I really feel like the Holy Spirit is emphasizing this subject right now in my life - and I feel pressed to really get down to the brass tacks of understanding and overcoming the spirit of immorality. The New Testament really emphasizes this sin, and particularly, Jesus really highlights immorality in the sermon on the mount. [Mt. 5:27-30].
[ You have heard that it was said to those of old, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out…it is more profitable that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off…for it is more profitable…than for your whole body to be cast into hell. ]
But I really feel like the full understanding of this is being overlooked, underemphasized, and/or whitewashed within the body of Christ today as a whole, with devastating consequences. Immorality includes all sexual activity (physical, verbal, technological) outside of a covenant of marriage between one man and woman. Jesus knows that immorality grants Satan legal doors of access to oppress and damage our heart and our relationship with God, our family, and others.
1 Cor. 6:18 says, "Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body."
God was speaking of more than avoiding physical adultery, but also the spirit of immorality. That spirit does not start with the physical - but in the eyes, then it moves to the heart, stirring up lust, and eventually turns into action. The Pharisees thought and taught that adultery was only committed if acted out in a physical way, but Jesus makes it clear that's not so.
So what's the big deal here - why is he making such an emphasis on this? It is because of the destructive and deceptive nature of the spirit of immorality. It is a spiritual cancer that grows and ends in death if not resisted. The reality is, many in the Church have a low view of hell; but the bible clearly and repetitively says that those who are immoral will go to hell.
Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves…nor drunkards…will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor. 6:9-10)
This you know, that no fornicator…has any inheritance in the kingdom…Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes… (Eph. 5:5-6)
The sexually immoral…shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire. (Rev. 21:8)
Enter…into the city [New Jerusalem]. But outside are…sexually immoral… (Rev. 22:14-15)
There's a false grace message being perpetrated among the body of Christ today that suggests because we are saved, and thus, we can dabble a little bit in sexual immorality and we're fine, praise God, Jesus saves. And yes, it's true that God's grace is big enough to cover any sin that we are repentant of.
The key word here is repentant. If you have identified and acknowledged behavior as immoral and you are fighting to overcome that and are sincerely repentant, you can be confident in God's saving grace. But in our society today, where the lines of social acceptance regarding appropriate sexuality is off the charts, more than not those seeped in sexual sin refuse to acknowledge it as sin, even within the body of Christ. And the false grace message adds to that emboldenness that puffs up the inner voice saying, "ah, it's not that bad; boys will be boys". (This message applies equally to women as it does to men.) No longer are women backstage in the game of sexuality, but are front and center; and the new norm for a woman today (by societies' measure) is her self-worth equating to the measure in which she is able to successfully present her body as a tool for lust.
We can back-peddle all day long and say, I'm a good person, surely that counts for something... I'm saved; God will forgive me, I won't go to hell for having sex outside of marriage, or for having an affair, or for looking upon another man's wife with lust. Beloved, our version of what's good and what's not, what's righteous and what's evil won't last a second in the throne room of the Lord Almighty on the day we stand before him - God's version of what's good and what's bad is what counts. And if we aren't in agreement with him, calling sin what he calls sin, and waging war within ourselves against it, then he knows. HE'S GOD. He's searched your heart and soul and knows you through and through.
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption... (Gal. 6:7-8)
Part of the verses I've quoted talks about plucking out our right eye if it sins against us. And of course Jesus didn't mean this literally; but as an illustration to show the radical measures one must take to reverse the hold that sexual sin has on them, in order to overcome it. One example of dealing radically with lust is to obey Paul’s exhortation for men to refuse what is often called “innocent touching” of women, when they know that it stirs lustful desires in them.
It is good for a man not to touch a woman. (1 Cor. 7:1)
Jesus emphasized how important it is to deal with immorality in a radical way. A casual approach to lust is not sufficient. We must make radical, even costly and painful proactive decisions to remove whatever stirs up lust in our members (Mt. 5:29-30). This means that some of what we cherish (people, places or things) may need to be removed from our lives. The spirit of immorality is rooted in “looking with lust” at a person directly or through media (internet porn). This fuels the heart with sexual fantasies. Adultery progresses from eye adultery to heart adultery then to physical adultery. The term fornication refers to those not married who practice sexual immorality, and adultery refers to someone within the covenant relationship, lusting physically or emotionally after someone they aren't married to.
The spirit of immorality is unbiased and operates to the degree that anyone opens the door to it. We were all born with sinful weakness. Satan wants our weakness to escalate to wickedness, but he needs our cooperation. He wants to poison our spirit and then imprison it. Augustine wrote, “Lust yielded to becomes a habit, and a habit not resisted becomes necessity (addiction).”
Immorality is dangerous because it grows and becomes uncontrollable. People imagine that they can “dabble with a little immorality,” then control it later. They do not understand the power of a cold heart, darkened mind, and defiled conscience with demonic activity in their life. It increases in corruption (shame, oppression, and perversion now and leading to judgment later).
In Romans 1, Paul described how people sin against their body by engaging in immorality. He explained how a “penalty” works in those who continually refuse the Spirit’s warnings to resist immorality. The penalty is that God progressively “gives them up” to greater darkness—going from uncleanness (v. 24) to vile passions (v. 26) and finally to a debased mind (v. 28). When someone is “given up” to dark desires, God lifts the natural restraints that He gracious built into our human design. Thus, they are compelled to yield to greater depths of lust.
Jesus reveals how He feels about those who continue in immorality without repenting of it. He warned the churches in Pergamos and Thyatira to not tolerate immorality (Rev. 2:12-23). Believers are sometimes made sick and die prematurely under God’s judgment on immorality. God’s discipline includes Satan being permitted to make the unrepentant sick (1 Cor. 5:1-5; 11:30-32). Paul commanded the elders to deliver a believer over to Satan (lift God’s protection, allowing Satan to make him sick) to wake him up spiritually so that he would not fall away.
If we judge ourselves by repenting, then we will not be disciplined by the Lord. We can reverse God’s judgment or discipline by repenting of areas of persistent compromise in our life. The Lord is the avenger of immorality in the lives of unrepentant believers (1 Thes. 4:4-8).
For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. If we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged [by the Lord]. When we are judged, we are chastened [disciplined] by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world. (1 Cor. 11:30-32)
We act in the opposite spirit of immorality by diligently seeking to grow in our relationship with Jesus and by meditating on His Word being implanted in us which is able to heal our hearts. I recommend reading Proverbs 5-7 regularly to be reminded of the terrible cost of immorality.
Many issues contribute to being able to walk free from the spirit of immorality. They include: looking inward by communing with the Spirit through the Word; looking upward to heaven and its rewards (Col. 3:1-4, 23-24); looking backward to deal with bitterness, shame, and wrong mindsets; looking forward to God’s assignment in our life and to His end-time purposes so that we are prepared by understanding the coming glory and crisis (2 Pet. 3:14); looking around to see the pain that our immorality would cause others; looking to others in relationships with accountability (confessing our weaknesses); and looking outward by establishing boundaries to avoid circumstances that stir lust in us by what we look at, where we go, and what we do.
Note: I borrowed heavily from one of Mike Bickle's sermons click here to access it in its entirety.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Saturday, June 2, 2012
A Message from the Recovering Individualist
I read an article this morning that stirred up the Holy Spirit in me, and when the spirit speaks, I listen. It had such personal implications for me on so many levels, it was astounding.
http://m.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationship/blog/27747-is-sexual-sin-communal-sin
Hi, my name is Jen, and I'm a recovering individualist.
What the heck does that mean?
Well, it starts with the basis of this article; that there are many baby steps between the knowledge of the differences between sexual individualism and sex within a covenant relationship - between porneia and agape (read the article to understand these terms).
I used to believe - as society teaches us - that I am the center of my own universe and my primary objective in life is to serve myself; to gain more, to be more, to grow more, to learn more. And I applied this to my relationships. I deserved to be happy. Fulfilled. Loved. Respected. And any relationship that did not conform to that was disposable. My sense of entitlement shaped every facet of my life, dictating the choices I made with the primary goal to be to improve the quality of my existence. But as this article illustrates, it is when we individualize our existence and remove it from its connectedness to others, we corrode the very foundations of our society; and our individual decisions have an effect not only on ourselves, but upon humanity as a whole.
Last year, I went through a complete transformation through the Holy Spirit. And it was during this time that I went through my own baby steps from believing in, practicing, and engaging in sexual individualism to a commitment of abstinence outside of the covenant of marriage. Last summer, I was having a discussion about this topic with someone I was having sex with. I was grappling with my changing heart on the matter and trying to relay that to him. As I tiptoed around the topic of abstinence, he finally asked if I was going to become a nun or something.
The tone in his voice had a twinge of mockery and sarcasm in it that left me embarrassed at the thought of it; that it was so far off the left field of societal norm that I couldn't possibly ever take it seriously. And being still in the infancy of my walk with Christ, I did not defend that idea because I wasn't fully won over by it. My readings of the bible told me that sex was only to be experienced between husband and wife within the covenant of marriage, but the chasm I had to cross from sexual promiscuity to abstinence was too big to cross in one fail swoop. Thus began my journey through these baby steps.
My first baby step was taken before that relationship - it was when I made a conscious choice to stop sleeping around. At the end of a marriage riddled with intimacy issues, I found myself emotionally starved and my sexual attractiveness challenged. I was wounded, broken, empty and in no position to even consider a relationship; yet my emotional starvation compelled me to seek out what I needed through sexual encounters. Six months of that and I found myself in worse shape than when I'd started; on the brink of an emotional meltdown. I knew nothing except that what I was doing wasn't working. So my first baby step was made more out of desperation than out of any sense of morality.
My second baby step was put into action when I met someone, like myself, who needed intimacy and companionship but wasn't ready for relationship. We engaged in all the levels of intellectual, creative, physical and emotional intimacies that a real relationship is supposed to have, but without the commitment. This is commonly referred to as friends with benefits.
You see, the paradox is that we have to give up our right to decide what is best for us in order to truly be free; which doesn't sound like freedom at all, until we have a supernatural realization that God's wisdom surpasses all; that his commandments are right and just and made in perfect love and wisdom and intended to bring our lives into fullness - when we embrace these truths through the lens of God's love for us, there is no resistance to him because we see the truth in it and reap the benefits of his blessings.
But for our choices to stand against the temptations of this world, they must be made through wisdom and knowledge gained from learning about God. The reality is, most people believe they have a right to be loved, appreciated, sexually satisfied, and adored, and want a relationship that can give them all of these things. But the disconnect comes in the reality of what it takes to achieve it; that we ourselves must be willing to unconditionally give these things (without the expectation of having them returned) in order to unlock the mystery of the bliss of covenant love. And we have bred the idea of marital bliss right out of our society to the point that even mentioning it as a viable option is laughable to almost everyone.
We convince ourselves that the message concerning sexual ethics that society feeds us is accurate; that to have freedom, we make choices based on self-satisfaction and entitlement. But by doing so, we contribute to the brokenness of the family unit, the increase in the acceptance of abortion and children out of wedlock, we increase the instances of the fatherless, and we increase and unlock a culture-wide hunger for deeper and darker levels of sexual immorality to include the exploitation and demoralization of the value of women and increase the boundaries of sexual appetites to include our children, in both, through the marketing of sex to them, and in the inclusion of them to satisfy mans' sexual appetites.
Think about it. Just 60 years ago, divorce was an abomination in our society. And just 50 years ago, having a child out of wedlock was heresy; 30 years ago pornography was considered perverse. And in the past 20 years, divorce has become the new standard for relationships; in the past 10, pornography, sexual slavery and the sexual exploitation of women and children has become the world's biggest cash crop; and in 10 more years, the likelihood of child pornography becoming an extension of pop culture is a stark reality.
And as the contrast between these lines become ever more blurred, we must soberly ask ourselves how our individual actions are contributing to the annihilation of the sanctity of the family unit. Because everything matters, and every choice has a consequence. Every relationship we bail on in favor of a more suitable one contributes. Every time we look upon members of the opposite sex as tools to use for our own personal gratification, we contribute. Every time we gaze upon and lust after someone's body (that we're not in covenant relationship with), we come into agreement with the sexual exploitation that dominates our society. And in our abounding lust, as we seek out ways to satiate it, we engage with society in helping to blur the lines between childhood and adulthood; with more and more girls dressing and acting in adult ways at younger and younger ages, with more and more instances of older women seducing underage boys.
These are becoming the new norms. It's ok to make sexual passes at minors. It's ok to lust after high school girls or boys. After all, if they are presenting themselves as knowledgeable in the arena of sexuality, they are fair game, right? Because it's all about the self; my experience, my entitlement, my wants, my needs being fulfilled, regardless of the impact my actions have on society. And every time we fall victim to these norms, we are teaching those same children that there is no longer a "we", only an "I", that sex is the new love, and that FWB is the new marriage.
You may think that by me bringing this up, I am placing myself in a position of superiority; perched on my self-righteousness, looking down on you with pointed finger. And that is the devil's plan for every person; turning truth into judgement, evoking resentment and resistance instead of an epiphany and curiosity to explore the truth. The reality is, I'm a recovering individualist. My words come from a place of humility and desperation, knowing that on the path to truth in God I am only a few baby steps ahead of you. The humility comes from knowing not long ago, I had no knowledge of any of this and how much that lack of knowledge affected every sphere of my life. The desperation comes from knowing the urgency of the hour in which we live, and in the knowledge of knowing first hand the distance between an intellectual introduction to this and a mature heart connect with its truth.
What baby step are you on? Are you practicing sexual individualism? Or are you experiencing the full blessing and joy of love and sex within a covenant relationship, and actively engaging others in our society who desire to form a community of others who are doing the same? More importantly, which do you truly want for yourself, and what does the fruit of your actions say about your path to achieve it?
http://m.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationship/blog/27747-is-sexual-sin-communal-sin
Hi, my name is Jen, and I'm a recovering individualist.
What the heck does that mean?
Well, it starts with the basis of this article; that there are many baby steps between the knowledge of the differences between sexual individualism and sex within a covenant relationship - between porneia and agape (read the article to understand these terms).
I used to believe - as society teaches us - that I am the center of my own universe and my primary objective in life is to serve myself; to gain more, to be more, to grow more, to learn more. And I applied this to my relationships. I deserved to be happy. Fulfilled. Loved. Respected. And any relationship that did not conform to that was disposable. My sense of entitlement shaped every facet of my life, dictating the choices I made with the primary goal to be to improve the quality of my existence. But as this article illustrates, it is when we individualize our existence and remove it from its connectedness to others, we corrode the very foundations of our society; and our individual decisions have an effect not only on ourselves, but upon humanity as a whole.
Last year, I went through a complete transformation through the Holy Spirit. And it was during this time that I went through my own baby steps from believing in, practicing, and engaging in sexual individualism to a commitment of abstinence outside of the covenant of marriage. Last summer, I was having a discussion about this topic with someone I was having sex with. I was grappling with my changing heart on the matter and trying to relay that to him. As I tiptoed around the topic of abstinence, he finally asked if I was going to become a nun or something.
The tone in his voice had a twinge of mockery and sarcasm in it that left me embarrassed at the thought of it; that it was so far off the left field of societal norm that I couldn't possibly ever take it seriously. And being still in the infancy of my walk with Christ, I did not defend that idea because I wasn't fully won over by it. My readings of the bible told me that sex was only to be experienced between husband and wife within the covenant of marriage, but the chasm I had to cross from sexual promiscuity to abstinence was too big to cross in one fail swoop. Thus began my journey through these baby steps.
My first baby step was taken before that relationship - it was when I made a conscious choice to stop sleeping around. At the end of a marriage riddled with intimacy issues, I found myself emotionally starved and my sexual attractiveness challenged. I was wounded, broken, empty and in no position to even consider a relationship; yet my emotional starvation compelled me to seek out what I needed through sexual encounters. Six months of that and I found myself in worse shape than when I'd started; on the brink of an emotional meltdown. I knew nothing except that what I was doing wasn't working. So my first baby step was made more out of desperation than out of any sense of morality.
My second baby step was put into action when I met someone, like myself, who needed intimacy and companionship but wasn't ready for relationship. We engaged in all the levels of intellectual, creative, physical and emotional intimacies that a real relationship is supposed to have, but without the commitment. This is commonly referred to as friends with benefits.
The third came about around the time of our conversation (about the nun). As I read the bible, I began to be aware of what it said about sex; and because I couldn't make the stretch to abstinence outside of marriage yet, I compromised in my heart and said to myself that sex within the boundaries of love was ok. That God couldn't possibly condemn me for being intimate with someone I was in love with. And it was during this time, that playing house with him turned into reality for me. But he wasn't where I was at, and didn't want to be; creating a conundrum that threatened to rip through every facet of our lives that we had unintentionally woven together.
Step four was when I discovered the flaw in that - that me loving him didn't mean he loved me, that it was a counterfeit for the real thing and the pain I was suffering was a result of me settling for the counterfeit. And step five came when I accepted fully in my heart the biblical definition of relationships, sex and marriage and made a commitment to God and myself not to give myself to anything less.
You may never go through the same steps I did; you may not understand what I'm taking about or can relate to it at all. But the importance of the evolution of this in my heart, my mind, my life is screaming at me at the top of its lungs - and its message is my commission from God, to share my perspective on it with others.
From the article: "Think about the sexual ethic that dominates our airwaves, billboards, bars and bedrooms. We are a society that believes in consequence-free sex; in sex that is first and foremost fun; sex that is removed from communities and severed from reproduction and children. At the center of sex lies not the family or even the couple but the individual, and what is paramount is that the sexual needs of the individual are met. Like any other application of rampant individualism, such a self-centered sexual ethic finds its ultimate destination in abuse and exploitation. We damage not only ourselves, but those in our midst: using people, hurting people, raping people, abandoning people."
The message of truth in this is the same message that resonates throughout the whole bible: that the freedoms we allocate to ourselves outside of the will of God become our prison, giving us enough rope to hang ourselves. It is the same idea behind the meek will inherit the earth; that in order to have power we must willingly relinquish our own; we must give more to have more; me must go lower (humble ourselves and serve others) in order to go higher (to be exalted at the right hand of the father with Jesus). The more we choose God's way over own own, the more freedom it brings. It's a paradox.
But for our choices to stand against the temptations of this world, they must be made through wisdom and knowledge gained from learning about God. The reality is, most people believe they have a right to be loved, appreciated, sexually satisfied, and adored, and want a relationship that can give them all of these things. But the disconnect comes in the reality of what it takes to achieve it; that we ourselves must be willing to unconditionally give these things (without the expectation of having them returned) in order to unlock the mystery of the bliss of covenant love. And we have bred the idea of marital bliss right out of our society to the point that even mentioning it as a viable option is laughable to almost everyone.
We convince ourselves that the message concerning sexual ethics that society feeds us is accurate; that to have freedom, we make choices based on self-satisfaction and entitlement. But by doing so, we contribute to the brokenness of the family unit, the increase in the acceptance of abortion and children out of wedlock, we increase the instances of the fatherless, and we increase and unlock a culture-wide hunger for deeper and darker levels of sexual immorality to include the exploitation and demoralization of the value of women and increase the boundaries of sexual appetites to include our children, in both, through the marketing of sex to them, and in the inclusion of them to satisfy mans' sexual appetites.
Think about it. Just 60 years ago, divorce was an abomination in our society. And just 50 years ago, having a child out of wedlock was heresy; 30 years ago pornography was considered perverse. And in the past 20 years, divorce has become the new standard for relationships; in the past 10, pornography, sexual slavery and the sexual exploitation of women and children has become the world's biggest cash crop; and in 10 more years, the likelihood of child pornography becoming an extension of pop culture is a stark reality.
And as the contrast between these lines become ever more blurred, we must soberly ask ourselves how our individual actions are contributing to the annihilation of the sanctity of the family unit. Because everything matters, and every choice has a consequence. Every relationship we bail on in favor of a more suitable one contributes. Every time we look upon members of the opposite sex as tools to use for our own personal gratification, we contribute. Every time we gaze upon and lust after someone's body (that we're not in covenant relationship with), we come into agreement with the sexual exploitation that dominates our society. And in our abounding lust, as we seek out ways to satiate it, we engage with society in helping to blur the lines between childhood and adulthood; with more and more girls dressing and acting in adult ways at younger and younger ages, with more and more instances of older women seducing underage boys.
These are becoming the new norms. It's ok to make sexual passes at minors. It's ok to lust after high school girls or boys. After all, if they are presenting themselves as knowledgeable in the arena of sexuality, they are fair game, right? Because it's all about the self; my experience, my entitlement, my wants, my needs being fulfilled, regardless of the impact my actions have on society. And every time we fall victim to these norms, we are teaching those same children that there is no longer a "we", only an "I", that sex is the new love, and that FWB is the new marriage.
You may think that by me bringing this up, I am placing myself in a position of superiority; perched on my self-righteousness, looking down on you with pointed finger. And that is the devil's plan for every person; turning truth into judgement, evoking resentment and resistance instead of an epiphany and curiosity to explore the truth. The reality is, I'm a recovering individualist. My words come from a place of humility and desperation, knowing that on the path to truth in God I am only a few baby steps ahead of you. The humility comes from knowing not long ago, I had no knowledge of any of this and how much that lack of knowledge affected every sphere of my life. The desperation comes from knowing the urgency of the hour in which we live, and in the knowledge of knowing first hand the distance between an intellectual introduction to this and a mature heart connect with its truth.
What baby step are you on? Are you practicing sexual individualism? Or are you experiencing the full blessing and joy of love and sex within a covenant relationship, and actively engaging others in our society who desire to form a community of others who are doing the same? More importantly, which do you truly want for yourself, and what does the fruit of your actions say about your path to achieve it?
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