Overcoming life-dominating sinful behaviors often begin with a crisis of truth. Everyone who struggles with sexual sin or any other kind of pervasive sinful behavior will have such a moment in their lives when they will be faced with the truth of God’s word and the resulting decision(s) they make in the face of that truth. When we choose to follow God through the saving grace of His son Jesus, we...
Everything
Thanksgiving is a bit of an ironic time. On the one hand, the focus of the holiday is giving thanks. On the other hand, if we were to sit down and record how we actually spend our time and energy this week, we might find the focus is more on buying, preparing, cooking, and eating…a whole heck of a lot. Can a heart of thanksgiving and all this holiday activity go hand in hand? I think we can ask...
Yes Sex
For anyone wanting to love well, learning to say ‘no’ to sexual urges is a must. Just as important, though, is learning to say ‘yes’. If you were to poll random people on the street what they think Christians believe about sex, I’d wager most people would begin with what they understand Christians are against. They’d bring up Christianity’s prohibition against sex before marriage, homosexual sex...
Are You Listening to Yourself?
You cannot be relationally healthy if you cannot listen. Where there is no listening, there is only isolation. This includes listening to ourselves. Where we cannot or do not listen to ourselves, we will not be able to bring ourselves to God or others for relationship. At best, we’ll only be able to bring a fraction of ourselves. Listening well to ourselves means first giving ourselves freedom to...
Desert Training
Last week we talked about how walking away from sexual sin can feel like walking into desert – and why this is necessary. If you missed that post, you can read it now here. I closed last week’s post by saying that only in battle can we rid the land of the enemy. We must let the desert train us for this battle. God is available for intimacy with you. True, lasting, committed intimacy...
Twisted Power
I just got off the phone with a dad whose son has been viewing porn and sexting strangers. The boy is just 15 but already he’s exhibiting signs of sexual addiction. Why did God create sex to be so powerful? God did create sex powerful, but this boy, like so many, is not dealing so much with the power of sex, he’s dealing with the power of sin. And there’s a big difference between the two. The...