CASTIMONIA

Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

ptsd

By

21 Things Pastors Need To Know About Porn

Originally posted at:http://www.pornfreedomnow.com/2012/05/21-things-pastors-need-to-know-about.html

stlouismag_mh_porn_dribbble

Here some thoughts on what Pastors (and you, too) need to know about pornography.

  • It’s sin. It’s lust. Lust is sin. It’s mental adultery.
  • It’s everywhere. Half the men in your church are likely exposed to it every week, and some of the women too.
  • It’s a ruthless slave driver and traps people in shame and secrecy.
  • NOT talking about it with your people does NOT help them.
  • The porn industry is a dark and twisted place, filled with people with souls whom God deeply loves.
  • People who act in pornographic films are people whom God loves.
  • People who produce pornography are people whom God loves.
  • It does NOT encourage more intimacy in marriage – on the contrary, it destroys it.
  • It is NOT victimless. Broken marriages and shattered lives are all around us as evidence.
  • The internet has exploded the number of porn addicts, offering the three deadly “A’s,” making porn accessible, affordable, and anonymous.
  • Pornography is a drug. It triggers chemicals in the brain that create addictions. It offers a temporary high, followed by a crash into guilt and shame. And one kind of pornography is almost always a gateway into something worse.
  • The younger you are when first exposed, the more susceptible you are to addiction as an adult.
  • Pornography WILL cause you to treat people (especially women) like objects and not living souls.
  • Pornography WILL harden your heart.
  • There is hope.
  • Consumers and producers of pornography can find forgiveness of sin in the blood of Jesus and be made righteous and pure by the saving power of God.
  • Those trapped in pornography addictions can be forgiven of what they’ve entertained themselves with.
  • Breaking the cycle is possible, but extremely difficult, as with any addiction.
  • The cover-up is always worse than the crime.
  • The cost of recovery is high, but the cost of not recovering is much higher.
  • You need help. You need help and accountability, without question.

By

How Journaling Heals Wounds, Part 2

stop-child-abuseWriting that both describes traumatic events in detail and also examines how we felt about these events at the time and feel about them now (describing both negative and positive emotions), is the only kind of writing about trauma that clinically has been associated with improved health . And this is accomplished in Pennebaker’s (Dr. James Pennebaker of the University of Texas) experiments by only one hour of writing – fifteen minutes a day – over a four-day period. Later studies showed that the more days people wrote the more beneficial were the effects of writing. Dr. Pennebaker’s work is compelling. I knew nothing about it during the years when I was working on When the Piano Stops, my own memoir of recovering from incest (and Never Tell: The True Story of Overcoming a Terrifying Childhood, which was the title given its best-selling, UK print). From time to time during those years, my beloved uncle, who had a very limited understanding about what’s involved in healing from childhood sexual abuse, expressed concern about my continually revisiting the most horrifying experiences of my life. The information in this blog would have been great to share with him at that time, but of course I couldn’t. Today, however, I have the opportunity to share it with you, and I do so with the hope that if you’re a survivor of child abuse you’ll take it to heart, gather your internal resources, your memory, your pain, and your creativity, and write on! By Catherine McCall, MS, LMFT
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/overcoming-child-abuse/201209/how-and-why-writing-heals-wounds-child-abuse

“We must be content to grow slowly. Most of us will still barely be at the beginning of our recovery by the time we die. But that is better than killing ourselves pretending to be healthy.” – Simon Tugwell

By

How Journaling Heals Wounds, Part 1

I often wondered why I was supposed to journal my thoughts and feelings when I entered recovery.  Honestly, nobody answered the why, it was just something that was supposed to be done.  Initially, I felt like some teenage girl in her bedroom writing in her “diary” because I did not understand the basis behind putting those thoughts and feeling to paper.  Below is a good summary of how journaling can help God heal our wounds!

journal-bestThere is a profound connection between writing and healing. Dr. James Pennebaker of the University of Texas, after considerable research, explained in his book, Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, that excessive holding back of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can place people at risk for both major and minor diseases. More than simply a catharsis or venting, translating events into language can affect brain and immune functions. The subjects he tested had an increase in germ-fighting lymphocytes in their blood and lower stress levels. Writing was found to reduce anxiety and depression, improve grades in college, and aid people in finding jobs. He also reported that months after people had written about traumas over 70% reported that writing helped them to understand both the event and themselves better. Writing provides a means to externalize traumatic experience and therefore render it less overwhelming. At the same time, as the upsetting experience is repeatedly confronted, the emotional reactivity one feels as s/he assesses its meaning and impact is weakened. Once organized, traumatic events become smaller and smaller and therefore easier to deal with. Having distilled complex experiences into more understandable packages, survivors can begin to move beyond trauma because the process of writing about it provides a means for the experience to become psychologically complete, therefore there’s no more reason to ruminate about it. But not just any kind of writing will do. Dr.Pennebaker explains that the more writing succeeds as narrative – by being detailed, organized, compelling, vivid, and lucid – the more health and emotional benefits are derived. Likewise, over time, the work of inhibiting traumatic narratives and feelings acts as an ongoing stressor and gradually undermines the body’s defenses. By Catherine McCall, MS, LMFT
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/overcoming-child-abuse/201209/how-and-why-writing-heals-wounds-child-abuse

“A journal is a tool for self-discovery, an aid to concentration, a mirror for the soul, a place to generate and capture ideas, a safety valve for the emotions, a training ground for the writer, and a good friend and confident.” – Ron Klug

By

Types Of Dysfunctional Families

Many people hope that once they leave home, they will leave their family and childhood problems behind. However, many find that they experience similar problems, as well as similar feelings and relationship patterns, long after they have left the family environment. Ideally, children grow up in family environments which help them feel worthwhile and valuable. They learn that their feelings and needs are important and can be expressed. Children growing up in such supportive environments are likely to form healthy, open relationships in adulthood. However, families may fail to provide for many of their children’s emotional and physical needs. In addition, the families’ communication patterns may severely limit the child’s expressions of feelings and needs. Children growing up in such families are likely to develop low self-esteem and feel that their needs are not important or perhaps should not be taken seriously by others. As a result, they may form unsatisfying relationships as adults.

Types Of Dysfunctional Families

    • One or both parents have addictions or compulsions (e.g., drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, gambling, overworking, and/or overeating) that have strong influences on family members.
    • One or both parents use the threat or application of physical violence as the primary means of control. Children may have to witness violence, may be forced to participate in punishing siblings, or may live in fear of explosive outbursts.
    • One or both parents exploit the children and treat them as possessions whose primary purpose is to respond to the physical and/or emotional needs of adults (e.g., protecting a parent or cheering up one who is depressed).
    • One or both parents are unable to provide, or threaten to withdraw, financial or basic physical care for their children. Similarly, one or both parents fail to provide their children with adequate emotional support.
    • One or both parents exert a strong authoritarian control over the children. Often these families rigidly adhere to a particular belief (religious, political, financial, personal). Compliance with role expectations and with rules is expected without any flexibility.

http://www.counselingcenter.illinois.edu/?page_id=171

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.” – George Bernard Shaw

By

Just Can’t Seem To Quit Self Gratification

February 26, 2013
by Prevailing Word Ministries

Oh, heaven NO!!!!

No relapse on my part. Not on your life because we are getting too close to the finale. I know that’s it’s been a while since my last blog. However, this is not a report of me backsliding kind of blog.

The trumpet will sound and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we that are alive and remain will be caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

To stay holy is my one goal. I do not plan to be fulfilling the lust of the flesh and satisfying myself when Jesus comes.

Some of you may recall the 10 virgins. Five were wise. Five were foolish. When the bridegroom came, it was time for them to go to the wedding. The five wise had enough oil for the journey in the night and the five foolish did not. The five foolish asked the five wise to spare what they had, and the wise ones declined.

The five wise told them to go and buy for themselves. So they went out to buy oil for themselves, and they found some, but by the time they got to the door, it was shut.

They knocked on the door and the bridegroom did not let them in.

It was too late.

There are many incentives to take advantage of to quit sexual immorality, however, very few will incorporate such incentives.

The pleasures of self gratification can be overwhelming because of the rewards it offers. However, the reward of heaven with Christ outweighs the pleasures of self gratification. There comes a point in your walk with the Lord where masturbation is something you do not need.

Dr. Mark Laaser, who wrote a book on Healing The Wounds Of Sexual Addiction, did a course and placed a powerful lesson on Sexual Addiction on CD. He asked a question, “Can you do without masturbation and sex with your wife?” That’s radical. Because he continued and said, “If you can’t, you do not have full control and you cannot manage your sex life.”

The release of sexual tension is powerful. However, there comes a point where these pleasure of life must come to an end one way or another. Either through self discipline or when the catching away of the people of God takes place. Even after that, people will still engage in some form of releasing sexual tension. Even then, it’s just a matter of time before it all comes to an end.

NO MORE SEX!!!!! FOREVER!!!!!!

For many people, a sense of hopelessness and shame clouds the mind. Hopelessness is the fog of war in the mind and flesh.

As long as this feeling of hopelessness lingers in the mind, the attempt to break free is the light at the end of the tunnel that is seemingly a fleeting thing. Many men and women have dashed their hopes because the urges and impulses dictates their every move.

In my studies about sexuality, I learned that many people plan their day around sex. It usually is at the expense of a marriage, their job, and ultimately, their relationship with the Lord. It was true for me too. The obsession, infatuation, day dreaming, open minded thoughts of reading a newspaper, magazine, women watching, and porn. My whole day was planned around an orgasm.

All these things and the true worship of God takes a back seat. In most cases, a relationship with God in hypocrisy is better than no relationship at all. As ridiculous as this sounds, this is where many of God’s people are. I can identify with this because when you refuse to equate the sin of self gratification as part of the religious ritual of false penance, it is easy to think that you are just as close to God as if you never sinned.

Like John, the apostle of the Lamb said, “If we say we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.”

I know you are not going to let me off the hook about calling masturbation a sin because there is no specific chapter and verse that declares that masturbation is a sin. However, where the Bible is silent, it is never to be assumed that it is safe to commit an act. Besides, not many people will agree that since Jesus didn’t do it, neither should I.

This stops all of the pretense.

I mean, we are to be like Christ in every way? Right?

If this is so according to, Romans 8:29, and if we are to prove that good, acceptable, and perfect will of God, to yield our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our reasonable service according to Romans 12:1, then we should be able, at least consider the fact that the Lord desires for sin to not have dominion over us according to Romans 6:12.

The majority of the time, we are always looking for a reason to “continue in sin that grace may abound” according to Romans 6:1. When we get to the place where we desire to please the Lord, we find ourselves looking for reasons to continue in righteousness so that grace may abound. We look to cut our hands and our eyes, we look to strive against sin even to the shedding of our own blood to stop sin.

No, put the Rambo knife down.

Jesus and the writer of Hebrews spoke of entering a place of radical cutting off of the instruments and members so that we would stop sinning.

Paul said, by the Spirit of God, “The body is not made for sexual immorality.” 

The physical body was made to be indwelled by the Lord. The Lord desired to inhabit man and the body is not for fornication (pornea).

As long as we make provision to fulfill the desires of the flesh and mind, we will never break its cycle.

Millions of men and women throughout the world masturbate every day. For reasons that range from sexual perversion to fulfill lust, to releasing sexual tension is a major problem. It seems like marriage, which is the answer to stop masturbation is no longer the answer that man wants to accept. Additionally, self control, a fruit of the Spirit according to Galatians 5:22, is cast to the side.

The parable of the sower is the most powerful parable that Jesus ever spoke. In that parable is the answer to handle the problems we face in life. It also serves as the gauge or measuring tool to locate where you are in your relationship with the Lord. Producing fruit is the thing that most concerns the Father. Galatians 5:22. John 15:1-5 confirms this and Jesus further confirms this when He said that we are known by our fruit.

Man will stand in four places. Good ground, wayside, stony ground, and thorny ground.

The last ground, thorny ground speaks of people that are trapped in cares, riches, and pleasures of life. 

The pleasures of this life come with a price. If we are unable to cast aside the pleasures of this life, we may never be free. But thank God your failure is not final. While there is still time, you can enjoy freedom in Christ from the powerful urge to masturbate. You can return to experience a healthy sexual life with your wife or husband if you are married.

Most importantly, you can be restored in your relationship with the Lord in righteousness and true holiness, laying aside every weight and the sin that does so easily beset you, to lay aside every filthiness and overflow of wickedness, to cleanse ourselves from the filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

Hopelessness is coming to an end for you. New life in Christ is at hand for you.