgrim who has learned every hard lesson, every hard way sexually. Who sinned time and time again in search of a pleasure I couldn’t find. Who has a mess of a testimony that was nurtured and redeemed by a King who makes our hopeless things holy,” she says.
It’s Mo’s hope that by sharing her sexual testimony—filled with misguided rule-following, temptation, porn, promiscuity, false expectations, and more—she can help the sexually wounded people in this generation discover the God-pleasing sex worth waiting for and celebrating. And that no matter where you’ve been or how bad your sexual past or present is, “that God collects the pieces of your fractured story, and resurrects in your heart the beautiful reminder that He alone can make all things new.” Mo is living proof of that.
Mo was an All-American soccer star in college. She has struggled through an eating disorder, the suicide of her father, and a horrific car accident. She is also a New York Times bestselling author of two books. Her first, Wreck My Life: Journeying from Broken to Bold, chronicles how God met her in her brokenness and completely changed her life. Additionally, she has been featured in Sports Illustrated, appeared on ESPN, CBS, The 700 Club, and many other places. Mo reaches tens of thousands of people worldwide through her speaking ministry, website, and blog, and lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband, Jeremiah, and their three young children.
Just Between Us (JBU) had the privilege of talking to Mo about reclaiming sex for God’s glory in a culture that knows very little about real sex and the hope that you don’t have to be defined by your past mistakes.
JBU:
How did God wreck your life?
Mo: He crashed right into my darkness, my pain, my circumstances, and my insecurities. He intersected my victim mentality. Collided with my promiscuity. Pummeled my pride and my arrogance and my suffering.
At my rock bottom, He found me. And His great love wrecked and redefined everything. My identity issues, my father’s suicide, my depression, my anxiety. All of my crushing fears and insecurities and false realities came to a crashing halt—quite literally, when I found myself upside down in my car after a serious accident. In those moments, I challenged God to reveal Himself to me. And I—a frustrated, exhausted, worn-out wanderer—ultimately came to believe.
JBU:
How did things change in your life?
Mo: One of the very first things He turned my attention to was the sexual narrative that had owned me for far too long.
First Corinthians 6:18 says, “No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body.” When I acknowledged my sexual sin for what it was, took accountability for my actions, and brought my sin to the throne of grace, I collided with the love I had always desired. The love I had spent my whole life seeking. Jesus entered my sexual testimony, and His great love for me changed everything.
The remedy for our sexual sin problem, I learned, is not behavior modification, it’s heart transformation. God, through Christ alone, is the one place we can find the power for true heart transformation in our lives. When we’re in sexual sin, it’s not enough to say that we know we need to not want to sin. We’re always going to want it. However, our want to honor God and surrender ourselves in gratitude for His incredible love must become greater than our desire of sex outside of His design. When I collided with that hope and love, it finally began to transform things within me.
JBU:
Tell us how you started down the road of sexual brokenness.
Mo: My moral compass hinged on what was socially acceptable at the time, which seemed to be a more and more permissive guide. In our culture, sexual expression is idolized.
So many times, I asked, “What was I doing?” “How did I get here?” Every part of me knew that I carried more worth. I was so much more valuable than the dispensable, passed-around girl. But somehow I was always back there—in the filth, I never thought I’d find myself in. Pawning off my value in desperate hopes of feeling loved. Giving men my body in hopes that they would give me their hearts.
I recklessly gave pieces of myself away. With the intent to explore my body and allow it to be explored by others in hopes of someone praising my beauty. My lack of understanding about my inherent worth to God and my insatiable curiosity called me to choose for myself, and that welcomed me down a path of sin-filled sexual wandering.
JBU:
Where do most of our sexual struggles originate?
Mo: They begin with choosing for ourselves, just like Eve. Sexual temptation piques the desires of our flesh, as sexual beings. But when we choose our wants over His will, despite God’s instruction, we quickly become lorded by that flesh, instead of surrendering to the Lordship of Christ. The toll that takes on our brains, our hearts, our spirits, and our actions—they culminate into a cycle that can be nearly impossible to escape without the renewal of our minds, an encounter with the Spirit of God, and a transformed heart.
JBU:
Why is sex close to God’s heart?
Mo: Because it’s His creation. Sex is a holy gift purely designed by a God who delights in lavishing His creatures with every good and perfect blessing. It’s designed by the Creator for the unity, pleasure, and reproduction of the very lives He created. We can rationalize all day that sex can be had in a detached manner but, in reality, we’re only fooling ourselves. That argument is invalid because sexual acts always tie souls. They leave a mark—they were always intended to. We are sexual beings, because sex is a deep and instructed desire in our hearts. God placed it there. Our immeasurable worth as image-bearing creations of God and our sexual identity have been unified since the beginning of creation.
JBU:
What is purity and how do we walk in it?
Mo: Purity is more than abstinence. Really, abstinence is a byproduct of purity. When I learned about true purity, that’s when I began to understand the difference between behavior modification and true heart transformation. See at nine years old, I made a loud and proud “virginity vow,” yet from that point forward I was still wrestling with impure thoughts, struggling with porn, pushing the boundaries physically with boys, and navigating what I wanted to do with my own body. I thought as long as I didn’t go “too far,” then it’s all okay. That was my rationale. But by solely focusing on virginity, and missing the greater call to purity, my questions always centered around, “Okay then, how far is too far?” Which really translates to, “How much can I get away with and not go to hell?” How sad that many of us live in that gray area. That type of mentality is works-focused and wants to negotiate and bargain and serve the sin in us, while claiming to love a God who calls us to more.
JBU:
Why is it so important for the church to get this conversation right?
Mo: Because the world is talking about sex all the time. The world has a lot to say about sex and sexuality, and the church is missing a huge opportunity to talk about a beautiful topic that is close to God’s heart. We need to find the middle ground of truth and love, and as more people step up to have these conversations, I believe we’ll see a greater shift culturally.
I think the Body of Christ is quiet about these topics because we are often navigating all the same temptations, sins, and struggles as the world. Many leaders—adults and parents—are quiet because they were never really taught about godly sexuality themselves. Or they may be dealing with their own sexual sin and feel ashamed or not qualified to speak into the matter. However, we need to rise up and step into these conversations as a church, because if we don’t, the enemy will continue to gain ground, devastating people’s lives. God’s love and grace have the power to touch, heal, and free each of us.
JBU:
How did God begin the work of setting you free?
Mo: I knew that breaking those sexual chains was going to require intentionality. I was going to have to fight with all my might against my flesh and against the enemy. I finally knew and believed God, that in His rich love and mercy, He was capable of making a way out for me.
One thing I did was take a yearlong intimacy fast. I committed to a year of intimacy exclusively with Jesus and decided to carry myself as if I was taken. I didn’t allow my eyes to wander, I didn’t flirt, and I didn’t give myself away physically. I never could have imagined that God would use this to heal me. God encountered me with truths about my worth, my value, my identity, and my security. He taught me how to walk with the Spirit daily and empowered me to boldly flee from sin.
When I look at myself in the mirror these days, I am constantly reminded of how God is not a keeper of wrongs. “He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west,” (Ps. 103:12). So the cry of my heart was, and continues to be, “For the honor of Your name, O LORD, forgive my many, many sins” (Ps. 25:11). “Do not remember the rebellious sins of my youth. Remember me in the light of Your unfailing love, for You are merciful, O LORD” (vs. 7).
JBU:
What conversations have been forgotten by the church?
Mo: We’ve forgotten to talk about the goodness of sex that God created within the confines of marriage. We’ve forgotten to celebrate and edify and exalt that gift God designed to join us together in spirit and decimate the enemy’s chance at victory. That holy-covenant bound sex is worth waiting for. That sex is what God always intended it to be—shame-free, pleasure-drenched, and deeply unifying. That sex unmasks the one-night stands and the culture-crazed hookups and the promiscuity carried out in the darkness for what they really are—counterfeits that cheapen the value of the real gift we’ve been given.
We’ve also forgotten to talk about the whys. Instead, we’ve talked only about the failings of our sexual morality and our lack of self-control, but we’ve forgotten to address the aching, bleeding needs of people’s hearts. We need to know the whys at the root of our wandering. We need to know the cause at the core of our temptation. We need to hear more than “do this, don’t do that.” We need to know why it matters to listen and obey in the first place. Because most of our sin struggles grow out of our lack of deep understanding of what sex is, and how God sees us, why God calls us to what He does, and why obedience and calling is worth our sacrifice.
JBU:
What conversations can parents and grandparents have with their children and grandchildren about sex?
Mo: I released an online video course that speaks into this topic! Lots of parents are so nervous to talk about sex, but truthfully, it’s our assignment from God. We are commanded to raise our children up in truth and lead them in the way they should go. Nowhere in Scripture does it talk about sex being a one-time “talk” we’re supposed to have. The Word of God consistently points back to relationship, stewardship, and counsel that persists over time.
As parents, we need to honestly assess our children’s developmental stage, the present environments and influencing forces in their lives, and the sobering reality of what they are being exposed to. Then we must step up and cultivate conversations in a foundational way that builds understanding in our kids’ minds. Speak with love, discernment, and truth and let it build and blossom—make it a part of your comfort zone. Sex is not weird, so we need to start carrying our commissioning with confidence.
Today, kids are sexually aware at younger and younger ages thanks to technology. If we don’t initiate the conversation, the world is going to beat us to the punch.
JBU:
Tell us what your conversations will sound like with your children.
Mo: We currently have a three and half year old, a one year old, and a new baby. The conversations have already begun for us. My first-born was almost two when she started noticing differences in my husband’s body and mine. One day, she was just adamant to see what she could, so my husband and I decided, “Okay, this is where the conversation can begin.”
“Isn’t God such an incredible artist? He made us so differently. Daddy’s a boy, and you and I are girls!” Having a conversation that way makes it not weird and it’s not silly. It’s a way to repaint healthy human sexuality, built on the conversation of God’s design when it’s been appropriate or when she’s asked questions. We can start parenting more intentionally around this often-uncomfortable topic.
JBU:
How do we bring Jesus back into the bedroom?
Mo: We start by remembering what a good gift sex is for a husband and wife. The conversations most often cultivated by the church have only communicated the sinful side of sex when it’s done outside of God’s design and instruction. But what happened to celebrating the beauty of sex when it’s celebrated in the context of God’s will? Often when couples stand before each other and say, “I do,” it’s difficult for them to just flip a switch and embrace sex as wonderful and pleasurable.
Ultimately, sex is an act of worship between a husband and wife, a unifying gift, and a weapon against the enemy whose sole goal is to destroy and divide our marriages. It is of utmost importance that husbands’ and wives’ seek to grow together in understanding around all things sex, and become one spiritually, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
JBU:
How do you keep encouraged in a sexual culture that has been completely overtaken by the enemy?
Mo: Knowing that redemption finds us where we are. Many of us have some layer of sexual sin, abuse, or struggle that has caused a great amount of shame and causes us to feel separated and alone. However, no matter what we’ve done, Christ’s redemption and His love find us, always.
I think of the story of the woman at the well in John 4:4-26. In the face of her filth, Jesus stayed and offered her living water. And, I love the Jesus who meets the woman about to be stoned in John 7:53-8:11. Redemption finds both of these women because He is the ultimate healer, redeemer, and intersector. And like them, redemption finds us too! Oftentimes, we find that the things that need the most healing and redemption in our lives, are the things that hurt the most—but things that are hard are often holy. And His grace always heals.
You are not defined by your past. You are not defined by the sexual sin you’ve lived in or the sexual sin others have dragged you into. Redemption is waiting for every single one of us, and that’s a beautiful truth. You are not alone and you are not outside the mercy of Jesus. We don’t need a partner to assign a value to us; we need a soul awakened to our worth in our Father’s eyes. He loves us—and refuses to leave us the same.
To further the conversation, get Mo’s book, Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot or check out her “The Conversation Continued” 8-part video series at moisom.com.
~ By Susan Vanselow. Susan is a freelance writer and editor, and Just Between Us volunteer. She holds a B.A. in English and has an MBA. She mentors adults and teens in her community and is active in her church.
