SIN, SUFFERING, AND SEXUAL ADDICTION

There was a time when porn was propagated in the form of a magazine wrapped

in brown paper.  Then came Adult bookstores, XXX videos, and now the internet.  Like a growing cancer roaring out of control, pornography is no longer creeping into the fabric of society.  It demands attention, thrusts itself upon the most innocent of minds, and sucks purveyors into addiction.  We live in a sexualized culture.  What some now call soft porn is normative on TV in advertisements, cable programs, and movies on Netflix.  It is remarkably easy for a seven year old playing games on an i-phone to land on a porn site in just one click.

Pornography readily becomes an addiction.  Dr. Patrick Carnes states that it is “a pathological relationship in which sexual obsession replaces people.”  Dr. Ted Roberts says that at its spiritual core, “it is about idolatry – about where we are going to find life and fulfillment.”  It is real, enslaves and results in bondage, shame, and powerlessness.  It promotes a false, ephemeral sense of intimacy, comfort, power, and excitement.  Sexual addiction starts out as an entertaining exercise in fantasy, becomes a ritual, is often acted out in behavioral engagements (strip clubs, soliciting prostitutes, multiple affairs, voyeurism and other “false intimacies”), and ultimately leads to despair, hopelessness and helplessness.  Professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Mary Ann Laden, writes “Pornography is contaminating all of our relationships between men and women.  The marriage relationship is traumatically damaged and decreased in terms of the emotional intimacy, which is actually the cornerstone of the marriage.”

What many do not realize is that pornography drives the mega-million dollar industry of sexual human trafficking enslaving men, women, boys and girls around the world.  The connection between the two are direct and real.  Rampant porn consumption fuels demand for the exploitation of women and children with as many as 300,000 youths trafficked into prostitution and pornography and

thereby exploited for profit in the U.S. alone every year.

Disturbingly, addiction to pornography is not just a problem in the public in general.  Of the 1,351 pastors that Pastor Rick Warren’s website, Pastors.com, surveyed on porn use, 54% said they had viewed internet pornography within the last year and 30% of those had visited within the last 30 days.  In the book Men’s Secret Wars, Patrick Means states that 63% of pastors surveyed confirm that they are struggling with sexual addiction or sexual compulsion including, but not limited to, the use of pornography, compulsive masturbation, or other secret sexual activity.  Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of pastors, seventy-five percent, do not make themselves accountable to anyone for their Internet use.

While terrorism is an external threat from without, sexual addiction to pornography is a threat from within.  Like other addictions, the sin of sexual addiction and the personal damage it does can be prevented and healed. Restoration to purity can be a reality.  But that’s a focus of another blog.

*Much of the information in this blog was found in Recovery in a Sexualized Culture, Pure Hope Coalition, 2013,  and at  http://www.expastors.com/how-many-pastors-are-addicted-to-porn-the-stats-are-surprising/

A CAPACITY FOR MORE

Imagine a very large dump truck, the kind that carries tons of payload, with a gas tank that only holds a gallon of gas.  Is something wrong with this picture?  The capacity of the truck to haul a load is meaningless if the capacity for fuel is so minuscule.  To do the job, it needs a greater capacity for fuel.  Christians may be bright, well educated and trained with great physical and intellectual capacity for serving others, but what if the capacity of their hearts to be filled with God’s love and Spirit remains minuscule, the size of a thimble?   

This is the case as Christians when our preparation to witness, and serve, and impact others for Christ remains a matter of the head only. We may learn strategies and tactics of evangelism, acquire skills in preaching and teaching the Word, and become accomplished in methods of discipling and counseling others, but to get the job done we lack the capacity of the heart to love.

The Apostle Paul said it well.  Without love our faith is nothing.  Our speech is like a clanging cymbal (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).  He also said “the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” (Galatians 5:6).  Jesus gave us his Great Commandment, “Love the Lord God with all your heart . . . and your neighbor as yourself.”  Paul goes on to pray that Christ may dwell in our hearts and strengthen us in our inner beingso that we be rooted and established in love, grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and know this love that surpasses knowledge.  In other words, to know the love of God not only intellectually, but also know with all our hearts.  He goes on to say why, “that you may be filled to the measure of the fullness of God.”  (Ephesians 3:16-19)

The great promise we have in Christ is this: When we remain in him and he remains in us his love increases our capacity to be filled with the fullness of his very self, his holy love, his essence in us.  We grow and grow some more so that he can fill us with holy love more and more.  I like to think we start out with the capacity of a thimble when we first come to Christ.  As we continue in obedient faith, he grows our capacity to the size of a Starbucks “tall” cup, then to a swimming pool size capacity, to that of a great lake, and then to what William  Booth composed when he wrote the song, “O Boundless Salvation, Deep Ocean of Love.”  In Christ there is always the potential for more growth in grace, more capacity to love God and others, even the unlovable.  In him we may increase in our capacity to love and to live fully in the life he intends for us in the Kingdom of God. 

Thanks be to God!

NOT PERFECT YET BEING PERFECTED

 Every coach in the world works toward their team’s perfection.  No matter how good they are, they may be better.  They’re not perfect, but in the coach’s success, they are being perfected.  This truth stands in contrast to a bumper sticker that I find irritating.

Bumper sticker proclamations convey truth at times.  Some though  bend

the truth and therefore deceive. One that disturbs me most lately states –“I’m not perfect, just forgiven.”  Here’s why it bothers me so.  The bumper sticker reflects only half the good news of the gospel.   The full message of the gospel is missing.  There is more to our life in Christ than forgiveness.  There's going on to perfection.  Wesley helps us to understand that Christian perfection is not absolute perfection in every area of life (physical, intellectual, etc.).  But he affirms that Christians can be perfected in a special way:  “A perfect Christian is one . . . who loves the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind, and with all his strength.  It is purity of intention, dedicating all the life to God.  It is giving all our heart; it is one desire and design ruling all our tempers (dispositions).  It is a renewal of the heart in the whole image of God, the full likeness of Him that created it.”

The bumper sticker may be the testimony of Christians who remain in the bondage of sin.  While continuing to live in sin day to day, they find themselves seeking forgiveness again and again rather than breaking free seeking the blessing of a clean heart and power over every temptation that leads to sin.  A more wholesome testimony might be “I am not perfect, but being perfected."  God the Holy Spirit can and will perfect us more and more by giving us pure hearts, undivided hearts, hearts after the likeness of Christ, hearts cleansed from sin, hearts that remain in daily obedience and intimacy with God, filled with His presence to the measure of the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:19).

As we are perfected in our hearts, in the fullness of God, walking in holiness, the Apostle Paul’s words then make sense in Ephesians 3: 21 & 22.  Purity of heart makes possible what otherwise is impossible:  “Now, unto Him who is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to Him be glory . . . Amen.”

Gracious Father, Jesus our Lord and Savior, Holy Spirit who guides, counsels, comforts, and convicts, Triune God, thank you for the immeasurable gift of your holy love which transforms us into your likeness.   We rejoice in your blessing of holiness.  Now we can love you and others as you love us, as you continue perfecting us in purity of heart, and as we walk with you in the Spirit.  We bow before you in humility knowing that such love and grace is undeserved.  Your loving kindness makes it possible for your Kingdom to come into our hearts and lives so that your will is done now on earth as it is in heaven.  For these mercies we give you thanks and bless your holy name.  Amen.

LIVING WATER OFFERED FROM A DIRTY CUP?

How often are pastors and lay leaders offering Living Water from a dirty cup?  The answer is “far too often.”  When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well he said to her, in contrast to the water drawn from the well and in referring to himself,

“Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.  But the water I shall give him will become to him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” 

Like the six water jars at the wedding of Cana (John 2:1-11) each holding twenty to thirty gallons, we are to be filled to the brim and transformed to bring the Living Water, Christ himself, into the lives of those who thirst.  In so doing we are means of grace, called to be filled with the very presence of God and to pass his grace and essence onto to a world of people seeking Living Water.

If sin remains and returns again and again into the life of the believer and is not dealt with, even the most serious, well-intentioned follower of Christ becomes a dirty cup in need of cleansing.  We can go through the motions of passing the water of life to others, but if we’ve sinned, if we’ve been disobedient, if we return to the old wells of carnality and sin, how can God use a dirty vessel.  He will not.

Pornography is a scourge in the lives of many.  It is no longer restricted to adult bookstores.  It dominates the internet, is readily available to children, and holds an insidious grip on many pastors and lay leaders.  It is directly tied to human trafficking.  Make no mistake.  There is great sin in the camp.  You may ask why the church is not being more effective in winning the world for Christ, why there is not a great awakening of to a movement by the Holy Spirit to transform the culture, why so many Christians seem asleep, dissipated in their faith.  Why is the preaching and teaching in so many churches ineffectual and lacking in God’s blessing and results.  The cup is dirty.  Too many, including pastors and lay leaders, are living in the deep abyss of sin with all the guilt that goes with it. God will not honor a desecrated life, a dirty cup.

We are not inevitably chained in bondage to sin and guilt of pornography or other sins (gossip, lies and deception, modern idolatry, self-centeredness rather than Christ-centeredness, and so on) that so easily beset us.   God can and will cleanse our hearts and lives and give us power over sin, but he requires obedience if we are to stay clean and pure within and filled with the Living Water of God's presence.  When temptations come, and they always will, the Holy Spirit can empower us to turn away from sin, to live life pleasing to God, and in obedience continuing in Christ. In the words of Oswald Chambers, "God does not save us from temptations.  He sustains us in the midst of them."  The Psalmist wrote (Psalm 51:10 -13) –

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and restore a right (steadfast) spirit within me.  Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me.  Restore the joy of your salvation, and uphold me by your generous Spirit.  Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners shall be converted to you.

O Gracious Lord, Living Water, fill our cups.  We lift them up.  We will do our part and in obedience to keep our lives clean.  We will be vessels you can count on.  Because of your faithfulness, out of our hearts flow rivers of living water.  Amen.