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A United Front!

Posted on by RLAdmin

“Two are better than one” Ecclesiastes 4:9
It’s so cool when you have a partner in crime!  Well not crime, but joy!
In the ministry of helping those husband and wife teams that have been impacted by sexual immorality (and which one has not had some form or another) I find there is a incredible God glorifying action that takes place when there is this “United Front” in fighting the lust of the flesh and the world.
How ecstatic I am when I see a guy finally get to the place in Christ, where He is moved by the Holy Spirit to confess, not for his own glory (for he is treading on literally shaky ground) but  for God’s glory.  The chains of  burdens of un-confessed actions of the past start falling off and a lightness begins to take over.  Running Light!  That’s how we get our ministry name by the way!
But on the horizon, though those chains are being lifted in the guy’s life, there are other chains that are rapped around our spouse   Chains of un-forgiveness  bitterness, anger, resentment, that if not dealt with Biblically will not glorify God and therefore no joy will become her.  Some women leave there husbands at this point.  They cannot get over the pain and hurt…The Betrayal!!!
Sharing our flaws with one another needs to start being cultivated in our marriages.  ”Confess our sins to one another, praying for one another that you may be healed.”   If this is not being done day after day, then when confession does take place, it will be as a nuclear bomb just went off in your stomach!  We’ve all had that experience when married right?  But daily talking about what we struggle with and walking together in helping one another to fight it through accountability  amputation, drinking of the Living Word is our strength.  Two are better than one!
Every Christian Marriage is between a sinful guy and an equally sinful woman.  There is no person you will meet on the planet that will not have to confess something to you as to his/her failures.  And some of our failures are big.
When I see a man bringing things into the light with a humble, 2nd Corinthians 7 type of heart,  (This heart is the one that is on the right path, thinking about God and wanting to glorify Him instead of himself, You can see the concern he has in what he has done)  I rejoice!  This is a move of God!
Though the wife might be in absolute turmoil (and it could be the other way around), there needs to be a understanding that this confession is a work of God in the person.  And wouldn’t that just be the thing that would get you through!  Knowing God is at work in your spouse is the best thought ever.  How sad it truly is when a man leaves his family for another women.  But for those whose husbands confess there heart of lust and share the struggles they have then you have a ‘real’ marriage.  A Christian marriage  that is full of active Christian principles that are daily being worked out.
The United front course at Settingcaptivesfree.com is a Bible based course that is to support your husband, by you the wife united with him in the battle against desires that go astray.
The free online course let’s you see what your spouse is going through and how to help make your home a home that is battle tested against the schemes of the ‘evil one’ who desires to devour.
All I can say is what a incredible resource and hope you take advantage of this free course.  As with every S.C.F. course, you will have a online mentor and have the ability upon signing up to include other mentor’s to your ‘receiving work’ list.
It takes two to make a marriage work.
One might be getting out of sexual immorality, but without the other side wanting to go through there own pain to grow then there will be difficult times ahead.
My next blog will be on some area’s for women that are very difficult to deal with when there husbands are coming into a new way of thinking about sex.  And I’m not talking about forgiveness or anger.  Stay tuned, it is sure to be a interesting read.
Pastor Beau J Ouellette
Author : Porn & A Pastor

A comment on Lust vs. Love from a friend.

Posted on by RLAdmin

By : Jeannie Miller Weyrauch

LUST is PRIDE pursuing or demanding what the flesh wants without regard for others or the consideration of the ramifications of the pursuit or demand

It dawned on me that all lust (not just porn) is incredibly self-seeking … self-seeking is pride. When we go after pleasures that only satisfy ourselves, which don’t take into account others or the ramifications that pursuit of pleasure will have on others, that lust is pride because it is self-centered and not others focused. So contrary to God’s word: Love suffers long and is kind; love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude (love does not parade itself, is not puffed up), DOES NOT SEEK ITS OWN (it does not DEMAND its own way), is not provoked, keeps no record of being wronged; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

Dark But Lovely

Posted on by RLAdmin

Submitted by Katy Collins 

“I am dark, but lovely…do not look upon me, because I am dark…my own vineyard I have not kept.” (Song of Solomon 1:5,6)

I sin. I am dark. Like the Shulamite woman in this passage, I can say with confidence who I know I am. She was explaining to her beloved that her brothers had made her work outside in the field all day and the sun had tanned her skin, this was an unfavorable characteristic in that time and she was warning him about what he was getting- something less than desirable.  She knew she was dark.

As do I. I’m not being unnecessarily hard on myself. No, dear friends, I’m being very real. I serve a perfect, holy God. In Leviticus we see just how holy God is in how the people of Israel had to relate to Him in order to be in His presence. God cannot look on sin and do nothing about it, for He alone is perfect in holiness. In the light of eyes like those, I see my failure, you bet. I see my sin.

I’m starting a women’s group this Thursday to have a place where women can go to seek freedom from pornography addiction and sexual impurity. Why would I start a group like that? Because I struggle with lust. Lust is not holy. I see my sin. Like the girl in this passage I too can say, “my own vineyard I have not kept” meaning I willingly choose to sin. It’s not forced on me. If “my vineyard” is my love relationship with Jesus, then I have chosen to not keep it at times. I have chosen to go to an emptiness promising to fill me and have come back more empty than before.

I am dark.

Perhaps you can see your sin too. Perhaps you are really aware of your shortcomings. And maybe, you like me, have a hard time not staying in despair and guilt over your sin. You see, the enemy is the same guy he’s always been and his tricks aren’t new. But he’s really good at wielding them. He lies to us and says that the sin will satisfy us. When we wake up to the fact that we have a gaping hole inside us and this sin (whatever it may be) is going right through that hole, not at all satisfying us, then he uses shame.

You’re so dirty. He says. No one is as awful as you. No one has seen what you’ve seen or done what you’ve done. And you call yourself a Christian. Yeah, right! God doesn’t love you. You are worthless and disgusting. These are the whispers we hear. Sometimes they even become shouts that drown out the Spirit in us beckoning us to step into freedom. We can see how dark we are. May I ask you, how does God see us?

“I am dark, but lovely…”

How can she say that she is lovely? Especially in the context of what I’m concluding here? How can Katy say that she is lovely, knowing the depths of the sin in her heart? The Shulamite knew she was dark. She looked at her own skin and saw the effects of the choices that had been made for her and that she had made. But then she utters the words, “but lovely.” How? This Shulamite farm girl knew that someone wanted her. This someone was king Solomon. A simple, farm girl was desired by the king. She had caught his eye and she knew of his love for her, so she could say, “I am lovely.”

In our sin, we are not made lovely because of anything we do. We can attempt to wash ourselves, but that is not what makes us lovely (sometimes in my darker moments of sexual impurity I would want to stand in the shower for hours to attempt to wash away my sin). There will be a day when we must clean ourselves and stand against the choices we’ve made, but first there’s a realization we must know. She was lovely because she was loved. We are lovely because we are loved by Love, Himself. The King desires us.

“Listen, O daughter, consider and incline your ear; forget your own people also, and your father’s house; so the King will greatly desire your beauty…” (Psalm 45:10-11a)

This psalm is urging us, as dark people, to forget what is behind us, even to forget what may or may not lay ahead and to come to the King. Then what does it say? That “the King will greatly desire your beauty.” You, reader, are dark. Yes. We all are. And if you’re like me, and the other contributors to this blog, you are very aware of the depth of your darkness. But… you are lovely. The King loves you and desires your beauty.

From the very beginning, God chose to love us with all that He is. As He formed Adam and Eve, God chose to pour out His love forever into their beings. We qualify for that too. Sadly, there are some who are rejecting God (even if it’s a quiet rejection). God loves His creation, His people, so very much and we are so very dark. Remember Leviticus? God cannot simply hang out with sin; He is holy. But He desires us and loves us, so something had to be done. For God to regain His precious creation to His side, to be with us, He had to make a way for this issue of sin to no longer hold us captive.

There is only One who has never sinned, though He walked entirely as a human. That Someone is Jesus Christ. Jesus willingly, with delight, stepped into our lives, stepped into our skin and walked through the trials and temptations and pain that we all face. Jesus was familiar with the lusts of the flesh, He too was tempted in all ways. Yet Jesus withstood. Where you and I fall into temptation and give in to sin, Jesus did not. He was beaten down by temptation, hunger, and all the weaknesses of His human frame, but He remained faithful to God. He continued to tend to His own vineyard- His relationship with God remained intimate. Therefore, He could be the final step in making our sin no longer chain us.

Jesus Christ was convicted though innocent, Creator yet let His creation spit on Him, cuss at Him and torture Him. He so loved you so much and wanted you to be His again, He went through all of that so He could crush sin. He died for you. This is love. This is what real love is.

This act of giving His life so that we could live gave Him the authority once again over death. In dying on the cross, as a perfectly sinless Man, Jesus took the power of sin away. Satan was king of this earth and ruled using sin and death. But because of what Jesus did, He took that power back and became the One, True King. Jesus is the King.

You, and I, are the Shulamite farm girl. And like her, we still have dark moments, dark days, darkness within us. She was able to say with truth that she was “dark, but lovely.” We are too. We are the farm girl. We are desired by the King.

“Listen…incline your ear…the King greatly desires your beauty…”

I am dark. But lovely. For I am loved by the King. I know my sin. And I don’t want my sin. I know that my Jesus has made me free. Though I stumble and fall, He loves me. He chose me. I am lovely to the King and the King greatly desires my beauty.

A Fresh work at Running Light Ministries (Update)

Posted on by RLAdmin

Much Happening – O2
We are planning on having booths at 4 states this June with Pastor Levi Lusko to help get students of all ages signed up for the Way of Purity course at SettingCaptivesFree.com in the hopes that they will experience a understanding of the bettler pleasure of God as compared to the Lust that the world offers.  As we know…there is no comparison between the Love of God and what this world holds so dear.
If you are able to help financially with a gift please do so by visiting runninglight.org and find the PayPal icon on the right.  Thank you so much for those that give to this ministry.  That average age of porn exposure is 11 and some say 9 years of age.  By the time they reach the University many have watched hours upon hours of hard core porn.   So many need to get into the free course work at S.C.F..  And that’s why were at the events!
Southwest Calvary Chapel Pastors Conference 2013
We just had our booth at the conference and boy what a turnout of people wanting to talk about the problem of online adultery that has resulted in 56% of the divorces that we see statistically!  Yep that’s right, people are online having affairs all the time today.  If not physically than emotionally.  I have seen just how devastating this is in a marriage with those that have come to us for help.
The need for groups at your fellowship
I have put a link on the right side of the runninglight.org website for you that are leaders at your fellowships that desire a group.  Please check it out.  Wouldn’t it be awesome to have Bible study groups that are not afraid to walk in the grace of confession, amputation, repentance, accountability weekly!?!?  So many Bible study groups we have give us a opportunity to drink from the well of Jesus, but not many are expecting that we walk in the other joyful ways of grace.  It’s cool to know that when people come into our groups they desire the entire package of walking with Christ.  Hey, it’s our joy!  let’s go after Christ!
New contributors to R.L.M.We have two new contributors to Running Light Ministries!  Katy Collins and Peter Martin.  Katy helps with the women that are in bondage to lust and single women.  Peter Martin helps with single men, married men, and especially those that have been in the military.  He is a former Marine with combat time.  The RLM team are stoked to see how the Lord will use these two for and to His Glory and NAME!  Women today exercise there freedom to pursue pleasure on their own terms just like men have for centuries!  Lust knows no gender, so pray the HOLY Spirit to guide as we open the Way of Purity course to a women’s group!
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A thirst (LUST) for violence

Posted on by RLAdmin

By R.L.M. contributor : Peter Martin
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When I was in the military, I saw a very disturbing trend amongst those I served with. A lot of my friends, during their time in service, turned very violent especially in their sexuality. “37% of women veterans report being raped at least twice, and 14% report experiences of gang rape” (Servicewomen.org). With statistics like this, which doesn’t even mention the violence from veterans to civilian women, as well as the overwhelming amount of violent and self-destructive habits that I saw in my friends when we came back, it makes people wonder, what in our experiences causes us to act out in this way? One major thing that I think about is our training. While I was on my first deployment, one of my friends started reading the books “On Combat” and “On Killing”. Both of which were written by a retired Army Lt Colonel, Dave Grossman, about the psychological aspects of warfare, more specifically the conditioning process of a soldier. I remember that the thing that he stressed most in his books was that the conditioning process for a soldier is even more mental than it is physical. The goal of this process is to make sure that when soldiers, like me, who were dropped in to combat for their first time, wouldn’t freeze up in combat and would be able to actually kill their enemy.

This process of conditioning takes shape in the little things in training. When I was in, they constantly sent us out to train in horrible conditions. And even when we weren’t training, it seemed like the leadership were doing everything that they could to make our lives miserable with mind numbingly boring classes and frivolous activities throughout the day. Beyond this, while serious hazing is punished, minor hazing is actually encouraged throughout the ranks. In the books, Grossman explains that this is all aimed at breeding aggression in soldiers, to make them, not only willing, but eager to fight and kill. In a book called “Generation Kill”, which is about a group of Marines fighting in Iraq, a reporter asks one of the Marines why they didn’t get the supplies that they needed and he responds, “The Marine Corps is like America’s little pit bull, They feed us, mistreat us, and every now and then, they let us out to attack someone.” And none of this is really new, even in ancient Spartan culture, you read about how they would constantly mistreat their soldiers while they were being trained to make them wildly violent and aggressive toward others, but very loyal to their fellow Spartans.

Another tactic that was used for this conditioning was the dehumanization of the enemy. While I was in, I remembered that we would call the Afgani’s “hodgis”, and in this book it explains how racial slurs like that have been used by the military throughout our history to make the enemy seem less human to us so that killing them won’t be as difficult. For example, the World War II vets referred to the Germans as “gerries” or “krauts”, the Vietnam vets referred to the Vietnamese as “Charlie” or “gook”. All of these terms are meant to make the enemy seem less than human to take the morality out of killing.

This may seem like a good idea, after all they want to breed killers to protect America, but the problem that emerges, especially in guerrilla warfare, is that it’s near impossible to turn off this mentality and only use it on our enemies. Because of this, I saw quite a few of my friends flat out murder innocent civilians without any real cause. And they never really saw this as wrong because they didn’t consider the Afghanis to be real people. Beyond this, we are all relatively young guys, given weapons and no real accountability, the level of power and dominance that we had over these people was intoxicating. We could take whatever we wanted and no one could stop us, and I saw clearly how armies throughout history got caught up in this and just pillaged, burned, and raped. And seeing the way that we saw the people there, I knew that it would be an easy next step for us to take. And while we did destroy a lot of people’s lives over there, I never saw anyone rape any local women, but the major reason for that is because if we did, we knew that there would be serious repercussions. But pretty much everything else that we did was tolerated and encouraged. And I wish I could say that I saw things differently but I didn’t  it is just so much easier to not see them as human. And while we are in country talking amongst ourselves where this behavior is tolerated, not many people really struggle with any guilt or trauma. But, when we got back to America and we tried to share these experiences with our friends and families, it became very clear to us that we had moved away from normal; and you start to question the justifications of your actions. This realization brings about severe amounts of guilt and when this is coupled with other bad memories from our experiences over there; this leads veterans down the road to PTSD. And like I said, it is near impossible to just turn off that aggression and thirst for violence. In order to compensate for the pain, many of my friends turned to alcohol, drugs, porn, and sex to ease their pain. But none of these things were effective for them; which in turn increased their aggression, their pain, and the level of their addictions.

The conditioning also gave us a, almost thirst for violence. This goes beyond watching action movies or playing violent video games, we began to legitimately desire to see and preform actual violent acts. This played out in several ways, my friends used to get drunk constantly and look for fights. Our conversations were usually shaped by talks of death and killing, and pretty much all of my friends turned this craving for violence into a type of fetish. Pornography already has an effect on most men, myself included, where it objectifies women that we see, if you add to this the lust that my friends had for violence, the logical choice for them was to watch degradation type pornography. This would be porn that is deliberately degrading to women, and more often than not depicts incredibly violent sex with men abusing women. Now there is a myth that somehow you can “get the lust out of your system” and if people just watch this type of porn, then they won’t act it out. This is incredibly false, and I think that the most well-known example of this is Ted Bundy. You can’t get lust out of your system by giving in to it; you can only make it worse. And it would be such an easy next step for men who are aroused by things like this to start acting out their fantasies. I am not sure how many of the men that I know have actually physically abused women, but I do know that virtually none of the men that I served with see women as actual human beings. They see them as objects for their own gratification, and then after they are done, they discard them. Even the married men began to act out violently toward their wives and scream at them even while we were in Afghanistan. The most shocking thing to me though is that this mentality of abusing women in this way is not confined to the military, it is spreading throughout America and has actually become common.

So how does anyone fix this problem? My friends that were diagnosed with PTSD were sent off to random psychologists that just fed them various kinds of drugs to “cure” them. These drugs ended up making my friends worse off than they were before the drugs, and then they became utterly dependent on their medications. And like I mentioned before, a lot of the men that I know tried to self-medicate with the pleasures of this world, but none of these things helped them and I actually had a friend a couple months ago call thinking about killing himself. I have seen first-hand just how inadequate this world is to help us out of these problems, there is no hope to be found in this world. Philippians 4:7 “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” In Jesus Christ there is amazing amounts of hope. In my life, Jesus has protected me from PTSD, He has given me freedom from porn and He has satisfied the longing in my heart. And while I can never un-see the things that I saw, He is daily renewing my mind, and He is daily drawing me closer to Him and away from my past. And praise God that Jesus came to seek and to save those who are lost, there is no such thing as someone that has fallen too far for Him to love and His love can reach even the darkest of hearts. And He longs to restore and to redeem those who are suffering in this way and the families that have been damaged as a result of this. It is only by His love that there is hope of restoration, and only through loving Him that someone can once again see just how valuable each life is. Joel 2:25 “So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.”

Lustful Pleasures or the River of Pleasure?

Posted on by RLAdmin

By K. Collins a R.L.M. contributor
One night in Pat Pong the team and I were heading through the narrow walkways between vendors and the bar doors. I happened to be tailing behind all the others, praying as we walked. We rounded a corner and began to head down a new row and a ‘menu-guy’ approached me. These men and women stand outside the bars, usually on the street in front of a shadowy, darkened entrance or door that leads someone up a flight of stairs. These stairs lead to rooms full higher levels of self-gratification. The menu-folks stand there with laminated menus offering coded sex shows for sale. Their whole job is to entice walkers-by with what is being offered upstairs, to allure them with curious thoughts, to catch their lusts with questions of ‘I wonder…’.
This menu-guy approached me with such a proposition. Our team leader had encouraged us to look at the menus, not so intently as to give them false hope of an interested buyer, but long enough to see what was being sold, to get familiar with what the menus read. I had glanced at enough to have an awareness of the language posed, and stories were told to us of what the shows actually entailed. I knew exactly what he was selling.
Coming towards me, he jutted his menu in my direction and said, “You come see? You come see?” Shaking my head, I motioned with my hand in a negating manner and smiled at him replying, “No. No.” He didn’t relent. Trying again, he turned the menu over (attempting to raise my interest by showing me details). “You come see? Good show, good show.” My gaze went to the menu, telling him I wasn’t scared of what he was presenting, but then confidently I said, “No. Me chrishan. Chrishan. No, no.” I waved my hand and walked on. He stood still, but I noticed that he continued to look in our direction. Then he came towards me again.
“You chrishan?” he asked. I nodded, smiling. In that moment a very neat thing happened. I saw his countenance change. Prior to me mentioning that I was Christian (in Thai is sounds like ‘chrishan‘) he saw me as a sale. He was merely doing his job; he was paid to get me upstairs so I would pay to watch unspeakable things. That was his job. But here comes this trail of ladies walking by his corner and that’s not necessarily strange. Women dig porn and buy sex too. But this time, someone he asked gave him a reason why they said ‘no’. This time, the name of a god he’d maybe heard of before was mentioned. Chrishan.
I wonder if he questioned the connection between why achrishan would come to a place like Pat Pong, walk through, color  with children and buy drinks for women, but not want to buy a show. After all, the gods he serves encourage the behavior that happens in Pat Pong. I wonder if he was curious about why being a chrishan made me say ‘no’ to a show he was selling. When he came back that final time to clarify that I had indeed said I was a chrishan, he stopped in his tracks, bowed his head to me and walked away.

“Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name…”
1 Chronicles 16:29

This man, most likely not knowing my God, the One whom I claim in saying I am a chrishan, bowed his head in respect and honor when he made the connection between who I was and why I chose not to buy a show that night. Without even knowing the true and living God, his spirit moved in ascribing glory (honor, exaltation, value) to the Lord, the glory that is due His name.
Last week I was speaking with my pastor about porn in the church (this is a huge topic, we’re making a documentary on it, so don’t worry more info is coming, smile). He said some things that were so profound, I knew I was hearing the voice of the Spirit speaking through him. We were discussing the power God gives us to be involved in the realm of the sexual industry to share the good news of Christ Jesus. He said,

“God’s eyes are too pure to look upon evil…but certainly he sees Satan when he’s before his throne in the past, or the sins of men on the earth.  God’s eyes are too pure to look upon evil and do nothing about it!  That’s how we should be!  It’s not that we are to live on a hill in the desert, but to see things properly and grieve in our heart when we see what we see on the internet or movies. To have these things be something that affects our hearts in a way where we see more clearly what needs to be done in getting out the gospel!”

My first night seeing Pat Pong ‘alive’, women and girls being sold for the lusts of the flesh, children playing outside of the bar doors, men and women in utter bondage to their sins of choice, I wanted to run home. I had no strength within me to continue to be in the pit where the devil seemed to have full reign. But later that night God spoke a word to my soul. He said, “Katy, you seek Me. Seek Me and let these go their way. I will take care of all that, My way. But your job is to seek Me.”  Now, here, 4 months later emailing with my pastor in Tucson the message is brought up again- we go there (wherever ‘there’ is) to seek Christ, to share Christ.
God’s eyes are too pure to look on evil and do nothing about it. He is God! He is perfect Justice, beautiful, unending Mercy, and amazing, healing Redemption. As God calls me into ministry (simply serving those) in the sex industry, I want to have his heart- to be able to look on the evil and do something about it. My opportunity to model God’s heart is to share Christ. What does this mean? It is to see the sin, be involved in the industry’s impact on even believers and “have these things be something that affects our hearts in a way where we see more clearly what needs to be done in getting out the gospel!”
Sex is not wrong. God designed it. And He designed it to teach us to know Him, and for us to glorify Him in enjoying our spouses. God delights in holy sex! But the call, I believe that is being revealed, on my life is to cry out that the fleeting, ultimately unsatisfying pleasures of sinful sexual choices are merely horrid, empty distortions of what God intends for us! He is waking me up to see that the Church should be where the world gets it’s definition of sex. The world should look at Christ-followers and say, “Man, I want what they have” even in regards to the marriage bed. Sadly, however, it is the Church who has failed and now goes to the world for its pleasure, instead of coming to the River of Pleasure, Himself.
Isn’t this the gospel, the good news? Isn’t it good news that Christ has set us free from the weight of bondage to sin and that we, instead, can come and drink from the Living Water and find true pleasure in God?

“They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house,
And You give them drink from the river of Your pleasures.”
Psalm 36:8

In our chat about porn and the church and how God desires that His followers seek to live pleasure-filled, God-glorifying lives of holy sex, my pastor discussed context and how important it is to rightly see sex as defined by Scripture. He said,

“Context is everything!  It is what separates the self-gratifyer and the missionary.”

Boom. What a profound word. Thank You, God. Remember the scene in Pat Pong I described earlier? In that moment, God was my strength to be there as a missionary- to be there to share the good news, the better pleasure, of Christ. However, I was surrounded by self-gratifyers. I am confident, 100% assured, that there were men and women customers in Pat Pong that night who would also say they are Christian. I know that folks were upstairs buying sex shows, or downstairs paying for lap dances, that were going to be sitting in church the following Sunday back home. None of us are immune to temptation. Jesus wasn’t, what makes us think we are? None of us are immune to falling into sin. (Romans 3:23). But we have a choice. Even today.

The self-gratifyer wants what the flesh wants. The self-gratifyer chooses to seek and obtain pleasure in sin- fleeting, momentary, unsatisfying, empty, but for a minute pleasurable. Then what? The self-gratifyer is left with a sinking hole inside, feeling wretched, starved, craving more of what cannot quench their hunger. I am a self-gratifyer at times. (I’m willing to be vulnerable with you and share my weakness; God is strong when I am weak!). Christ said He came for the sick. I want Christ; I admit to you that I fight my flesh all the time. But, by His immeasurable grace He strengthens me to walk in victory.
I can, by what Christ has done for me and in me, be a missionary instead. Will I look at the sin of the world and proudly sneer, judging them too dirty, worthless and hopeless? Or will I, through Christ, look on the world’s sin and identify with it, knowing I once was lost, I still live in a body of death, I daily fight to pick up my cross and follow Jesus. Will I use the strength God gives me, and the conviction He allows me, to quicken my heart to share about the good news of this Savior of mine?
God is our treasure. He is the only true pleasure. All of the world’s attempts to copy Him are failing miserably. Our souls cannot be satisfied on anything but the LORD of lords. I am a chrishan and today, even right now, I choose to want the River of Pleasure, the LORD God. I not only choose to forsake the fake, false, depleting, bondage of the worldly pleasures of sin, but I choose to let God use my life to share with others the message, “No. I don’t want the show. I want Christ.”
May your heart be burdened as His is, for the sin in which you are entangled. May your soul be sick of the lies the enemy has fed you, stuffed down your throat, and nearly drowned you in. May the Spirit rise up within you to strengthen you to fight and may He reveal to you the treasure of God, the pleasure of God, the enjoyment of God. Let us awake, Church; let us arise, Bride, to run together with Christ to show the world the Better Pleasure!
Some resources:
Setting Captives Free (free online studies for breaking bonds)- http://www.settingcaptivesfree.com
Running Light Ministries (Pastor Beau’s ministry)- http://www.runninglight.org
Pastor Beau’s Blog- http://runninglight.wordpress.com
Be Loved Ministries (Tucson biblical counseling for women)- katy@ccftucson.org

'Try Before You Buy?' (Think again!) Reaching College Students

Posted on by RLAdmin

ImageI ain’t no Bonobo
Do you know what the Bonobo monkey is known for?
Its crazy sex habits!
Have you ever thought that maybe those that try and teach you about sex think that you are no different than a Bonobo; having sex is simply an instinctual desire- as food is to the stomach, sex is to the crotch!
Atheist Aldous Huxley said, “We objected to morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.” 
I grew up in Southern California where we were taught that was exactly the way it was.  We came from monkeys, and like ‘em, sex is what we do!  And that’s what we did.
I never thought it was wrong and certainly never thought there would be consequences to such education.
We live in a day where sexual stimulation is everywhere.  Better sex, bigger boobs, bigger junk in the trunk. We are fascinated with the pursuit of personal pleasure.  Self-gratification is what my generation is all about.  Sex is about my body, my desire, what I want to experience.  No-one can tell me how to use my body, it’s mine…me, mine, I…
What happens when we live for selfish purposes?  How many marriages fail today?  How many relationships fail today?
It is true that the more sexual partners you have the greater the risk is of not only disease, but future relationship disease!  What I mean is the more sexual encounters I had, the more I sought my own self-gratification in those encounters, which in turn lead to an inability to be in a long-term relationship. The reason?
Lust!
When viewers of porn are imitating it, Porn mogul, Al Goldstein said people are imitating “the worst possible kind of sex”.
The paradigm that I am picturing is the one of lust as opposed to Love.  As long as I sought self-gratification in my relationships failure was just ahead.  Lust cannot last, because it is unable to satisfy the human heart.
I struggle with porn.  I used to struggle a ton!  The porn industry is interesting; it seeks to cash in on customer dissatisfaction!  Yep, when we view porn we go from one image to another, to another and so on, it sucks. You can never get satisfied.  Lust is unable to satisfy. And those that walk down this road are not having sex with the people they are in the sack with; they’re simply self-gratifying with your body as the tool instead of there own hand!
Those in the Porn industry understand this themselves.  When reading “The Hardest Man in Showbiz,” by the porn star Ron Jeremy, you get the idea that he is sad because he has forfeited something that he longs for due to his self-lifestyle.  That something is Love.  He has wanted to be in relationship with only one person throughout his life. But because lust becomes an uncontrollable behavior with no room for selfless acts, he has been bound to the thing which he knows causes him to not have what he so wants.  That does not sound good.
I actually understand that.  So many of us want to have a killer life with someone, but unfortunately we will never have that because of what we do in the here and now.  The more sex you have, the more you will compare your future husband or wife with.  Sex is no longer special at all, but we have made it common.  And when you get to meet the person you think you want to spend the rest of your life with, he will have had 15 partners already and you too!   That sucks!  You’ll be so used to a life of self-gratification that understanding the best part of sex, which is being selfless and giving, will not be in the cards.
“The orgasm has become today’s secular sacrament.”  – Dinesh D’Souza
You might think you’re different than the billions of people that have lived before, that crappy for-self sex will not have its consequences in your life.  But please don’t believe the illusion of the Matrix.  I hope to unplug you!
The Jewish Scriptures are filled with guys and girls that have tried and tried to be the most sexually selfish people ever.  King Solomon, of all people, was a sex maniac and his life was jacked!  King David as well, and his family went to pot!  Abraham had sex with the maid, Judah slept with his deceased son’s wife thinking it was a prostitute because he was horny. Lot drank too much and had sex with his daughters!  Come to think of it, I think all porn is a parody to the Bible, in a way.
Through the paradigm of scripture I understand now that God is real. And He created me and made sex as a way to know Him, and His love for you and me.  I love it that the Bible paints the picture that many of the so called ‘saints’ who have trusted God failed miserably, constantly looking at sex through the wrong lens.
And that includes me too!
When I read the Bible I was 17.  I started in Genesis and being raised an agnostic I was blown away by the idea that God made this union called sex and it was already talked about in the second chapter of the Bible!!!  The greatest impact on my intellect was the idea that maybe sex is to be special. Maybe I am not a Bonobo after all.  Maybe one man and one woman for life was really the Better Pleasure. Maybe I had been wrong.
Today I have been married 20 years!  I have learned many killer sex lessons in my life.  But the greatest is that in my marriage, sexual arousal today is not from selfish lusting, but from Love.  The arousal I’m talking about is that which comes from giving joy to my beloved.  She is mine!  I am hers!  My body is hers, and her body is mine.  Arousal is not from lusting her, but from giving of myself to her (Love).  That is much different from the idea of, “How can I have better sex?”
Better sex happens when you exalt sex to what it was meant to be, something sacred, special and beautiful, where Love lives and not lust.
The old way of thinking about sex does not work.  You are not a Bonobo and that is why it will not work with you either.
One day you and I will be old, and on that day your self-gratification, self-lusting, self-sexuality will not matter.  We will only desire at that time to see Love.  Love’s roots can only go deep in the soil when you see it as special, sacred and Beautiful.  For love is not common… lust is.
You were created not to be common, but to be special.  I learned that…finally.
Try reading the Bible and learn from its view on sex.  It changed my life.  And it would be awesome one day to see you in a killer marriage of 20 years, where it is special and not the ‘norm!’  Be uncommon. Pursue Love not lust.

Sex, to the glory of God

Posted on by RLAdmin

What a title! I hope I have your attention now. We live in a sad time where we don’t equate the two right? Sex, the glory of God…what do they have in common? I was speaking the other day at the university and before the service we sent out teams to get the students to come in and attend the talk I was giving on better pleasure. One of the leaders who went out encountered a girl and ask her if she would be interested in listening to a talk on porn and the bible. The girl looked at the leader with a blank stare and began trying to figure out in her overwhelmed brain now the two go together. That is kind of how it is with sex and the glory of God. Oh they go together…or they should.

Now I can tell you a quick way to start your marriage of in a jacked way; do not pay attention.

This is important.

If you and your future spouse do not see the pursuit of Christ in the most intimate of places…the bed room…then you will have some potential problematic issues for sure.

All things are to be done for the glory of God. Even sex.

What would it be like if you don’t see sex as a way to glorify God? It would become a secular experience alone. That’s porn and porn is duty…they get paid!

What makes sex a God glorifying experience? Wouldn’t it simply be what makes eating food sacred act as well…or anything else for that matter. When we live our lives with a heart of thanksgiving to The Lord and prayer we see from rabbi Paul that it is a God glorifying act. See Tim ch. 4

When sex becomes a God glorifying act it is done with the same attitude. Thankful hearts come to the marriage bed! Hearts that want to seek the joy of Christ in the act of sex. If this is foreign concept to you, I apologize..we pastors need to teach the entire bible which is all about a real, intimate relationship between God and His people. See Ezk 16, but really, the whole bible is about this oneness. See John 17 too!

See Christ exalting sex is all About what you bring into the bed, When a man or woman say watches pornography and then enters the bed they import those images to find arousal. That is lust, not love, no matter what body is in the bed with you. That cannot glorify God even if its with your wife. Why? Lust seeks its own, love does not. Love pursues the joy of the beloved while lust
knows not such things but is satisfied only in self. For God to be glorified he must be the focus, and God does not lust the world, he loves it Sex should reflect that, everything else is a lesser joy,a distortion.

Christ glorifying sex is the best, because God is the greatest pleasure! If pursuing Jesus in your heart when in the marriage bed then you a going after the better pleasure. Come drink from the river of Gods pleasure. Taste and see that he is good. At His right hand are pleasures forever more.

Why would we remove God from the marriage bed? Maybe it’s been the way your were brought up. Maybe affection was not showed or modeled to you as a child or teen. Giving yourself to someone is a big deal, there is no abuse like sexual abase, so lets exalt it! But if we don’t seek to glorify our Lord in it, then it is just porn, common is that way, a path most taken.

Sex can be scary for newly weds. Pray, be thankful for the gift you are to one another. Ask The Lord to give you a heart for His glory and you won’t go wrong. Love and not lust will rule. For we are one with Him in Spirit it says, so you are acting out a sermon on your marriage bed…Christ and the Church, becoming one…a prophetic dance it is! What joy for those called to marriage. Enjoy!

Genesis & Porn! Reality & Reaching Others

Posted on by RLAdmin

ImageOne thing I have noticed over the years of listening to Pastors, Leaders, Speakers within the Church culture when talking about the porno culture is this:

  • We tend to show how unsatisfying having a secular view of sex is from today’s culture
  • We try to show from science how watching porn causes problems
  • We tend to focus on the men in general when it comes to porn

Though I think all the speakers that I have heard speak the truth, I believe most talks are a bit outdated.

  • Women view and make up the consumer market or the porn industry today like men.
  • Women use sex toys to stimulate themselves (Was in Denver and heard a stat that said 1 out of every 2 single women in the US use one!), so they pursue pleasure on their own terms.
  • People who have viewed porn mostly are not deemed un-stable, chemically imbalanced people.

These are just observations.
But things are changing in the community and it is my heart to show people that the Bible addresses the overall problem; an unbridled, unchanged from times past, lust that dwells within all of us!
In sharing the dangers of porn I could tell students just how bad it is and how it messes you up in the brain and how you look at people all jacked and that if you keep doing it you will get to a place where nothing matters but your idol; porn…But that is only half of it.  Porn is a mind set, it is a world view.  What is the best way for me to help people see a Biblical world view?  Maybe it’s through reading the Bible.
How many Christian parents out there would let their child watch a movie on the Bible?  I bet if I asked the question to a room full of parents they would all say a resounding, “YES!”
But really, would you?  Would you allow your teenager to watch the two becoming one flesh in Chapter 2 of Genesis or Onan later in Genesis spilling his semen on the ground?  How about Jacob’s older sons killing a whole town of men in a terrorist attack while they are hurting from being circumcised?  Or how about slicing the necks of animals and draining the blood, skinning the animal, and cleaning the inner parts out?  Do you allow your kids to watch animal sacrifices from Bangladesh on video social networks sites?  What about Lot getting hammered and having sex with his daughters?  And then there’s Abraham with the maid!  Or would you allow your kids to watch a show about Judah getting a bit horny while away on business and finds a escort, who just so happens being his son’s wife!   And I’m not even out of the first book of the Bible!
I believe that everything we see in the world is just a re-telling of things in the Bible!  Why?  Because the Bible reports to be real history; real world history.  So we shouldn’t be shocked that it’s reporting of the facts is just as hard core as the world we live in today.
There is nothing new under the sun.  Nothing!
Everything we watch on Tv or in the movies, online or elsewhere is just a reflection of what has always been.  The Bible tells us so.
So when I share with students the issues of porn and its effect on them, Genesis is a place I show them that the Bible is based in reality, we need not look any further.  God’s own people struggled with porn (arousal through viewing women or men,) and so it shouldn’t be shocking when we do too!  Yes, that means me too.
Great men and women of faith have been knee deep in the porn culture throughout the Word of God.  How cool is that!
So would you allow your students or children to watch a movie on the Bible?  I bet you wouldn’t if you really have read it.  It’s about as hard core as you can get.
Do you allow your students to watch violent movies?  Do you allow them to read the Bible?
Do you allow your students to see sexual movies?  Do you allow them to read the Bible?
You following me now?
The reason the Bible is so cool and should be allowed to be read or watched, is that we see the realities of the world in their entire context where in a porn movie, we unfortunately take the ‘real’ context out and buy into a fantasy…a non – reality view, which causes arousal. (Lust)
If we were at the studio in Chatsworth, CA holding the lights for the porn vid, I’m not sure we would be aroused  but you would see things in a better context for sure; starting, stopping  getting water, resting, arms getting heavy from holding lights, getting hungry, when’s lunch anyway!  But the Bible gives us the best context in which to view sex, violence and everything else in between   this context is the God context.  All is laid out before God in the Bible.  You see the consequences of King David’s bad sexual problems.  You see his son’s lust issues which come from the father.  You see the destruction of the family because of lust’s reign!  But you also see an incredibly merciful God, who reaches and touches the very heart of these men and women to move them to repentance.  I love that!
Maybe the best way to help people see the destructive nature of porn is simply to read the Bible!  When we see things in its proper context then we will not be moved.  How is it that Jesus could talk to women alone and not have a problem with it though his all too wise apostles did?  That sounds a bit like us men leaders today doesn’t it!  “Don’t meet with women because you could fall!” mmm, once again, we have horrible contexts which even we in leadership view women.  The more I hear that kind of statement, the sadder my heart get’s that maybe we are not seeing people in the correct way, and actually so bad that we can’t meet with a person without lusting!!!  Urrrr, that stinks and it’s a porn view of sexuality.
The more students and adults read the entire word of God they will see everything in its correct context and understand that today as always people are simply doing what people do.  The world is the same.  It’s us in the Church that needs to get things in focus!

Leading in Repentance to the Glory of God

Posted on by RLAdmin

The idea of Repentance cannot mean the total annihilation of a sin.  Because if so, sin would never ever return.

Someone can repent of Porn use but still lust!  To say that You have repented from pornography and no longer deal with the lustful desires that go astray would be quite a fictional statement.  It is very hard to believe that lust of others, things, or places does not come up in the human heart, though there is a sincere repentance that the same person has experienced, as seen in his amputation of porn.

Maybe we do not understand repentance well.  Maybe how we have been lead is to think it means a total eradication of sins, instead of a moving in a lifestyle of confession, amputation, accountability as contrasted by a hiding of the sin.

Jesus assumed that we are sinners and need daily forgiveness.  In the Lord’s prayer (really the disciples prayer) he is very clear in the line, “And forgive us of our sins…”  If repentance meant a complete annihilation of sin, never to ever struggle with it, then at some point, we would no longer have sin.  Lust would be gone…geed, jealousy, covetousness etc…too!  This seems like a move towards the legalism of the Pharisee sect which outwardly showed no sign of sinful behavior, (and talked a good holy talk) yet they could not hide the stench of lust as it seeped out of there pours!

Today’s Church wants to be strong, to be seen as no longer struggling with sins.  At times it is tough to see where Pastors themselves need the line, “and forgive me of my sins,” because they never seem to have any!

Without a lifestyle of open confession the need for God seems lame, fake & simply not necessary.  God is not so exalted as our all sufficiency when we have no need.  You can hear preaching all day long on your need for God, but why is it that you (preacher) need the Christ?  What depths of sin do you find yourself in?  Is it not His Grace alone that saves you and I from the same Lake of Fire as any of his other saints in the pages of scripture?

Many that come to church hear the same tune; Christ loves you,, He died for you, He saved you from your sins by dying on the Cross.  But then the thought comes in the congregates mind, “But I watch porn every night,” I bet he never has done that!  Without the ministers own confession of sin and the real showing of need for Christ through that confession then the gulf is present.  There is the ‘Holy’ and the ‘not so holy.’

In Romans 7 Paul not only spoke openly of his sin of covetousness, but over and over again shares his inability to get out of the pit of sin though he tries and tires!  What a great pattern for us leaders in the Church to share openly with our flock the depravity of our own sin, the wretchedness of our pride and how it crushes those in it’s way.

Repentance cannot mean a total termination of the sin:

Repentance is a calling a spade a spade.  IT’s saying the same thing about something that God does.  Repentance stands on acknowledgement of sin, confessing it, and moving away from it.  This certainly is not a one time act, for the fight against desires that go astray in the flesh will be until the body no longer can hold the Spirit within it.  “The body wars against the Sprit and the Spirit wars against the body, so that you do the things you do not wish to so.”

If repentance meant a total eradication of the sin, then the Spirit would not fight with the body any more in that particular area.  And that seems a bit in contradiction from what Rabbi Paul is trying to tell us.

There is a constant fight against desires that go astray within the flesh and Paul gives us the details on how it looks in the Galatians 5 scripture.  Those that simply continue in the life of the flesh with no heart to move away when approached with such a danger have no place in God’s Kingdom.  They do belong to it, or a burdened heart would have shown itself at the sin.

The Christian daily senses this burden of sin, and the need to walk in the Spirit, trusting, leaning, drinking of Jesus.

As we continue to grow in a daily life of repentance we see that God supplies us with new things, which include a new heart, with different desires.  No longer do we want to go back, for it no longer fits the ‘new man.’

But this maturity does not come easily, but with years of fighting, through a life of confession.  It is through this, ‘coming into the light,” that God has made the way of escape for us!  Through daily confession comes greater accountability, which is another gift of God for our joy and His Glory.  Through the hands of many come easier labor.  Fighting the fight alone is a waste!  We will loose.  God intended for us to win together, for the benefit of each other!!!

It is only in my confession that others see my need for Christ, and can witness the work of the Holy Spirit to change my heart and mind (repentance), leading me to victory.

May the Lord give the Church a understanding into these things so that we might grow united together in the battle against sin, lifting up one another daily, knowing daily each others struggles in the flesh, that our reliance on Christ would be seen by all though our acknowledgment, confession and move away from destruction  to His Glory.  When we are weak, He is strong!