Do boys need ADHD medication, or do they need to stop watching porn?

VIDEO by Wretched

Pornography – A Fatal Addiction: Ted Bundy’s Final Interview with James Dobson

Pentru traducere automata, fa click aici – Romanian

At 7 a.m. on Tuesday, January 24, 1989, convicted serial killer Ted Bundy was put to death in the electric chair at Florida State Prison. He admitted murdering more than 2 dozen young women but is widely believed to have killed many more. In this video-Bundy’s final and exclusive interview conducted by Focus on the Family President and psychologist James Dobson – Bundy takes viewers back to his roots, explaining the developement of his compulsive behavior.He reveals his addiction to hard-core pornography and how it fueled the terrible crimes he commited. Bundy warns that within our society, are men like him, whose violent tendencies are being encouraged by pornography. A controversial presentation-recorded just hours before Bundy’s execution-„Fatal Addiction” is the story of a tormented man, a man caught between the right and wrong he learned as a child and his plunge into the dark world of hard-core, violent pornography.

Bundy:

Part of the tragedy of this whole situation: Because I grew up in a wonderful home with two dedicated and loving parents, one of 5 brothers and sisters, a home where we, as children, were the focus of my parents lives- where we regularly attended church. [I had] two Christian parents who did not drink, they did not smoke. There was no gambling. There was no physical abuse or fighting in the home. I’m not saying this was „Leave it to Beaver” [a TV show portraying a ‘perfect family’], no such home exists, but, it was a fine solid Christian home and I hope no one will take the easy way out and will try to blame, or otherwise accuse my family of contributing to this, because I know, and I’m trying to tell you as honestly as I know how, what I think happened. And I think, this is the message that I wanna get across.

As a young boy, a boy of 12, 13, certainly, that I encountered (outside the home, again), in the local grocery store, in the local drug store, the soft core pornography, what people call soft core porn. But, I think, as I explained to you last night, Dr. Dobson, in an anecdote, as young men do, we explore the back rows and sideways and byways of our neighborhood. And often times, people would dump the garbage and whatever they were cleaning out of their house and from time to time, we would come across pornographic books of a harder nature and more graphic, of a more explicit nature, then you would encounter in your local grocery store. This also included some things as, say, detective magazines [with violence]. And this is something I want to emphasize: the most damaging kinds of pornography , and again, I’m talking from personal experience, hard, real, personal experience. The most damaging kinds of pornography are those that involve violence, sexual violence. Because the wedding of those 2 forces, as I have known only too well, bring about behavior that is just too terrible to describe.

….

It’s important to me for people to believe what I’m saying. I’m not blaming pornography and I’m not saying pornography caused me to go out and do certain things, that I take full responsibility for whatever I’ve done and all the things that I’ve done. That’s not the question here. The question and the issue is how this kind of literature contributed and helped mold and shape the kinds of violent behavior. In the beginning, it fuels this kind of thought process. Then, at certain times, it’s instrumental in what I would say crystallizing it, making it something which is almost a separate entity inside. At that point, you’re at the verge, I was at the verge of acting out on these kinds of thoughts.

Dobson:

I wanna understand that. You had gone about as far as you could go in your fantasy life with printed material and film, magazines… And then, there was the urge to take that little step. A big step, over to a physical event.

Bundy:

It happened in stages, gradually. It doesn’t necessarily, not to me at least, happen over night. My experience with pornography, generally, but with pornography that deals on a violent level with sexuality is that once you become addicted to it, and I look at this as a kind of addiction. Like other kinds of addiction, I would keep looking for  more potent, more explicit, more graphic kinds of material. Like an addiction, you keep craving something which is harder , harder, something which gives you a greater sense of excitement, until you reach the point where the pornography will go so far. You’ve reached that jumping off point, where you begin to wonder if maybe actually doing it will give you that which is beyond just reading about it or looking at it.

Dobson:

How long did you stay at that point, before you actually assaulted someone?

Bundy:

Well yeah, you see… that is a very delicate point in my own development, and we’re talking about, we’re talking about having reached the point or a gray area that surrounded a point of years. I would say a couple of years. And what I was dealing with there were very strong inhibitions against criminal behavior, violent behavior, that had been conditioned into me, bred into me in my environment, in my neighborhood, in my church, in my school. Things which said, „No, this is wrong.” Even to think of it as wrong, but certainly, to do it is wrong. And I’m on that edge, and the last vestiges of restraint, the barriers to actually doing something were being tested constantly and assailed through the kind of fantasy life that was fueled largely by pornography.

Dobson:

Do you remember what pushed you over that edge? Do you remember the decision to go for it? Do you remember where you decided to throw caution to the wind?

Bundy:

Well… again, when you say pushed, I know what you’re saying. I don’t want to infer that I was some helpless kind of victim. And yet, we’re talking about an influence, that is the influence of violent types of media and violent pornography, which was an indispensable link in the chain of behavior, in the chain of events that led to the behaviors, to the assaults, to the murders… It’s a very difficult thing to describe. The sensation of reaching that point where I knew, that I reached something that (say) snapped. That I knew that I couldn’t control it anymore. That these barriers that I had learned as a child and had been instilled in me, were not enough to hold me back with respect to seeking out  and harming somebody.

Dobson:

Would it be accurate to call that a frenzy, a sexual frenzy

Bundy:

Well, yes, that’s one way to describe it. A compulsion , a building up of this destructive energy. Again, another factor here, that I haven’t mentioned, is the use of alcohol. But I think, what alcohol did, in conjunction with my exposure to pornography, was, alcohol reduced my inhibitions. At the same time, the fantasy life fueled by pornography  eroded them further.

Dobson:

In the early days, you were always nearly half drunk when you did these things? Was that always true?

Bundy:

Yes, yes. I would say that that was generally the case, without exception.

Dobson:

If I can understand it, now there’s this battle going on, within. There are the conventions that you’ve been taught. There’s the right and wrong that you learned as a child and then, there’s this unbridled passion fueled by your plunge into the hardcore violent pornography. And those things are at war with each other. And then, with the alcohol diminishing the inhibitions, you let go.

Bundy:

You can summarize that way, and that’s accurate, certainly. And it just occurred to me that some people would say, „Well, I’ve seen that stuff and it doesn’t do anything to me. And I can understand that. Virtually, anyone can be exposed to so called „pornography” and while they’re aroused to it in one degree or another, may not go out and do anything wrong. (Dobson: Addictions are like that. They affect some people more than they affect others. But there is a percentage of people affected by hardcore pornography in a very violent way and obviously, you’re one of them.) That was a major component and I don’t know why I was vulnerable to it. All I know is that it had an impact on me that was just so central to the development of the violent behavior that I engaged in.

Text from the first few minutes of the interview.

VIDEO by Christianity Reason and Science

Ways to fight the temptation of pornography

KEEP your EYES on JESUS !!! photo credit  blog.febc.org

From TheResurgence.com written by BJ Stockman, written in 2012, but very insightful. Please click to read through the bullet by bullet points Stockman makes as he elaborates on these 9 points.

• 1. Fight lustful images with the knowledge of God’s written Word.

• 2. Realize that viewing porn unleashes insatiable craving but kills genuine satisfaction.

• 3. Treat all women who are not your wife like sisters and mothers (1 Titus 5:2).

• 4. Sever the sources of temptation to view porn.

• 5. Think about the eternal result of lust.

• 6. Enjoy the pleasures of purity more than the pleasures of porn.

• 7. Avoid accountability groups. (Please read why)

• 8. Stare at Jesus, not at porn.

• 9. Fight as sons and daughters of God.

Read the entire article here – http://theresurgence.com/2012/03/10/9-ways-to-fight-the-temptation-of-pornography

Heath Lambert – It has never, ever, in the history of the universe been more convenient to destroy your soul, to ruin your family , and to bring reproach on Jesus Christ and His church

You can use the TRANSLATER in the right handed sidebar to translate this page into a different language.

Heath Lambert – The Power of Purity

Romans 6:1-14

Dr. Heath Lambert, author of „Finally Free” at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

There’s all kinds of difficulties with sexual immorality in the church. Pornography is just one. But, I am convinced that it is the most significant in the church. And the reason I think that is because in the old days, if you wanted to commit adultery, you had to do it with someone who could tell on you. Pornography solves that problem. It makes it possible for you to commit adultery with a woman whose lips are as silent as the grave. With the onslaught of internet pornography, it’s possible for anybody that wants to, to run around with hundreds and thousands of women. „And nobody has to know” is the lie.

In the past, being vigilant to be pure, meant being vigilant against a physical woman. Today, the people in our churches have to be vigilant against a phantom. Al Cooper, a sociologist, he was commenting in the late 90’s about the problem of pornography, and he said, „The problem with internet pornography in particular is 3 things: (1) Affordability (2) Accesability (3) Anonimity

You can get it cheap and nobody has to know.” For someone who is trying to get away with sexual immorality, it’s a deadly combination. For somebody who likes drinking that kind of poison, the internet is so handy, it’s so tidy. And so deadly. It has never, ever, in the history of the universe been more convenient to destroy your soul, to ruin your family , and to bring reproach on Jesus Christ and His church. This is not an abstract problem. It’s not a problem with the people out there. This is your problem. (READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW THE VIDEO)

The Power of Purity – Romans 6:1-14 from Southern Seminary on Vimeo.

I speak to you today with a great deal of urgency and I am aware that I speak to you today in a time of crisis. These are dangerous days in our culture, these are dangerous days in our church. The specific thing I want to talk about with regard to that danger today, right now is the danger that the church faces with the epidemic problem of pornography. Pornography is not the only problem that the church faces, it’s not even the only problem with sexual immorality that the church faces. There’s all kinds of difficulties with sexual immorality in the church. Pornography is just one. But, I am convinced that it is the most significant in the church. And the reason I think that is because in the old days, if you wanted to commit adultery, you had to do it with someone who could tell on you. Pornography solves that problem. It makes it possible for you to commit adultery with a woman whose lips are as silent as the grave. With the onslaught of internet pornography, it’s possible for anybody that wants to, to run around with hundreds and thousands of women. „And nobody has to know” is the lie.

In the past, being vigilant to be pure, meant being vigilant against a physical woman. Today, the people in our churches have to be vigilant against a phantom. Al Cooper, a sociologist, he was commenting in the late 90’s about the problem of pornography, and he said, „The problem with internet pornography in particular is 3 things:

1. Affordability
2. Accesability
3. Anonimity

You can get it cheap and nobody has to know.” For someone who is trying to get away with sexual immorality, it’s a deadly combination. For somebody who likes drinking that kind of poison, the internet is so handy, it’s so tidy. And so deadly. It has never, ever, in the history of the universe been more convenient to destroy your soul, to ruin your family , and to bring reproach on Jesus Christ and His church. This is not an abstract problem. It’s not a problem with the people out there. This is your problem.

At the risk of making this a little too uncomfortable, I know that there are people in this room who are struggling with pornography. It is absolutely impossible that this room is clear of people who don’t have an issue here. I don’t know who, I don’t want to make you suspicious, and I don’t want you creeped out looking at the person next to you. The goal is not suspicion, but, the goal is vigilance. And if we’re going to have to be vigilant, we’re gonna have to face facts. So, I want to speak, not about porn in general, not about culture in general. I want to speak to YOU. If you’re here, I take it that God wants you to be here and this is something God would have you hear. And so, I want to speak specifically to men. It’s not because there aren’t women in the room. It’s not that women do not struggle with porn, because they most certainly do. But, I want to speak to the men in the room who struggle with pornography, because God has raised you up to be leaders in your home. God has raised you up to be leaders in your church. And here’s the hard and fast reality.

If our homes and our churches are to be pure, then they’re going to be led by men who are pure. And if they are not, then they won’t be. And I’m so concerned when I pray for you. And I pray for you all the time. I don’t even know most of you, but when I pray for you, as I do all of the time, I am praying that you will stop doing what you are doing, if you’re in here and you’ve got a problem with porn. And here’s what you’re doing: Every time you do it, you sip, sip, sip on poison and you are storing consequences. Maybe nobody knows right now. But they will. It is the nature of sin to ooze out of the boundaries that we create for it. My concern for you is: You’re here because you wanna be a Godly man. You wanna be a Godly husband, you wanna be a Godly father, you wanna be a Godly minister of Jesus in the church. And what you’re doing is destroying all of it. And you don’t even see it yet.

Now, if you’re here, I take it you know it. I don’t need to persuade you that this is wrong. You know it’s wrong. You know you’re living a lie. You know you need to quit. But you just don’t know how. And what you need is not a lecture about how it’s wrong, but you need somebody to give you some resources to be different. And this is what it’s about. This is me, talking to you, trying to give you some resources, because if we tell you, if anybody says, „Be pure. It’s a pornographic culture and you need to get pure!” Good luck with that. The reality is that being pure requires power. You have to have resources and energy if you are to be vigilant against the pornographic onslaught in which we are living. And, Romans 6 is about that power. And this is what the apostle Paul says (8:00):

Romans 6:1-14

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? ² By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? ³ Do you not know that all of uswho have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We wereburied therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

⁵ For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. ⁶ We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. ⁷ For one who has died has been set free from sin.⁸ Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹ We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. ¹⁰ For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. ¹¹ So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

¹² Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.¹³ Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, butpresent yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. ¹⁴ For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

Here’s what Romans 6 is about. When you read commentators and you listen to preachers talk about Romans 5 and Romans 6, they regularly highlight the flow that exists between those 2 chapters. Though, pay attention, especially to Romans 5:20-21 – Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, ²¹ so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And what commentators regularly do, rightly, is they show how the connection between Romans 5 and Romans 6 does not lead to a lawless Gospel.

The hypothetical argument that the apostle Paul responds to is, „Ok, if I want grace, if I need grace, I can’t outsin my need for it. Grace always superabounds above my sins. So, whenever I sin, I get more grace. And so, hey, if I wanna experience God’s grace, I’ve got it. I’ll just keep sinning. And then, I’ll get more grace. So the ticket to more grace is more sin.” And the apostle Paul says, „No. Grace does not lead to more sin.” The argument is that grace ought to lead to obedience. That’s the argument of Romans 5-6. But, here’s what I’m eager for you to see this afternoon. I am eager for you to see that this is not just about rhetoric. I’m eager for you to see that what Paul is doing is more than building a strong argument. He’s doing more than unfolding logical progression.

In Romans 6, the apostle Paul is communicating power, for you to overcome, by the grace of Jesus, the sin that is in your life. And today, I specifically wanna apply it to the power that you have from Jesus to live a pure life, in the midst of porn everywhere. So, 3 things about Romans 6 that communicate power for purity:

1. The facts of Romans 6

I want you to see the power for purity in the facts of Romans 6. This passage communicates powerful information for you. Paul wants to provide facts that will fuel your vigilance to be pure. And he gives 2 facts for us to consider in the first 10 verses of Romans 6.

1. First fact: You are dead. The whole point of the first 10 verses is that you’re dead to sin and you cannot live in it anymore. And your baptism is your signification of your reality. He says, „How can we, who died to sin, still live in it? ³ Do you not know that all of uswho have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We wereburied therefore with him by baptism into death, Baptism is the point of reference because Paul doesn’t know any unbaptized believers. And so, he used the baptism as the point of reference to talk about our conversion. And he says, „If you’ve been baptized, you’re a Christian, and you’re dead. The death that you’ve died, what is that? Seems like I’m alive. Seems like my heart is beating. What is the death that I’ve died? Well, verse 6 says the death is the death of the old self being crucified.  ⁶ We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. The death that we died in Christ is the death of our old self. Romans 5 sets up 2 heads for the human race. There is Adam, as a head. And, there is Christ as a head. And all of humanity is under one of those 2 heads. For believers, Adam signifies the old self, who they were before they came to know Christ. And, Jesus signifies the new self, stands for the new person, who they have become in Christ. The old self is who we were in Adam, so old person is a redemptive historical category, it’s a redemptive historical designation and it refers to the fact that our representative head used to be Adam. And he’s no longer our head. Jesus Christ is our head. Our old self was crucified to make something happen, in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing (verse 6).(16:56) Notes from the first half hour.

Pornography – What’s at risk when people think they can maintain a life of Christian discipleship while continuing to view pornography?

Dr. Heath Lambert, author of „Finally Free” at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I’d answer that (question) like this:

The men I’m doing ministry with, who are coming to me and saying, „I have this incredible struggle with pornography, I’ve been stuck for a long time and I don’t know how to get out of it.” By the time I’m having this conversation with someone, I’m actually encouraged. That doesn’t freak me out at all, I’m really encouraged when you’ve got a guy who says, „Let me open up my life and tell you what’s going on.” The people that concern me are the people that I’m not talking to. People that aren’t talking to the pastor, that aren’t talking to somebody else, because those are the people who are destroying their ministry, or their future ministry. They’re destroying their marriage and family, or their future marriage and family.

Because the way sin works, is it destroys. The lie of internet pornography is ‘, I’ll do this little thing over here, and it’s nasty, and it’s ugly, but I get finished with it and I cover it up, and I’ll go back to the rest of my life.” And the problem is that sin doesn’t stay covered up. You think you can control it, and you cannot control it. And it will break out, it will ruin your life.

And the tragedy of that is that the worst consequences are actually the ones that are stored up over a long amount of time. And so, these men who are doing this are sipping on poison that is eventually going to kill their ministry efforts and their efforts at marriage and family. They’re literally destroying their lives and their effectiveness for Christ, and they don’t even understand it. (Photos via Amazon)

See the 2 min video here – https://vimeo.com/73385832

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(2) For those seeking to overcome pornography, 

what practical measures are commonly missing from their strategy?

See the 2 min video here – https://vimeo.com/73385831

The most important thing, and this is what I try to detail in the book, the most important reality is that you have got to have a method for change that’s founded on the Gospel of Christ. Legalism doesn’t work, moralism doesn’t work, guilt trips don’t work. The common element that you see in so many books, and in so many sermons is, „If you don’t stop looking at porn your wife’s gonna think you’re a pervert, and your kid’s gonna think you’re a freak. And your church is gonna think you’re a horrible, terrible person. While those things might be true, that winds up being a terrible foundation for real and lasting change. And so, the most important thing is that we need to motivate men to change, by the Gospel of grace. We can change, and we should change, because of who Jesus is and what He has done for us.

That’s the first thing. It’s very practical to believe that. That’s not just this confessional statement of orthodoxy. That’s, „You can’t change the way Jesus wants you to change, if you try to change without Jesus’s grace.” That’s one significant thing. Another significant thing is that men think they’re gonna change on their own, without help. They think, „Well, I feel really badly. I’m gonna pray and ask Jesus for some help, but try to keep this thing covered up because if my mom finds out she’ll freak. If my church finds out, I’m fired. So, I gotta keep this quiet. You will not change that way.

Sin thrives in the darkness and the only way to defeat it is by exposing it to the light. A third way that people fail is when they try to bring other people in, but they bring people in that are the wrong people. So they don’t tell people that are wise enough to help them. Or they try to bring people in the wrong way, by giving them all kinds of details and information that they don’t need. That is the purpose of the book, to detail how you bring in the Gospel of grace, and how you tell others in a way that is going to be conducive to real and lasting change.

See Parts 3 & 4 also which answer the following questions:

Part 3 – How can people identify whether their sorrow over sin is godly sorrow or worldly sorrow?

See the 2 min video here – https://vimeo.com/73385833

That’s a great question, and where so much of the action is. Because you can have 2 people that are both sobbing, that are begging to be different, that are both begging you to help them and they swear they’re gonna change from now on. And you don’t know if either of them, or any of them, if they’re serious about it, if that’s the kind of change that will last. And so, this is why Paul’s language in 2 Corinthian 7 is so helpful, because he makes a distinction between these 2 kinds of sorrow. There’s Godly sorrow that leads to life and peace and there is worldly sorrow that leads to death and despair. And the difference is fundamentally, whether the sorrow is about you and your kingdom, or about Jesus and His kingdom. If you’re sad because you got found out, if you’re sad because of the consequences, that is the kind of sorrow that will kill you. The Bible is very clear on this. But if you’re sad over your sin because God’s law has been broken, because you’ve grieved the Holy Spirit, then that is the kind of sorrow that indicates that you’re turning the corner because it indicates that you’re moving from yourself, in your own lust, which is why you looked at the porn to begin with, towards God and His kingdom. And the markers between those are a number that I mention in the book. But, just a few that I’d mention here that are most significant are:

1. Do you have the willingness to reach out to others for help? Do you have the willingness to expose yourself and bring the darkness into the light?
2. Do you have the willingness to accept the consequences? Are you willing to have your wife be upset?
3. Are you willing to tell your parents and have them cut off your internet privileges?
4. Are you willing to lose your job at your church because of being sexually immoral?

People who are willing to face the consequences are people who are demonstrating that their sorrow is the Godly kind that leads to life.

Part 4 – How are pastors particularly vulnerable to pornography, and what are the dangers?

See the 2 min video here – https://vimeo.com/73385834

There is a recent statistic out that says that 75% of pastors do nothing to make themselves accountable to anyone with regard to pornography. That’s terrible. I don’t think I wanna make a law here, where the Bible leaves people free, but I think I wanna say that in this pornographic age, it is reckless and irresponsible for a minister of the Gospel to take no measures to insulate themselves from pornography, for this reason: Pornography is looking for you. You don’t even have to think, „Oh, I might struggle with this.” Pornography is looking for you. There’s all this research that the porn industry is engaging in marketing , and in paying all kinds of things to attract people that aren’t currently looking at it. They’re spending millions and billions of dollars to get you in. And pastors that are really concerned to protect themselves and their families, and their flock from this real silent killer, need to be serious about putting some kind of accountability measures in their life, whether it’s just an accountability partner to say, „Hey, here’s where I’m struggling. Here’s some areas where you can pray with me.” Certainly, internet filters and protection on tablet devices and phones. That’s something that everybody can do, but I say that particularly for pastors since that recent statistic is so high.

Related articles

• How viewing porn mocks the Gospel (rodiagnusdei.wordpress.com)
• Finally Free: Fighting for Purity with the Power of Grace by Heath Lambert – Review (beverlylynnt.wordpress.com)
• Absolutely Fantastic: A Review of Heath Lambert’s „Finally Free” (ep104.wordpress.com)
• 200/444 Healing from Infidelity: Pornography Thins The Soul (marriagesrestored.com)
• Free Porn Is Still Costly (intentionalwarriors.com)
• 9 Things You Should Know About Pornography & the Brain (rodiagnusdei.wordpress.com)

Crystal Renaud – Women and sex addiction – a story of grace

Crystal, who was exposed to pornography at the age of 10.: It’s interesting how a magazine one day, can take you places you never wanted to go.

Click here for the podcast:

From http://www.ragamuffinreflections.com

Episode #26 of the Undone Redone podcast features an interview with author and speaker Crystal Renaud who shares her 8 year battle with pornography and sex addiction and the unique shame that women who struggle in this area experience. Crystal is the Founder and Director of Whole Women’s Ministries and the author of Dirty Girls Come Clean, her story of dealing with and overcoming sex addiction as a female. Crystal launched Dirty Girls Ministries in 2009 out of her own journey of becoming whole after an 8-year battle with pornography and sexual addiction.

Crystal’s ministry is hosting an online conference for women called Whole Women’s Conference being held September 7th for North America and September 14th for the International conference. To register, go to www.dirtygirlsministries.com/whole/.  For more information – http://crystalrenaud.com/
Related articles

• 9 Things You Should Know About Pornography & the Brain
• Internet Pornography, Sham Repentance and the Gospel
• How viewing porn mocks the Gospel
• Sexual Sin: Every Sinful Heart is Prone to Struggle by David Platt
• David Platt: The Church Needs to Declare War on Every Sexual Sin
• When Temptation Comes
• Killing Sin – Tommy Clayton
• Ian Hamilton – Sin’s deceitfulness

9 Things You Should Know About Pornography & the Brain

via The Gospel Coalition

1.  Sexually explicit material triggers mirror neurons in the male brain. These neurons, which are involved with the process for how to mimic a behavior, contain a motor system that correlates to the planning out of a behavior. In the case of pornography, this mirror neuron system triggers the arousal, which leads to sexual tension and a need for an outlet. „The unfortunate reality is that when he acts out (often by masturbating), this leads to hormonal and neurological consequences, which are designed to bind him to the object he is focusing on,” says Struthers. „In God’s plan, this would be his wife, but for many men it is an image on a screen. Pornography thus enslaves the viewer to an image, hijacking the biological response intended to bond a man to his wife and therefore inevitably loosening that bond.”
2. In men, there are five primary chemicals involved in sexual arousal and response. The one that likely plays the most significant role in pornography addiction is dopamine. Dopamine plays a major role in the brain system that is responsible for reward-driven learning. Every type of reward that has been studied increases the level of dopamine transmission in the brain, and a variety of addictive drugs, including stimulants such as cocaine, amphetamine, and methamphetamine, act directly on the dopamine system.
3. Why do men seek out a variety of new explicit sexual images rather than being satisfied with the same ones? The reason is attributed to the Coolidge effect, a phenomenon seen in mammalian species whereby males (and to a lesser extent females) exhibit renewed sexual interest if introduced to new receptive sexual partners, even after refusing sex from prior but still available sexual partners.
4. Overstimulation of the reward circuitry—such as occurs with repeated dopamine spikes related to viewing pornography—creates desensitization.
5. „Whenever the sequence of arousal and response is activated, it forms a neurological memory that will influence future processing and response to sexual cues. As this pathway becomes activated and traveled, it becomes a preferred route—a mental journey—that is regularly trod.
6. What makes Internet porn unique? Wilson identifies a number of reasons, including: (1) Internet porn offers extreme novelty; (2) Unlike food and drugs, there are almost no physical limitations to Internet porn consumption; (3) With Internet porn one can escalate both with more novel „partners” and by viewing new and unusual genres; (4) Unlike drugs and food, Internet porn doesn’t eventually activate the brain’s natural aversion system; and (5) The age users start watching porn. A teen’s brain is at its peak of dopamine production and neuroplasticity, making it highly vulnerable to addiction and rewiring.
7. Men’s exposure to sexually explicit material is correlated with social anxiety, depression,low motivation, erectile dysfunction, concentration problems, and negative self-perceptions in terms of physical appearance and sexual functioning.
8. This video: 
9. This video:

Read the article in its entirety here – The Gospel Coalition

How viewing porn mocks the Gospel

by Tim Challies on Churchleaders.com photo via www.dailymail.co.uk

Pornography is ubiquitous today; addiction to pornography, especially among men, is equally widespread. Young men are often introduced to pornography long before they are able to understand what it is and what it means.

Many a young man’s first awakening to sex and sexuality is by exposure to pornographic sex and nudity. This is sadly, increasingly, the case with women as well.

Some Christians can take a kind of refuge in the fact that so many others share in the struggle. „We are all in this together” can minimize the weight of it. Yet the ubiquity of porn and porn addiction does nothing to lessen the horror of it.

Desecration and Titillation.

There is an inescapable consequence to the fact that human beings bear the image of God: There is nothing God values more than human beings.

Bearing God’s image is an extraordinary privilege and brings with it extraordinary worth.

Jesus asked, „What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but forfeits his soul?” If you were to accumulate the wealth of Bill Gates and add to it the wealth of Solomon, you would barely be scratching the surface of the value of a soul, of a person. Wealth will fade. It will rust and decay and be lost. People are eternal. When all of that wealth is gone, the soul will live on.

God says there is nothing in all creation that he values more than human beings. And if this is true, there can be nothing more abhorrent to God than the desecration of human beings.

There is nothing that displays greater spite toward God than destroying what he considers most significant. As man rejects being made in God’s image, there necessarily follows a culture of death and desecration.

When you look at pornography, you are watching the violation of what God considers more valuable than anything else he has created.

It is a violation of all that person is, for sex is not only skin deep, but soul deep. You are not only watching it, but enjoying it, and not only enjoying it, but being titillated by it. God says, „I value her above all else because she is made in my image, in my likeness.” You watch her being humiliated and violated and desecrated, and all the while fantasize about doing the same.

God says, „Of all I created, there is nothing with more worth and dignity,” and you delight in her desecration and indignity.

God says, „I hate it when her body and soul are stained,” and you say, „It turns me on.”

I have an important question I want to ask you. But first I want you to consider another consequence of pornography.

Porn and the Portrait.

There is nothing in all of creation with more value than human beings. There is no message more central than the gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection.

Long before the cross, God decided that he would embed within humanity a picture, a portrait of the gospel: marriage. The great mystery of marriage, a mystery that could be revealed only after the cross, is that marriage has always been and will always be about the gospel. The relationship of a husband and wife is to be a constant pointer to the relationship of Christ and his church.

Sex is inextricably bound to marriage. The only right expression of sex is within marriage, for only then can the sexual relationship point us to the intimate love of Christ for his people.

Sex outside of marriage tells lies about Christ, it tells lies about the church, and makes a complete mockery of the gospel. To tamper with sex is to tamper with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

When you look at pornography, you are participating in this mocking of the gospel.

You are watching the violation of the gospel, you are enjoying the violation of the gospel, you are being aroused by it. God says, „I have given you this great picture of Christ and the church,” and you watch that portrait be defaced and violated and mocked, and you enjoy it all the while.

God says, „The purity of the sexual relationship points you to the purity of the love the Savior has for you.” And you say, „Right now I need a different kind of salvation from a different savior. A more satisfying kind, and one Christ did not supply at the cross. I need salvation only this god can provide.”

The Question.

Pornography desecrates the one thing in all of creation that God values above all; pornography makes a mockery of that great portrait God has given us of Christ’s faithful, compassionate love. And you who claim to love this God and who profess faith in this Savior, enjoy it, dedicate yourself to it, are titillated by it.

God wants you to know that there is forgiveness, that the same gospel you have mocked offers you forgiveness even for so grave a sin.

But I think God wants you to consider something else. He wants you to consider a warning:

No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. … Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him (1 John 3:6,8-10).

Here is what I want to ask you: Do you love pornography enough to go to hell for it?

Is a boyfriend’s porn use a reason to call off a marriage? (How porn destroys)

Some advice and an explanation as to how porn impacts a young man and his future wife when they get married. You can listen to the entire podcast here- https://soundcloud.com/askpastorjohn

Is My Boyfriend’s Porn a Marriage Deal-Breaker? (Episode 122):

Porn is destructive to a man’s capacities to love a woman purely for herself. He is training his body to need increasingly different, strange, erotic situations and bodies, and he is making it harder to be content with the real body of the woman that is going to be offered to him as his wife. And her body, as it is, at its best, is not going to be the airbrushed body of pornographic sites. And when she is 50 it isn’t going to be that either. And if he hasn’t cultivated a kind of pure love for his wife, for herself, as she is, then his eyes are going to be cruising continually beyond what she has to offer him at age 40 and 50 and 60. A woman needs to be able to trust a man. A woman feels profoundly compromised when a man says to her, “No, I really need more than you can offer me.” That is tragic for a man to say that to a woman. So porn is destructive to his capacity to love her for who she is.

And here is the fourth and the last thing I will say about why it is so wrong for a man to do this. Porn is destructive to a man’s soul. His capacity to see God in the purity and the greatness of his glory is shriveled. It is compromised. The soul shrinks to the size and the quality of its pleasures.

Full Transcript

QUESTION: Lindsay writes in to ask: As I considered men who had a desire to marry me, pornography and lust continue to lay strongholds in the lives of my suitors. I am seeking to view men with eyes of grace , but to use wisdom at the same time. I understand that every sin, including lust is the turning away from delight in Jesus to a broken cistern. In light of this, do you believe it is possible for a man to be strong in faith, finding genuine joy in Jesus, and enjoying an overall satisfying relationship with Him, while simultaneously indulging frequently in lust? I believe that every sin could be defeated through the power of the Holy Spirit, but I do not wanna be naive either, since I know this issue is wide and pervasive. I suppose another way to pose my question would be this: Pastor John, should the present presence of pornography  in a man’s life be a marriage deal breaker for a single woman like me?

John Piper:

Wow, I hear at least 2 questions there, and I can’t answer the last one ‘Is it a deal breaker’ until I answer a couple of others. When I hear about this, here are the 4 questions I’m going to have to tackle.

1. The very question she asked: Can a man get victory over this? Shouldn’t a man be able to live a life of more or less regular triumph, instead of recovering over and over again from pornography?
2. If he can’t, is it  a deal breaker for her marrying him?
3. What is pornography? That she didn’t ask. I’ve got to ask it.
4. And, even more important: Why is it wrong?

So, let me tackle those real quick. Here’s my definition. I’m going to omit homosexual issues. I’m going to omit sex in movies, those are huge issues, but more or less, what men are usually dealing with today is: Involvement with pornography is looking at sexually, or fantasizing about nude women, other than your wife. That’s what I’m talking about. Looking at or fantasizing about nude women. They might be doing all kinds of stuff, or just standing there- (but they are) other than your wife. That’s my definition.

Now, here’s why I think it’s wrong. And, I have to say this: Until the guy feels these things that I’m gonna say right now, about why it’s wrong, it won’t make any sense to him why she would say, „I can’t marry you.” These are so big, I’m gonna wind up saying, „Woman, you are so right! Don’t lower your standards!”
So, here’s why I think it’s wrong:

1. Porn is unloving

It’s unloving to the women involved because it endorses their behaviors and their desires, which are going to destroy them if they don’t repent. It’s unloving to their future husbands. And, when they are confirming in these women a lifestyle of nudity, that is gonna be destructive to those future relationships those women are going to try and have some day. It’s unloving to the parents of those women. I would just ask men: Put yourself in the position of the dad, or the mom. That’s your daughter, how do you feel about that? And here’s this Christian guy, who is endorsing, approving, helping that happen, and confirming that as if he doesn’t give a rip about those parents and their broken heart. Their hearts are broken because of this girl’s behavior, and this guy doesn’t give a rip about whether their hearts are broken. He’s enjoying her breaking their hearts.

2. Porn is adulterous

In other words, it cultivates and pursues mental and physical pleasures that are made by God to flourish in marriage. But they are pursued through women other than our wives. So Jesus has had very strong words to say about that.

3. Porn is destructive to man’s capacity to love a woman purely for herself

He’s training himself. When he does pornography, he’s training his body to need increasingly different, strange erotic situations and bodies. And he’s making it, therefore, harder to be content with the real body  of this woman who is going to be offered to him as his wife. And her body, at its best is not going to be the airbrushed body of these pornographic sites. And when she’s 50, it isn’t going to be that either. And if he hasn’t cultivated a kind of pure love for his wife, for herself as she is, then his eyes are going to be cruising continuously beyond what she has to offer him at 40 and 50 and 60. And a woman needs to be able to trust a man that ‘I am what you have, I have what you need. Don’t have eyes for another woman.’ A woman feels profoundly compromised when a man says to her, „No, I really need more than you can offer me.” That’s tragic, for a man to say that to a woman. Porn is destructive to his capacities to love her for who she is. 

4. Porn is destructive to a man’s soul

His capacity to see God in the purity and the greatness of His glory is shriveled, is compromised. The soul tends to shrink to the size and the quality of its pleasures.   If a man constantly says to his soul, „Adapt yourself now to this low, brief, unclean, selfish pleasure. Adapt yourself to this, soul. Get yourself around this, soul. Form yourself around this, soul. It will become that small, and a soul that shrinks like that won’t be able to make much of God, won’t be able to see God, won’t be able to delight in God anywhere near how God should be delighted in, in the glorious pleasures that He offers us in His world and in His word.

So, those are my reasons, I would say, to this woman, and to all the men who may be listening, why it is so wrong for him to pursue pornography. Now, back to her question. She wanted to know: Isn’t it possible for a man to be strong enough in faith, and to have enough joy in Jesus, and have an overall satisfying relationship  to Him, that he could conquer this? Isn’t his indulging frequently in lust an undermining?

My answer is: She’s right. An overall satisfying relationship with Jesus means that Jesus is precious enough, so that we value Him above those 4 reasons. Those 4 reasons that I gave, that porn is wrong become compelling because Jesus is our treasure, not just a doctrine, but is Lord and friend, and Savior and Supreme treasure of our lives, the way He should be

Then, we won’t be continually hating women with our choices to demean them and confirm their destruction. We won’t be continually committing adultery in our heart with those women. We won’t be continually defiling our capacity to love our present and future wives. We won’t be continually shrinking our souls, our ability to save for the glories of God. We won’t, because Jesus is utterly different than that.

A man who continually says, „I embrace all that destruction, I embrace all that evil, I embrace all that uncleanness, I embrace all that idolatry, and that hatred for women is saying something that a woman who is about to marry him better hear loud and clear. So, my answer to her last question ‘Should it be a deal breaker?’ If this man can’t get victory over this, if he is regularly tuning in , I would say, „Yeah, that’s a deal breaker.” Now, I am not a woman, I can’t make this call for myself. I would just say, if I were her I would say, „You strike me as a woman of remarkable grace , not legalism, you strike me as a woman who is striving for a biblical standard, that is not artificial, nor realistic or perfectionistic  standards. I hear grace in your question, I don’t hear brittleness and I would say, „Don’t lower the bar.” I think we’ve lowered the bar too much. We’ve treated men like dogs in heat , rather than men who are created in the image of God, who have the Holy Spirit, whose fruit is love, joy, and self control. And that last one, self control, is usually used in relationship to sexuality. Men are not victims. And these women have a right to expect more from us. And, I would say to her and to the other women: Don’t lower your standards. God is in the process, I believe right now,  in purifying a man’s soul and a man’s body for you.

Also read/view

• How viewing porn mocks the Gospel
• Sexual Sin: Every Sinful Heart is Prone to Struggle by David Platt

9 things you should know about pornography and the brain

An important article which you can read in its entirety at theGospelCoalition.org

Here are just the first 3 devastating facts out of the 9, plus theGospelCoalition.org also posts 2 videos for you to watch at the bottom of their article:

1. Sexually explicit material triggers mirror neurons in the male brain. These neurons, which are involved with the process for how to mimic a behavior, contain a motor system that correlates to the planning out of a behavior. In the case of pornography, this mirror neuron system triggers the arousal, which leads to sexual tension and a need for an outlet. „The unfortunate reality is that when he acts out (often by masturbating), this leads to hormonal and neurological consequences, which are designed to bind him to the object he is focusing on,” says Struthers. „In God’s plan, this would be his wife, but for many men it is an image on a screen. Pornography thus enslaves the viewer to an image, hijacking the biological response intended to bond a man to his wife and therefore inevitably loosening that bond.”

2. In men, there are five primary chemicals involved in sexual arousal and response. The one that likely plays the most significant role in pornography addiction is dopamine. Dopamine plays a major role in the brain system that is responsible for reward-driven learning. Every type of reward that has been studied increases the level of dopamine transmission in the brain, and a variety of addictive drugs, including stimulants such as cocaine, amphetamine, and methamphetamine, act directly on the dopamine system. Dopamine surges when a person is exposed to novel stimuli, particularly if it is sexual, or when a stimuli is more arousing than anticipated. Because erotic imagery triggers more dopamine than sex with a familiar partner, exposure to pornography leads to „arousal addiction” and teaches the brain to prefer the image and become less satisfied with real-life sexual partners.

3. Why do men seek out a variety of new explicit sexual images rather than being satisfied with the same ones? The reason is attributed to the Coolidge effect, a phenomenon seen in mammalian species whereby males (and to a lesser extent females) exhibit renewed sexual interest if introduced to new receptive sexual partners, even after refusing sex from prior but still available sexual partners. This neurological mechanism is one of the primary reasons for the abundance and addictiveness of Internet pornography.

 Read the article in its entirety here- theGospelCoalition.org

 

Related articles

• Great Sex? Not With Porn (intentionalwarriors.com)
• Pornography Can Ruin Your Sex Life (thoughtcatalog.com)
• Women Flock to Pornography (psychologytoday.com)
• Why Porn Hurts Marriages (sethsoasis.wordpress.com)
• How Premarital Sex Rewires the Brain (vineoflife.net)
• Pornography: The School of demoralization (nopornforever.wordpress.com)
• The Scary Thief (nopornforever.wordpress.com)

You Forget About God, Family When Addicted to Porn

Please don’t miss the second post, below this one, titled: How Do You Counsel A Husband Who Has Revealed a Struggle with Pornography to His Wife? (Advice for pastors on an increasingly relevant topic)

via http://www.christianpost.com (photo via Facebook)

Pornography is an unspoken word in most congregations, but this powerful addiction is permeating Christian households, and is destroying marriages and parent-child relationships.

To combat the addiction to pornography, Pastor Jay Dennis of First Baptist Church at the Mall in Lakeland, Fla., created his own program, „One Million Men Porn Free,” because he wasn’t able to find resource materials that he could use to defeat the devastating effects the lure of pornography had on members of his church.

„I led our church initially through this program in March and April of 2010,” said Dennis, who leads a congregation of 9,000 members. „I met with our men for six Wednesday evening sessions, with the last session being the commitment rally. I also met with our women for one session and our parents for one session. The women’s session was called ‘What Men Wish Their Wives Knew About Pornography.’ The parents’ session was titled ‘Protecting Your Child From Sexual Brokenness.'”

Dennis hopes the „Join 1 Million Men” program will ultimately strengthen churches by helping pastors get the subject of pornography out in the open so they can work on rebuilding families and marriages.

„If the pastor is not addressing the issue, either he doesn’t feel it’s enough of a problem, or it’s too shameful to discuss in church,” said Dennis, who cites the biblical scriptures of Job 31:1, Psalm 119:37 and I Timothy 5:2 to illustrate the ways in which men should view and respect women.
Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/one-million-men-porn-free-pastor-you-forget-about-god-family-when-addicted-to-porn-90771/#cc7OQ2lz48I0RgjW.99

Brian Croft: How Do You Counsel A Husband

Who Has Revealed a Struggle with Pornography to His Wife?

Read this article in its entirety here- http://theaquilareport.com/how-do-you-counsel-a-husband

Every pastor already faces this. Unfortunately, I fear the problem will only become more common in the future; that is marriage counseling as a result of a husband’s struggle with pornogrpahy. The work to restore trust and intimacy within a marriage deeply affected by this sinful struggle is only possible through the gospel and applied most effectively within the local church; having said that, consider six practical ways that husband can reestablish trust and intimacy with his hurting wife:

1) Be patient towards your hurting wife.Men are known to deal with something, then move on. A wife, especially one sinned against by pornography will not move on so quickly.

2) Understand the seriousness of your sin against her. Sexual sin hurts a wife more deeply than most other sins against her. A husband needs to realize that the reasons this sin stings so much is that it seems to confirm almost every doubt and insecurity most women already battle within themselves. Understanding the seriousness of this sin and the pain it causes will help cultivate patience and prevent a reoccurrence of it.

3) Look to your wife to play an important role of accountability. It is easy to seek the accountability of another man when it comes to this struggle because, we say, “only another man knows what the battle is like.” Yet, you do not have to sleep next to that man every night. You do not have to look into his eyes knowing the hurt you caused. You do not have to be as patient and gracious with your buddy through this like you must with your wife. It may need to be in the context of regular counseling for a while, but convince him his wife will be a great asset to establish his new patterns and protection from falling again.

4) Consistently and creatively romance your wife. A husband should have already been pursuing his wife romantically as a regular practice. Now, he must understand this pattern must be established to restore his marriage.

5) Affirm your physical attraction to her. It should surprise no man that when he looks at other women in lustful ways, it will communicate a sharp message to his wife that he does not find her attractive. Most men would confess that is not what drove them to pornography, but it is inescapable that this is how a wife feels because of it. Encourage the man verbally to affirm his physical attraction to his wife. Then, he must back it up with his actions.

6) Realize the battle never ends this side of eternity. The gospel is powerful to free men from this bondage and to establish new patterns in their lives, but the fences of accountability must always remain.

Related articles

• Porn This Way: The Devastating Effects of Lust (boldandunashamed.com)
• How Pornography Addiction Works and Affects Your Life (dilettantee.wordpress.com)
• Fake Love, Fake War: Why So Many Men Are Addicted to Internet Porn and Video Games (phenum01.wordpress.com)
• The Lies of Lust and porn (rodiagnusdei.wordpress.com)
• This Is What Happens When Kids Grow Up On Unlimited Access To Pornography (upworthy.com)
• Overcoming Pornography (exjezebel.wordpress.com)
• Iceland banning porn, Page 3 on the way out – the feminists are winning, thankfully (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)

Traylor & Melody – Betrayal, Divorce and then Reconciliation

I read the story of Melody & Traylor some years back, and when I started up this blog I tried to find it again in order to post it, but could not remember their names. Tonight, I came across the website again and I am providing the link to it. Traylor was a preacher who became addicted to pornography, and slowly it escalated to secret rendezvous  with women he met on the internet, which sometimes took him across state lines. But, it is no ordinary story, because after divorcing when Melody found out, he started feeling God’s conviction, which eventually led Traylor & Melody back together again, remarried and helping other couples deal with addictions through their ministry.

Please share this story with someone in your life who is struggling with pornogroaphy, and sex addiction, and especially share it with the spouse of the person with the problem, and let them know there is hope for their marriage. Here’s the snippet from the blog, and I recommend watching the 3 videos posted to the page in the link- http://www.ragamuffinreflections.com/story/ 

Melody and I were married for 11 years before my struggle with pornography and sexual addiction ripped our family apart. This tragic upheaval left both of us reeling and disrupted our status quo, to say the least. The appearance of the “perfect” life that we both worked so hard to maintain came crashing down all around us.
After 6 years of divorce, we were remarried.

Watch (or listen to) their testimony here- http://www.ragamuffinreflections.com/story/ 

Pornography – What’s the big deal?

A Veritas lecture at Fresno State University about the presence and effects of pornography today.

Russell Willingham, the first presenter, explores the issue of pornography and sexual brokenness. He examines the spiritual, psychological, social and cultural aspects of these issues from a biblical standpoint. He demonstrates how a biblical worldview on this subject is effective in transforming lives for the better. Russell Willingham is Director of New Creation Ministry in Fresno, California.

Dr. Tamyra Pierce, the second presenter at the 46th minute, shares her research and expertise on the content, some of it pornographic, found on teens’ ‘MySpace’ websites. Dr. Tamyra Pierce is assistant professor and director of the Dept. of Mass Communications and Journalism at Fresno State University. She holds a doctorate in Media Effects from University of Missouri, Columbia.

There is a Question and Answer session with the students at the end.

Seven problems with pornography:

1. Pornography objectifies sex. It divorces sexuality from any kind of relationship.
2. Pornography trains the person who engages in it to live in his head, in a narcissistic world of gratification.
3. Pornography keeps the person stuck in an adolescent selfishness, rendering them incapable of true adult relating or sexual functioning.
4. People who engage in pornography tend to become isolated.
5. When it comes to pornography, more and more research has indicated that pornography has a lot in common with substance abuses and other addictive behaviors. There is an actual neurochemical kick involved with pornography.
6. It often leads the person to act out the pornographic scenarios that they’ve seen.
7. Physiologically, more and more research is indicating that porn actually stimulates the brain (in males and females) in ways that create an addictive experience, adrenal releases and neurotransmitter releases that actually change, not only brain functioning, but, brain tissue.

Pornography: What’s the Big Deal? from Veritas [2] on Vimeo.

The Social Institution Damages Pornography Causes:

(1) SOCIAL DAMAGE: In the social institution of Marriage- it chips away at it in a number of ways: 

• If the couple engages in pornography together, they lose their intimacy, which takes years to develop. In time, the man tends to become more attached to the pornography and less attached to the wife.
• Pornography provides images and scenarios that a spouse (man or woman) can never live up to and it breeds this chronic disappointment.
• Pornography tends to isolate the user from the spouse, which can lead to solo sex, adultery and even prostitution.
• It blinds their thought pattern. They stop engaging with spouse and children, or even their job, because they can’t think of anything else.

(2) PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE: In the relationship and with the training of children

• Pornography has such an addictive quality that the person who engages in this (and this applies to all addictions) the addict has the addiction as his/her primary relationship in life. Every other relationship is secondary. In fact, the people in the addicts life are judged in whether they get in the way of their addictions or they encourage it. So, obviously, that’s gonna cause problems for  a father or a mother, who needs to be emotionally available to their children, when they are actually occupied with other pursuits in their mind.
• Another issue is that addiction tends to rob us of our soul. We become automatons. It definitely impacts how we parent our children. They become truly unable to engage children’s real needs. Children need more than food, clothing, and shelter, a drive to the soccer practice, a movie or hot dog from time to time. They need adults who will engage them soul to soul, and addicts cannot do that effectively, because their soul is engaged elsewhere. Even if they’re not acting up as of this moment, it robs us of our ability to be human.
• The emotional detachment that the children experience on the part of the parent who’s addicted to porn, feels to them like rejection. And this sets the children up, often times, for lifetime issues of abandonment, that will likely spur addictions in their own lives, down the road, to fill the hole. And the beat goes on.
• Lastly, the person who engages in pornography, if they do any sex education at all, they will either give their children a warped view of sexuality or because of their own shame and guilt, they won’t talk to their children at all. (22:00)
• If a person engages in certain types of pornography and allows certain walls to crumble in their own moral system,  they could even abuse their own children sexually. Pornography shapes and warps a person’s perspective not only for sexuality, but, for what people are for and what people are about and how to connect and it can create problems. Pornography has a way of breaking down laws of our own conscience, to the point where we don’t even see a problem anymore and anyone who points out that problem anymore is simply a ‘prude’.

(3) CULTURAL DAMAGE: How pornography affects culture

• This is not just a private matter. We like to think we are islands, and what we do in private doesn’t affect anybody else. That’s a falsehood. 
•  (1) First point about that is: There is an entire industry in pornography, that requires the violation of women and children. If you have engaged in online pornography (or videos or printed) you have helped support that industry. You’ve given your donation to them. You’re helping to enslave people. Much of the slave trade, human trafficking is related to pornography or prostitution.
• (2) Pornography contributes to the cheapening of sex in our culture and the lowering of protection of marriage and children. Pornography contributes to many crimes: Rape, child abduction and molestation. At the national level, Americans spend between 8 and 10 billion dollars annually on pornography.
• It contributes to the early sexualization of children and teens.
• There’s been a link to teen sexuality and depression.

(4) SPIRITUAL DAMAGE: There is a damage that we inflict on ourselves when we engage in pornography.

• 1 Corinthians 6:18 „Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.” When Paul talks about ‘body’, he has a much more hollistic view than we do. He sees it as being – body, soul and spirit, the whole package. And, he is teaching that when we engage in sexually destructive acts, it does a number on our psyche, in a way that nothing else can touch. My sexuality is with me all the time. And, if my behaviors and my choices distort that, I carry that around with me the rest of my life. Thankfully, a person can experience healing from that. But, it is incredibly hard work. That’s one of the reasons the Bible pleads with people not to go down this road. Because whatever impacts the spirit and the soul, will eventually impact the body as well.
• Sex, like every other desire, can burn out of control and it can cause damage. And, throughout history, every  culture that practiced a biblical sexual ethic, and what I mean by that is monogamy,  saw less violence against women and children, and even greater economic prosperity. If you’re interested in doing research on that, I would recommend a book called „The Gift of the Jews”. And, it’s argued in that book that the Jewish nation gave the world something it never had before: monotheism and monogamy. And every culture that’s been impacted by that has been blessed.
• In my work, I have worked with some very broken men and women. By the way, the whole pornography issue is becoming a bigger and bigger issue for women now. That’s a first. That’s a whole new phenomena that’s never existed before. I’ve seen very broken people, marriages that had no hope. People who had been engaged in this behavior for 20 or 30 years start to heal. Start to experience not only behavior modification, but intra psychic change. And of course, as a Bible believing Christian, I believe that the Creator has the power to bring that about. It’s not a quick fix. It’s really the hard work of recovery just like AA has said for 100 years, encouraging everybody in their groups to reach up to a higher power. I just tend to be more specific about that power.
• There is an interesting story in the New testament book of John. It tells the story of Jesus speaking to a female sex addict. And the way He interacts with her us fascinating. He’s talking with her about spiritual things and then He says, „Go and call your husband, I’d like to talk with him”. She says, „Well, I don’t have a hsband”. He says, „You’re right when you say that, you’ve had 5 husbands and the man you’re with now is not your husband. He’s a live in, but, you’re not married”. And she was stunned. She felt like He saw her whole life. But, not once does He bring the book down her head, not once does he tell her she needs to repent, she needs to get her act together. In fact, what He says to her is, „You’re here at this well looking for water, I have living water to give you, if you want it”.  My paraphrase? You’ve been looking for satisfaction and satiation for your soul in the arms of one man after another. You haven’t found it daughter. Only your Creator can give that to you. God is far from being shameful and angry at people who have sexual struggles. He wants to restore them. So, pornography is in fact a problem, but, there is a solution. (46:00)

Pornography – the „family killer” that is increasing divorce and infidelity rates

photo via http://www.images.learnsoc.org

Experts call it the „quiet family killer.”

Pornography is a booming business, but the addiction is now to blame for a growing number of divorces.

Four to 16 hours a day of sexually explicit videos and pictures. That’s how far porn addiction goes for many of Michael Howard’s married clients.

„For the spouse or partner that feels betrayed, it’s as if their partner is choosing someone or something else over them,” said Howard, a marriage and family therapist at the Healing Solutions Counseling Center.

Howard says pornography breaks relationships as much or more than cheating.

„Feelings of inadequacy. Am I not good enough, am I not pretty enough, beautiful enough, sexy enough, am I not good enough in bed?” said Howard.

Divorce and child custody attorneys say those doubts lead many couples to court.

„We see over 50 percent, probably between 50 and 60 percent of every case, someone is alleging pornography excessive use,” said Angela McIlveen, of Mcllveen Family Law Firm.
Read the entire article here – http://www.foxcharlotte.com/news/top-stories/Porn-Use-Increasing-Local-Divorce

Related articles

• The Social Costs of Pornography (compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com)
• New Book: When your husband is addicted to pornography + 2 more (rodiagnusdei.wordpress.com)
• Porn Harms: An Untreated Pandemic – Porn’s Effect on Brain & Relationships (onlyhopeyouhave.com)
• National Subcommittee Investigation into Pernicious Effects of Porn: It Changes Your Brain Chemistry! (porn-no-more.com)
• Is pornography making you impotent? (margotcairnes.org)
• Pornography putting viewers to deviant tendencies (porn-no-more.com)

Women embracing pornography

with thanks to Gabi Bogdan for alerting us to this link.
Here’s an article that describes the new phenomena of not only how women are getting into and addicted to porn, but how they are influencing their daughter’s generation as well. Read the entire article here – http://www.foxnews.com/opinion The article is written by Patrick Wanis, PhD, human behavior and relationship expert. For more visit: www.patrickwanis.com

Dr. Wanis claims that not only is ”

porn becoming socially acceptable, but it is becoming an aspirational target for women.”

He also points to the fact that

‘Using sex for money and fame, women have found a new way to feel powerful and secure without a man or even necessarily a family.”

But the more disturbing trend that Dr. Wanis points out is that mothers are now sexualizing their daughter by dressing them (not allowing, but actually encouraging this) in provocative clothing, including babies and toddlers. (see his examples in the article).

Dr. Wanis makes a statement that I have not heard before, but, which is right on the mark. I remember the feminist movement fighting militantly against pornography on the basis that it degrades and objectifies women. Now, the tables have turned. Porn is seen as a quick way to riches and fame and has become acceptable in the mainstream by most women. Yet, in the end, as Dr. Wanis points out-

The paradox is that women are becoming more educated than men as women surpass men in attendance and graduation rates – for every two men who get a college degree, three women will do also. But, women are failing to realize the dangers of falling for porn or promoting porn as the new fashionable profession and path to fame, riches and glory. This is the antithesis of female empowerment as MTV, Kim Kardashian and Octomom are teaching young girls to gain power over men by using sex. 

Women have now created false empty idols and have lost their real sense of self-worth, value and significance, replacing it with fleeting pseudo-power and artificial values and relationships, leaving them feeling unfulfilled and unsatisfied.

„Pornography is equally damaging to adult relationships and social bonds – men are struggling to develop close, intimate relationships with real women with some men now preferring porn to sex with an actual human being.

He concludes:

Bottom line: porn does not promote love or sex but rather cruelty and hatred to women, and so, while women continue to endorse and make porn fashionable or a new ideal, they are foolishly robbing themselves and undermining all of the positive strides and triumphs they have made in their quest for equality.

Please read this article in its entirety at the link below and ponder the impact of our words and actions and ultimately ponder the cost incurred to our children’s generation.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/09/15/how-women-made-porn-fashionable/?intcmp=obnetwork#ixzz2CDPEgTCq

Related articles

• America is addicted to pornography; produces 89% of its webpages
• Arousing Ourselves to Death, Dr. Russell Moore
• Two videos on the struggle with (and freedom from) lust
• How does a wife feel when a husband looks at porn?
• Why Pornography Robs a Man of His Humanness
• The downfall of the church will not come from a lack of apologetic teaching; it will come from disintegration of the families in the church
• God’s design for sex
• Satan Uses Sexual Desire by John Piper
• Redeeming Sex
• Pornaddiction.com Launches New Site to Help People Overcome Addiction (pr.com)
• Why more and more women are using pornography (guardian.co.uk)

Nanotech and Jesus Christ with Jim Tour, Ph.D., professor at Rice University

James M Tour’s website- http://www.jmtour.com. James M. Tour is a synthetic organic chemist, specializing in nanotechnology. Quote from Dr. Tour: People ask, „Does science draw me away from God? And, it’s just the opposite. When I study biological systems, it’s like, „Wow! This, to me is so amazing, how it happens. It is understandable, as we understand more, but, it draws me closer to God…. I see this amazing order and it causes me to love God all the more. That’s what it causes me to do.”

Among the great work Jim Tour does as one of the world’s top 10 chemists, and top scientist at Rice University is his work with nanotechnology. A tiny nano-sized car which can propel itself forward in response to …while the first nano car (without a motor) was built by James Tour in 2005. Read about it here- http://articles.cnn.com

A stimulating talk/lecture about nanotechnology in the first 15+ minutes- Webster defines nanotechnology as ‘the manipulation of matter on an atomic and molecular scale’. At the 19th minute Jim shares how he came to faith in Jesus Christ. The talk lasts about 49 minutes, followed by a 48 minute question and answer session.

The following are some notes I jotted down form the talk.

The first verse Dr. Tour ever thought about at the age of 18, in his freshman year of college was pointed out to him by a college sophomore. He was doing his first load of laundry at college and another young man, a sophomore who played quarterback on the Syracuse Football Team  was also in the laundry room. This young man started talking to him and Jim asked him, „What do you want to do when you leave school? Do you want to play professional football?” He said, „Oh no, I’m not good enough for that. Maybe I want to do lay ministry.” Well, Dr. Tour being from a secular Jewish home in New York City, he didn’t know what lay ministry was. So I said, „Lay ministry, what is that?” He said, „Oh, like a missionary.” I said, „Missionary? We don’t need missionaries today. This is 1977. Why do we need missionaries today. We got TV, TV can do everything.”

He told Jim that he wanted to give him an illustration of the Gospel. Here are the things he told Jim:

Jim: „He had me read a verse from the Bible. This was the first verse: Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And, when I read this, I looked at him and said, „I’m not a sinner.” He was a bit taken back by that. Now, sin is not something that secular Jews in New York think about. This was never ever a topic in our home. We never discussed God, we never discussed any of this stuff. As far as I was concerned, as far as I knew you would go to the synagogue once a year and the rabbi would take care of all of that. And we never really thought about it, at least I never did. And then, lo and behold, I understood christians, every thought, „Oh, oh I have sinned.” It’s constructed around this. But, it was a new concept to me and I said, „I’m not a sinner.”

He looked a bit bewildered and then he had me read another verse, Matthew 5:28 ‘But I say to you that anyone who looks at a woman with lust for her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’ I read this verse and it was as if a knife had been stabbed right in my heart, because when I was 14 years old, I started working in a gas station on a highway going in and out of New York City… I told the owner I was 16, I was 14 years old. I learned that when I cleaned the parking lots on Friday nights, that I could find an amazing stash of pornographic magazines, as the salesmen, on their way home on friday nights would throw them out.

And I became addicted to pornography at a young age, at the age of 14. By the time I was 18, I was well addicted. And, I didn’t think anybody knew this. And then this man, Jesus Christ, said something 2000 years ago that just zeroed right in on my heart. And for any of you that have ever been, or are addicted to pornography, ( in my day there was no internet, it’s much easier now to get addicted to it) you understand how compelling that can be. 

And I couldn’t get this off my mind. Then he had me read another verse. Romans 5:8 ‘But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’ I didn’t even know that there was a claim on the table- that Christ died for me. You would think, someone growing up in the United States, born and raised in New York, would have heard this somewhere. And, I’m sure I heard it on some TV program. I remember when I worked at the gas station, some people would give me some little tracts sometime and I’d sit on the night shift and read these sometime. But, nothing ever registered. But, all of a sudden after reading these verse- somebody died for me. 

And then I read that ‘If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord  and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.’ What an odd verse! Romans 10:9 If I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord- well, that’s pretty simple. But, ‘believe in my heart that God has raised Him from the dead’? Who could believe in a physical resurrection? Who could believe in such a thing? How could any thinking man or woman ever believe in a physical resurrection? Were it not for the case that it’s true. And God has set it in the very hearts of men and women to believe it’s true. Could that be? Could it be?

I was living at that time in a small dorm room at Syracuse University. On November 7, 1977 . So a couple of months after I heard this, that word was still  penetrating into my heart. And, I don’t know, to this day, what motivated me to do this. This was something that was not demonstrated to me in Christianity or in Judaism. I got down on my knees and I said, „Father, forgive me because I am a sinner.” At that moment it was as if somebody was in my room. I was all alone, my roommate wasn’t there. And I remember opening my eyes, because I felt somebody was in my room. I did not see anyone, but, all of a sudden there was this rush of cleansing over me and the feeling of conviction that I had about that lust in my heart about that pornography just went away. I started weeping. What a strange experience for some Jewish kid from New York City… to read a few verse… and I didn’t want to get up because I loved the presence of whoever was in my room. Something happened to me and I didn’t know what I was gonna do, what I was gonna say.

I remember a couple of weeks later, the young man who had shared these few verses with me looked at me a couple of weeks after this event (I didn’t tell anybody, what would this Jewish kid from New York say?)  and he said to me, ‘Jim, have you asked Jesus into your heart?’ I said, ‘I think I have, why do you ask?’ He said, ‘You haven’t stopped smiling for weeks. Something is different.’ And I sure felt different.  And I’ll tell you the other thing that happened to me on that day, which is really remarkable. There was no longer any hold of pornography over me. All of my magazines went in the trash, and never in all of these years has pornography been trouble for me again.

Now, this is very unusual. I have seen many men come to faith. I do prison ministry at a maximum security prison for 10 years. I’ve worked with many men, with many struggles. It is very rare that somebody on the day of salvation gets delivered in this way. What’s interesting is that I’ve been convicted of my sin through pornography. And on the day that I received Jesus, something changed in me.

Now, I’ll tell you what happened in my career, as a result…

 Jim Tour recounts some of the results of that experience and his decision to follow Jesus Christ.

• First result was that he started striving to overcome sin on a daily basis.
• One of those results is that he reads his bible every day. For over 30 years he has read from Genesis 1 through the end of Revelation. Then he started all over again and reads through the whole Bible. He doesn’t hurry. Every day he picks up where he left off the day before. As he reads, when he feels God speaking to him through the verses- he just reads that passage over and over.
• He started seeking like minded friends.
• He joined a church where he was mentored by godly men.
• He started praying that God would provide a wife that He had for him. He realized that that would be a pretty important decision.
• He started actively praying for God’s blessing on his studies.  Jim says he was struggling in freshman chemistry. He says he was never good or smart. His older sister was gifted, she is now head of Microsoft Research. HIs brother was one of those guys that always did well and never had to work very hard and now he’s a lawyer. As he was struggling with chemistry, he started praying for his class and ended the semester with a B+. After that, he took all the Organic Chemistry classes available and finished at the top of all of his classes. God really blessed his work and answered his prayer.

The impact of Scriptures on my career

• Admonition to change my words and actions Proverbs 3:3-4 – Do not let kindness and truth leave you, bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good repute in the sight of God and man. This transcends faith.
• Admonition to value my family. I don’t know of many who marry and don’t do it out of love. But, love in itself doesn’t make marriage last forever. ~~Proverbs 5:18 ‘Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth.’ And then ~~Proverbs 22:6 ‘Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.’ I invested in my children. We had daily prayer times.
• Admonition to fear God and keep His commandments. ~~Ecclesiastes 12:13 ‘The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person.’  ~~John 14:15 If you love Me, you will keep My commandments,’ Jesus said. ~~John 15:10- Jesus said, ‘If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.’ 

http://www.veritas.org/talks – Jim Tour, Ph.D., a professor at Rice University, is ranked in the top ten most cited chemists in the world. He is known for creating nanocars, nanoelectronics, graphene nanostructures and carbon nanovectors in medicine. He will speak on nanotechnology, the impact of faith in his life and career, and about his love for Jesus Christ. Published on Nov 14, 2012 by VeritasForum

Moral Purity in Marriage

Dr. Russell Moore – You will encounter sexual temptation in your marriage. It is not a question of whether you will encounter sexual temptation, you will encounter sexual temptation when the satanic powers see two who become one flesh, what they see is a living, breathing,  organic display of what they hate the most, which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Whatever sexual temptation will come into your marriage is not about you, it is about something that has been going on for millennia and something that was purposed and planned in the mind of God before the cosmos ever was. Your struggle and your battle is precisely what the serpent offers in the garden when he says to the woman, simultaneously, „See yourself as an animal”. She’s been given dominion, the Bible says, over all the beasts of the fields and now she is taking direction from a beast of the field. And also, „See yourself as a god. You can decide what is good and evil”. You will face this throughout your marriage because this is exactly what the apostle Paul is talking about when he says the issue with sexual purity is not simply about self control, although it is about self control. It is about a kind of self control that is doing warfare against the temptation of Satan.

Paul has been going through this entire letter, talking to them about the dangers out there, in the spiritual world. He talks about sexual morality, he talks about sexual fidelity and he says, „Don’t you understand that there is something spiritual happening here?

ADULTERY – Almost anybody in this room can look around and see the kind of carnage that takes place in the lives of even the people that you know. Some of you have pastors who preached the Gospel to you , or baptized you and were later destroyed because of an adulterous affair. Sexual immorality is not something that suddenly happens to you, sexual immorality is part of a conspiracy and a plot to work with you in your sin in order to, as the book of proverbs says, trap you like an animal who is caught.  Paul says, „Flee from sexual immorality. Be warned about joining yourself in adultery”. And why is that the case?  It’s because this warning applies to all of the people of God. We typically think that sexual temptation and sexual opportunity happen to sexy people. That is not the way that it happens. And I have seen so many men who have left beautiful, godly wives for women that you would not even notice if you passed them in the hallway. This is not a matter of how sexy someone is. The Satanic powers are noticing you. They are watching you. Especially those of you who have stood up and said, „I am pursuing God’s call upon my life, to stand and to speak for Christ, in proclaiming the oracles of God.” They will do anything to see to it that the Gospel is discredited by your animalistic impulses. Most people who find themselves drawn into adultery, are not drawn into adultery because they are so oversexed. Most of them, instead find them selves in that place because marriage is a mission, it’s an economy. It’s an order that has been put together and it is hard labor together to bring forth the bread from the earth and to be fruitful and multiply, and to raise up the next generation and to get along with one another through all of these sufferings and all of this strife.  Notice what the apostle Paul says here, it is shockingly radical „You belong to each other”. He does not simply say, „Flee adultery”. He says something significant here. He says, „Husbands, your body belongs to your wife. And wives, your body belongs to your husband”. Do you realize what a shocking statement that is?

(2) FORNICATION – When you change the biblical name ‘fornication’ which is something that is evil, to ‘premarital sex’ you are changing it to something that signifies it is just a matter of timing. There are some ways that fornication mimics the conjugal union of sex. When you have two that are joining themselves together, outside of that life long covenant, you are picturing something other than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The fornication is not simply something that is timed badly. The fornication is a spiritual act that is joining you and attaching you in some mystical way to another person, in a way that communicates a ‘Christ who is not faithful to His bride’. That is not just immoral, that is blasphemy. One of the significant issues that we face in our churches is that we have an entire generation of young people who are able to cover over and to callous their consciences by being technical virgins, by justifying to themselves acts of rebellion against God as somehow being acceptable and somehow being justifiable in a way that not only stores up sin, but also devastates the functioning christian conscience. And often, even those teenagers and young single adults in our churches, who are remaining faithful in sexual purity are doing so more out of risk avoidance than out of a commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God has revealed that fornicators will not enter the kingdom of God. One of the things we have in our church and possibly in your marriage is that we don’t really believe that. And we really do not see the spiritual war that is going on at this point, because we assume it’s premarital sex, so once the marriage takes place, the issue is now resolved. Some of you in your marriages right now are experiencing deadness and mistrust, and conflict because you, husband led that woman into fornication and you have never gotten to the point of repentance before God for evil. Everything that you said to her, to convince her that this was justifiable, every act of hiddenness that you took to manage your own hiddenness and to cover over your sin, yo will be able to do just as easily, again with some other woman. „She’s the love of my life!” You’ll feel that way about some other woman some day. „We were just so carried away”. You’ll be carried away again, like that. „The timing was so wrong, we were so young”. „My wife just doesn’t understand me and I’m at a time in my life when I really need this relationship”. Until you get to the point, specifically men, where you, as a former fornicator get on your knees with your wife and say, „I am guilty of not protecting you, of not exercising Godly headship over you, of not loving you as Christ loved the church, and I repent before God and I repent before you”. You will never understand what the scripture is talking about when it says, „you were washed, you were freed”. The problem is that we assume that because the problem is in the past, that the issue is over, but, nothing drives 2 people further apart than sinning together. Your wife, men, may not trust you right now because she knows her parents couldn’t trust you then. Until that is dealt with, with the kind of heart that cries out, „Lord have mercy and free me and wash me”, you will never find the kind of spiritual power and freedom in your marriage that  you so desperately need.

(3) PORNOGRAPHY. The apostle Paul doesn’t speak to pornography directly here, but he speaks to porneia, to sexual immorality. And this issue has become almost ubiquitous to such a degree that pornography in terms of spiritual warfare has been weaponized, including in our churches. Now, when a couple comes into my church and says, „We don’t know what’s wrong in our marriage, we just don’t have any intimacy, we don’t have sex with each other anymore, we just feel cold, I immediately say, „How long has the porn been going on? ” Husband usually looks at me like I’m an Old Testament prophet or a new age psychic. It is because it happens so often and with such regularity and it always has the same satanic results. PORNOGRAPHY IS UNIQUELY SATANIC BECAUSE IT DRIVES YOU TOWARDS INSATIABILITY. Nobody in the history of the world has said, „Ok Ive seen my porn”. Porn, by definition drives you further and further and further towards intimacy . WHy? Because it is an occultic pull upon you that is driving you towards the kind of mystery  and the kind of intimacy  that you are designed to find in the one flesh union and it severs that away from real life, covenant, flesh and blood love in such a way that you become numbed over to the joy of sexual intimacy itself. PORNOGRAPHY LURES YOU IN WITH SEXINESS, and then TOTALLY EVISCERATES YOUR CAPACITY  FOR SEXUAL INTIMACY. So much so, that there may even be men in this room  who are so captured by pornography that you are not even able to have sex with your wife without retrieving for yourself images that you have archived from porn. If you do not see how desperate and how sad and how pathetic and how pitiful that situation is, you will never find freedom. When you put yourself in the orbit of pornography, you are not just viewing material, you are joining yourself with a digital prostitute. Someone who is paid to create a sexual arousal in you, you are doing exactly what the apostle Paul is warning about in Corinth, when he says, „Don’t go up there to the temple prostitutes. What will happen when you get there, no matter how you cover over it, no matter how you keep it hidden, something spiritual has happened in the most wicked sort of way. Pornography will move in and destroy you because it will start to create you into the kind of person for whom intimacy is simply body parts rubbing together, not one flesh. And you will ultimately find yourself, when you have seen every image you want to see, when you have read every word you want to have read, like Esau, vomiting up the red stuff that he craved so badly. Pornography has some of you enslaved, precisely because the satanic powers love to work by helping you to hide your sin.

The power that Satan has over you is only two fold. Satan’s power is to take those things the God has created for good in your life, including the impulse towards intimacy and to twist it slightly away from its intended object, so that you become more and more entrapped and enslaved in your own deception. That you are exactly in the situation the apostle Paul speaks of as unbelievers, „Following after the prince of the power of the air, through the passions of the body and of the mind”. The only other power he has is Revelation 12- to accuse the brothers. Some of you are staying in hiding right now when you are at the place in your life where if there is enough of the sense of the urgency of the situation, you can save your life. , you can save your marriage, but you are hiding in the bushes back there where our prehistoric parents are. But, there is a voice through the word of God speaking as it does in every generation that asks the question, „Adam, where are you?”

The only way that you will break yourself free from the pull toward immorality is to come out of hiding. „Lord have mercy upon me, the sinner”.  And the only way that the power of Satan can be defeated is first of all, by recognizing that the goodness that God has given you in that one flesh union in your marriage is to point you to something that is even better news than that. So that the very act of holding that husband, holding that wife, crying and weeping in repentance together, that very act is a physical picture of what the apostle Paul says to the church at Colossae, when he says, „All of that legal record of our condemnation, that list of thoughts and intents, and archived internet histories has been nailed to His cross, disarming the principalities and powers by making a public display  of them.

Why Pornography Robs a Man of His Humanness

Ed Welch a counselor at CCEF in Philadelphia tells how he counsels men addicted to pornography:

From Tony Reinke at http://www.desiringgod.org

For more resources on the sin of pornography, see the CCEF website here.