Two thousand years ago, God warned Christian men, “Abstain from sinful lusts, which war against the soul.” (1 Pet. 2:11.) There have always been casualties from sexual lust; but it is doubtful that the church has ever before seen the spiritual carnage that now covers the Christian landscape because of our unparalleled access to graphic pornography.
Here are a few comments I’ve heard in the last few weeks from the battlefront.
“Inwardly I cried through your whole message on sexuality. My husband and I haven’t had sex for two and a half years. Last summer he went off alone for a week to a gay beach.” This broken-hearted wife went on to tell me of the pornography addiction that had increasing destroyed her marriage and was wrecking her husband’s life.
Another comment from the war zone: “She took her wedding ring off, threw it at me, and sobbed, ‘I don’t want to stay married to a man who makes me worry every second whether or not he is going to be faithful to me when he is deployed overseas.’” He had confessed to his wife that his pre-marriage struggle with pornography had come back after 3 short years of marriage. He told me she was seriously considering whether or not she had biblical grounds for divorcing him.
One last conversation from the frontline: “My teenage son just said to me, ‘Dad, I know that you keep the family computer in the family room. But the PS-3 we just bought is in my room and it has Internet access. I have started looking at pornography and I need your help to stop.’”
These three conversations represent three stages in the slippery slope towards pornography addiction. The first man is at stage three—fully addicted to perversion. His lust is dominating and destroying his life. But he didn’t start out that way. His pornography use increasingly enslaved him and demanded more and more perverse sexual images to gratify him until those screen images no longer satisfied him and he acted out his lust with a real man.
The second man is at level two, where his pornography habit is strong enough to have impacted his relationship with his wife. Habitual use of pornography before marriage returns after marriage 100 % of the time. He will probably need counseling to break the habit and restore his marriage.
The teenage son is at level one—fighting to keep from forming the deadly habit of pornography use. He is fighting to abstain from the sinful lust that would destroy his soul. As a computer virus systematically destroys the computer’s hard drive, while hiding its presence, so pornography systematically destroys the soul of a man, without him even realizing it. This is deadly serious stuff.
Today’s church must minister to men at all stages of pornography abuse—but the place to win this battle is at level one! Today’s church must either equip the men in our churches with biblical principles to win the battle with lust or allow our boys and men to slide down the slope towards an addiction that will wreak havoc in their soul. Sin doesn’t stand still.
If you are reading this e-letter, please push your church to equip the teenage boys and men for this battle. The best approach is to host a seminar on sexual purity every three years with a follow up bible study. I have led such a seminar over 25 times including a workshop at our national denomination-wide meeting, with very encouraging results. It is called Grace Transformed Sexuality, has a 9 week follow up study by the same title, and is very affordable ($25/man with a minimum of 25 men.) Click here for more information about this seminar.
It doesn’t have to be my material. Just do your part to equip the men of your church in their battle with lust. Stop them from sliding down the slippery slope to addiction.
Why Many Approaches to Sexual Purity Fail
Seven years ago, one of the men mentioned above seemed radically changed by attending a sexual purity seminar. There was every indication that the desire for sexual purity was sincere and the changes real. Eighteen months later, however, the addiction returned with a vengeance.
Many approaches to sexual purity work temporarily, but eventually fail. The reason is that they focus on behavior modification without the heart transformation that needs to go with it. For example, learning the discipline of bouncing our eyes away from half-dressed women (instead of towards them) is a great principle for resisting temptation. The problem is that sometimes I don’t want to bounce my eyes but want to engage in a little lust. Heart transformation is about changing our wants.
How is the heart changed? By marinating our hearts in grace. In the words of Tim Keller, “We can only change permanently as we take the gospel of grace more deeply into our understanding and hearts.” Grace is the only antidote strong enough to overcome men’s toxic shame over their sexual lust. It is the only motivation compelling enough to pick fallen men up, when lust has bloodied them, and send them back into the arena to fight again. It is the only force potent enough to change the heart desires that lead us into sexual sin.
To find out more about the nine week group study, Grace Transformed Sexuality click here.
For a fuller explanation of why a grace-centered approach to sexual purity is the only method that works click here.
