Wednesday 31 July 2013

What the Heck is Holiness? - Part 1: The Power of Porn!

     Hi guys, so I was exposed to stuff of a sexual nature from an early age through television and school and first saw a pornographic magazine at the age of 10. YIKES!! Here we go folks, we're going deep with this post!! Please don't let this opening line scare you off. I'm going to be really real and honest here in the hopes that what I have to share will put peace in some people's hearts and set them free while bringing a gracious challenge to others in the lifestyle of a Christian. I'll share personal experience from my own life all the way through as well as truth from the Bible and I'll try to say quite a lot in this post so please don't tune out. I'll be real but not to the point of being crude. This isn't at all easy for me to share, particularly on a public forum and hey maybe it will change how some people feel about me but I've waited a long time before putting this out and I know it's necessary for me to share so it's ok ; ) I pray that the Holy Spirit will give me grace to write and that He'll give you grace to read and hear what I believe He has to say. Ready? Still with me? Awesome, thank you, let's go!! : )

     So I first saw a pornographic magazine at the age of 10 (which is apparently only a year earlier than the average young person in the West) and this opened a door to a new world of temptation and sin. Bad times. Two years later while away at a youth camp I committed my life to loving and serving the Jesus who died to remove me from my sins and give me His new life. It was a beautiful experience, walking in this new connection with God, knowing His heart and His delight towards me. However, the following 6 years for me were a serious battle against lust and pornography. Getting a computer in our house certainly didn't help! With my parents out of the house I'd just get lost in this thing. I became very clever at covering up my tracks. If I was on the computer and alone it seemed like it was inevitable*. I felt so helpless against it. In my spirit it definitely wasn't what I wanted to be doing or giving my mind to but there's a reason Paul told Timothy to "Flee YOUTHFUL passions..." (2Timothy 2:22a) and not just general passions. Youthful passions are powerful and unrelenting! Guilt and shame would descend upon me every time making me feel unfit to go to God. This is one of the enemy's favourite tactics against us! If he can get us to believe we're unwelcome in the presence of God, we won't go to Him but He is the one who heals us and forgives us and strengthens us to resist temptation. When we don't understand this we try fighting the devil on our own and it's just embarrassing! We forget the first part of James 4:7 and simply try to resist the devil without submitting ourselves to God first. It's hard to submit yourself to God when you feel like He doesn't even want to look at you! It's a clever tactic but knowing it definitely helps us.

     At the age of 15 I was asked to start helping to teach the youth (who were aged 11-17) on Sundays in my church. I was really excited about this but I was still up and down with this inner struggle. Sometimes I'd go weeks or months without giving in but then would fall back into it. Of course the devil had an absolute field day with my heart. John tells us that it's in walking in the light that we allow God to cleanse us from sin (1John 1:5-10) but the devil lives in the darkness of secret sin and he will happily kick our heads in all day if we stay there with him, continually whispering, "You call yourself a Christian? No one else has this problem. How can God love you when you do this? How can God use you when you do this? You're a hypocrite." So there's me leading young people, trying to be an example, trying to be a role model while being utterly torn apart on the inside. Riddled with guilt and shame. Maybe you've been there or somewhere similar. Let me tell you about the grace of God though. Through all of this stuff I found that God would still speak to me! I found that He would still use me to speak to others! I can't tell you how humbling it is to know the love and grace of God in the middle of sinning! He remains faithful in all circumstances (2Timothy 2:13) because His faithfulness was never dependent on me! He was faithful before I was born and He'll be faithful after I'm dead, it's who He is!!

     The devil wanted to condemn me but the Holy Spirit wanted to convict me. I began to become aware of the heart of God towards pornography. Thoughts of how lost the people on the screen were flooded my heart. The heart of our Father for His daughters who'd wandered so far from Him and His love pressed heavily on me. This was not ok. Kris Vallotton gives the best description of the difference between condemnation and conviction that I've heard in his book** so let me share it with you. He says that condemnation is from the devil and will always equate you with your sin e.g. you sinned, you're a sinner. You lied, you're a liar etc etc. The goal of condemnation is to convince you that you are what you do. If it's successful, the devil can leave you alone because you'll only ever act out who you believe you are and you'll continue in these cycles of sin, driving you further from your relationship with the Lord. Conviction however is from the Holy Spirit and conviction basically says "You're way too awesome to be acting like that! That's not who you are any more. Why settle for that?" Conviction comes with the power to change, condemnation robs you of that power! I started to feel more of the conviction of the Holy Spirit and I knew I didn't want to live my life like this. After occasions of giving in, I started to find the strength to go before God and speak to Him and cry out for forgiveness and deliverance. Leading a double life is not healthy for anyone. I started to set targets for myself with agreements between me and God. I'd say for 2 weeks I'm not going to look at anything dodgey on the internet or even  anything slightly dodgey on TV e.g. music videos (remember the good old days when people wore clothes in music videos? Good times.) and the fear of the Lord combined with His conviction and grace carried me through those weeks. Obviously this wasn't a permanent solution and something else was needed.

     When I was 18, Lent came around. To be honest I didn't even really know what Lent was up until then but I heard it's 40 days when people give stuff up. I made my decision. 40 days, no porn, just prayer. At the time there was also a girl in my life, a previous girlfriend who really wasn't doing my heart any good either so I added in that I wouldn't contact her either during this time. I wanted to get free of things that were hindering me in my relationship with Him. So for 40 days I steered clear of any images that might compromise my promise and I just prayed and spent time with God while of course going to school and doing usual day to day stuff. Towards the end before the 40 days were even over, this thought passed through my mind: "The time is almost up then you can look at stuff again." The thought of trading this amazing new and fresh intimacy with God for anything else was actually hilarious! I think I actually laughed out loud! Hahaha!! VICTORY!!! When the 40 days were over I can't describe to you the level of freedom I felt but most of all I was walking in this new unbroken communion with God because my conscience was clear before Him. John tells us in 1John 3 that there is something incredible about being able to stand in His presence with a pure conscience, a heart set at rest, with confidence because we know that we're doing His will (1John 3:19-22). I can't describe this feeling to you but it was delicious!! HAHA!! The desire to even look at anything like that had completely left me and been replaced with a desire to walk closer with God. My journey didn't stop there however, God had more He wanted to teach me.

Thanks for reading friends, that's the end of Part 1. I hope it's helping you. Whether it's sexual sin you've struggled with or something else that has left you feeling far from God, or whether you're not a Christian at all and have felt like you can't possibly live the Christian life, please continue to read this mini series. It's really not about us and our ability, it's about Jesus and His power to save, deliver and heal us and make us more like Himself. It's about us answering the call to walk closely with God and leave our dirt and shame behind. It's about allowing the strength of His love for us to break the chains of our sin. Let the dark power of porn dissolve in the light of His love. Come as you are and let Him do the rest!

End Notes
* By the grace of God I never struggled with masturbation at all throughout the battle against lust and porn. That in itself is a miracle! Haha!

**
Moral Revolution: The Naked Truth About Sexual Purity by Kris Vallotton. Buy it! - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Moral-Revolution-Naked-Sexual-Purity/dp/0768438632/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375186402&sr=1-1&keywords=moral+revolution

I also just want to honour my Mum and Dad for being good parents and working so hard to provide for me and my brother. Mum I know you'll probably read this so I want to say thank you for continuing to encourage me in the Lord so I could come out with this testimony of His faithfulness! You continue to inspire me.



Part 2 

Thursday 11 July 2013

Featured Post- "What It Means to be a Friend" by Babette Shaw

“I care so much more about you than I ever could about something you do.”

     When my eight year old nephew Ethan talked to me excitedly about all of his friends that are coming to his birthday party and how they’re going to be best friends forever I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for him. You see, after 20 years of “I’ll miss you so much, I’ll call you every night!” and no phone call, or “I can’t wait to come visit you!” and no visit, I've become a tad cynical. As a kid we moved around a few times to plant churches, and so pretty quickly I put true, long lasting friendships on par with Father Christmas and just accepted the fact that people disappoint. I hadn't realised how deep the hurt went until I found myself crying at a friend’s party in first year because she had called me her best friend. We, as human beings, were designed for friendship. And not just with God, but with each other. A need for companionship is etched into our very DNA and yet somewhere along the line we have become bad at it. Sadly this is equally as true for the church as it is for general society. How many times have you come to church having had a terrible week, and yet when someone asked how you were you’d put on your ‘church face’ and talk about how great everything is? I did it every week for at least a year. Someone once told me that problem with Christianity is Christians. Church isn't a safe place any more. Instead of wanting to run to the body of Christ when everything’s gone wrong, people tend to run away from it. Why is this? Why do we struggle so much to let people in? Because it hurts, that’s why. Because true love is sacrificial, it goes after the other person’s best interests before your own and it is determined to love you no matter the damage done. Jesus came to love and we put him on a cross for it. There’s a vulnerability that comes with genuine friendship, I can easily say that there are some people who know me so well that if they wanted to, they could wreck me with a single word – I trust that they wouldn't, but my heart is open to them and so I'm at risk. In order to see someone’s heart you have to expose your own, and that’s scary. It also means allowing people to see your dirt, trusting that when they see your mess they’ll stick around anyway.  A massive problem with this part of friendship comes with a lack of identity, When you see yourself as dirt it’s not surprising that you think people won’t stick around, I mean, why would they? If you think you’re a burden, then you’ll push others away before they push you away – it’s a defence mechanism and it’s entirely logical. The thing is, God see’s your sin, and calls you by your name regardless. We must do the same. When you realise that the king of heaven sees you not as the sinner that you once were but as a saint, that you utterly captivate His heart, that He is jealous for your affections and dotes on you, smiling over you even now. When you realise that the creator thinks these things of you it’s only logical that His created think the same. People often tell me that no-one’s ever truly been there for them, but that’s because they've never given them the chance to. Step out; take a leap of faith, the people around you might surprise you.

     I know this is all a bit messy, and it’s all good and well to stand here and say “Be better friends!” but how? I whole heartedly believe that one of the ways we will see revival is from people on the outside looking in at our genuine, fully committed, sacrificial love for one another – but how do we get there? How do we go from being Sunday acquaintances to brothers and sisters?

1.       1.     Be honest. In order for people to be able to catch you when you fall, you have to show them that you do fall. At one of the Dangerous Bride prayer meetings, God was talking to me about this idea of his girls going from strangers to sisters; and how a culture of honesty needed to develop. It was when I was praying into that that he told me to be honest, to come to my sisters and bare my soul. ey'eight year old nephew Ethan talked to me excitedly about all of his friends that are coming to his birthday party, and hI was terrified. Here I was in front of a group of wonderful woman who all seemed far more together than me; and I had to be brutally honest about the fact that I lie, and struggle with lust and alcohol amongst other things. I braced myself for the awkward silence; or the glare of judgement but instead it created an onslaught of people opening up and baring their dirt to Daddy God in front of their sisters, I’ve never felt more loved.
     That being said, honesty is a two-fold thing. Not only are we called to be honest about ourselves and where we’re at, we’re also called to be honest about others. Friends care too much about you to let you sell yourself short or settle for anything less than Gods calling on your life. I have a guy mate who’s quite flirty, and at one point it looked like he was getting close to one of the girls who I knew he didn’t see in that way. And so, despite the fact that he wasn’t really doing anything wrong, I sat him down and I called him on it. Why? Because I want him to be a man of merit, I want his yes to be his yes and I love him too much to not tell him off when he’s letting himself down. Friends don’t bite their tongue, and in the same way that I was honest with him about how he doesn’t treat women well enough, he’s honest with me when I cross a line or am too flirty, it’s a two way street and I couldn’t be more grateful for his input into my life. 

2.     Be honouring. Firstly, honour has become such a hokey Christian term that I felt the need to define it. It either means 1. High respect & Great esteem or 2. The quality of knowing and doing what is morally right. So why is being honourable important to a friendship? Why should morality matter within our relationships? Because when you decide that no matter what you will honour someone, you set a standard the likes of which are rarely seen in today’s society. You don’t do to others what they do to you, none of this ‘eye for an eye’ business, no matter how they treat us we must be honourable. We must determine to honour and respect people not because of who they are but because of whose they are, not because of what they’ve done but because of what Jesus did, and when we do this people will realise that no matter how much they mess up they’re still loved and we will see communities transformed. There’s a story about a woman in an African village who was fairly plain looking, and then one day a man came up to her father and told him that he wanted to give him ten cows for his daughters hand in marriage. The father was shocked, told him that ten cows were too many and said he’d give him his daughter for just three. The man insisted on paying ten cows and so the father gave in. Once they were married, a rumour started to spread throughout the village of this woman being the most beautiful woman in the whole village because a man had paid ten cows for her, and slowly, as the rumours spread this once shy and plain woman began to transform into a woman that truly was worth ten cows. When we call out the gold in people, they will start to shine. 

3.     Be bold. There’s an episode of Friends where Monica admits to Phoebe that she once tried to ‘freeze’ Phoebe out of her life, but Phoebe was so persistent that Monica gave up trying to get rid of her and they had been best friends ever since. I can’t help but wonder how many more people might be in the church today if we were that bold and shameless when going after our friends. If we hadn’t been too embarrassed to ask the second time if they wanted to get a coffee, or had been stubborn enough to text again even though they didn’t reply. I’ve seen a few mates come to church, one of whom I had to shamelessly pester every Sunday for about three months before he came for the first time. When people are scared to make the first move it usually comes back to the issue of identity once again, but when you realise that your identity is in Jesus not in what your mate thinks of you, it doesn’t really matter if you get shot down because there isn’t an ego to bruise.

4.     Be loyal. Love even when it’s hard to – Like Ruth & Naomi, Ruth renamed herself Mara meaning bitter at one point, she was hardly a barrel of laughs to be around but Ruth remained loyal and was rewarded for it. She also accepted the advice of a friend, which shows a great deal of humility, something else we could learn from. 
     In a world where marriages more often than not end with divorce, children are growing up fatherless, and depression is at an all-time high, nothing is more counter cultural than love. We, as Christians, have become very good at over-complicating things when Jesus himself told us to love God, and love everyone else. Our job is to love people, its God’s job to do something about it. 

Thanks for reading Babette's post! Do leave comments and the like and share with your friends! : )