CASTIMONIA

Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

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Not Just Feeling Good

To experience spiritual intimacy, take time being naked. I don’t just mean taking your clothes off to make love. I mean actually be naked together. Hold each other. Take a bath together. Even pray naked together! Redo that exercise where you just take time touching each others’ bodies. Really feel as if you completely know the other person. It’s actually more vulnerable to be naked while someone touches you than just to be naked while you “have sex”. And so take that time to explore! Take time to be spiritually naked. This may sound weird, but trust me on it: pray before sex. When we unite together spiritually first, it’s as if our souls are drawn together. And when our souls are drawn together, we want to draw together in a deeper way. If you’re uncomfortable with free-form prayer, buy a book of prayers… The words don’t matter; the heart does. When you mean it, and you bow before God together, you really are drawn towards each other in a much more intense way. Look into each others’ eyes. The eyes are windows, and yet how often do we close our eyes, as if we’re trying to shut the other person out, and concentrate on ourselves? I know sometimes you have to close your eyes to feel everything, but sometimes open up and look into his eyes. To actually see him–and to let him see into you–is very intimate, especially at the height of passion. Say “I love you”. It’s such a little thing, but while you’re making love–or even when you orgasm, say “I love you”. Make sex about not just feeling good, but expressing love.
http://tolovehonorandvacuum.com/2012/02/29-days-to-great-sex-day-27-experiencing-spiritual-intimacy-while-you-make-love/

There are only two
guidelines in good sex.
Don’t do anything
you don’t really enjoy
and find out what
are your partner needs
and don’t balk them
if you can help it.
Alex Comfort

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Monday Night Meeting at The Fellowship Cancelled, 12/28

Due to The Fellowship being closed the week of December 28th, we are cancelling the Monday night meeting on 12/28.  The meeting will resume on January 4, 2016.  Please visit our other Monday meetings if you would like to keep a Monday meeting in your rotation.

 

Monday Mornings
Time: 6:00AM – 7:30AM
Location: First Baptist Church
1700 Milam Street
Columbus, TX  78934
979.732.6261
http://www.fbccolumbustx.org

Monday Nights
 Time: 7:00PM – 8:30PM
Location: Lifepath Church – Room 108
17703 W Little York Rd
Houston, TX 77084
281.855.0222
Other Meeting times and locations can be found by following the link below.

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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