Bless you!
Choose Jesus not the stooges!
The answer for those who are enslaved to pornography is not mere willpower alone. What drives men to pornography is poor self-esteem based around identity issues. Without good male role models and male bonding relationships that give validation and vision to their maleness, men will look for gender confirmation and identification in the opposite sex. Which really only robs them of their real identification and amplifies the problem with guilt and confusion. The same principle of course works for females as well. Proper role models and bonding with those of your same sex gives you peace and purpose in your relationships with those of the opposite sex. If you deal with the root of the problem all your relationships will benefit.
We live in a hyper-sexual society that plays on the affections of people to manipulate them at every turn. At the same time the woman's role has changed in society leaving very little room or sometimes want for a man's role to be defined. Concurrently the government in it's blindness also has instituted systems that are anti-family and actually circumvent the fathers place in the home. This has caused what is called the disenfranchised male syndrome. Consider also that male bonding is no longer achieved in the traditional roles of physical work in the field or the factory as now our male workforce is more white collar than blue. All this is compounded by a selfish "me first", entertainment based society that places little value on quality relationships of any kind.
Addiction is the fruit of pain. Addiction to porn is not the root it is the pain of not being affirmed in self worth. The root is a man's low self esteem that is fed by his inability to bond with other men in healthy relationships. We live in a society where men are not being validated as to their clear role and respect in that role. If they are affirmed through male relationships with a vision to better themselves the result is freedom. Without this vision the pain makes addiction normal by this I mean it is prevalent in our culture not isolated or in a sub group. Porn is so available at the touch of a button or cell phone that it is the largest profit media in the world. Our focus needs to shift from legalistic blame shifting and shaming to a cure. God fixes things at the heart level. When loving male role models are in someones life they become empowered. In the church men need to organize and mobilize methods of fellowship and meaningful acts of service. This is how men bond. Women are more social by nature and need little help to connect. The body of Christ needs to understand that regularly gathering men together is a vital part of keeping men healthy and focused on growing in true identification.
Now God is returning the hearts of the fathers to the sons and the sons to the fathers. That momentum is to heal a sense of purpose and true identity in men. Vision gives purpose and meaning which is necessary to move away from self destructive habits. Of course submitting yourself to God and resisting the flesh are being learned at the same time as this. But keep in mind that an excess of performance focus always leads to self condemnation and self hatred. Until the soul is healed of the pain the addiction is an automatic response to stress. Legalism creates a kind of endless roller coaster for the self image sufferer. Working on the identification and acceptance of God's love for you and your roll with other men is more efficient and eventually by God's grace it will manifest a permanent healing of the soul.
Finally I do want to make clear that I disagree with the idea that "if a man will look upon women in a better way then he will be free of pornography". Though I know that can be helpful and I teach similar things as part of a course of recovery. However since women are not the source of the problem but only an alternative route of affirmation, any correction of how one thinks of women is only a small part of the deliverance. There is much more than just lust involved here. Real healing and deliverance only comes from an identity in Christ and knowing your identity among your fellow males. I'm saying that it has very little to do with women at all. I'm only sharing this because I care very deeply about the needless pain men and women are in.
I highly recommend a book called "Healing of the Masculine Soul" by Gordon Dalbey
http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Masculine-Soul-Restoration-Manhood/dp/0849944384
In His love,
Jeff Moore www.JeffMooreMinistries.com
1/ Don't get involved in someone's problem more than they are.
2/ God must love stupid people cause He made more of them.
3/ Father forgive them for they KNOW NOT what they do. Pretty much is a daily prayer.
4/ Christianity is not about you or me it is about Jesus love.
5/ Salvation is unconditional. Relationship with God is very conditional.
6/ God loves everyone but He's not going to put up with everyone.
7/ God's answer to sin was to kill everyone (Jew and Gentile means everyone) and raise them up in a new creation in Christ Jesus. Galatians 2
8/ If the book is called "The Revelation of Jesus Christ" perhaps that is what it is about.
9/ The translation of Romans 8:1 would be nonsense if the no condemnation only applied to "those who walk in the spirit and not after the flesh" because there has never been ANY condemnation for those folks! The better translations do not add that part in there. Then the thought makes sense!
10/ Most people think reading the bible is enough. Yet the bible says to study the bible. The difference is life and death!
11/ God's love is not human love on steroids. It is His love let His word define it!
12/ Grace is not unmerited favor. You could not fall from unmerited favor! Grace is the empowerment of God that comes from His presence.
13/ It is always God's grace, it is never ours.
14/ Don't let your righteousness be in competition with God's righteousness.
15/ Don't let your conscience ever try and tell you how God feels or what He thinks. You conscience is not God. It was trained by your culture.
16/ Don't be fooled by your opinion of yourself. God loves you much more than that!
17/ He who does the work gets the glory. He also gets the blame. Let Jesus do the work and He will take the blame.
18/ Most Christians have no clue what covenant they are in. Most make a third one from blending the two. God cannot honor that!
19/ You were never under the 10 commandments.
20/ Christianity is a sharing of lives not a sharing of Sundays.
21/ The Golden Rule is the fulfillment or sum of all that the law and prophets hang. That is not the Christian law or new covenant law at all. Jesus gave only one new Covenant law. That you love one another AS I HAVE loved you.
22/ We cannot manufacture the love of God. We must receive it more and more in order to give it more and more.
23/ Love is it's own reward.
24/ Legalism is the power of sin. The mind set on His finished work will produce the works that glorify God.
25/ God gave you a brain and He expects you to use it!
26/ Jesus removed you from the curse of the law and brought you from death unto life but you a not free from the consequences of your choices.
27/ All spiritual gifting is a matter of focus. Spiritual maturity is another thing entirely.
28/ Your actions trump your prayers. Being good to one another count for more than being bad to them and then praying for them.
29/ You cannot do both sides of a relationship.
30/ All relationships breathe. They have close times and far times. If you do not let it breathe, you will smother it.
31/ Nowhere in the bible does it say to make a bible. Stop worshiping a book and learn what the scriptures say!
32/ Go where your celebrated not where your tolerated.
33/ Who you love is more important than who loves you!
34/ Lucifer never was the devil. The text says he was "the king of Tyre", a man even perhaps allegorically, all men. The devil, the dragon and the serpent of old were all the same person, and he was the one being disarmed at the cross!
35/ God gives us over to what we want. He is so gentle and so not self centered that He allows us to have our desires. By this we learn to want what He wants for us. David said, "Thy gentleness hath made me great".
36/ Joy is OUR portion! Get some!
"The failure of Christianity is not the failure of the nature of God in man, but it is because Sense Knowledge has gained the supremacy in the church, and Jesus is no longer Lord or Head of the Church.
Worldly-minded men rule most of the churches."
- E.W. Kenyon
1/ Grace has never meant unmerited favor. It means the empowerment of God. How could you "fall from grace" if it was unmerited?! Grace works by faith in God. Without faith it does you no good at all!
2/ As He is so are we in this world is conditional on us acting like Him. His love is what is seen when He appears through us!
3/ Unconditional love is not in scripture anywhere! It is a man made concept. Jesus unlimited love was shown in His condition of the cross. You cannot be in relationship with God without accepting His cross!
4/ All does not mean all in all contexts. Universal-ism is the lie of futurism. It does not preach a now condition of acceptance of Christ which is clearly in the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
5/ Salvation is free for the asking but relationship with God is very conditional by faith!
6/ Nowhere in the bible does it say to make a bible. Or to make a book with all the scriptures in it. God still speaks and writes today! Cannon was a political thing not a Spiritual thing. Proved by the bible mentions other books it does not contain!
7/ All are not already reconciled since we are to beg men to be reconciled and we have been given the ministry of reconciliation. The Gospel only reconciled the unbeliever if the person accepts Jesus cross for them. Reconciliation is NOT salvation in the bible! It takes two "I do's" to make a marriage NOT one!
8/ God is love but your version of love may not be God. Only God has and gives us AGAPE love to use, grow and live by!
9/ The whole bible is written for you but it is not all written to you.
10/ Peter and Paul both wrote "now at the end of the age/world" 2,000 years ago so if your reading this, you missed that end! There is not another end for the bible says "the world without end"!
11/ There is a street of gold not streets in the book of Revelation. The highway of holiness is Jesus Christ!
12/ The words rapture and trinity are not in the bible. If you search the Greek you will find that they are man made doctrines. The rapture started in 1827 from a spiritualist girl's dream and published by non-Spirit filled men! The Greek words used in 1 Thess. 4 mean the "air" we breath and a secret "twinkle" knowing not anything to do with "in the sky" or anything sudden. etc. The trinitarian scriptures in our Bible were added to it by Tertullian (not a Christian) during the Nicene Council! He was trying to appease the polytheism cults to join the official church of Rome. Nothing holy about that at all!
13/ The Gospel message is about a now choice to come into relationship with Jesus Christ which is a life or death decision.
14/ The only thing called the word of God in scripture is the person of Jesus Christ. The term Holy Bible is not in the bible and just a man made tradition.
15/ The KJV is not a translation to this generation at all. No one speaks in that language but folk have convinced themselves that that is how God speaks? Rubbish! It needs an interpreter and that is why religion uses it to control. Men speaking for God rather than studying to relate, they are hiding the word from the people like the Catholic Church did. NASB is my personal favorite. Keep studying!
16/ All but two percent of Christians are not taught to study the bible for themselves! Hence they cannot reason through the ideas of scripture. Bible interpretation has grown with the archaeology and science in the last 400 years. No bible contains that information today! None! Please STUDY like your life depended on it!
17/ Jesus spoke in Matthew 24 to people whom He said would not die before it happened. So it happened in 70AD thus Jesus is not a liar. Study Josephus and Tertulian to learn what happened as predicted in the Book of Revelation that was written around 68AD! Not in 95AD as some denominations say! How could the temple being destroyed not make it into The Book of Revelation if it was written after 70AD?!
18/ There is more evidence that what we have as the bible is the authentic material than any other ancient book in the world. Exceptions: What King James added to the text. What Tertulian (not a Christian) added about the trinity in the counsel of Nicine and also what names were changed to hide that women were equals in the early church structure!
19/ For centuries when man tried to disprove the bible through archaeology or any other science they have been proven wrong and the scriptures true.
20/ The kingdom of God is invisible until someone with righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit lets it out of them!
21/ The entire old covenant was fulfilled in Jesus Christ and all the prophecies of Jesus were fulfilled in the 70AD event. Now we are living in the age of Luke 13:32 and a coming of the Lord through His mature people (Rom. 8:19) to the rest of the world.
22/ God is Holy! The bible is NOT! We are told in the bible to study the scriptures and some of which are mentioned in the bible but not part of it! Study the bible using Context Audience Relevance and the Language it's written in! Do not just read the bible for then you may be reading INTO it from your cultural view or hearts condition. But study to hear what God is saying today!
Keep seeking Jesus!
I was 21 when I came to know Jesus personally.
Born Catholic, I had always known God by the sacrifice of His Son, but I had never had any personal experience, just a lot (and I do mean a lot) of one-way conversations! Dry religion with a lot of questions and obvious meaningless ritual. However, I thank God that I knew the basics of who He was.
Twice I remember distinctly trying to give my life to the Lord and asking for his will to be done in my life. Once at age eight and again at age 15. When I finally did meet Jesus, I asked him why not sooner and He replied, "My time is My time!" So to me, being "Born Again" is not so much a matter of our will but His! None are out of His sight or His care!
It happened on Monday, April 19, 1979.
I went to a meeting being held by the then little known, Benny Hinn. I was surprised to see the people there were from all walks of life and made no special effort to dress up for God. Not like most churches I'd seen! I had played guitar in a traveling youth group with the United Church so I had seen a lot of churches (my church had no youth groups). The first thing I saw was a huge man in a plumber's uniform shaking peoples hands and asking "Are you born again?" I said a quick prayer! "Lord, don't let him ask me that question, I don't know the answer!" Well I was spared as I slipped past the crowd and sat with my chess-playing friend that had brought me. The worship music started and I enjoyed that! Most were lifting their hands unto God and I had never seen that but I thought it was cool and I tried it!
Then out near the front of the church I saw them! Three little old ladies with the sweetest, clearly supernatural, glow all around them! I had seen lots of blue haired old ladies as I toured with the youth group but I had never seen this glow before!!!
I was enraged at God!! I think even I was surprised at my reaction to this! I said to God, "All my life I've been looking for this and look! You gave it to them!" I was so angry but after a minute or so I realized that being angry wasn't doing me any good so I decided to give it a try. I said to Jesus "They are worshipping like you are really in the room so I'll try it!" I lifted my hands and imagined for a moment that Jesus was standing right in front of me, then WHAM He was!!! I could see Him standing right in front of me and I was so overwhelmed that I went to hug Him! All of a sudden He grew right there into this huge person as tall as the empire state building and all white and glowing! I felt very small. I realized then that I had to do something.
Right there with no one to lead me I said "Jesus, I know you died on the cross for me, and I am sorry for all the wrong things I have done! Help me do batter." Immediately He came back to my size, He reached out His arms and we hugged. While in that embrace, I had a series of visions and conversations with Jesus!!
He showed me my life like a giant chess board (I played a lot of chess back then) and I was one of the pawns trying to make it to the other end. Being a pawn I could not see all the other pieces and their potential threat! He showed me that from where He was He could see the entire board and all the pieces! He could lead me safely! I replied to that saying, "Ok Lord, wherever you lead me I will follow for the rest of my life!"
Next I thought of my family and the others I had cared about and I realized how much I had tried to love them yet it seemed fruitless. He then showed me His great love for them and I cried out to Him that I had tried so hard. "I've tried to love them", I said sobbing. He then showed me how His love was perfect and I responded, "Please Lord, show me how to love them properly." I felt a tremendous weight lift from me! I asked Him, "Why didn't you get me sooner?!" He then showed me a pocket watch and said to me "My time is my time!" When the experience seemed to be lifting I said to Jesus, "Please don't ever let me forget to tell people how to cross over." I was so grateful; I wanted everybody to know Him!
All this happened without any sermon or miracles happening around me! Just Jesus and me during the worship time! Later at the end of the awesome miracle service they gave an altar call to meet Jesus. I knew I already had, but I went up there to be obedient! I felt as if I was a giant clock and only the God that made me could have placed the gear deep inside me that make me work. I was Born Again by God!
When my friends drove me home, they told me to go home and throw away my astrology books and Tarot cards. My answer was sincere. I said, "All my life I've been doing what other people had told me!" (Thinking angrily of the Catholic church). "Now I've met Jesus and from now on He'll tell me what to do!" (Two months later, Jesus clearly showed me that they were deceptive, so I got rid of them). As I left the car, my dear friend turned his head and told me to read Romans chapter 8 when I got inside! I did and it has been my favorite chapter ever since!!
Lying on my bed that night, still too excited to sleep, I saw eight faces in a circle on my ceiling! Those faces almost scared me at the time, but I trusted God with them. During my walk I have met some of those faces and they all have been ministers and important teachers to me!
The next morning as I was washing my face I asked Jesus if what has happened to me was just for last night or forever. He gave me a sign that I asked for and I was so happy I did not want to even step on a bug! Literally!! I would meet people on the street and I would shake their hand and say, "I'm a born-again Christian! I have no idea what that is but it is wonderful!"
After more than 35 years I can still say, "IT IS WONDERFUL!!!!" and my favorite saying is "How good does this get?" and it still gets better every single day!
Thank you Jesus!
In His Love, Jeff Moore
Footnote Thought:
The bible clearly teaches and my own experience tells me that I was dead in sins and trespasses before I got born again approximately 1979 years after the cross! Even though He had already reconciled God to me, I was not yet reconciled to God! It takes two "I do's" to make a marriage. The day I got born again I was made a New Creation. Right then I knew I was in Him on the cross and raised with Him in His resurrection. I had New Life! Two minutes before however I was still dead in sin before I accepted that finished work.