One of my kids decided to interview the old folk at the table, as research for a school paper. These people are the last of the “depression generation.” Born in the ’20′s and ’30′s, they lived through the Great Depression. Electricity didn’t come to the farm until the ’50′s. Party line telephones were common – once they got a phone. They grew up eating from their own garden and butchering their own chickens and cows. Their choices were few.

These people were self reliant. They learned to fix tractors and cars. They tell stories of keeping the mailman’s car running during WWII – otherwise they just didn’t get their mail. Necessities were hard to come by; luxuries were out of the question.

Back to my kid’s paper… the question was something about the biggest change from their youth till now. The elder man in the group spoke without hesitation.

“Folks just aren’t satisfied these days,” he said.

I thought, “What?” I was expecting answers like jet travel, internet, highways, farming… just about anything other than that.

Satisfaction???

I don’t think he was talking about addiction, but it sure rang my bell. If there’s one place I’ve lived with constant dissatisfaction, it’s sex. I stepped on that treadmill back in my youth – the search for that last experience that would make the pain stop. It wasn’t conscious. The heart drove the mind. But the more sexual experience I pursued, the more my heart became dissatisfied.

Finally, I learned my way out of that. I can’t tell you the exact moment it came. It began when my secret was no longer a secret, but the actual change was more like the gradual transition from fog to clear sky. It only came after I laid down my pursuit of sexual satisfaction and started listening to others who had made the trip; started listening to and following the steps that they told me would bring healing, relying on God to give me strength. As I did that, satisfaction quietly grew.

In the words of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 4…

I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

Satisfaction.

No way would I go back to where I was.

Email me at victoryispossible@gmail.com. I promise two things: you won’t find your way out of the sexual satisfaction fog alone, and I’ll keep your contact confidential.

People tend to see pornography as a victimless crime. In their minds they think “What’s the big deal? I’m not actually having sex with anyone. The person in the photo posed of their own free will. It’s a free country and I’m not breaking any laws. The photo is already there so they’re not making it because of me.”

This assumption couldn’t be further from the truth.

Let me introduce you to Donny Pauling, a former porn producer. While in the porn business, he became a believer and follower of Jesus. (He left the porn business immediately after his conversion.) Donny now writes a blog and he has a posting here where you can read about the real inside scoop of the porn industry. I have to warn you… it’s graphic.

Guys, the bottom line is this… at Hope Community Church I can virtually guarantee you that one out of every two of you are looking at porn on a somewhat regular basis. Yeah, you heard me: one out of two, fifty percent! Why am I so sure? Those are the nationwide stats that come up over and over again when Christian men are anonymously surveyed. There’s no reason to believe that Hope would be any different.

You know, most men sit and think “Boy, I wish there was something heroic that I could do for the Lord. Most days it’s just get up, work, eat and sleep. If I just knew what it was, I would surely do it.” Well… there is. If you’re a believer, then I virtually guarantee that you are called by God, not by men, to take part in this battle against sexual slavery. How? Stop consuming porn. Live a sexually pure life. If God can forgive a man like Donny, then he can forgive you. You have not sunk too deep that God cannot reach you.

I know… it feels like a very small drop in a very big ocean, doesn’t it? The key you need to understand is that it is your drop. No one else can do this for you. (The Holy Spirit will help! But he needs your cooperation.) Anyway, you gotta realize that the drop we’re talking about is not water, but strong poison. It poisons your soul, your thinking, your actions, your marriage, your relationships with others, your relationship with the Father. This drop poisons your whole life.

If you have tried before to quit before but it just doesn’t seem to stick, then you need help. Usually, men don’t and can’t quit alone. They need the support of others that are quitting as well. If you’re interested in seeking out the confidential support of other excellent Christian men who are walking this quitting journey together, then email me at victoryispossible@gmail.com. It’s totally confidential. I’ll get you to help. Who knows…if we get a big enough response we’ll start a meeting at Hope!

I talked to an old motorcycle racing buddy yesterday for the first time in five or six years. We talked about old times and bikes and guns and I told him I was pretty involved with my church friends and how the times had totally depleted our benevolence fund. Talked about the issues of the day, human trafficking and drugs and such. His comments reminded me of how the people of the world think based on their environment or feelings.  Jokingly I told him I wished it would be okay in the bible to snipe a few pimps seeing how human trafficking is the second most profitable illegal trade now. He has two teen aged daughters and began to get visibly enraged thinking the worst. He told a story about how a predator had hung around one daughter a few years ago. My spirit cringed.

I noticed something though…I didn’t have the hate I once would have. Yeah, I was joking about sniping pimps, but not out of hate…more out of fighting the war.

Then todays article about a 72 year old man distributing 3 million child pornography photos from here in Wichita launches and I think about praying for him. Him? Him and the millions of little kids who even today are being well…it’s really too vile to mention here. But the worst you can think is reality today. Somebody will have their 13 year old daughter stolen from them tonight in the Philippines. In three days she will be in the states under threat of death, doing the unthinkable. Her parents will scream out and pray for her.

What do we do? Put it out of our minds? Get back to the land flowing with milk and honey? What?

blake

I started out by just jumping off the trampoline and landing on the ground with a flourish. I would try to point my toes and give a little wave of the hand, with all the snap an untrained seventh grader could muster. It was pretty pitiful. It really needed some pizazz. I don’t know when the brilliant idea of adding the flip with a half twist to the dismount struck me, but like a space rock hurling from the outer reaches, strike it did. I knew I had to try.

Well, I started practicing these little dismounts. The great thing was that the ground was even a little wet and soft. It really didn’t hurt so much landing. It looked awesome! After ten or so times, my socks were nice and wet and the trampoline was getting wetter with each try.

You know where this is going, don’t you?

The bones in my forearm made two neat, audible snaps… clear as a bell. I can still hear them today. Time slows to a crawl when you’re watching your arm bend into a neat little right angle between your elbow and wrist!

My bright idea turned out to be less than stellar. There were a lot of places I could have stopped this little event from happening. Let’s list some:

• Don’t buy a trampoline
• Don’t do dismounts without a spotter
• Don’t do dismounts at all
• Stop if the ground is wet
• Use pads on the ground
• Go watch TV instead
• Be really, really skilled in falling so I can avoid breaking my arm

There were so many better boundaries that I could have put in place. By doing this crazy flip off the trampoline, I was just setting myself up for a potentially life changing injury. I was relying on my skill in the latest of moments to avert disaster.

Somehow, we think that the place to put the boundary is where our toes are right up against the line between sanity and sin, when we’re struggling to stay on the sanity side of the line.

We let all these thoughts rattle in our heads… Fantasies that inspire acting out. Desires that sooth the pain and hurt from years past. Eyes that roam. We decide that if we ever find ourselves at that certain website, or in the park, or going to lunch with that woman in accounting, or face to face with a prostitute, that we would run. If those are our only boundaries then we are kidding ourselves.

Putting our only boundaries at the end game is creating a 99% failure plan. It’s the Hail Mary play – a desperate plan in a desperate moment almost certain to fail in the long run. It’s like jumping from an airplane with no parachute with the plan of finding a soft spot to land. The reality is that temptation starts as a small seed – a little 1% thought. It’s tiny but can grow to immense tragedy in our lives.

Next article – Drastically increase your chances for success – the 1% rule.

Why go to meetings, meet with accountability partners, set up and keep boundaries and even be honest? I know that I could do these things but isn’t attending meetings an inconvenience? Who has time for accountability anyway? The other guy probably has problems too. And whats with that messy honesty thing? Anyway, who wants to tell others the deep stuff? And boundaries, what’s that about? Come on…God has given us freedom right?

Play Sexual Purity Bingo instead!

All you do is go with the flow. Don’t plan ahead. Tear down your boundaries. Live for the moment! Don’t be honest. Don’t meet with others. All that stuff is such a waste of time and really takes the fun of slips and relapses out of my life.

Consider the prizes if you win!! Loss of relationships. Twisted thinking. Fetishes. Serious incurable illness or death! Divorce. Losing your job! Disgrace for you and your family! Distance from your kids! Living all alone! Always feeling unsatisfied. Grand prize winners could win an all expenses paid stay at a Federal grand resort for years AND a place on the community website list recognizing their accomplishment!

Here’s the rules. Print out the card below. Don’t take any action to deal with your issues. Withdraw from any relationship that confronts you to change for the better. Be patient and self centered. With a little luck you’ll be crying “BINGO” in no time!

By the way…if your game is too slow try this. Look around and give yourself a square every time you see one of these things on TV, magazines or in someone else’s life, especially celebrities. Being a part of the culture always speeds the game up. Anyway, you don’t want to miss out on the fun do you? Print out your card and get with it!

It’s a great question that needs to be asked but our sin nature misleads us. Lots of thoughts swirl through our minds here like:

• If I don’t have sex I’ll explode.
• It’s a tough world to be sexually pure in.
• If my wife is not keeping me satisfied, isn’t that causing me to stumble?
• God said so, it’s in the bible.
• If God didn’t want us to have rich sex lives then why give us the plumbing?
• Sex is a good thing, right? Shouldn’t I confront her on this?

The whole council of scripture. Hank Hannegraf says that “We are to interpret scripture in light of scripture.” That means that all of scripture agrees with all the other parts. If that is the case (I think it is) then there may be other places in scripture that helps us make some sense of this. Let’s take a look.

Submission…the two sided coin. Ephesians 5:22-24 tells wives to submit to her husband in everything. Men often stop there. That should sum it up…she has to do what I ask, right? Guys, if you stop reading there you are going to miss a clear command aimed right between our eyes.

The next 8 verses tell us that men need to love theirs wives like Christ loved the church. Jesus sweat blood as he begged the Father for a way out of being crucified… for the church. Ultimately, he submitted to the Father’s will and gave his life for the church. This leads to our forgiveness and eternal life. The example makes it clear that we are to love our wives sacrificially to the point of death if necessary! Are you asking for submission without loving to the point of d

Planks. Matthew 7:1-6 Jesus told us to remove the plank from our own eye before taking a speck out of our brother’s eye. Hmmmm…planks? Let’s do a little self-examination shall we?

In Matthew 5 Jesus said that a man who looks at another woman lustfully in his heart has not only committed lust but also adultery. Honestly now, how are you doing with that one? We tend to minimize our sin. Facebook, chatting, meeting men in parks and restrooms, using pornography, hanging out in bars, looking at women on the street or at work, masturbating. We reserve our condemnation for the likes of Senator Craig and Jonathan Edwards. Scripture tells us that when we just lust we are no different. No small splinter here, we just found the motherload of redwoods! I’m surprised that our necks don’t snap under the load!

What does God think about this kind of plank? Galatians 5:19-21 that the sexually immoral will not inherit the Kingdom of God. Like all sin sexual immorality separates us from God. We need Jesus. The point is that sexual sin is a really big plank that we need to deal with before we lovingly ask our wives to deal with their spec.

But this is really urgent/important/critical/etc. Steeped in sexual sin I totally lost my sense of reality. I thought I was normal and my wife was the issue. The reality was that we both had issues to deal with. I was just too blind to see my own. Recovering alcoholics have a saying “Clean up your own side of the street, let others clean up theirs.”. Deep down I knew the calling. I had to take care of my own junk and trust her to take care of her own.

There may be deeper hurts. It’s entirely possible that your wife has deeper hurts that need to be resolved. We live in an age of sexual promiscuity that is incredibly damaging to women. Consider the possibility that there may be deeply hidden issues and hurts in her heart. It’s also entirely possible that you have played a part in these hurts. I am absolutely not recommending that you go on a witch hunt trying to fix your wife. Leave it alone for now. Clean up your own side of the street! What I am saying is to use a scripture verse out of context to compel a woman who secretly suffers from this kind of hurt is to perpetrate a kind of emotional rape and create very difficult damage to repair.

The easy way out. This is an attractive verse to misapply. The bottom line is when we are misusing sex then more sex never solves anything. Our brain chemistry tricks us into just wanting more. When we misuse sex it’s only temporary relief. It’s the heart issues that need to be solved, not the amount of sex. There is no denying that the 1 Corinthians 7 verse is there and it is a biblical truth. It was just not intended for us to use it to force our wives to satisfy us. If it is a something your wife needs to work on then let her discover it and let the Holy Spirit convict her. God is fully able. He knows your need and he knows your wife’s needs. Trust him…clean up your own side of the street.

It you are in this for long you will see success and failure. The patterns remind me of the parable of the sower in Luke 8. Some seeds are sown on pavement, rocks, weedy soil and in good soil. Birds eat the seeds on the pavement. The seed that land on the rocks spring up but die quickly. Weeds choke the seedlings that grow at their feet. The only seeds that excel land in good soil. The parable is really about the state of our heart (the soil).

I have seen all four examples in my heart:

The pavement: I asked the question “Is masturbation really wrong?” and heard the radio programs about sexual sin and avoided them. The strategy is to ignore the message. A hard heart will not respond to the Spirit.

Rocky soil: I knew I needed to turn from this. I felt the pressure to change but wasn’t ready to let go of my way of coping. It’s common to get pressure from wives, friends, counselors, parents, employers or other people in our lives. We respond to get along. There is short-term success but lacking real motivation to do the hard work, it dies. Rocky hearts soon return to their old tricks.

Weedy soil: It’s having a deeper desire to quit but being afraid of the solution. I’ve found resolve isn’t all that counts. I also had to weed my soil. Weeds come in all shapes and sizes. Some weeds even look like good plants. Lack of honesty. Minimizing the real story. Secrecy. Double mindedness. Isolation. Not finding good support. Not fixing our baggage. It’s fear that the medicine is more bitter than the problem.

Good soil: Weeding the garden really helped. It you are like me, you have some trouble recognizing your own weeds. I had friends help me weed. I told a good, wise, spiritually mature, confidential friend. I got involved in a support group. Heartwork to deal with my stuff was key. I have seen guys pulling up the roots of self deception. Living honestly, setting up healthy boundaries. Getting in the Word and applying it in their lives. Spending consistent time in prayer. Helping others who are not as far along. Finding experts to help them. It’s a total commitment to water, fertilize and pull weeds for the rest of their lives.

What about you? What kind of soil are you? How will you respond? If you’re ready please email me. It’s free and confidential. I have never felt better, been more on track with the Lord or been more sexually pure. You can be too!

Another note. Jeff’s blog (porntopurity.com) is a great blog. He knows what it means to be committed to recovery and has a lot of great insight. He also has a good podcast if you are into those. Put it on your bookmarks or your newsreader.

• Struggles with the same or similar issues as you do. This person needs to have a clue about what your struggle is like. Sexual sin thrives on deception and denial. A person who understands your struggle will be better able to see the areas in your life where you are deceiving or in denial and bring that to your attention.
• Is able to challenge you. Using a person that you can control will be completely ineffective. If they are not free to challenge your thinking where you need it, then the entire accountability relationship will be worthless. In other words, using your employee or grown child as an accountability partner won’t work. If you’re in ministry, you need to find someone who is not in your “flock.”
• Comfortable with them. You gotta get along with them. If you can’t relate and find common ground, then it may not work out.
• Has the time and diligence for a weekly conversation. You need to talk about things every week and sometimes on a daily basis. If the person is not consistently available, you’ve gotta find a different solution.
• Is not your spouse. Some people think that their spouse would make an ideal accountability partner. They almost never do. First, it’s very likely have a long history of hiding your sexual sin from your spouse. If this is the case, what makes you think you can be honest now? Second, every time you make some kind of revelation to your spouse (who is already hurt to the core) it will be like salt in their wound. This is not an environment that encourages honesty. Third, they have their own stuff to deal with. It is said that the healthy does not marry the sick. Usually, your dealing with your stuff will expose some issues your spouse needs to deal with that make them poor accountability partners. Using your spouse as an accountability partner will very likely make your relationship worse.
• Same gender as you. It seems silly even saying that, but you’d be surprised that some people think that might work!

• Balanced approach to life. There are two extremes in the area of quitting sexual sin. The “Just give it to God” camp and the “I just need some counseling” types. The problem is both are right to some degree. If you take either approach and push it to the extreme it doesn’t work. We were created spiritual, emotional, physical and mental beings. The solution will draw a good balance between all the areas.
• Must be confidential. Think carefully. Confidentiality is a non negotiable. If you hear your potential confidentially partner sharing things about others that you would be embarrassed about if that was you, they are not your accountability partner. This person needs to be so totally committed to confidentiality that they need to not share this stuff with even their wife. No bringing it up as a “prayer concern” – or any of the other loopholes we use to gossip.

A common question that people ask about accountability partners is “Does my accountability partner need to be further down the road than I do?”. Not really. Often times that kind of person would be called a sponsor. You are looking for someone engaged in the journey that can walk side by side with you. A brother. A friend.

Magic fixes are things that people think are the silver bullet for their problem. Just fire it once and the werewolf dies, never to return. Usually magic fixes are based on good things. The problem is that people think this is all they need to do. It will somehow magically make their problems go away. While accountability relationships can be very beneficial, they never work out to be a stand-alone magic fix.

One key thing you have to realize about even the best accountability is that its success depends on you – not the accountability partner. You have to be honest. No accountability partner in the world is going to make you be honest or quit sinning sexually.

Sexual sin depends on lies and deception to grow. If you’re involved in it, then you’re involved in a systematic program of deceiving yourself and the significant people in your life. It’s likely that this deception and hiding has gone on for years or decades. Undoing these years of deceptive habits and patterns will take getting honest with yourself – which is not something an accountability partner can make you do.

Think about it this way. All these years, your best efforts to stop doing what you are doing have failed. Your own conscience has not brought about the change you have been looking and hoping for. The Holy Spirit has likely been prompting you to change but you haven’t stopped yet. So how is another human going to accomplish this thing that your best efforts, your conscience, and the Holy Spirit (working on an uncooperative subject) haven’t made happen?

For a large majority of us, solving this issue will require an honest response to the Holy Spirit’s prompting and hard work from us. Don’t look to your accountability partner to make you honest.

Accountability partnerships are good things… really good things. When I’m struggling, I’ve found that my accountability partner helps me think things out. He usually sees things from a different perspective and helps me get past my own deception. I’ve come to think that the term “accountability partner” is a bad description. It conjures up images of a cop or law enforcement officer; someone who’s making me toe the line. Far from that: an accountability partner walks side by side with me. Yes, sometimes he does hold me accountable, but I find much greater value in his friendship as my confidant, adviser and encourager.

Part II… what to look for in an accountability partner.