BREAKING BONDAGE: THE PURE HOPE OF RECOVERY

What does it take to break away from the bondage of sexual addiction that pornography promotes?  I ended my last blog entitled “Sin, Suffering, and Sexual Addiction” with these words: “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.”  PureHope is a non-profit organization that tackles the pervasive threat of pornography and promotes recovery from addiction in a sexualized culture.  You can find them at purehope.net/.  Their insight into the steps to recovery is derived from their thirty-year history in the fight. Here’s what they say about steps to recovery* . . . 

(1) Acknowledgement and Confession – Movement to freedom begins with acknowledging that there is a problem and honest confession.  Confession to a trusted, godly friend of the same gender is a start. Such a friend can speak the truth in authentic love and be a continuing source of accountability.  They can also help with disclosing the problem to one’s spouse.

   (2) Intimacy with Christ – God is intimate and just.  He is the one who saves.  He can heal and save with power over sin’s guilt, power, and shame.  Experiencing a deepening, authentic relationship with God our Father through faith in Christ is the key to overcoming addiction.  By God’s Holy Spirit healing comes “not by might nor by (your own) power, but by My Spirit says the Lord.”  (Zechariah 4:6)

   (3) Counseling – Professional, well trained Christian counselors and Christ centered mentors who have “been there” have helped thousands out of the pit of pornography.  They are essential to rescue, restoration, and recovery from sexual addition.

(4) Community – Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)  This is not a solo act.  It can’t be done alone.  Success requires fellowship in community with others who persevere with us on the journey of transformation.

Avoiding sexual sin can be helped through internet filtering software, being aware of entertainment triggers, remembering that porn is a lie of the evil one that ultimately destroys, and being aware of the camel’s nose of seemingly innocent curiosity that can give the devil a foothold.  Avoiding the darkness of porn is not enough.  Healing takes place in the light.  The pursuit of purity means living in accord to God’s design and his will for us.  A wholesome sexual life can reflect God’s truth, mystery, beauty, and goodness.  In Christ it is possible to have a life of purity in the sexual culture in which we live.

Pure Hope offers a four part message of hope in the pursuit of a pure life: (1) Prayer cultivates intimacy with God including time in God’s Word;  (2) Understanding by acquiring knowledge promotes healthy discernment;  (3) Resolving to be healed requires perseverance in repentance and commitment; (4) Engagement with others for support and accountability makes it possible to love others in word and deed and to love and respect ourselves.

On this last point, remember God’s Word – “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor:  If either one of them falls down, one can help the other up.  But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.”  -  Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

*This particular blog relied heavily on the helpful literature from Pure Hope 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/

For more info, see:  purehope.net/blog    facebook.com/findpurehope      recovery@purehope.net

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.