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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

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

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 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.

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

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

A good question came up about confession in our Setting Captives Free meeting that I would want to share.  All of our situations are so different, some are married, others are single parents, and still others have never been married.  So the question comes up with who and when should you confess.

I find the a couple answers that could help.  One deals with the who should I confess too.

Matthew 5
“Therefore if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, GO

1st Thess 4:3 It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should learn to control your own body[a] in a way that is holy and honorable, 5 not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; 6 and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister

Ok, let’s follow the Spirit of the law now.  Make matters right, especially to the offended party.  Sure our sin is against God ultimately (Psalm 32, 51), but it is true also that we have offended people in our sexual immorality too.  Who is it that you have wronged?  Your wife?   Your girlfriend?  Your children?  Your parents?  For me it was 3 out of the four I listed.  In sexual sin (idolatry) I have followed a distorted view of sex, one that damages people around me. (That’s the consequence of sin)  So when we are off getting a sex fix, our kids are by themselves, or we are not honoring our parents by our actions of being deceptive or lying.  This should help you determine who you confess too.  Who was it that you offended.  Pray and then go to them.

The second questioned answered is when you should confess.  I have found that for those in a marriage it is best to get it out in the open asap.  If it going to be a real shock then you might want to have a counilor, Pastor, Leader available to sit with you both when you confess for comfort and perspective.  For young kids I would say this…I was young when my father told me about his own failures as a parent and it made me happy to know that what I felt as a kid was valadated by my pop.  What I mean is that when you are a kid you have feelings, but don’t know if there right or wrong, there just there.  When my pop came up to me and my brother and said, “I was wrong,” that really put my mind at ease knowing it wasan’t my fault my parents didn’t get along or that they were not going to live together anymore.  Sometimes confession needs to be in stages as well.  Meaning as youi share your stuggles, you will share about what you are doing about it for help.  The next time you talk there might be more that you share about what God is doing in your life etc…

The most important thing about confession is that it is for your benefit and joy and for the Glory of God.  If those around us do not see that we are overjoyed in Christ to draw closer to a right relationship with God and with our fellow mankind then it will be hard for anyone to believe that we really mean what we say.  It’s like having to do something vs. getting to do it!  God is not glorified if you have to confess, but because you want more of Him, we confess.  It certainly shows our weakness, but isn’t that the point…we need deliverance!  Psalm 50:15

Confession. A word that conjures up all sorts of emotional quandary’s within the body of Christ.  On one side we know it is the “right thing to do.”  But on the other, our pounding heart tells us to “keep it to yourself.”  Much fear is associated with this 3 syllable word.

My text is “But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”  John 3:21

This text is right after a judgement is pronounced on all those not only practicing evil, but not willing to come into the light to expose the evil deed(s).  Truth means coming into the light.  Coming into the light reveals a work of God in the individual.  Confession is a revealing of what was done in secret.  This, Confession, is a good thing, a God working, Spirit moving event in the life off all who have been made alive in Messiah!  I do not need to recount the wonderful testimonies out there, or my own, where the burden of sin, it’s weight, has been thrown off (Heb 12:1-2), by the powerful good news of Jesus, the Messiah.

So why have I thought about confession in a negative way, instead of such a positive?  Haven’t you every wondered about this?  Confession is work of God, yet we stuggle with asking God to, “search our hearts and see if there be any wicked way in me,” out of fear that God might just take us up on the offer and reveal something so disgusting in His sight that confession becomes the remedy.  And oh, what a remedy Confession is!  We get nervous to tell God about our sin, and even more nervous to come before a Church goer.  Why?

I’m afraid I have seen a pattern over my 21 years now of walking with Jesus.  Let me tell you a story, a true story that I feel is not the marginal, but the norm.  I was at a Pastors conference one year and during a Q & A time with a panel of 10 pastors or so, old and young servants of the Lord, a question was asked about dealing with a staff member or clergy that was in sexual immorality.  AH, there it is!  The sin of sexual immorality, everyone duck, because the rock throwing is a comin!  That’s what we think right.  Israel was sexual immoral, Abraham was, Solomon of course was, Judah, Rahab, Samuel, plus many, many more.  And God sure made their lives a wreak!

Getting back to the panel of Pastors now.  The answer to the quesiton was a immediate stepping out of the position that they were in and a demotion, more than likely without the ability to get back to where they have fallen from.  Seemed like a too the point answer, from strong men who have never struggled with the sexual temptations that the forefathers of the faith have stumbled upon.  I seriouslly doubt that.  With so many Pastors on the internet today, it’s hard to imagine a Pastor not being tempted at some point with the false pleasure of internet porn.  Especially if they do not have a filter system on there computer.  I mean there open to the 420 million porn pages out there just like the rest of the world, right?  Right!  The statistics bear it out, many, many Pastor’s do have a temptation to pornography as they use the same medium as Bible teachers and porn producers in pushing their products; THE INTERNET.

But how this reaction by the Pastors effects an audience can be radical.  Just think of hearing the answer to this question!  Put yourself in the shoes of someone who makes such a confession to a Pastor of sexual immorality.  Your come into the office, sit down, look at the Pastor and blurb it out, heart pounding, blood racing…  God says that this confession is a work of HIM in you.  This is His work in you!  How great is that, right?  Then the Pastor tells you that your sins are forgiven but your fired?  Nice.

Now to give the Pastors some leaway, they could have thought about a situation where they come into the office area and find someone viewing pornography on the church computers.  No cofession there.  Different situaiton entirely.  But if someone confession to you, then we have to take a look at the passage of scripture above and dicern what it is that is moving this man or women to the point of confessing their sins.  They obviously know it is sin, and have been convicted of it.  The work of the Spirit in them has brought them to a place of coming and confessing to there leaders.  What a beautiful thing this is.

When I was listening to the Pastors at the conference I could just imagine what the 1000 leaders were saying in there minds while listening…,”I’m never going to tell anyone.”  They way the question was answered made you think that confession was not a God glorifying, benefit to the believer, move of the Holy Spirit in them.  Instead the answer given pushed down the idea of the pleasure in Confession, and placed it in the abyss of the person’s brain, never to be brought up again.

I have to understand as a minister that when the Lord is moving his child to Confession that this is a good thing, a great thing, a time to rejoice, for it is the Lord that moves in Him as the great deliverer of the soul.  (Psalm 50:15)  I am not to fire a person who confesses to me that he eats to much or is jealous of others am I?  The Lord is honored when we bring to him and others our struggles, for this shows our great need and  our weakness.  Though the church longs to be strong, God’s graces in our life our to reveal our weakness as to show His might and power working in us, so we cannot boast, and He is seen as the deliverer of our souls.  We win the war by being weak and vulnerable, not strong.

I had another encounter recently with a young man, who was serving at a church on their worship team.  As a up and coming leader in the ministry he observed a Pastor removing another young man from the leadership team after the young man confessed his sin of viewing porn.  Sad, really sad.  The lesson the young lad learned from observing this action/reaction from the Pastor was that if you confess to him anything, your fired.  Your time of serving the Lord is done.  You can’t help lead in music anymore because being in leadership means that we don’t sin or confess our sins, especially viewing a naked person.  This I believe is wrong, very wrong.  Leadership is moving in grace in ALL area’s of our life before the congregation.  I lead in repentance, cutting off sin and yes, Confessing sin.  Oh, it might take you down a peg or two in your mind, (and others) but then again….It’s not about you or I, is it?

Psalm 115:1 “Not unto us, o Lord, not unto us but to your name be the Glory.”

I was watching the previews to some of the new movies comming out and a comment caught my ears!  The movie being previewed was about the founder of the famous networking site Facebook.  You might have seen the flick by now.  But what did catch my eye was one of the motivation for him creating it. 

The movie showed the college student at his computer with some beers in him, no doubt, running his fingers on the compter keys like he was playing “war games,” with the thought of girls on the brain.  Oh, man…how shocking…a college kid with sex on the brain!  I went to a Cal State College myself, and I must say there is a a ton of sexual stimulus on campus and on the minds of America’s college students.

But what really got me was that once again porn, or un-satisfying sexual behavior (i.e. lust), won the day in a young man’s heart to move him to great things; richness, fame, all the girls he wants, a reputation, and of course rock and roll (well maybe not that).

Plase Pascal once said, “self-will will never be satisfied, even though it might be capable of achieving whatever it wills; but one is satisfied as soon as he renounces it.  Without it, one cannot be dissatisfied; with it, one cannot be content.  from Psacals thoughts on the Christian Life, section D

Our behavior of Sexual immorality has us untill we confess it (renounce) for what it is.  When the grace of God moves us towards this renounceing, then it no longer has hold of us, we are no longer enchanted with it’s fruit.  Another is better, far better pleasure than it!

It saddens me a bit to find that the prelude to such a used tool like Facebook was started with a mind on porn pleasure.

There is one form of sexual immorality that is rarely discussed but, like most everything else that society once considered taboo, is slowly being slipped into our culture. The cycle seems to be this: introduce that which was hidden in the closet into mainstream media, create a public outcry from those who hold to conservative Christian values (and even non-Christians who have a sense of morality), spawn debates and counter-outcries from liberal-thinkers who derisively ridicule the morality of the past and put the question out there “who says it is wrong?”.  The debate goes back and forth between the 2 groups, but the battle is already lost by the “moral minority”. As the debates go back and forth, we find more and more people who are unwilling to stand for what they believe, or who are so weakly-grounded in their beliefs that they begin to question their own feelings on the issue. As this goes on, the issue is re-introduced through the media, and given enough time it is accepted. At least by society in general.

Acceptance doesn’t make it right, it just means we have lost the fear of God and His principals. We’ve seen it with sex on TV,  foul language in public, provocative (slutty) fashions, homosexuality, and now, making its emergence, is pedophilia.

Amazon.com recently released an electronic book, “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct,” on their online store. After public outcry and threats of boycott, they made the decision to pull the book. You can read about it at this link:

http://www.examiner.com/social-media-in-national/amazon-pulls-pedophile-s-guide-to-love-book-from-online-store

No matter what the author says, or those who defend what he says, his right to say it, and Amazon’s right to publish it, pedophilia is sin. Just as pornography, adultery, self-gratification, homosexuality, etc. are sin. Those engaged in it are in bondage to sin whether they believe it or not. The only way to break those chains of bondage is through Jesus Christ. Nothing but the Blood of Jesus can set us free, no matter what sin we are enslaved to.

I have no doubt that pedophilia will be accepted by American society, maybe not in my lifetime, but the shot has been fired. And it really should not be a surprise. We know that things will get worse and worse before the Lord intervenes. Until that time, the enemy is going to try to get as many in his camp as he possibly can. We need to pray for those in bondage and those who defend them.