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A Virtuous Wife… Don't forfeit this!

Enjoying some old tunes (New Order, Everything’s gone green),  reading Proverbs 31, with a small cup of coffee this monring I was pontificating (nice word) about this Virtuous wife found here in the chapter.  Of course I think of my own wife, as some of you might have as well and find myself very thankful for the Bible and God’s value on women.

But what I found my mind going to most was the idea that those in porn pleasure will not be able to experience this joy between a husband and wife, simply put, they have a perspective problem.

When I was writting my book I read Ron Jeremy’s book, “The hardest man in showbusiness” and recieved much of what he said.  One thing that got to me and still does was the idea that he is lonely and would love to have a monogamous relationship.  He sounds like a very nice guy and quite the romantic.  He is a play actor as well and has always enjoyed the theatre and such.  What a swell guy.  What a bummer that through the continual  lust of the flesh this oportunity now is slipped by in many ways and will be completely snuffed out unless he stop his occupation and in turn lust.

Just as R.J. has thought through this senario, I have too.  What does it profit to have everything in this world, to be dying, and have no wife there holding your hands or looking into your eyes for the last time.  Man my heart just breaks for those that have never expereinced the beautiful joys of having  a person that is yours!  Only yours!  You live together every day, raise children and watch them play soccer.  Walking your kids to there first day in Elementary school.  Going on trips together seeing exotic places together in loving embrace.  Fighting age together and feeling the roots of love going deeper and deeper.  This is a Virtuous relationship!  A man & a women togerher till death do they part.

See I know that I will get old one day… If I live that long, that is.  And my nose is going to be long, my face longated as well.  My ears will grow extra big and my eye sockets will go inward.  My hair will be jacked, and my body broken.  I will not look like a porn star in the slightest.  But what will be of greatest value will not be my looks, or my wifes.  It will be at that time a simple love for one another, that has nothing to do with our ability to be great in bed or what our bodies look like.  Our perspectives will have changed and love have grown from looking at the outward to all of the inward beauties in each other.

A Un-Virtuous wife…Easy to find…Just as in the same proverb a man who likes to drink is as well.  Don’t forfiet this life of committment.  Don’t let love be a surface thing.  Let it’s roots run deep!  You’ll be blessed you did…in the end.

“There is a way that seems right but in the end it leads to destruction.”  Proverbs 16:25

Training in lust

“Having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls.  They have a heart trained in covetous practices, and are accursed children.” 2nd Peter 2:14

I would like to take the time to say something here that I think is quiite importanat to point out for us from the writting of Peter.

These false teachers had:

Eyes full of adultery – they didn;t have porn movies or internet porn per say, but they consistantly put themselves in places of sexual stimulation.  We have TV & Interenet that do just fine in supplying us all the fullness of adultery behavior.  How many times do you think you have seen Adultery being committed in your life?  This is crazy to think about, but I would guess that most of us living in this 21st century have seen the ‘act’ of adultery hundreds of times in movies before.   It is no longer marginal, but common.  What are you and I viewing?  Has it changed the way we think about the subject?  When I used to watch porn, I would think, “hey this really is not that bad.  It’s making be a better lover to my wife.”  Oh, what justificaiton for viewing adultery over and over and refusing to believe there is a consequence in it.

They Cannot cease from sin – Here is the problem of viewing sexually stimulating ‘acts.’  It is addictive.  We will soon be in bondage to the behavior.  It’s not that we will not cease, but we “cannot” cease. (akatapaustos – unable to stop, unceasing) 

Continued viewing brings us to consistent behaving, leading to bondage.  We now think adultery behavior is the way things were designed, we have seen so much of it.  My culture bears this out completely.  Growing up I saw behaviors over and over and assumed that was the way things were done.  I had to re-learn what I had seen for years and years.  The brain is a magnificant sensory organ in the body, capturing images and storing them in our hard drive, over and over this happens.  We tend to emulate those we see on the screen.  But the end of this is destruction.  This behavior really was not what we were created for, but a ploy of the Matrix so to speak, to keep us in our so called happy blindness.

Enticing unstable souls – This is where it gets bad.  What is porn there to do anyway.  Make money?  Only one way to do that, and that’s to entice. To entice means to arouse desire.  That sounds like porn to me.  Not only porn, but those that are ‘in the church’ that continue in sin with no heart for confession to the glory of God and their own joy.  I’m talking specifically about chuch leadership that has gone this direction as to not offend anyone, but has gone the total opposite way, enticing those to continue in a world of sin by not willing to confess their own adultery themselves!  I know, you say that sounds hard core.  But how many Pastors are caught in sexual sin?  Heterosexual sin?  Homosexual sin?  Whatever the case, we will continue to entice unstable souls until we are ourselves no longer being enticed ourselves by the culture.  Oh, I have a long way to go.

Trained in covetous practices – When learning guitar, I practiced.  I did not practice once a week, but for hours a day.  Now picking up a guitar and playing something takes no thought at all.  It comes easy and naturally.  How great is that?  But what if it’s adultery, lust, sexual immorality?  Don’t you think this too becomes natural to us who have been practitioners of this?  We cannot just think the input in the brain has not changed the way we export behavior.  Something is training you and I!  What is that?  We get so used to mediocrity in porn that we cannot see the beauty in our own spouses or a precious older couple that has weathered the storms of life for 65 years.  Oh, we have compromised through a deception, our hearts have become hard.  It’s like those that listen to American Idol singers never realizing the greatness of the Hillard Ensemble of works of Puccini.

We need re-training.

Kill your TV!  haha – I remember that bumper sticker.  Maybe there is a inner crucifying that we need to do within the church to find something far greater, or rather someone!

Jesus is beautiful…precious is He…1st Peter 2:7Image

Sex Trafficking 101- Thoughts on the testimony of Natasha Herzig

Natasha HerzigI recently was invited to attend a conference here in Tucson about Sex Trafficking.  My heart has been pricked lately to learn more about this collosal problem knowing one thing mainly:

It is my belief that in defeating the un-Christlike desires that beat our brains for sexual immorality, we first must see the greatness of Christ and secondly (the reason I went) was to remove delusionment of the sex industry as being great for society, and on a smaller scale, us in the church of Christ.

I wrote a Chapter on this… “way that seems right but in the end”..Kapoof!!!  Destruction!  See  http://www.tatepublishing.com/bookstore/book.php?w=978-1-61566-015-5

But for this Blog the conference did the Job at tearing down the porn fantasy land that we make up in our brains as we watch people “act.”

One of the testimonies in particular was outstanding.  This nice looking 35 year old stood at the podium (introduced by a DVD of America’s Most Wanted front man) and shared for 45 minutes the most troublesome truths from her life from 18 on.  First there was the abduction by professional sex traffickers at 18.  If that didn’t freak me out enough, hearing about the physical abuse of that event and of her capturer forcing her into prostitution being a virgin did it!  Can you imagine the hatred in a person to put a person through that kind of pain because they thought of them as a opportunity for gaining money!  Learning of her heart change over the year of being in forced prostitution gave me much compassion on those that are stuck in sex bondage’s of all sorts.  I mean why is it that some people are in porn (acting or viewing)?  Why do some of us just struggle with that particular sin and others have no desire for such a sin?  Seeing and hearing her share made me again see the incredible mercy and greatness of God to forgive.  His long-suffering is great.

We all in a way have been sex trafficked…Someone is making money off our viewing and buying.  But this lady had no choice…and if you think about it…some of us have seen sexual immorality since we were kids!  I did’t choose porn!  It choose me!  How many little kids (6yrs old) you think woke up and went searching for porn images?  NONE… Here she was a 18 year old virgin, honor role, church go’er who later would be so thrown into sexual immorality, even against her will, that when she spoke of no longer being bound by a Pimp anymore, still the sexual stimulation was needed (so she went into the porn industry), it was her identity and how she felt valued.  She had something others wanted.  They paid for it.  It was emotional economics…Supply and Demand.  But don’t blame her for this, though she was on film just 4 years ago (it’s 2012 now).  This is a person taken from her protective world, placed in a world of hate, greed & perversity of the worst kind.  Kind of like us who have been around the struggle with porn forever it seems.  Children, innocent and beautiful, taken and shown images and actions that we don’t understand only to later find ourselves accepting those ideas and graft them into our own lives…to our own destruction.

She now is happily married.  The influence of porn pleasure will be a continual battle for her.  In the way she engages in intimacy with her spouse to how she dresses.  These sexual influences in our lives rear there heads, the heart still breaks, the scars are deep.

I praise God for her deliverance.  She has found something greater.  She couldn’t just get out of the porn industry untill she found something greater, something better…Her value had to be found not in her ability to please others sexually, but her value had to be found in another who is greater, and better in pleasure than anything she had ever tasted.  “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

I think I got much out of her testimony.  No matter how great porn pleasure might look, it’s just never can satisfy.

The conference did the job!  Thanks Natasha for sharing.

Pastor Beau J. Ouellette (Author of “Porn & A Pastor)

How Sad!

Most of you have heard of the latest sex scandal that has taken place in Happy Valley at Penn State University.
How sad this is for those victims of such a act.  I find it amazing that all people who do not necessarily hold to a absolute truth code of ethics now so loudly proclaim what is good and bad with such absoluteness!  I hope you too see the contradiction of this world that so rejects the absolute truth of the Bible yet in turn has chosen a different standard for judging right and wrong based on the philosophies of men.  Two men that have changed us in the United States are Sigmund Freud and Alfred Kinsey.  Their sex studies and infatuation with the topic influenced many in the Country.  Today we hear many proclaiming how awful it is that this happened under Joe Pa’s watch at Penn State, yet I don’t hear much from the Psychology department that uses Freud as a basis for it’s studies?  Or how about the ACLU that backed the Kinsey report in having court cases that deal with sex use the Kinsey report as it’s basis in passing judgment on child sex offenders?  Haven’t heard from them!  It is one giant contradiction that is taking place.  People are against this act (and they should be) yet

beau.jpg they reject the book that tells us that it is wrong and believe the books (some even teaching in the fields) that solidify these actions.  Anyway…here is some stuff I recommend.

http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/traducoes/pedophilia.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rAvF23WvoUc

Sweet Sleep!

I was reading Proverbs 3 the other day and came upon this passage.  The context is keeping wisdom and not letting it depart from us.  The passage is in verse 24 and it reads, “Yes, you will lie down and your sleep will be sweet!”One of the area’s that is so affected by our porn behaviors has been “sweet sleep.”  So many of us have found ourselves in late night patterns, flipping through channels or getting online only to fall again, and once the stumble has occurred, it becomes difficult to have this sweet sleep.  In our conscious we are burdened and unable to rest well, only to wake up groggy and regretful.This is no fun!  The remedy is to find Happyness (vs. 13) is God’s wisdom in His Word.  His word tells us plainly that in keeping his word we have peace.  This means a great night of sleep!  Practically this means changing things up in your life.  For married couples I recommend going to bed close to the time your wife does and enjoy her…as the proverbs also say.  This does not just mean sexually, but in a loving way, simply being around her.  She will be blessed to know you prefer her than TV!

Think through some of this and how you can have better sleep, peaceful sleep.  It is good for your health!  (vs eight)

You are complete in HIM!
Col 2:10

Lust and Trust! by Karen Adams

Well, summer is definitely here.  We certainly are not wearing long jeans and sweaters anymore!  Not in this heat!

It is time now to bring out our summer clothes.  Now, as believers, we know how to dress more modestly than the world does.  (1st Tim 2:9)  Yet we know that just as the flower sprouted in the Spring, we will be seeing much more skin sprouting too!  Swimwear, sleevelesss shirts, shorts that are…real short.  This brings me to what’s on my heart.

At this time of year, men’s eyes will be darting all over the place.  Either subtly or blantantly to get a look at women and their apparel (or rather, non apparel).  A common saying for women who see their spouce/boyfrind doing this is the old cliche’ “Oh, men will be men.”  But NO!  Men as believers in Christ are called, often challenged to a much higher standard when it comes to this lustful behavior.  It hurts if our loved one looks at another woman and says how nice she looks or how pretty she is.  Be honest, how does that make us feel?  Undersireable?  We think of changing our hair, going on a diet to fit into old cloths that once fit us nicely.  Although I do give Christian men more benifit of the doubt there are still many who do this.  But my thought is for us women.  How do we react?  Do you pretend you didn’t hear it?  Do you comform to dressing like the world, or are you just plain angry and keep your mouth shut?

There is a better way of going about this issue.  Sure men are acting sinful as they lust, but for us women we also fall into sinful behaviour in the above ways too.  This reaction to sin is not the way to go!

There is a evil one and this is where he gets us.  He would love for you to believe you have a justified righteousness here.  But we simply don’t.  Men are lusting, yes, and that is sinful.  But we as women are angry and resentful and that is sin as well.  Both do not produce the righteousness of God.  First and foremost we need to ask the Lord to forgive us for feeling the way we do.  Pray for sustenance, abiding in the fruits of the Spirit.  Galatians 5:22.  Be honest and talk to your loved one.  But even if he continues, know this, we don’t have too!  We can pursure the joy of the Lord.

Colossians 2:10 tells us that we are complete in Him!  That’s right, your complete in God alone!  We don’t need a person, place or thing to keep us joyful!  Our joy is complete in the Messiah!  Not only that but we are beautiful to Him.  He wants us to praise and glorify Him in every situation that comes our way, showing His value to a lost world that does not know that value of Jesus.  Knowing that our hope and trust lie in Him should keep us showing joy and now, in this world, and in the life to come.

by Karen Adams

Spicing things up!? O Really?

Have you ever heard someone use the term, “Spicing things up?”  This term is usally linked with our intamacy with our spouce, correct?  There are books written on the subject, christian books by Christian councilors that discuss this subject in detail in attempts to have a couple that is struggling with there intamacy for one another find a new spark of passion for each other.

I’ve had many people approach me over the years, especially ladies who try this sort of tequnique, but is this really a God glorifying approach to the passion between me and my wife?  I find that the world uses this tool as well.  Talk shows are littered with this kind of approach to healing a non passionate marriage.  But should we in the church use the same tool.  If what I understand as spicing things up means for my wife to dress in fanasy clothing like a porn star than I am strongly against it.  Im not sure if I see much difference between wathcing porn and self gratifying than having my wife dress up as a porn star and again I self gratify, but this time its with a body!  The same thing is happening in the brain.  Lust, not love.

If I am moved deeply in my heart by the God of Creation, who is Love, the most passioate of all, then being passionate for my wife will come from a motivation from the passionate relationship of love that is rooted in God.  God does not run out of love or passion, and neither will I for my wife, as the souce of our passion is not porn lust, but the eternal pleasurable God!

So that makes me wonder…why do you need to “spice things up?”  Maybe that is a sure sign of not knowing God as we should?  If we knew who it was, then we would ask!  (John 4)  Knowing God keeps us away from the porn pleasure of this World. (1st Thess 4)

But what I find really sad is so many women are so passionate for their husbands yet because of their husbands trading the infinite well of the Pleasure of God (Psalm 36:8) for the porn pleasure of the World, the ladies find they are not satisfying to their husbands as they once were.  May I share something with you ladies, “IT”S NOT YOU THAT IS THE PROBLEM!”  You don’t need to dress differently, plan a vacation to a exotic place, or practive voyeurism.  Simply put you would only be buying in to the empty solutions of this world.   If you strive to gain in this way you will strive to maintain as well.  And that is no fun.  The answer is always knowing the pleasure and goodness of God.  This is where our passion comes from, our love, our joy!

As often, the church tends to follow what the world thinks is the right path towards happiness, when it is dead, a zombie.  I have found my own heart moved in this way too, I confess.

I have had 18 years with my wife.  Beautiful years.  I love her deeply, profoundly.  She is my covenant partner.  I pray she never thinks we need to, “spice it up.”  Our passion for one another is no different than it has ever been.  God is our passion.  And from the well we will always be satisfied and will never run out.  Our cup runs over!  But catch this, it’s because we love God and desire to know this passionate love of God more in our own individual life!  The bedroom will only be as passionate as our love for Christ is!  As we grow in love with the Lord we want to do fun stuff together where we can be alone and focused on each other.  This is our joy in Christ.

So ask the Lord to give you a passionate love relationship with Him.  Feel Him, adore and find your affections in Him.  Ask the Lord to be glorified in you intimacy with your spouse to help you glorify Him and show the Passion He has for you to your spouse.  “Lord may your passion work through me, to your glory.”

Today's cable porn… leaving something behind.

Today we have porn piped right into our homes through satellite or our cable providers at a cost either per month or purchasing PPV movies on the spot.  Through New Frontier Media in Colorado or another producer and distributor of Porn easy access is here more than ever before.  Battling Porn is no longer for some people, but now it for all.  There are those that do not want to see it near them, yet they can’t seem to get away from it.  This is where amputation comes in.

What I have found over the years in observing the kind of Porn that is on Cable is that it has followed the trend of today’s TV programing.  We see a ton of either “Real” TV Porn shows that have a mix of women and men thrown into a interesting situation of living together in a home with cameras everywhere watching all moves.  Mtv was incredibly ahead of it’s time years ago yet Porn has taken it to another level of depravity of course, now not withholding all activity in the home.

What I find even more interesting about these situations more than ever is the natural almost “normal” way all involved act.  As if this is the norm, or a right way to act.  I find a incredible lack of perspective of life’s longevity in today’s Porn.  It’s not like the 90’s where you had fantasy situations that we all knew were not the norm.  Today the shows portray your average looking men and women (not all the time of course), seeming to be living this kind of Porn life as normal.  It is not acting per say, but their norm…their life.

Oh, my mind just recounts reading Ron Jeremy’s book and how he has always struggled with being in a monogamous relationship though he has desperately wanted too.  I wish the others would read his book, if for anything to get perspective that life can be long.  Ron J. has lived a life of sex with many people.  This has had it’s consequence in his life.  He has not experience the wonderful joy of loving someone exclusively.  Without this exclusivity love cannot take root and run deep.  Our love for our parents grows as time goes on.  That’s because as time goes we have more opportunity to extend love to them.  This love is a large tree planted by a river!  You cannot be this without time running its course to allow deep penetration into the soil!

Can you see what is happening to so many of these men and women that have gone the way of temperary pleasure?  They have traded the beautifuness of a life of love for a temporary stimulation in making money through pleasure.  Both money and temperary pleasure will perish, but love will not.  1 Corinthians 13:1

Oh, what is a life that is lead when at the end you are alone.  Sure you have detoured from the hardship of commitment to someone, from even the vulnerability that is a given in marriage, but you have also fortified the understanding of what moves mountains… Love.  When I die, I desire to have my kids and my lovely wife at my side!  I long for her face to be the last thing I see before leaving this planet.  For she has been my partner from my youth.  I have seen her body age and will see it age more ending if death.  Her hands will no longer be soft, but old, wrinkled…but I wouldn’t want to have any other hand holding me at the end.  Her’s is what I know, what I have experienced in a lifetime.  Her eyes are what I know.  They have been seeing me for a lifetime. Oh do you see it, do you catch the beauty of this!  My eyes welt up just thinking of my wife in my life over the past 30 years.  I have seen her grow from a little girl to a women of faith, of loyalty, of integrity, of love.  Her love runs deep, deeper than any women that has settled for the reality TV Porn style that is looking oh so normal today.

Today this reality porn just kills me with it’s normality.  It makes it seem like it is suppose to be normal to go to College and engage in incredibly depraved sexual parties.  I know, I have succumb to the brainwash, I understand.  But I ask those, please understand what we give up when we go this direction.  The Porn we see so trendy on Cinamax etc., Too much for TV and Playboy have caught the public’s desire for reality.  The makers have now pushed the envelope of reality for many viewers  in the realm of sex that would have never thought about participating in such extreme activities on a regular basis.   Don’t sucumb to it, the end does not look good.  How can you learn to love a person when you take what is sacred and treat it as something common?  Anyone in our life that means something to us, is just that because they are uncommon to us.  Love does this.  We must not make the mistake of thinking a trade is not taking place.

Do not throw away love!  Don’t trade down and settle for this empty bucket of sex with many people only to come to the end and have no-one, because you have not known love.

The Love of Christ is there for you.  He is God’s only Son, given as a substitute for our failures to walk in wholeness before a Whole God.  This He did on His own will.  It was His Joy to make for himself a people, forgiven and accepted.  Cry out to Him.  He said He stands at the door and knocks.  I answered that door in 1990 and the love that has been seen by me in my life was a love I did not know.  it is beautiful, to much to describe.  You will be blown away!  Come to Him!  He makes what we have destorted and brings such clarity.

Psalm 4   In your light we see light.

A great Father's Day gift…Honesty

I love my earthly dad.  My feelings were not always that way.  Like most I went through some early life days of hating the man in many ways, drinking, violence and the abuse that goes along with that kind of behavior.  No fun, no fun at all.  Those dyays are long gone for me.  They seem somewhat blurrier now than before, though I know it was real.  I have my brother and mom to substantiate it!

I ended up going down the same path as my earthly father.

What changed my life?

In a Word it was honesty!  I remember getting with my dad when I was 13 or 14 and him talking with my brother and I about his recovery.  THe most beautiful gift he gave us was admitting failure not trivializing it or minimizing it, but being honest with us boys.

I realized that my situation is life was not my fault.  Though it usually never is the kids fault for a messed up home life, we tend to feel that way when little.

Fathers…  Could you give your family a great gift this Fathers Day and be honest about your sin ?  Confess it, share it.  You will glorify God and bless your kids.  Let them know what you are going to do about the area you need help in, but it does no good to take your family out or have a BBQ and not be honest about our struggles.

As always use discernment depending upon the age of your son or daughter.  For some of us we have held secret sins that haunt us till this day inside that desperately need to break out!  We have a word for this type of honesty…Confession.

When my father confessed his failures it was like a breath of fresh air to us, and it brought about a new beginning.  That honesty gave us the opportunity to be merciful and gracious.

I hope you give it a try or rather die to the old and live in the new!

Have a great fathers day from us at Running Light Ministries!

Beau

Steve Jobs of Apple! Why r they so mad?

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/19/steve-jobs-android-porn/

I think it’s somewhat disturbing that people consider Apple’s decision to restrict porn apps to some type of infringement on freedom of speech. They are a business, not the government, and as such can allow or restrict whatever they want on their product. I don’t generally like Apple, but I gotta hand it to Steve Jobs for his commitment to limiting porn as much as he can. I’d buy an iPhone over a droid because of this. Unfortunately, I can see Apple losing the smartphone war over restriction of porn.

By R.L.M. tech writer contributor – Chris Johnson