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You Are In Control of Your Choices

Romans 8:13 – ““For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.””

A common boundary problem is disowning our choices and trying to lay the responsibility for them on someone else. Think for a moment how often we use the phrases, “I had to” or “She (he) made me” when explaining why we did or did not do something. These phrases betray our basic illusion that we are not active agents in many of our dealings. We think someone else is in control, thus relieving us of our basic responsibility.

We need to realize that we are in control of our choices, no matter how we feel. This keeps us from making choices to give “reluctantly or under compulsion,” as 2 Corinthians 9:7 says. Paul would not even accept a gift that he felt was given because the giver felt he “had to” give it. He once sent a gift back so “that any favor you do will be spontaneous and not forced” (Philemon 1:14).

Jesus said a similar thing to the worker who was angry about the wage for which he had agreed to work: “Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius?” (Matthew 20:13). The man had made a free choice to work for a certain amount and was angry because someone who had worked fewer hours had gotten the same wage.

Throughout the Scriptures, people are reminded of their choices and asked to take responsibility for them. Like Paul says, if we choose to live by the Spirit, we will live; if we choose to follow our sinful nature, we will die (Romans 8:13). Making decisions based on others’ approval or on guilt breeds resentment, a product of our sinful nature. We have been so trained by others on what we “should” do that we think we are being loving when we do things out of compulsion.
Setting boundaries inevitably involves taking responsibility for your choices. You are the one who makes them. You are the one who must live with their consequences. And you are the one who may be keeping yourself from making the choices you could be happy with.

Today’s content is drawn from Boundaries DVD Study by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend. Copyright 2014 by Zondervan; all rights reserved. Visit BoundariesBooks.com for more information

 

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Castimonia Purity Podcast Episode 36: Working Step 4 – Sexual Conduct & Deep, Dark Secrets

Part D – Jorge and Doug discuss the next aspect of working Step 4 in sex addiction recovery.   If you haven’t listened to steps 1-3, it may be a good idea to listen to episode 31 (Step 3), episode 20 (step 2), and episodes 9/10 (step one).  Also parts A, B, and C of step four were released a few days before this episode.

In this podcast, they discuss how to work through the harms we have done to others or have been done to us. We take ownership for our part in those harms, and pave the way for future step work by identifying them now.  They also discuss the “deep dark secrets” and how those are detrimental to recovery.  Step 5 is an avenue to release those, so after successful completion of Step 4, that work can be done more fully!

For more information, please email us at puritypodcast@castimonia.org.  We would love to hear from you, get more show ideas, or find other testimonies to record!

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Journal Through Recovery Entry 22: The Why

Early in recovery, my counselor did an exercise with me to expose me to the ingrained behavior I have of avoiding all emotions. I experienced some of the highest anxiety I have ever experienced when spending time in the source of my early shame. It was emotionally smothering. I didn’t want to stay in that. I couldn’t breathe and thought I was going to curl inward from the shame. After that experience, my counselor told me that this was my first experience with getting to the source of my behavior, to the “why.” So evidently, its time to revisit the why.

In my last session, these were the instructions from my counselor:

“I want you to spend the next week just journaling on something that is at the root of your behavior. I want you to focus on the issue of being left alone.”

Ok, so that is interesting. I am to spend time in this, in a place I have previously found to be uncomfortable at best. I am supposed to give my wife the bare outline of this but not any details. I don’t know the details myself so how can I give them to her? I can’t, so I need to let her know what I am doing and that I will come back to her with specifics. I wasn’t quite prepared for where this went.

I am a middle child. I have older siblings and a younger sibling. I didn’t really feel a connection with my father at a young age. I can remember only a couple of instances as a child where we actually spent any time alone together. They weren’t very memorable. Mostly, I felt like an afterthought. I was allowed to come along on hunting trips my brother and father took, even though I had zero interest in hunting. I mainly felt left behind. I started playing into that, overtly stating that I wanted to have time to myself to read and do other things alone, mainly so I would feel like it was my idea, rather than feeling abandoned. That was a hard realization I just had.

The other really hard realization was when my counselor asked me what life was like for me between the ages of 6 and 14 when I first had a sexual experience. I guess I really hadn’t focused on that time. I did now. I journaled about this time in my life. I realized this was a very painful time and a major source of abandonment for me. I spent a lot of time at my older aunt and uncle’s house. As I child, I thought it was because I was special, because they chose me from my siblings and wanted me around. I recently, just very recently, realized it was primarily because my parents were too busy to take care of me and that my older and younger siblings were taken care of in other ways. That was the worst realization.

I spent more days and nights than I can remember, on weekends and during summers, with my aunt and uncle. Well, not with them. At their house. They had a very large house, very formal, with a big library and huge basement with a pool table and ping pong table. Outside was a pool and trampoline. I spent so much time in those rooms alone. Alone with books, games, an empty pool, a solitary game of pool or ping pong. I didn’t realize the impact that time alone had on me. Until today.

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Castimonia Purity Podcast Episode 36C: Working Step 4 – Fears

Part C – Jorge and Doug discuss the next aspect of working Step 4 in sex addiction recovery.   If you haven’t listened to steps 1-3, it may be a good idea to listen to episode 31 (Step 3), episode 20 (step 2), and episodes 9/10 (step one).  Also parts A and B of step four were released a few days before this episode.

In this podcast, they discuss how to work through fears. Often we feel that fear is a weakness that should be forgotten about or not dealt with.  In recovery, we see the importance of facing these fears in appropriate ways, so that we don’t medicate sexually to avoid them.  Jorge and Doug discuss what fears are and appropriate ways to work through them and release them to God.

For more information, please email us at puritypodcast@castimonia.org.  We would love to hear from you, get more show ideas, or find other testimonies to record!

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Human Trap

A pair of rats stare at some cheese in a rat trap and exclaim, "Look, cheese!" and a pair of humans look at an open laptop computer and exclaim, "Look, an internet connection!"
A pair of rats stare at some cheese in a rat trap and exclaim, “Look, cheese!” and a pair of humans look at an open laptop computer and exclaim, “Look, an internet connection!”