Sexual Purity: Part 1 - The Awkward Moment When Watching Porn Doesn't Make You a Man

Welcome to Part 1 of the Series. Please have a read of the Intro before you go any further!

     The first author I want to share with you goes by the name John Eldredge. He wrote a book called Wild at Heart which describes the way a man carries the wounds of his heart and how he responds to the world. John talks about how a man's heart is made to live passionately but a combination of wounds and disappointments he picks up during childhood, his own sin and the structure of society can rob him of that passion.* What's that got to do with pornography you ask? Well let's hear a little from Mr Eldredge:

     "If a man does not find those things for which his heart is made, if he is never even invited to live for them from his deep heart, he will look for them in some other way. Why is pornography the number one snare for men? He longs for the beauty, but without his fierce and passionate heart he cannot find her or win her or keep her. Though he is powerfully drawn to the woman, he does not know how to fight for her or even that he IS to fight for her. Rather, he finds her mostly a mystery that he knows he cannot solve and so at a soul level he keeps his distance. And privately, secretly, he turns to the imitation. What makes pornography so addictive is that more than anything else in a lost man's life, it makes him FEEL like a man without ever requiring a thing of him. The less a guy feels like a real man in the presence of a real woman, the more vulnerable he is to porn." - Wild at Heart

     Sorry lads but I'm gonna have to rat us out to the ladies reading now.  Most boys (not all) continually feel like their masculinity is under question, so because they're not convinced that they're a "real man", they feel like they have to do things to prove it to themselves and to others. They may not be thinking in their brain "Stand back everyone! I must prove to all that I'm a MAN!" But if you could ask a man's heart directly why he does what he does, you'd probably make some interesting discoveries. Sir Eldredge (yes I've knighted him, read the book and you'll see why) says that there is a question that haunts every man's soul. It's right on the surface and clear for some but deep down, buried and hidden to others. That question is simply any variation of "Have I got what it takes?". It's a question of strength, ability, skill and effectiveness. Any situation that might give a negative answer they will automatically shy away from it and give excuses e.g. "Oh that's for girls, I don't like playing football, I just think it's boring."

     John is basically saying that pornography is a coward's route to sexual intimacy. The woman on the screen is under his control. He doesn't have to commit to her, he doesn't have to romance her, he doesn't have to respect her, he doesn't have to be vulnerable with her, he doesn't have to listen to her, he doesn't have to cater to her needs, he doesn't even have to talk to her! He can just use her to satisfy himself and be done with her. His strength and masculinity will never be called into question. She will never reject him. In fact the woman on the screen will probably tell him how great he is and how happy he makes her. 

     Let me take a moment to address some questions to the gents reading this. Have a look at your life. Are you drawing a sense of accomplishment from pornography? Do you brag about it to your friends? Does it make you feel like a man? Does it make you feel powerful? Let's go a little deeper. Maybe you don't actually have an issue with pornography, that's great! But are you using your relationships with women to make you feel like a man? Do you try and see how many girls you can get to like you at once? Have you ever broken up with a girl first because you thought she would dump you? Do you feel intimidated, threatened or invalidated around confident and independent women? 

     If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may be a boy who hasn't had his question answered and is taking it around as a little survey to God's daughters. You may be a dude who doesn't know what it's like to live passionately from your heart so you pretend not to care about anything because it's easier. You may appear confident on the outside but are actually a guy who is inwardly, desperately needing to be validated. God the Father wants to answer that question for you and seal up the holes in your heart with His love. If that last sentence made you squirm, I'm talking to you sir! I recommend you buy John's book. If you're a young man and can't afford it but really want it, contact me and I'll gladly get a hold of it for you.

More on that next time.
Thank you for reading!

End Notes
*Many of John's points are applicable to men and women but the book is written for men in general.

What the Heck is Holiness? - Part 2: The Higher Call of Pure Intimacy

Hi again, please read Part 1: The Power of Porn before you read this post! Thanks.
http://peoplebeingreal.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/holiness-part-1-power-of-porn.html

Again this was a difficult post to write. Those of you who know me may have been surprised to know about the story in my previous post. I'm hoping that this one will help you make even more sense of me! Haha. You shouldn't feel condemned reading this one. My words come from a heart that is proper happy to have been set free by my King and the lover of my soul! My prayer is that you won't shy away from the conviction of the Holy Spirit if He speaks to you and you won't let the devil tell you lies either. I'm not trying to lead you into a dull and boring life of boycotting stuff and hiding from the world but I do what to shed some light on an issue from the eyes of someone who went pretty deep in and eventually got dragged out by grace. While reading this you might feel something that you think is the spirit of legalism. It's really not about that at all. I'm not a prude or a fun-killer but boy do I have a vision for something glorious! As always, read with discernment and check everything out in the Word. :-)

Purity
     When something is pure, it's just not mixed with anything else. Following my liberation from the world of internet and tv-based pornography, I enjoyed a sweet season of simple, pure passion for God. I was loving living in this purity and enjoying unbroken relationship with Him being able to stand before Him with confidence (1John 3:21)! When I was 18, I started spending more time with young adults in the church which made me feel more grown-up! Something odd happened for me however. I noticed that the vast majority of the humour that was thrown around in our group was kinda crude in nature. The films and TV shows we watched together followed a similar pattern. I felt a little of that "something-is-up" feeling in my heart but I ignored it because I considered the people involved to be more spiritual and more mature than me. They were older than me, some of them knew the Bible better than me, others heard God more clearly than me (prophetically). Considering all this, I decided it must be fine and I must be overreacting. I mixed my conviction with a couple excuses and made a cocktail of compromise and joined in!
Mistake.

     After a while a certain friend of mine who had been a constant source of strength and challenge during my teenage years sent me a message. It simply read "Ephesians 5:4 What do you think of this verse?" I didn't know it off the top of my head so I went to find it. Let's look it up shall we? With a little bit of context:

1Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children 2and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

3But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. 4Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.

Ephesians 5:1-4 (NIV)

Ever read a verse in the Bible that you swore was never there before but is now jumping up and slapping you in the face?! This one was definitely one of those for me!! I just stared at it! It's really not in any uncertain terms. There it was! Plain as day! Well what the heck was I supposed to do now?! Ever read the Bible and then try to pretend you didn't just read something so you can go on living sinfully *cough cough* excuse me, comfortably? That would work out great if the One who wrote it didn't live inside you! The Holy Spirit was ready to challenge me on it all day and echo what I had read in the caverns of my soul. This started to make it pretty awkward for me to be around some people as they went out of their way to engage in this stuff. It was our main source of entertainment! Of course the temptation to just let it go or not "overdo" the Christianity thing was definitely there and I had plenty of friends letting me know that. I jumped backwards and forwards in this for a while (a couple years). I wanted to live my life for God whole-heartedly but this made things REALLY awkward for me AND other people sometimes! Although I had a real conviction in my heart that this stuff was wrong, what I definitely lacked was grace to share it with others and integrity to walk it out myself. I just slapped on my judgement cap, hopped on my soap box and unleashed! I remember an occasion when I'd moved to Cardiff, I was at a party and the direction of conversation was going south and so I tried to challenge someone directly on the basis of the Ephesians 5:4 verse. Almost everyone in the room turned against me and by the end of the argument the atmosphere was so tense that the only way the party would continue was if I left! So I did, feeling VERY confused!

Passion
     You might be thinking I'm taking this all a little too seriously but I hope you'll continue reading and hear me out. My journey into purity had created in me a hunger and a desire for it because I'd experienced the level of intimacy that came with it. I wanted everyone to have that. Sure we can learn to live in compromise but why would we? I'd developed a passion for my own sexual purity both in my body and in my mind and I was serious about protecting it. I found it odd that I was having to safeguard my thoughts among God's people. "It's just a bit of fun" and "Tony you need to lighten up" were things I heard a fair bit and still do. I even remember someone saying to me "Well you have to look at that verse in its cultural, historical context". Walking away from that party, honestly I wanted to cry. I couldn't understand why people who love the Lord wanted to continue in something that hurt His heart but whenever I tried to share this with people I just came across as arrogant and self-righteous and to be honest, I was! I'd forgotten that it was His grace that had rescued me, not my own personal holiness. I hope the years have brought me a little more humility, discernment and wisdom. I'm grateful for the freedom He's given me. I love Him and want to honour Him with my eyes, ears and mouth.

     Let's face it some rude jokes are just funny. Some dodgey films are hilarious and entertaining. You're on the bus or watching TV and you hear something horrendous but you still want to laugh. Innocent fun right? Maybe. But maybe not. Our culture is totally permeated with subtle sin that can be almost undetectable. Sin disguised as humour is still sin however hilarious it might seem. He bled for it. I've had to ask myself some tough questions as the Holy Spirit has challenged me and continues to challenge me. Why do I laugh at things I know are wrong? Recently the Holy Spirit dropped something like this into my heart "Don't laugh at jokes demons will laugh at." That made me think. Will what I draw my laughter from now still be funny in Heaven? In Hell? Does God share my sense of humour? If I water down my idea of Him and make Him just like me, He certainly does! But I'm supposed to be like Him. If I'm constantly feeding myself with things He doesn't like will it make me more like Him? What if I set my heart to allow the Holy Spirit to direct me in what I watch and listen to?

     God calls us to be holy because He is holy (1Peter 1:16). That's a pretty scary thought and a pretty high call! The Greek word for "holy" means to be set apart or separate. Quick analogy: If I tear a small piece of paper away from a big piece, technically I've made the little piece holy (thanks Richard). God is holy, He is set apart and He calls us to be with Him, separate from the ways of the world. In the world but not of it. Not sitting above the world in judgement, snobbery and apparent superiority but living in love with Jesus, setting an example in how to walk with God in love and grace. The call to holiness is actually a call to intimacy, not a call to legalism. God knows what a compromised conscience does to our relationship with Him. So many people walk away from God or never approach Him because they feel too dirty for Him! They feel like He could never love them because of what they've done, not knowing that it's His love and what He's done that empowers us to live differently. He calls us to be holy (set apart) because that is the best way we can relate to Him and walk closely with Him, with clean hands and a pure heart (Psalm 24:3-4). Jesus died so that living a life of holiness and purity would be possible for us. His death, burial and resurrection reconciled us to God. He is the Holy One so He gives us the Holy Spirit to live in us and continually make us more like Him, enabling us to live out the holiness that is ours in Him.

Thanks for reading! Share your thoughts or jump over to 

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