30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
Recovery Articles
Boundaries in Dating: Why Say No to Sex?
1 Peter 2:11 – “Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.”
If you have hung around the church for very long, you have probably heard that God wants people to reserve sex for marriage. If you haven’t and that is news to you, then we can understand the shock you might be feeling. For many people, both inside and outside of the church, it does not make sense. If sex feels so good, and is good for the relationship, and both people are consenting, then what is the problem?
Consider this viewpoint: When someone can say no to sex while dating, their behavior is a sign that he or she is capable of delaying gratification and exhibiting self-control, which are two prerequisites of the ability to love. If someone cannot delay gratification and control himself or herself in this area, what makes you think that they can delay their own gratification in other areas of sacrifice? What is going to curb the “I want what I want now” mentality in the rest of life? If someone is able to respect the limit of hearing no for sex, then that is a character sign of someone who can say no to their own desires and hungers in order to serve a higher purpose, or to love another person.
You fall in love with a person and think about making a real, committed relationship with him or her. Naturally, that is going to mean some sacrifice down the road. You are going to want to be with a person who can deny himself or herself for the sake of your relationship in many areas. Think of the areas of sacrifice that a relationship takes. There are sacrifices of time, when you might want to spend time on your favorite hobby, and yet the family needs you. There are sacrifices of money. One person may want to buy a new car, and yet the family needs money for the home. There are sacrifices of getting one’s way. One person may want to go to one place for dinner and the others want something different.
Most importantly, there is the sacrifice that it takes to work out conflict. One person is hurt and wants to strike back in anger or hurt, yet to reconcile, the ability to put one’s own desires aside for the sake of the relationship is necessary. If someone does not have self-control and delay of gratification in pleasure, can they delay the gratification of getting his or her own way in conflict?
Think about it. Wouldn’t you want to be with a person who can hear and respect the “no” of others? Having a boundary in sex while you are dating is a very important test to see if the person loves you. We have all heard people refer to the line “If you love me, you will.” In reality, you should say back, “If you love me, you won’t make demands that I do not feel comfortable with.” Love waits and respects, but lust must have what it wants now. Are you being loved, or are you an object of self-serving lust? Saying no is the only way to know.
We cannot overemphasize the value of dating a person who can delay their own gratification. If you are with someone who ultimately has to have what they want when they want it, you are in for a long time of misery. Choose someone who can delay gratification for the sake of you and the relationship. To the extent that he or she says, “I must have what I want now,” you are in trouble. Boundaries with sex are a sure-fire test to know if someone loves you for you.
This devotional is drawn from Boundaries in Dating, by John Townsend and Henry Cloud.
Porn Addiction Is Now Threatening an Entire Generation
Mainstream researchers are waking up to the real dangers of porn.
April 12, 2016
The latest issue of Time Magazine landed on stands yesterday. And, you might have heard, the cover story paints a menacing picture of sex and sexuality among younger Americans. When the story, “Porn and the Threat to Virility,” first appeared online last week, it initiated no small buzz around the Internet, including an unusual teaming of conservative Christian and secular feminist voices characterizing Time’s findings as indicative of a larger, systemic cultural problem.
During the past decade or so, we’ve heard a lot about how viewing pornography affects the human brain. That, apparently, is a relatively controversial claim. Time’s Belinda Luscombe references experts who argue both for and against that idea—and all of whom bemoan a lack of research in the area. Neurological effects aside, Luscombe basically concludes that for a generation of men more or less raised on porn, the law of diminishing returns comes heavily into play—and those effects are leading to a generational health crisis.
She writes:
A growing number of young men are convinced that their [physical, in-person] sexual responses have been sabotaged because their brains were virtually marinated in porn when they were adolescents. Their generation has consumed explicit content in quantities and varieties never before possible, on devices designed to deliver content swiftly and privately, all at an age when their brains were more plastic–more prone to permanent change–than in later life. These young men feel like unwitting guinea pigs in a largely unmonitored decade-long experiment in sexual conditioning. The results of the experiment, they claim, are literally a downer.
So they’re beginning to push back, creating online community groups, smartphone apps and educational videos to help men quit porn. They have started blogs and podcasts and take all the public-speaking gigs they can get. Porn has always faced criticism among the faithful and the feminist. But now, for the first time, some of the most strident alarms are coming from the same demographic as its most enthusiastic customers.
For a generation of men more or less raised on porn, the law of diminishing returns comes heavily into play—and those effects are leading to a generational health crisis.
The men in these online communities and support groups, Luscombe takes pains to reiterate, are not antisex or some kind of emerging asexuals. Just the opposite, in fact. They, at least in theory, like sex, but their addictions to the pornified portrayal of it won’t let them have the real thing. One man told Luscombe, “I just want to enjoy sex again and feel the desire for another person.” Another: “The reason I quit watching porn is to have more sex.” And simply: “Quitting porn is one of the most sex-positive things people can do.”
The Mainstream Backlash
Time’s cover story is reminiscent of a late 2013 article in GQ called “10 Reasons Why You Should Quit Watching Porn.” At least to me, this article came as a little bit of a surprise, given the magazine’s history of love for the conquesting “gentleman.” The article looked at a survey of the Reddit group NoFap (which also figures in prominently to the Time research). GQ warned sexually active men essentially about the same thing the Time piece now warns an entire society about.
In addition to this kind of anecdotal evidence, Luscombe’s article in Time also details some of the statistics surrounding pornography use—she mentions, too, that the academic world seems curiously hesitant to study the phenomenon, which results in relatively scant data. Still, the results she does report are as damning as the testimonies. She cites an “independent Web-tracking company” that counted some 58 million monthly U.S. visitors to adult sites in February 2006. “Ten years later,” Luscombe writes, “the number was 107 million.” She also claims that the website P****** reported 2.4 million visitors per hour in 2015 alone. Around the world, people watched a gargantuan 4,392,486,580 hours of porn on the site. According to the Time article, that represents “twice as long as Homo sapiens has spent on earth.”
All this porn watching adds up to an overwhelmingly consistent claim from the consumers themselves: Porn users are saying that what they wanted from porn—the pleasure and fulfillment of sex—they’ve now lost completely.
As revealing as Luscombe’s article is, it may not even be the most indicting porn data in this week’s issue of Time.
Also in this week’s issue, a small column appears titled “How Porn Is Changing a Generation of Girls” by Peggy Orenstein, the author of a new book, GIRLS & SEX. Her account of the toll of pornography culture on women, particularly young women, might even be more alarming than the cover story. Orenstein writes:
There is some indication that porn has a liberalizing effect: heterosexual male users are more likely than their peers to approve of same-sex marriage. On the other hand, they’re less likely to support affirmative action for women. And porn users are also more likely than their peers to measure their masculinity, social status and self-worth by their ability to score with “hot” women.
Perhaps because it depicts aggression as sexy, porn also seems to desensitize: female porn users are less likely to intervene when seeing another woman being threatened or assaulted and are slower to recognize when they’re in danger themselves.
If we take this issue of Time seriously—and why shouldn’t we?—porn not only robs men of the very thing they want from porn, but it also damages women, the very people it supposedly celebrates.
A Paradoxical Fight
Back in January, the Barna Group published the results of large study on this same pornography culture. The findings confirm and underscore what we’ve known for a while: Porn use is a massive and growing problem, even among Christians. In part, the Barna study reveals that a staggering 57 percent of younger Millennials (ages 18 to 24) seeking out porn at least once or twice a month. Among older Millennials, the number is only slightly better at 43 percent. Gen-Xers and Boomers reported 41 percent and 17 percent respectively.
Perhaps the most dejecting finding of the study is that only half of adults consider viewing porn is wrong (54 percent). In fact, on a list of taboos, respondents said viewing porn ranks number seven on a list of 11. Things like overeating and not recycling ranked higher.
Anyone who has ever struggled with pornography—or helped someone who has—knows the paradoxical nature of it. On the one hand, of course, sexual drive and desires come naturally. On the other hand, these same desires, as the Time piece clearly articulates, can get out of control and lead toward actions that actually make light of sex and hinder sexuality.
A Spiritual Conflict
One of my former professors talks about what he calls “refugees of the sexual revolution.” Well, if these articles are an indication, they’re here. For some, porn culture promised something a browser screen can never deliver, and left them more empty than before. For others, porn culture dictated new norms of beauty and femininity that stripped them of both. And just like refugees from the Middle East, they are looking for a new home. This is where we have to reach out with welcome and a depiction of sex far more compelling than the self-centered digital version.
In their book, God Loves Sex, Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman III and counselor Dan B. Allender explore, you guessed it, sex in biblical and theological perspective. And right from the start, they recognize this tension. They write:
[Sexual] satisfaction is not final; love never fully satisfies as we desire. We desire more than any one relationship can provide, and yet to seek from others what one can’t fully satisfy is to create even more emptiness and sorrow. We are both blessed and cursed by desire. And we are never perfectly faithful to God, our lover, or to ourselves as we wrestle with desire. Only God is faithful in his desire for us.
The Song of Songs invites us to intensify our desire for sex and play. The by-product is to increase our desire for an Edenic sexuality that will only be fully possible in the new heavens and earth.
Allender and Longman fully recognize the lure of self-focused, self-gratifying sexuality. And they recognize that vision never satisfies. So they point to the deeper realities of sex, that “it is an experience in which a person can lose oneself in the other person. In other words, two people becomes ‘one flesh.’ Though described physically, this oneness is felt not just in the body but also in the soul.”
This vision is exactly the opposite of pornography. As Luscombe’s Time cover reports, porn culture offers an accessible, instant kind of sex but in the end leaves you with no sex at all. God offers sex that requires self-sacrifice and covenant, and it brings far more than just sex.
Don’t Follow People off the Recovery Boat!
Just because a friend jumps off the recovery boat doesn’t mean you should follow!
Happy New Year!
What Are Some Encouraging Bible Verses?
Originally posted at: https://altruistico.wordpress.com/2016/04/25/what-are-some-encouraging-bible-verses-2/
by altruistico
No matter what our discouraging situation, there are encouraging verses in the Bible that can give us hope:
When you’ve lost something, or someone, who has been very precious to you:
Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
Revelation 1:18 “I am alive forevermore.”
John 11:25 “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies’”
When excruciating waves of chronic pain and weakness are crashing over your head:
2 Corinthians 12:9 “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Hebrews 4:16 “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
When your cupboard is bare, and your last crumb has been scraped up:
Matthew 6:33 “Seek first God’s kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
Psalm 23:1 “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.”
1 Thessalonians 5:18 “… give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
When no one seems to understand, or even to care:
Psalm 55:22 “Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.”
Isaiah 40:11 “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.”
When you are being persecuted for your faith:
2 Peter 2:9 “the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment.”
John 15:18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.”
When the nation, the world, and even the family and the church, seem to be disintegrating:
Isaiah 14:24: “The LORD of hosts has sworn, saying, ‘Surely, as I have thought, so it shall come to pass, And as I have purposed, so it shall stand.’”
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
When life’s fears and insecurities gang up on you:
Psalm 27:1 “The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?”
Luke 12:7 “Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
Romans 8:1 “There is, therefore, no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.”
When your mood is dark:
Psalm 118:24 “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice, and be glad in it.”
Romans 8:29-30 “For those whom God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”
When worn out and worn down to the point of giving up:
Hebrews 12:2-3 “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and completer of our faith, who, for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”
When abandoned by everyone meaningful:
Deuteronomy 31:6 “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Hebrews 13:5-6 “… God has said, ‘Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.’ So we say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?’”
When friends and even family seem to be abandoning God:
Psalm 100:5 “God’s faithfulness endures through all generations.”
2 Timothy 3:1-4 “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God”
When under powerful temptation:
1 Corinthians 10:13 “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”
James 4:7-8 “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and He will come near to you.”
2 Timothy 1:12 “He is able to keep what I committed to Him against that day.”
Hebrews 2:18 “Because He Himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.”
When stung by your enemy’s false accusation:
1 Peter 3:14, 16 “But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. … keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.”
Matthew 5:10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs in the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, because great is your reward in heaven”
Romans 8:31-34 “What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.”
When circumstances lead you to doubt God:
Psalm 42:5 “O my soul, why are you downcast? Put your hope in God: for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.”
Mark 9:24 “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
When gripped by unrelenting anger and even hatred:
Ephesians 4:31 “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
James 1:19 “My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.”
1 John 4:20 “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.”
When defeated with guilt, shame, and remorse:
1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Romans 8:1-2 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”
When about to go over the edge with overwhelming demands, pressures, and expectations:
Matthew 11:28 “Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
John 15:5 [Jesus said] “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
When the road forks unexpectedly, or when the multiplied factors of a crucial decision bring darkening confusion:
James 1:5 “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”
1 Corinthians 14:33 “God is not the author of confusion.”
Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your path.”
When you are famished of soul, longing for purity and righteousness:
Matthew 5:6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
Psalm 23:3 “He leads me in paths of righteousness, for His name’s sake.”
When all roads have been cut off so that only despair seems left:
1 Corinthians 10:13 “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”
2 Corinthians 4:8 “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair.”
When the grave opens before you:
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
John 11:25-26 “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.
Hebrews 2:14-15 “Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”
A blessing for all circumstances:
Romans 15:13 “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
