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Experiencing Spiritual Intimacy While You Make Love

Spiritual intimacy in marriage is a beautiful thing. When we have it, we can truly make love, not just have sex. I think that’s actually part of God’s plan for sex. Think about it: in sex we bare ourselves physically. But for sex to really work well, we also have to bare ourselves emotionally. We have to be able to be vulnerable. We have to be willing to “let go”. God created people with first and foremost a desperate longing for relationship. We long to know and be known, and in that knowing to be accepted. It’s our deepest need. When we focus only on the physical, sex too often can seem shallow. When we combine the physical with the emotional and the spiritual, sex is stupendous, because it encompasses all that we are. One of the reasons that our culture has become more pornographic–and why things that were once considered sexually taboo are now pretty much mainstream–is that our culture has made sex into something only physical because they don’t have anything else. And yet they know they’re missing something, so they try more and more extreme things. We have the ingredients for an amazing sexual relationship, because it’s real intimacy, not just orgasm. (And, by the way, that makes orgasm even greater!). Excerpts form an article found at http://tolovehonorandvacuum.com/2012/02/29-days-to-great-sex-day-27-experiencing-spiritual-intimacy-while-you-make-love/

Sex is always about emotions.
Good sex is about free emotions;
bad sex is about blocked emotions.
Deepak Chopra

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Give Up Your Old Negative Identities

If you are in a relationship, and you recognize that it is heading toward the same negative outcome as past relationships, you can stop the momentum and avoid another tragic ending. You and your partner are most likely collaborating in creating the negative dynamics in your relationship. Not only is he/she the same kind of person you always end up with, it is most likely that you are the same kind of person he/she ends up with, too. Even though there are real qualities we love and admire in the people we choose to become romantically involved with, we must consider that each of us is also making sure that the negative baggage we each carry fits nicely into one another’s undeveloped emotional compartments. Talk with your partner about how your patterns of relating fit together and about how you may be playing out dynamics from your pasts with each other. As you discuss how they play out in your relationship, you will each have ideas of behaviors you can challenge and recognize that your relationship is not doomed. Remember that, in any relationship, you are going to face your own limitations as well as those of another human being. The better you know yourself and your partner knows him/herself, the stronger you will both be in dealing with these limitations. You can both evolve and grow in the relationship. As you each challenge yourselves and give up your old negative identities, you will discover new aspects of yourself and of your partner. Taken from an article by Lisa Firestone http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-firestone/wrong-relationship-choices_b_830989.html

Most people are other people.
Their thoughts are
someone else’s opinions,
their lives a mimicry,
their passions a quotation.
  Oscar Wilde

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Key Questions: Now That I’ve Started My Purity Journey, What’s Next?

Posted: 28 Mar 2014 03:00 AM PDT

HOW DO I LIVE NOW?

Alternate Title:  SEXUAL PURITY 201

I’m assuming that you’ve already taken some first steps.  To me, this is an intermediate blog.  It’s primarily for those who are working on their sexual purity journey.  You are engaged in the basics.

How do I know I’m engaged in the basics?

  • You’re sharing your sins, secrets and struggles with others
  • You’re building a support team
  • You’re building a purity strategy
  • You’re in the battle fighting, struggling and wrestling (you’ve not given up)

It’s hard to take the next steps if you haven’t taken the first steps.
It’s hard to take the next steps if you’re still hiding.
It’s hard to take the next steps if you are throwing in the towel.

SEXUAL PURITY 201
Alright, let’s look at some deeper lessons.  I think these tips will help push your sexual purity journey into the deeper places God wants you to be.

1.  Always move toward truth. – We can’t lie and go with God.  We can’t hide, cover up, minimize, deflect, and color our actions and be righteous.  We need to accurately reflect our sins, struggles, and victories to others.   Moving toward the truth means we take the next steps.  We answer our wife’s questions.  We tell the truth to our accountability partner and to our group.  We allow light into the dark closets of our heart.

2.  Behind the wounds are lies, find them. –  My counselor challenged me with this.  I’ve been testing this theory for the last 4 years and found it to be true.  Anytime I have pain or wounds, I have believed something wrong about myself, God, or another person.

3.  Deep healing comes in patches. – Of course, healing is a process.  Of course, God can instantly heal our hurts.  But I’ve found that I have to work on a patch before the next patch opens up.  Some call it “layers of the onion”.  We will find new areas of our life and past that we need to surrender to God and seek Him for healing.  Every patch that gets touched by God is one more place you’ll be able to reflect God’s glory.

4.  Tune in to your emotions. – We guys generally run away from our emotions.  We push them away and think that someone’s a “sissy” if they talk about their emotions.  Not in 201 class.  The student of sexual purity is learning how to identify what’s in his heart.  He’s learning to talk about his feelings and express them in a healthy way.  If you’re building a good support system (friends, support group, counselors, ministers, spouse) those will be good places to develop your emotional muscles.

** Bonus Insight ** My counselor reminded me that porn and masturbation has a numbing effect on our emotions.  When porn is gone and we’re no longer medicating, we’re able to feel more.  The highs are higher and the lows are also lower.

5.  Healthy sexuality is the larger goal. – The main goal is not stopping our bad behaviors – the affair, masturbation, chatrooms, or Internet porn.  It’s bigger than that.  God wants us to move toward having a healthy sexuality.  There are many of us (myself included) that never had health to begin with.  Now we have a chance to experience the true fulfillment in our sexuality that God intended.  We are getting a taste of the Garden of Eden.  True intimacy with God and with our spouse.  Exercising our capacity to value, respect, and love others.  Serving others instead of consuming.

6.  Figure out who God really is. – I was surprised how messed up my understanding of God was.  He was like my earthly father – distant, angry, and loved me conditionally.  He was a God that had to be appeased.  I had to work to earn His attention and love.  I thought I had to be a “good boy” in order to have good things happen to me.  Wrong.  Our sexual purity journey is a spiritual journey.  God not only wants you to stop looking at porn and ogling women, He wants you to know who He is and how deep his love, grace, and mercy is.  Personally, the book of Psalms is the place where I’ve found God most during these last four years of my recovery.

Jeff Fisher helps guys with their purity journeys through:

  • Online / Phone Support Groups
  • Accountability Coaching 
  • Personal Coaching 
  • Speaking at Conferences

www.puritycoaching.com
jeff@puritycoaching.com

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Star Wars: Redemption – VIDEO (Part 3)

This is the finale of the previous two Anakin Skywalker movies, Star Wars: The Fall and Star Wars: Tribulation.  One of the most fundamental items to understand about the Star Wars Saga is that it is not just a battle between rebels and an empire, it is all about the redemption of one man, Anakin Skywalker. 

The Star Wars Saga was probably one of the best film series ever created and had an amazing recovery theme.  Below is a short summary of the overall movie from Wikipedia:

Star Wars is an American epic space opera franchise centered on a film series created by George Lucas. It depicts the adventures of various characters “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”, mostly involving, but not limited to, the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker.

In this final part of the Star Wars Redemption Trilogy, we see Darth Vader continue to struggle with the fact that he has a son and the Emperor (the addiction) wants to cause harm to his son after years of tormenting Darth Vader.  Many of us in recovery have felt the Holy Spirit speak to us about our children and the effects that our addiction had on them.  For Darth Vader, it is just the same.  A struggle continues inside of Darth Vader.  He knows he has lost a lot to the Dark Side, his first master, Qui-Gon Jinn murdered by a Sith, his mother, Schmi Skywalker murdered by evil Sand People, and even his wife, Padmé Amedala who dies from a broken heart after Anakin chooses the Dark Side.  Now there is a possibility of losing his son Luke to the Dark Side, aka the unhealthy lifestyle.  Will he draw the line and say this problem ends with him, or will he allow the addiction to continue and pass on to his son?  Can someone so vile and evil be redeemed or is he destined to live a life of anger and rage?

One of the things I explain to my daughters is that my own personal story is a lot like Anakin Skywalker’s.  A lot of bad stuff happened to me when I was a child that formed me into an unhealthy individual that made a lot of bad choices.  For 30 years, I was involved in unhealthy behaviors.  But like Anakin, I was redeemed from my past with the help of the “Son” Jesus Christ and now do good for the Lord.  My small children seem to understand this and have compassion on Darth Vader rather than fear him.  Maybe we should all have compassion on those that have fallen into the pit.  After all, if I, “Darth Vader” can be redeemed than anyone can.  I hope you enjoy watching this video as much as I enjoyed creating it.  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.

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Children Accessing #Porn in the UK

From www.breitbart.com on 3/28/14

Pornography websites were accessed by at least 44,000 primary school children in one month, online research showed Friday, amid calls for greater restrictions on providers.

The Authority for Television on Demand (Atvod) tracked the actions of children in Britain in December 2013 and found that one in 35 of six- to 11-year-olds online clicked onto an adult website.

Some 200,000 aged under 16 — one in 16 who went online — also accessed an adult website in the same month, while one in five teenage boys under 18 were clicking on porn, the online video regulator said.

One adult site, P******, which allows users unrestricted access to thousands of hardcore porn videos free of charge attracted 112,000 of the teenagers.

Atvod is calling on the government to act urgently to protect children from adult material and introduce laws forcing pornography websites to carry out age checks before allowing access.

The watchdog said sites that do not comply should be blocked from processing payments from British customers.

Atvod chief executive Pete Johnson said: “Significant sums are flowing from UK customers to foreign websites which allow children to access hardcore porn. In 2013, The Times estimated the sum could be £180 million a year.

“Cutting off that flow of funds to services which allow children to view hardcore porn would provide a powerful incentive for porn websites to put in place effective age verification and access control mechanisms in order to restart the flow of funds from the UK.”

The findings come the week after a group of MPs urged the government to do more to tackle under-age exposure to online porn.

Atvod already forces pornographic websites based in Britain to conduct age checks before users can view explicit photographs or video, by demanding credit card details or verifiable personal information.

But the regulator says the majority of online pornography is downloaded from businesses based overseas, which are beyond its control.

Atvod wants all adult sites to request a license that would only be granted if age checks were in place.

The government recently acted to protect child Internet users by forcing service providers to block pornography unless a household opts in to receive it.

Responding to Atvod’s demands, a government spokesman said: “We will continue to work with industry and others to look at where further action could be taken, including around age restrictions.”