Sexual Purity Posts

November 23, 2018 By Castimonia

11 Brutal Truths About Emotions That You Really Need to Hear

Make emotions work for you. Instead of against you.

Since it was first introduced decades ago, the concept of emotional intelligence has been heralded by many as the secret, intangible key to success. But as this concept has increased in popularity, it’s also become widely misunderstood.

So, what is emotional intelligence exactly?

Emotional intelligence (EI) is a person’s ability to identify emotions (in both themselves and others), to recognize the powerful effects of those emotions, and to use that information to inform and guide behavior. Practicing EI can help you reach your goals and make you more persuasive.

So, here are 11 tips brutal truths about emotions that will instantly increase your EQ:

1. Emotional intelligence begins when you ask the right questions.

Asking the right questions gives you valuable insight into the role emotions play in everyday life.

For example, if you’re frustrated at work, you might ask:

Where is the underlying problem? Is it an assignment, a colleague, a situation?
Do I have any control over this? What can I change, and what can’t I?

You can find a list of more thoughtful questions here. Get familiar with them, and you’ll start to be more proactive, and less reactive.

2. You can’t control your feelings. But you can control the reactions to your feelings.

Since emotions involve your natural, instinctive feelings and are influenced by brain chemistry, you can’t always control how you feel.

But you can control how you act upon those feelings.

For example, let’s say you have an anger management problem. The first step is to increase awareness of how anger affects you. Then, you need to develop an appropriate method for responding to that feeling–by focusing on your thoughts and actions.

All of this won’t take your anger away. But it can keep you from actions that will hurt yourself and others.

3. Others see you much differently than you see yourself.

This isn’t about right or wrong; it’s simply understanding how perceptions differ, and the consequences those differences create. But for many, all of this goes unnoticed.

By asking those close to us–like a significant other or close friend or workmate–about our interactions with them and others, we can learn from their perspective.

4. Empathy can greatly increase the value of your work.

The ability to relate to another person’s feelings goes a long way in building and fostering great relationships.

But learning to see things from another person’s perspective yields immediate, everyday benefits as well–like making you a better writer, presenter, trainer and manager. (More here on the practical benefits of empathy.)

5. It’s all about the long game.

Science has shown that changing deeply-ingrained behaviors and habits requires repeated effort and substantial commitment.

How can you do so? Here are seven methods that you can begin practicing today.

These methods aren’t easy to apply. But with dedication and hard work, they’ll help shape the way you experience even the most powerful emotions.

6. Criticism is a gift.

Nobody’s right all the time; that’s why criticism can help us to grow. Unfortunately, emotions often prevent us from taking advantage of negative feedback.

Instead of wasting time and energy rating how ideally criticism was delivered, ask yourself:

How can I use this feedback to help me or my team improve?
Putting my personal feelings aside, what can I learn from this alternate perspective?

Even if negative feedback is unfounded, it can still give you a valuable window into other perspectives.

Of course, not everyone has this ability. That’s why…

7. It’s vital to gain trust before delivering negative feedback.

Humans all share certain emotional needs, like a general craving for sincere acknowledgement and praise. Recognizing that, good leaders first focus on the positive (and potential) in his or her team. Additionally, by getting to know your team, their challenges, and their way of working, not only will you begin to see things from their perspective, you’ll begin to earn their trust.

Negative feedback can be difficult to swallow. But if your team is confident that you’ve got their backs, they’ll appreciate your efforts to make them better.

8. Remember that “negative” emotions can be just as beneficial as “positive” ones.

When we’re happy, the coffee tastes better, the birds sound sweeter…and there’s no challenge too great to handle.

But “negative” emotions (like anger, sadness, or fear) can give you the impetus to dig deep, learn more about yourself, and develop a strategy to make things better. (More on that here.)

9. Raising your EQ isn’t all fun and games. But it can be…sometimes.

Researchers have found that some of our favorite recreational activities can produce an increase in emotional intelligence. For example, watching films, listening to music and reading in the right way can actually help you understand and practice empathy for others.

10. EQ and EI aren’t the same thing.

Nowadays, many use EQ (Emotional Quotient) and EI (Emotional Intelligence) interchangeably. But that’s a mistake.

EQ is useful as shorthand to refer to a person’s knowledge of emotions and how they work. It can be adopted liberally: Just as we speak of athletes having a high basketball or football IQ, an allusion to one’s EQ is easily understood.

But by definition, emotional intelligence is a practical ability. And while a person may comprehend the principles of how emotions work in real life, application of that knowledge is another story. (This is the foundation of my forthcoming book, EQ, Applied, which explains how emotional intelligence works in the real world.)

11. Emotional Intelligence can be used for evil.

It’s important to know that, like any ability, emotional intelligence can be used both ethically and unethically. Every day, certain politicians, colleagues, and even supposed friends use emotions to manipulate others.

Of course, this is just one more reason why you should work at raising your own EI, to protect yourself.

Because in the end, that’s what emotional intelligence is all about: making emotions work for you, instead of against you.

November 22, 2018 By Castimonia

11 Rules on Marriage You Won’t Learn in School

SOURCE: Dennis and Barbara Rainey/Family Life

Here’s some practical, counter-cultural advice on how to make marriage work.

For many years, e-mails have circulated the country with the outline of a speech attributed to Microsoft founder Bill Gates titled “11 Rules You Won’t Learn in School About Life.” It turns out that Gates never wrote these words nor did he deliver the speech—it was all taken from an article written by Charles J. Sykes in 1996. And it really doesn’t matter that Gates wasn’t involved, because the piece does a great job of unmasking how feel-good, politically-correct teachings have created a generation of kids with a false concept of reality.

I thought I’d not only pass on these rules, but also make a few of my own—on marriage.

First, here are the 11 rules of life that you won’t learn in school:

Rule 1: Life is not fair—get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will not make $60,000 per year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping—they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault. So don’t whine about your mistakes; learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes, and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents’ generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you “find yourself.” Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is not real life. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Sage advice.

After reading this piece, I was inspired to take a crack at something I’d been chewing on: “11 Rules on Marriage You Won’t Learn in School.”

Rule 1: Marriage isn’t about your happiness. It’s not about you getting all your needs met through another person. Practicing self-denial and self-sacrifice, patience, understanding, and forgiveness are the fundamentals of a great marriage. If you want to be the center of the universe, then there’s a much better chance of that happening if you stay single.

Rule 2: Getting married gives a man a chance to step up and finish growing up. The best preparation for marriage for a single man is to man up now and keep on becoming the man God created him to be.

Rule 3: It’s okay to have one rookie season, but it’s not okay to repeat your rookie season. You will make rookie mistakes in your first year of marriage; the key is that you don’t continue making those same mistakes in year five, year 10, or year 20 of your marriage.

Rule 4: It takes a real man to be satisfied with and love one woman for a lifetime. And it takes a real woman to be content with and respect one man for a lifetime.

Rule 5: Love isn’t a feeling. Love is commitment. It’s time to replace the “D-word”—divorce—with the “C-word”—commitment. Divorce may feel like a happy solution, but it results in long-term toxic baggage. You can’t begin a marriage without commitment. You can’t sustain one without it either. A marriage that goes the distance is really hard work. If you want something that is easy and has immediate gratification, then go shopping or play a video game.

Rule 6: Online relationships with old high school or college flames, emotional affairs, sexual affairs, and cohabiting are shallow and illegitimate substitutes for the real thing. Emotional and sexual fidelity in marriage are the real thing.

Rule 7: Women spell romance R-E-L-A-T-I-O-N-S-H-I-P. Men spell romance S-E-X. If you want to speak romance to your spouse, become a student of your spouse, enroll in a lifelong “Romantic Language School,” and become fluent in your spouse’s language.

Rule 8: During courtship, opposites attract. After marriage, opposites can repel each another. You married your spouse because he/she is different. Differences are God’s gift to you to create new capacities in your life. Different isn’t wrong, it’s just different.

Rule 9: Pornography robs men of a real relationship with a real person and it poisons real masculinity, replacing it with the toxic killers of shame, deceit, and isolation. Pornography siphons off a man’s drive for intimacy with his wife. Marriage is not for wimps. Accept no substitutes.

Rule 10: As a home is built, it will reflect the builder. Most couples fail to consult the Master Architect and His blueprints for building a home. Instead a man and woman marry with two sets of blueprints (his and hers). As they begin building, they discover that a home can’t be built from two very different sets of blueprints.

Rule 11: How you will be remembered has less to do with how much money you make or how much you accomplish and more with how you have loved and lived.

Pass on the rules to a friend who will enjoy them!

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November 19, 2018 By Castimonia

Pain – VIDEO

The Equalizer is one of my favorite “justice” movie series. The Equalizer 2 is a continuation of the series staring Denzel Washington who helps people in need. Below is a short summary of the overall movie from Wikipedia:

The Equalizer 2 (sometimes promoted as The Equalizer II or EQ2) is a 2018 American thriller film directed by Antoine Fuqua. It is the sequel to the 2014 film The Equalizer, which was based on the TV series of the same name. The film stars Denzel Washington. It follows retired United States Marine and ex-DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) agent Robert McCall as he sets out on a path of revenge after one of his friends is killed.

In this film we see Robert McCall travel to Turkey to return an American girl who had been kidnapped by her estranged Turkish Father. Just like most of us are given a choice to act out or not to act out, Robert gives the father a choice on doing the right thing. Although not Biblically accurate, this scene gives a good description on the two types of pain we can experience in life. As always, take what you like and leave the rest.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This video may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for purposes such as criticism, comment, teaching, & education, etc. This constitutes a ’fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED! All trademarks and copyrights remain the property of their owners.

November 18, 2018 By Castimonia

“Pastor, my husband’s addicted to pornography!”

Originally posted at: http://www.careleader.org/avoid-4-mistakes/

November 9, 2016 by Vicki Tiede

A recent study shared that 47 percent of Christian men struggle with pornography, many of whom have a full-blown addiction to it. That’s almost half of the men in each congregation. The number is shocking. And while the church is making some strides in ministering to those men, not much effort is being made in ministering to their wives.

For married men, the impact of an addiction to pornography can be astounding. When the addiction comes to light, the wife is oftentimes overwhelmed by the magnitude of the struggle. Additionally, she may be overcome with shame, fear, and uncertainty, but also left feeling betrayed and in pain over the lies that accompanied her husband’s addiction. In many ways, the effects are similar to finding out about an affair. Trust has been broken in the most intimate way.

Since these women often feel betrayed and as a result are often emotionally wounded and fragile, you don’t want to add to their pain by making missteps in providing care. Below, I share four key mistakes to avoid in order to better understand how to walk with the women in your flock on the path of healing.

Mistake #1: Rushing her healing

When it comes to ministering to women whose husbands are addicted to pornography, realize that this is a journey. As with any other addiction, and most other life struggles, her husband’s addiction to pornography hasn’t happened overnight. Her healing will be a process and a journey. Be patient with her. You aren’t going to cover everything the first time she walks in to see you, nor should you expect her to heal that quickly.

Paired with this, give her opportunities just to be heard. She needs to know that you as her pastor are hearing her, understanding her, and validating her. It’s easy to focus on the husband in this instance, the man addicted to pornography, and forget that she has been violated, that she needs help too. Even though her husband chose this road, it impacts her greatly. She’s part of the collateral damage. So she needs people who will hear her, whether that’s a counselor, a pastor, or a support group particularly for her.

Mistake #2: Underestimating her need to grieve

One of the most important things you can do as you minister to the wife is to allow her an opportunity to grieve. When a woman finds out that her husband is addicted to pornography, she’s just experienced a great loss. That loss may be obvious, like intimacy, trust, respect, and self-worth. Or it may be something more tangible: she may be experiencing financial loss as his addiction has progressed, or if he has lost his job. She may be experiencing a loss of health; I’ve recently spoken with a woman who now has a sexually transmitted disease because her husband’s pornography addiction progressed to the point that he was seeking out prostitutes. Give the wife an opportunity to grieve those losses. Sit and listen. Let her cry, and tell her that she’s not alone as she walks through this.

Ultimately, her husband’s addiction to pornography is not about her. A woman oftentimes tends to ask what she could have done to fix the situation or how she was insufficient for him. But this is not her fault. Her husband is using pornography to fill a hole, a God-sized hole, in his heart. People long for peace, comfort, and intimacy, but pornography brings a false sense of these. It has nothing to do with how she looks, or what she does or doesn’t do.

Mistake #3: Allowing yourself to be deceived

As you listen to both the husband and the wife, don’t be too quick to believe everything that the husband shares, particularly as he is describing the extent of his addiction. Understand that addicts lie. They lie repeatedly. They lie because for a long time they got away with it, and they lie because they want the best of both worlds. Pornography and sexual intimacy are completely different things, and they want both.

And when it comes to caring for the wife, understand that trust is something that must be rebuilt. When a woman realizes her husband is addicted to pornography, she will very likely begin questioning anything he says. Trust has been broken, and it takes time to rebuild. Where her inclination before this revelation was to trust his word, her inclination now will be to doubt it.

We know from Scripture that truth matters. Philippians 4:8 commands us to think about that which is true. This matters for the pastor as you seek to discover that which is true in the addict’s reports, but it matters also for the wife as she tries to wade through the things he says. Lead her, then, to encourage her husband to be truthful, even when it reveals his sin. This may be difficult, but we must live in light rather than darkness.

Mistake #4: Letting her be the porn police

This brings us to another important topic. Oftentimes, a woman will ask me if she should be her husband’s accountability partner—in other words, if she should be the porn police. This usually is motivated by a true desire to help her husband change, to help him recover from his addiction. But this isn’t a healthy dynamic to be setting up. Not only does he need to be reporting to more than one person, he should be accountable to other men, ones who are walking in purity and are mature in their faith.

Further, a wife acting as her husband’s accountability partner is putting herself in a position to have her emotions continually damaged. It is allowing her to be hurt over and over again. Whereas her intentions may be to repair the emotional damage, asking her husband to share each and every lapse only exposes her to more pain.

Help her understand the difference between a lapse and a relapse

Being an accountability partner to her husband also doesn’t help to build trust in their relationship. She needs hope that he will have victory over this addiction. But he will slip; he may relapse. This is an addiction, and like other addictions, lapses and relapses happen, typically more often than we are aware. But if the wife is the accountability partner, it’s much more difficult for her to discern the difference between a slip and a total relapse. And she may allow her already overwhelming emotions to become hysterical. She may question if he really wants to change or be angry that they’re “going down this path again.” Her emotions may cloud her ability to see the difference between a momentary slip that was brought to light and a full-blown relapse.

It may be helpful for you, as a pastor, to help the wife understand the difference between a lapse and a relapse. While a lapse is a momentary slipup, such as a lingering look at a woman walking by or a glance at the woman on the front of a magazine, a relapse is a recurring pattern of the addiction. A lapse is temporary; a relapse lasts. And while a lapse is much more likely to be brought out into the open, a relapse is usually shrouded in the same secrecy that hid the addiction originally.

Where churches often fall short

To conclude, don’t assume that this isn’t a very real issue in your own church. Around 47 percent of Christian men are struggling with pornography, yet only about 7 percent of churches offer any kind of support for men struggling with pornography. So there’s a huge deficit there. Additionally, if 7 percent of churches are offering something to men, the percentage of churches offering something for their wives didn’t even make the radar because there’s already such a deficit for the men. So if you are offering something for the men, you need to be offering support to those women as well. That may be individual counseling, or it may be support groups for women as they walk through this with their husbands. Understand the impact of pornography addiction on women, and seek to minister to them also.

If you’d like additional information on this topic, please see my article 4 Myths About the Wives of Porn Addicts. Also read How to Help the Spouse Who Stays in a Marriage After an Affair by Cindy Beall. She shares the story of how she chose to stay in the marriage after discovering her husband’s infidelity and pornography addiction, and she provides insight on how to minister well to the betrayed spouse. Each of these articles may be helpful to you as you work to help the wives of porn addicts.

Vicki Tiede, MEd, MMin, is a Bible teacher, conference speaker, and author. Vicki is uniquely qualified to minister to women whose husbands are addicted to pornography because of her own experience of being that wife in her first marriage. Vicki has written Your Husband is Addicted to Porn (mini-book) and When Your Husband is Addicted to Pornography: Healing Your Wounded Heart in addition to writing and contributing to six other books. Through her ministry, Vicki offers online, video-conferencing support groups for wives. You can find further resources at www.vickitiede.com or follow her blog at www.vickitiede.com/blog.

November 15, 2018 By K.LeVeq

Wait, I need to tell what??

I think like most others, I tend to camp out in the New Testament. Sorry, Ezra and Nehemiah. Old Testament history can get, well, old! The words of Christ are magnetic. I mean who doesn’t want to dwell on the eternal wisdom Jesus shared with His disciples?

As I try to improve my constant contact with God (love me some step 11!), I have found myself spending a lot of time heeding the advice of my friend and Bible study leader by seeking to understand God’s character in His words. In John 13:35, Jesus reminds His followers to play nice. He tells them: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” It reminds me of something my mother would say to me and my brother when we were fighting. “Love each other. One day you may not have anyone else!”

I read those words and put them out of my mind. I mean of course we should love each other. Lines up with what Jesus called the greatest commandment: love God, love your neighbor as yourself. Ok, I got that. Only, Paul had to go and mess it all up for me.

In Romans 10:14-15, Paul wrote: “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?” Ok, sounds like the work of preachers and missionaries. Except, Jesus told us in the Great Commission in Matthew 28 to go and tell.

I don’t know why, wait I really do know why, but all those disparate points coalesced in my recent study of Romans. By how we love one another, others will know we belong to Christ. Not will come to Christ…will know we belong to Christ. Jesus told us that wasn’t enough. Go and tell. Paul took it a step further. He reminded us that people need to be told. They need to hear the words, to listen to the Gospel. We must go and tell. Tell the story of Jesus, the Gospel, and how he overcame death and sin and was raised from the dead. And how He saved you and all about your story of recovery and redemption. How he didn’t walk away from me and redeemed me in my addiction and continues to work in my family…all about my story.

So go. Tell. In your work. At your school. To your neighbor. Your co-workers. Your friends. What better way to show your love than to share the Gospel with others. And if you feel safe, share your story of how Christ redeemed you.