Papers by Chris Van Doodewaard

A BURNING ISSUE

2009-11-04T11:26:00.000-05:00

When our Free Reformed fathers came to North America they smoked cigars, pipes and cigarettes. They loved to settle down with a nice cup of coffee and an aromatic cigar. We used to say, "You're not a man if you don't smoke". We secretly (or openly?) snickered at those over- zealous Baptists who proclaimed smoking a great evil. However, our ladies were not supposed to smoke, smoking was for men; men were masculine and strong. Men smoked.

But men have also paid the price. For instance, lung cancer is the most common form of malignant tumour of the respiratory tract system, and it began increasing in frequency at an alarming rate about 1940. In 1980 it was the leading cause of cancer deaths in men and today it is also rapidly increasing in women. As a matter of fact, in the mid-80's nearly 6 million new cancer cases and more than 4 million deaths from cancer were being reported world-wide each year. To bring it a little closer to home: about 400,000 Americans die each year from breathing their own smoke. In Ontario, where most of our churches are, over 14,000 residents die every year from smoking-induced lung cancer.

Did you ever stop to think how much grief is caused by so many deaths every year? Many people are fatalistic. They reason that if they will get it, they will get it. They will just "hope for the best." Or they may be optimistic. Just because there is a warning on the label, it doesn't mean that I will get it. Some say: my grandfather became 98 and he smoked like a chimney!

When we talk about smoking, many say that we should not be judgmental about others. You have bad habits too, they say, and therefore, mind your own business! What I do in the privacy of my own home or vehicle is my responsibility and will affect no one else.
Is this true? Will your premature death not affect your loved ones? Doesn't your smoking affect the health of your spouse and children? Do you, by smoking, set a good example for your children? Isn't the likelihood great that they will catch the addiction and become smokers themselves? Can you by smoking be a good Christian witness in your environment? Do you not present a stumbling block to those who are struggling to quit the habit?

Reports about smoking are plentiful. Just ask the lung cancer society and you will have all the statistics you will (n)ever want to know. Let's see what the medical community has to say about smoking.

First some background. Smoking most commonly refers to the practice of inhaling smoke from burning tobacco in a pipe, cigar, or cigarette. American Indians smoked pipes and European explorers introduced the practice into the Old World by the early sixteenth century.
Controversy over the health effects of smoking has existed ever since that time. Cigarette smoke consists of more than 4,700 compounds, 43 of which are carcinogens, such as tar and nicotine--a poisonous alkaloid, which is considered the addicting agent that makes quitting smoking so difficult. Nicotine is an extremely poisonous, colourless, oily liquid alkaloid that turns brown on exposure to air. The most potent ingredient of the tobacco plant, Nicotiniana tabacum, is found mainly in the leaves. Both nicotine and the tobacco plant are named for Jean Nicot, a French ambassador who sent tobacco from Portugal to Paris in 1560. Nicotine can affect the human nervous system, causing respiratory failure and general paralysis. It may be absorbed through the skin. Only two or three drops (less than 50 mg.) of pure alkaloid placed on the tongue is rapidly fatal to an adult. A typical cigarette contains 15 to 20 mg. of nicotine. However, the actual amount that reaches the bloodstream and hence the brain through normal smoking is only about 1 mg. Nicotine is believed to be responsible for most of the short-term and many of the long-term effects of smoking and for the fact that tobacco smoking is such a powerful habit. Nicotine yields of cigarettes have declined by about 70 per- cent since the 1950's, largely due to the popularity of filter-tipped varieties.

By the early 1960's numerous clinical and laboratory studies on smoking and disease had been made. In 1964 a committee appointed by the surgeon general of the U.S. Public Health Service issued a report based on the critical review of previous studies on the effects of smoking. The report concluded that nearly all lung cancer deaths are caused by cigarette smoking, which was also held responsible for many deaths and disabilities from various illnesses such as chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and cardiovascular diseases. A more recent study estimated that about 400,000 Americans die each year from inhaling their own smoke.

As for your non-smoking spouse and children, a 1984 report by the Health Service also suggested that passive inhalation of smoke by non-smokers is very harmful. Although considered controversial at the time, studies have since confirmed these charges. Some experts estimate that passive smoke kills as many as 50,000 Americans a year, and it is the third leading preventable cause of death, behind smoking and alcohol. Studies have shown that children are particularly sensitive to passive smoke and that pregnant women who smoke may harm the fetus. Smoking during pregnancy affects fetal growth and development due to increased carbon monoxide and decreased oxygen in the blood. Babies are smaller, sicker, and more likely to be stillborn. In addition, babies born to women who used drugs during pregnancy may be addicted to the drug at birth.

Should parents of little children continue to smoke? Is this responsible Christian behaviour? Is smoking sin?

Edward T. Welch strongly posits in his book,
Addictions, A Banquet in the Grave, Finding Power in the Hope of the Gospel,

"that we live in a culture that encourages self-indulgence. It should be no surprise that addictions are everywhere. Addiction is not a disease and sin is not a sickness. Scripture emphasizes sex, food, and alcohol (a category which would include modem mind-altering drugs) as the most common addictions and these appetites remain the most prevalent. Yet the list of potential taskmasters is always growing. Addiction was once a term used for the chronic heavy drinker. but over the past two decades its turf has expanded dramatically. Now the list of addictive substances and desires is limited only by our own imagination. as we see here:

anger, alcohol, music, gambling, work, caffeine, love, exercise, nose drops, shoplifting, radio, cocaine, sex, money, lying, chocolate, sleep, nicotine, sports, internet, risk, pain, sugar, success/winning, TV, weightlifting, ipods, pornography, computer games, fashions, gossiping etc.

Some criticize the widening scope of addictions, claiming that when a category expands too much it loses its meaning. But God's Word anticipates the way the term is being applied to more and more behaviors. The thing that drives addictions can be found in every human heart.

For example: we all have had experience with unruly desires that don't take no for an answer. If we are afraid to admit it, we can take our cue from the apostle Paul who said. "1 have the desire to do what is good. but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do" (Rom. 7:18-19). Indeed, "the addiction experience is the human experience." -
This broader view of addictions is important because it challenges us to examine what drives addictions instead of focusing on the particular drug of choice. What is it about our humanness that leaves us susceptible to being overtaken by certain desires? Why do alcoholics, drug addicts, smokers, compulsive shoppers, and secret indulgers in pornography crave things that are wrong or unwise? Why do we inordinately desire things that, in themselves, might be legitimate (money, approval from others. comfort) but then become too important to us?

Why do we have a hard time saying no to our desires? Since the answers to these questions strike at the core of our humanness, the biblical teachings are relevant to us all.

Definition of addiction – “ Addiction is bondage to the rule of a substance, activity, or state of mind, which then becomes the center of life, defending itself from the truth so that even bad consequences don’t bring repentance, and leading to further estrangement from God.”

How the addict views his or her addiction:
“We don’t want to be ruled by alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, food, or anything. No, we just want these substances or activities to give us what we want: good feelings, a better self-image, a sense of power, or whatever our heart is craving.

Idols, however, do not cooperate. Rather than mastering our idols, we become enslaved by them and begin to look like them.”

There is only one way in which sin can be dealt with; there is only one way in which sin can be destroyed! There can be no salvation for those who aren’t convinced of the wickedness of sin. It is only when one acknowledges that his external actions originate from a sinful heart that he will flee to the only Saviour of sinners: the Lord Jesus Christ! It is only by repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ that one can ever begin to conquer any sin. This is the only way in which the guilt, punishment, or power of sin can be removed from your life. There is no hope in renaming your sin ‘disease’ – for then you become merely a victim of circumstance. But when you take responsibility for your sins – when you acknowledge your sin – there is forgiveness with the Lord! There is only hope when you call sin, sin! There is no hope when you call sin, disease. "

Since 1964, health warnings have been mandated on tobacco advertising, and the use of such advertising has been restricted. Most of the states in the United States, as well as the Canadian federal government, have passed laws to control smoking in public places such as restaurants and work places, where non- smoking has become the rule. In Toronto and most other cities smoking is banned from all public places. American and Canadian airlines have prohibited smoking on flights. Among the military, the U.S. Army has been particularly strict in imposing smoking restrictions.

Despite the help available from various organizations many people apparently find it impossible to quit smoking. But surely, with God's help, any addiction, including smoking, can be overcome!

Are we getting the message?

The tobacco industry and many smokers regard anti-smoking measures as harassment, whereas many non- smokers defend the measures on the grounds that the government has a duty to discourage harmful practices, that public funds in one form or another are used to treat diseases caused by smoking, and that smokers pollute the air for non-smokers.

Smoking is not only a dangerous addiction, but it is also the source of many ailments and much suffering, both for the smoker, and for the relatives of the smoker who have to assist him or her through the various stages of life-threatening diseases which most smokers experience.

A clinic in one the southern States which specializes in the healing of complicated fractures, found that for (then) unknown reasons, it took twice as long for some patients to heal their bones as it did for others. It did not matter what kind of fracture the client had, but if it normally took, for instance, six months to heal, it would take twice as long for some patients: a full year for exactly the same fracture. This baffled them for quite some time, but after much research it was discovered that the difference was caused by smoking. In each case the non- smokers would heal in half the time. The reasons for this soon became evident. Substantial healing requires great amounts of oxygen. Lungs which are very polluted cannot supply much oxygen, and furthermore, if they are filled much of the time with smoke, resulting from a fire at the end of a cigarette, which uses most of the oxygen they need for their healing process, it is clear that all healing will be greatly delayed.

Some researchers have estimated that if Americans stopped smoking cigarettes, lung cancer deaths could virtually be eliminated within twenty years. Lung cancer has also risen rapidly in developing nations because of the spread of cigarette smoking, so that it has becomes the leading fatal cancer in the world today.

Although cigarette smoke contains many initiating agents, the cessation of smoking results in a negligible risk of lung cancer after a year or so. Can you think of a better incentive to stop smoking?

The evidence that smoking is dangerous and deadly is overwhelming. Yet many of our older people continue to set a poor example for our youth. Also, many young people are starting to smoke. Is it not time to act in a principled manner and decide that smoking is harmful, not only to your own health, but also to the health of your children, especially teen-agers and all who come within the reach of your smoke?

Have we not allowed this terrible practice to go unchallenged far too long? Is it healthy for office bearers to smoke? Do they give a good example to the congregation? How can an elder or pastor who is addicted to nicotine (and thus in bondage) counsel and admonish young people who are enslaved (in bondage) to Rock music?

In light of the above statistics, can there really be any doubt that smoking is harmful to our bodies? Let us hear God's Word on the matter: What, know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For you are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's (1 Cor.6:19,20.)

These are searching questions, are they not? Perhaps those who still smoke are unhappy with this article. You may argue that other people have other bad habits. This is probably true. But is this an excuse for your addiction? Admittedly, it is very difficult to break out of an addiction. Despite the help available from various organizations many people apparently find it impossible to quit smoking.

But surely, with God's help any addiction, including smoking can be overcome!

Is it responsible to have part of your resources go up in smoke when you can support a needy child in a developing country for the same amount of money? Even when you can afford to smoke, are you a good steward of your funds when a considerable amount of your money goes up in smoke annually? Is it not better to give it for the cause of the Lord, such as missions or evangelism? It will not cause illness, but instead spread the Gospel!

It seems that in this matter the world is providing better leadership than the church. By banning smoking from all public buildings and areas, the children of this world show they are wiser than the children of light (Luke 16:8). Society has recognized the evil of smoking and its disastrous consequences for the health of the population.
Particularly the effect of second-hand smoke is seen as very dangerous. In light of this, what are we to think of Christian parents who smoke in their home or car and pollute their little ones? It is a fact that many smokers have children who smoke. In many cases they have been introduced to the habit by second-hand smoke and by the example of their parents.

Can we do anything about this matter? Should we do anything? I believe the answer is "yes." Churches which have implemented a NO SMOKING policy on their premises (and I believe that most of our churches have) , are to be commended for their initiative and the love and care shown to their members. This policy shows that as a whole, the church recognizes that this addiction is unethical. But the church can do more:

1) We can pray for those who are addicted to the habit and striving to be delivered.
2) Each church which has not yet done so, may consider banning all smoking from all its premises, inside and outside buildings.
3) Consistories can lead by example and only nominate non-addicted brothers for the office of pastor and elder.
4)Consistories can decide to make smoking and its detrimental health effects on children (especially smoking of mothers-to-be) a topic of discussion at home visitations.
5) Church leaders can sit down with young people who are prone to take up this evil habit and urge them not to do so.
6) Family members and friends can support and encourage their brothers or sisters and so help them in the struggle to find a release from this dangerous addiction.

This is an article reprinted (updated and expanded) from the Messenger of April 1994.
Editor's Note: The following guest editorial is by Mr. Chris Van Doodewaard, a member of the Editorial Committee.

Sexual Detox I: Pornifying the Marriage Bed: Tim Challies

2009-11-02T17:17:00.002-05:00

I am going to devote this article to the topic of sex. I want to speak especially to young men, those who are teenagers or dating or engaged or newly married. However, I do hope that anyone can read and enjoy the series, even if the teen years are far behind you. I want to talk to young men as an older man. I would like to think that I’m in a sweet spot between young and old—where I am young enough to remember the troubles and travails of youth but old enough to bring a measure of maturity. I want to be forthright with you and yet I also want to be discreet; I often think we, as Christians, talk entirely too much about sex and in too much detail. You may accuse me of the former simply because I’ve written this series but I hope to remain innocent of the second.

I often thank God that I grew up in the years before the internet was in every home; I’m not sure that I would have handled it very well. It’s not like I’m ancient, either, but my thirty-three years do mean that I was born and raised in a pre-internet world. It is difficult to quantify or even qualify how the world has changed since the web tied us all together into this elaborate network of bits and bytes. There is scarcely an area of life that has remain untouched by it. We do not have the old world plus the Internet; we have a whole new world all around us. Even something as flesh and blood as sex has been radically altered in this digital world.

Teenagers in the 90s were not a lot different from teens today. We wanted the same things—we just had to work a little bit harder to get some of them. If we wanted to see pornography (and we did, of course), the process usually involved at least two kids working in tandem, one of whom would distract a shop keeper while the other would try to steal a magazine from the rack at the back of the store. It was dangerous, high stakes work that, if it went wrong, could easily involve a visit with the police. Times have changed.

Today a teenager needs only to turn on his computer and, within two or three clicks of the mouse, he can have unlimited amounts of pornography available to him. Today it is far more difficult to avoid pornography than it is to find it. It would be literally impossible for one person to watch all of the pornography being created today; there would not be enough hours in the day. Not even close.

Needless to say, teens, and teenaged boys in particular, are quick to take advantage of this pornographic feast. Even pre-teen boys are being drawn into the world of porn. From the first awakenings of a boy’s sexuality, he is being inundated with pornographic images. These are not simple images of naked women as they may have been a couple of generations ago, but are hard core images that often extend to what is base and degrading. The sexuality of a whole generation of children is being formed not by talks with their parents, not by reading the kind of book I was given as a young man, but by professional pornographers who will do anything, anything!, to fuel the increased desire for increased depravity.

This is the very nature of sin, isn’t it? Sin is always progressive in nature. If you give it an inch, it soon seeks to take a mile. Sin is never content, but always seeks and desires more. Have you ever been scared by your sin? Perhaps there was a time that you saw how a particular sin was taking you over. Maybe you had thought you were in control of your sin but suddenly found that, almost in an instant, it had increased to the next level. You were no longer in control—sin was leading the way and you were more and more just along for the ride, obeying the impulses of the flesh. This is a terrifying place to be and I believe everyone has experienced it at one time or another.

I know beyond doubt that many, many young (and middle-aged and old) men can testify to the power of pornography in taking over. The first glimpse of porn may be fleeting—intriguing but short-lived. A naked body is all the eye needs to see and it provides plenty of fuel for a while. But before long the heart craves more. What was once satisfying is now boring; what was once repulsive is suddenly desirable. Along the way, a person’s whole perception of sex is changed. No longer is sex simple intercourse between a man and a woman. Instead it becomes a series of acts, even acts that are in some way uncomfortable or degrading. Pornography teaches that sex is everything but intimate face-to-face, body-to-soul contact between willing spouses. And, as they say, life soon imitates “art.” Young men enter into marriage with their minds full of pornographic images and their hearts filled with the desire to fulfill pornographic fantasies.

A short time ago I read an article by a woman who considered herself a feminist. She insisted that she enjoyed sleeping with men and thought little of sleeping with a continual succession of men. Yet she shared what for her was a growing concern. More and more, she said, the men she slept with had no real interest in her at all. They simply wanted her to act like a porn star for their benefit. They were using her to do little more than act out their pornography. There was no tenderness, no desire for shared intimacy, and certainly no love. They simply used her body as a means to a very immediate end. This, she saw, was very quickly becoming the new norm. She was disgusted by it but saw that her feminist worldview gave her no real recourse, no effective means of explaining her disgust, her discomfort.

What seemed clear is that a generation of men, drowning in a cesspool of porn, has a new set of expectations for what they want from women. They want women to subdue their own selves in order to act like porn stars. The women walk away feeling like little more than prostitutes.

In the new bestseller SuperFreakonomics Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner spend almost an entire chapter investigating the economics of prostitution. They make many interesting observations, not the least of which is based on comparisons in the relative pricing between sex acts in the past and sex acts today. It seems that the taboo nature of certain acts has always claimed a certain premium. Yet “taboo” is a moving target. What was forbidden in the past, and hence what was expensive, is today so mainstream that the price has fallen substantially. What was once the most expensive act is today among the least expensive. Acts that were once taboo because of their exceedingly intimate or vulgar and degrading nature are now accepted as legitimate forms of sexual expression in any relationship. What would by any other standard be considered “normal” is now too undesirable, too boring. It has been replaced by the invasive, the degrading.

Pornography is inherently violent, inherently unloving. It is a perversion of sexuality, not a true form of it, and one that teaches violence and degradation at the expense of mutual pleasure and intimacy. It is about conquests, about conquering. It is the very opposite of God’s intention for sex. It tears love from sex, leaving sex as the immediate gratification of one’s most base desires. It lives beyond rules and ethics and morality. It exists far beyond love. And yet countless young men, Christian young men, are coming into marriage bringing with them all of this pornographic baggage.

Having seen thousands of sex acts in a pornographic setting, they load the porn star expectation upon their wives. The young husband assumes or demands that his wife will be willing to do anything, that she will do it all with the proper joy and encouragements, and that she will be as willing and eager and skilled as the women he has seen on the screen.

My great concern with young men today (which is really more a concern for their young wives) is that they may perhaps inadvertently or perhaps intentionally pornify the marriage bed. They may bring impurity to the pure, selfishness to the selfless. Having given themselves over to pornography, they have had their whole perception of sexuality altered, shaped by professional pornographers. They may be imposing on their young brides the impossible expectation of a porn star.

With the vast majority of young men having been exposed to pornography (at least 90% according to recent studies), with a large percentage of them having been addicted to it and with many enjoying it still as they enter into marriage, they need to have their understanding and their expectations reset according to the One who created sex.

Many young men need a kind of sexual detox before they are equipped to be the kind of pure, loving, attentive, sacrificial husbands that God calls them to be. In this series of articles I hope to help young men reorient their understanding of sex, both in the big picture and in the act itself, according to God’s plan for this great gift.

Source:
Sexual Detox I: Pornifying the Marriage Bed

1. Chelsey
October 26, 2009
9:19 AM

Thanks so much for this series. I’ve been married about six months and while I’m a female, I’m definitely looking forward to hearing more about this topic from an older saint who has much more wisdom than I or my husband do.

2. Dan
October 26, 2009
9:30 AM

I grew up like you did, in the pre-internet days, but I caught on fast after that and almost ruined everything. That’s as much as I’ll admit in this forum, but let me tell you that detox is much worse after you’re married than before, so I hope that your younger readers take you up on your offer of this sort of mentorship-by-distance and learn from you.

I’m very humbled by your post and I look forward to learning more from you myself.

3. Drew K
October 26, 200910:00 AM

Kudos to you Tim for taking on this important and pervasive issue. It is not fun but necessary partof the Lord purifying His church.

4. marriagejunkie
October 26, 2009
10:32 AM

Spot on! Going to RT on Twitter and link on the site for my book, Before “I Do”. (http://fullmarriageexperience.com) A real concern for young (and old) marriages and an issue to address for most young grooms to know about. Kudos and thanks!

5. Candice
October 26, 2009
10:36 AM

Tim, thanks for taking on this topic. I know as a wife affected by porn that it is a powerful tool that the enemy loves to use to tear down men and tear the hearts of their wives apart, too. Satan loves to whisper to men that it will only affect them, and that they aren’t hurting anyone but themselves. I look forward to reading your series that is setting out to debunk that lie.

6. Anonymous
October 26, 2009
10:54 AM

so are your next articles going to list out a “sexual detox” program?

7. Alan
October 26, 2009
10:56 AM

This was good, and I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. One thing I would add goes right in line with the major points of this post.

Once the pornstar expectations are placed on a wife, and she comes up short, it leads to more involvement in pornography to fill the void left by the non-pornstar wife. This only deepens the problem all the way around. The sin goes further, and the expectations become greater on the wife, who will have a harder time fulfilling these new expectations. And on and on it goes.

The whole thing seems so harmless at the very first, and yet it is so incredibly lethal to a person’s soul and marriage—if not more.

8. Dave Dunbar
October 26, 2009
11:00 AM

It is right to carefully address an insidious attack by the enemy upon Christians. Thank you, Tim.

One of the things that men need to remember is the pictures aren’t “real”. What I mean is that our standard of beauty is falsely affected by the parade of perfect bodies on TV, movies, etc. Even then, what percentage of pictures are photo-shopped? In other words, the perfect pictures have been altered, and do not reflect reality.

Or in the case of movies, the women involved in vile acts ACT like they enjoy it, but they are paid actresses (or porn stars, or whatever), and their false enjoyment of degrading activities in no way indicates that an honest and holy wife would enjoy such defilement of the marriage bed.

Please keep up the good work on this series of articles. Just taking a guess, this could become a popular and widely-read (and helpful!) series.

9. Tim Challies
October 26, 2009
11:07 AM

so are your next articles going to list out a “sexual detox” program?

Pretty much. Then plan is to replace truth with lies.

Once the pornstar expectations are placed on a wife, and she comes up short, it leads to more involvement in pornography to fill the void left by the non-pornstar wife. This only deepens the problem all the way around. The sin goes further, and the expectations become greater on the wife, who will have a harder time fulfilling these new expectations. And on and on it goes.

Exactly so. This is the consistent pattern of sin, isn’t it? It spirals, it twists, it is never satisfied.

10. BigNorm
October 26, 2009
11:18 AM

Great Post.

As a newly-wed, we fought hard for a blank canvas to build our marriage on, including keeping the bedroom pure.

Divine innovation and creativity is the ONLY way to go for marriage.

Loving it.
N

11. Matthew
October 26, 2009
11:30 AM

“Pornography is inherently violent, inherently unloving. It is a perversion of sexuality, not a true form of it, and one that teaches violence and degradation at the expense of mutual pleasure and intimacy. It is about conquests, about conquering.”

I think you might be looking at the wrong kind of porn. There is some good stuff out there that is not violent or degrading. Don’t let the bad stuff spoil you on the rest.

Pornography and masturbation can have a role in a healthy marriage. It is very unlikely that you and your spouse will have the same appetite: allowing one of you to have some extra release can reduce the pressure on the other to perform when not in the mood.

12. Mike D
October 26, 2009
11:33 AM

Scripture itself teaches the bondage that sexual sin brings. After speaking of the sin of adultery and of some of the repurcussions (Proverbs 5), Solomon adds the following (v. 22)…”he will be HELD with the CORDS of his sin.”

There is an enslaving nature attached to sexual sin. By God’s grace I have been kept from it in large measure, but I have seen it wrap its tenticals around many a man and not relinquish. There is a reason that Solomon also says or the adulteress in verse 5 of that same chapter, “Her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of hell.”

I am glad you are talking about it, Tim. But please encourage FATHERS to do their duty as watchmen upon the city wall - warning their children of this decieitful enemy. It is time for men, as heads of their households, to call sin what it is, and to be as the angel with the flaming sword, not allowing his family or his friends down that path, God giving him help. This duty should also be pressed upon SHEPHERDS of the flock of God, that they might watch over the souls that God has put under their charge.

May God give you help as you seek to chart a course - faithfully dealing with prevailing sin and men’s souls AND yet not giving such detail and content as would prove a carnal feast to our remaining flesh.

Matt. 11:12…”the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” May God give us grace to do battle. It is a war. May God give us grace to deal ruthlessly with our remaining sin and the sin that so easily besets us. May we be willing to go to all extremes to be rid of it - even to such extremes as represented by an eye plucked out and a hand cut off. As Christ said, such extremes might be necessary if we would enter heaven.

13. Rodica
October 26, 2009
11:35 AM

what about writing a book on this topic? Haven’t seen a good book to recommend to someone with this problem. The book shelves may have many books on pre-marriage and marriage counseling yet I have not seen one that focuses squarely on this topic. Can you suggest any?

14. Ken Davis
October 26, 2009
11:37 AM

“I want to talk to young men as an older man … my thirty-three years…” - Well - you’re older than somebody.

15. Bonnie
October 26, 2009
11:40 AM

Thank you for addressing this topic. From my vantage point (being of a certain age, married 22 years, with a teenaged son), I wonder whether ubiquitous p*rn has simply ramped up something that men are already tempted toward. Even without taking it to base extremes, and absent p*rn, a young man can still develop a selfish sexual view toward women. Later he might be unloving and subtly degrading to his wife because he views her as a means to satisfy his fantasies rather than someone to relate with.

I think it’s important that young men, from the time they are small children, learn to view others, especially their female peers, in terms of relationship as fellow human beings, rather than objects of any type, sexual or otherwise. They need to be guided to learn how to express themselves properly across the board, so that they will be able to do so properly sexually as well, when the time comes. And yes, parents need to talk to their kids about sex, from an early age and age-appropriately, so they grow up to hold it in proper regard.

In this way, when temptation comes, they have strong values to hold onto, and character training from an early age which has strengthened them.

16. Tim Challies
October 26, 2009
11:42 AM

I think you might be looking at the wrong kind of porn. There is some good stuff out there that is not violent or degrading. Don’t let the bad stuff spoil you on the rest.

Matthew - the foundational “badness” in pornography is not the violence. Pornography is bad simply because already it inflames the heart to adultery. Jesus says that adultery is not simply the act of sleeping with another person, but is as much as a lustful thought about another person. It is impossible to watch pornography and not be incited to lust. The whole point of pornography, even pornography that is “normal” as opposed to violent, is to incite sin.

Pornography and masturbation can have a role in a healthy marriage. It is very unlikely that you and your spouse will have the same appetite: allowing one of you to have some extra release can reduce the pressure on the other to perform when not in the mood.

Let’s just call this what it is—a man’s justification to look at porn and masturbate. Why even bother rationalizing?

17. Christina
October 26, 2009
11:47 AM

Thank you for taking this topic on. Until the church starts addressing these issues with the gospel of Jesus Christ we can have no hope that our culture will change. I look forward to this series.

18. Polarbear
October 26, 2009
12:12 PM

Thank you Tim for this post and I look forward to the series this week. This pornification of the marriage bed is perhaps the number one tool that the enemy is using to destroy Christian marriages.

Matthew, I am praying for you man.

19. Jerry
October 26, 2009
12:29 PM

Greetings,
I am excited about this series and will send the link to everyone I know. I think that this topic is of the utmost importance. There should be more conversations about this issue in our local churches. Maybe this will get some to start talking about it.

20. Eddy Alexandre
October 26, 2009
12:51 PM

I will be waiting…

21. Jerod
October 26, 2009
1:00 PM

Great post Tim. This is a deadly sin that so many times stays hidden and is not discussed. Church culture needs to change so that it’s ok to not be ok. Otherwise we will continue to hide sin and not find healing from it.

I hid for a long time. Bringing it to light by talking about it and confessing is extremely difficult, but the only place to find freedom and healing from it. (James 5:16) God forgives, and it’s through confession to one another we find healing!

22. Tom W.
October 26, 2009
1:29 PM

Wow, Matthew. That whole approach is wrong on so many levels; to add to Tim’s reply, consider this verse in your approach to sexual intimacy with your wife:
“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; “
(Philippians 2:3)

23. Mike D
October 26, 2009
1:41 PM

Rodica…

…you asked about a good book on this subject.

I would recommend a small book by Randy Alcorn entitled…
The Purity Principle: God’s Safeguards for Life’s Dangerous Trails (LifeChange Books).

If you want an excerpt from the book, you can go here…
http://www.epm.org/artman2/publish/Randys_books_excerpts_from_Randys_books/Chapter_5_and_6_from_the_Purity_Principle.shtml

It is a small book and an easy read. I hope this helps…

24. Kath
October 26, 2009
1:44 PM

Please, please don’t overlook that this is a very serious issue for women too, too often men in the church have at this point in the porn conversation effectively told women to close their ears because this won’t affect them. The thing is it does. It’s a real and even more taboo struggle for many women who feel unable to be honest about all this because so many people hold the expectation that only men struggle with this. I’m tired of hearing pastors tell me that only the men should listen at these point. Women struggle in this area. Sure, we may struggle differently but it is no less pervasive and all the more dangerous because it’s a whole lot more harder to be honest about it.

25. Josh Reich
October 26, 2009
1:45 PM

Great post.

I just preached a message in a marriage series on pornography and what it does in a marriage. To go with that, my wife and I wrote on how a wife can handle her husband’s addiction and how to find healing: http://missionalthoughts.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/how-a-wife-handles-her-husbands-sexual-addiction/. This comes out of our personal experience and our story and how it shaped our marriage.

Looking forward to the rest of the series.

26. An Honest Question
October 26, 2009
2:14 PM

very needed stuff. excellent post. I would be interested, however, how you develop “right sex” from “porn star sex” in marriage. in Song of Solomon the couple seem to delight in pleasing one another, and she even dresses to delight his eyes. you mention “face to face intimacy” as if any other kind of sexual position might be wrong.

asking your wife to act like a porn star is obviously wrong but just what are the rules? if it delights a husband for his wife to wear “frilly pajamas” (so to speak!) is that wrong of him to ask her to do so? if the wife likes a man with a beard is it wrong for her to ask him to grow one? just how far is one obligated to go to bring sexual pleasure to their mate? I think that is an area a lot of marriage could use some help with. hope you will be able to address that.

27. Tim Challies
October 26, 2009
2:18 PM

asking your wife to act like a porn star is obviously wrong but just what are the rules?

I am planning on covering some of that in a couple of days. There is a bit of ground work first, but we’ll get there.

you mention “face to face intimacy” as if any other kind of sexual position might be wrong.

I don’t mean to be a prude! I more just mean that there are things you can do in sex that personalize it (even without being nose-to-nose) and others that de-personalize it.

28. Grace
October 26, 2009
2:46 PM

Tim,

Looking forward to reading more!

29. Anonymous
October 26, 2009
2:46 PM

Thanks Kath for bringing to light that women struggle too. I am thankful Tim is addressing this issue.

30. Tim Challies
October 26, 2009
2:49 PM

Please, please don’t overlook that this is a very serious issue for women too, too often men in the church have at this point in the porn conversation effectively told women to close their ears because this won’t affect them. The thing is it does.

I have purposely targeted this series to young men because I feel that I understand young men. I am not far removed from being one myself. I have infinitely less experience being a young woman so I hesitate to speak out about such things. However, I do think much of what I say will apply either way. If pornography is shaping a man’s expectation of his wife, it will also shape a wife’s expectation of her husband. And in either case, the solution will be to repent of sin and to replace sin with truth. So do stay tuned. I hope you’ll find the rest of the series relevant.

31. Neil King
October 26, 2009
3:08 PM

Like many others who have already commented, I really appreciate that you’re dealing with this issue, Tim. It’s the area of my life where I can mostly sympathise with Paul when he cries out ‘Who will save me from this body of death?’

In a way, I can thank God for the struggles I have with sexual sin. Obviously, this isn’t because He gave me these evil desires, which is a blasphemous idea to contemplate, but rather that I am constantly struggling with them rather than having them removed, because I truly know that my strength in overcoming sexual sin can only come from Him alone, and not from my own efforts. It is a constant reminder for me that the Christian life is not a holiday; rather it is a day-by-day, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute struggle that we cannot hope to succeed in without God’s grace and mercy.

32. Rodica
October 26, 2009
4:31 PM

Mike D.
thanks for the book recommendation. After scanning the excerpt, I found it to be a very useful book to read, and to pass along to the young men and women in my family life.

…also, planning on passing on the full text of this article series , once complete, to family and friends. I agree with all other comments that speaking truth on this issue, at this time, is very warranted and very welcome.

33. Daniel Holter
October 26, 2009
4:34 PM

“Pornography is bad simply because already it inflames the heart to adultery.”

I’d blame the heart so inflamed, not the fuel.

If it weren’t porn leading to adultery, it’d be something else.

Until one can control vices, no matter the form, one is in danger of being weak and suspect, hypocritical and wicked… all while blaming the vice instead of one’s own character.

34. Tim Challies
October 26, 2009
5:00 PM

I’d blame the heart so inflamed, not the fuel.

While I know what you are getting at, that is a bit of a silly line to take, I think. I’ll grant that pornography is not morally culpable (porn has no soul, will not go to hell, etc) it is still evil simply because it distorts and perverts. It is a medium used to share evil.

35. Tim Irvin
October 26, 2009
5:19 PM

I have to agree, whole-heartedly, with Daniel (#33). A man isn’t a thief because he steals, he steals because he is a thief already in his heart.
Any married person who turns to porn, even if they say they’re just curious, is doing so because adultery is already in their heart.
Discussion is not what is needed. Reproof is what is needed.
Ephesians 5:11-12

36. Daniel Holter
October 26, 2009
5:26 PM

“[Porn] is a medium used to share evil.”

With all due respect, Tim, so is religion. So what?

37. mark
October 26, 2009
5:27 PM

nice try on I’d blame the heart so inflame, not the fuel.”

however porn has no legit use of any kind. it’s express purpose is to incite lust. thus it can be blamed because there is no good thing to be said for it.

and while certainly granting that a heart that is not right with God will find other avenues of sin it is foolish to think that we can’t help the problem by pointing out how depraved this “fuel” really is, and all the effects that come from “consuming” it.

38. Anonymous, please
October 26, 2009
5:38 PM

As a redeemed sinner, one who - pre-conversion - became a feminist “out of necessity”, feeling abandoned by a husband who acted as if I were there to support him and be a playtoy at the same time, and then he would wondered why I began to shudder every time he even touched my shoulder, with both of us investigating what could be wrong with ME and why I was suddenly so frigid; and after the divorce, learning that I was anything but frigid, but became a misandrist due to exactly this sort of thing, I can recall lamenting that it seemed that men got their sex education from the skin flicks. There is nothing more dehumanizing than to be expected to live up to that expectation, and to have all sense of worth and value placed upon my ability to perform in that manner. The sheer selfishness inherent in that kind of mindset destroys women, it destroys marriages, and it destroys families.

39. Daniel Holter
October 26, 2009
5:46 PM

@mark (37.) :

How nice it must be to eradicate one’s life of all inciters and stimulus. :)

I can imagine a life worth living here on planet earth with no lust, no thirst, no desire to escape, no groove to satiate one’s need to grind on the dancefloor, no poetry to open a soul nor images to affect a heart, no food on which to gorge oneself.

Oh, wait… no I can’t.

“Porn” is what you make of it… one man’s porn is another man’s marital aid. One man’s joint is another man’s nausea helpmate. One man’s celebratory feast is another’s gluttonous escapade. One man’s justified vindication is another’s cold-blooded murder. The vice/method/tool/path is not evil. A man’s heart can be. Can be.

40. Daniel Holter
October 26, 2009
5:54 PM

@Anonymous, please (38.) :

“There is nothing more dehumanizing than to be expected to live up to that expectation, and to have all sense of worth and value placed upon my ability to perform in that manner.”

While your personal story is, indeed, sad and regrettable… there are more than a few experiences more dehumanizing than being expected perform like a porn star.

Just off the top of my head : think of being sold as a child sex slave; actual rape; or, you know, enjoying a spontaneous, free, and unplanned vacation in Dachau or Auschwitz circa 1939.

41. Tim Challies
October 26, 2009
6:03 PM

Daniel - You’ve made your view well known. I think it’s probably a good idea for you to back off a bit now. You aren’t going to convince people here of what you’re saying.

42. Daniel Holter
October 26, 2009
6:05 PM

@Tim :

fair enough… all meant in the interest of honest discussion, please know that. :)

I’ll still be reading, with interest.

43. Anonymous, please
October 26, 2009
6:51 PM

Daniel,

You are correct. It’s the end of a long day, and I surely have misspoken to a degree, though perhaps you don’t know what it is to participate in some very dark situations just to please someone enough to keep a roof over your head (again, pre-conversion). But the coldness and callousness that comes through in your response to me is exactly the kind of attitude that makes it very clear that you don’t get it, and that you clearly have no desire to. As a result of all this, I was once quite heavily involved in the whole thing, not realizing it then but after a couple of decades of that kind of expectation, my attractiveness to the opposite sex and my ability to gain and hold their interest in that way was the only place I had any sense of any kind of worth - and I hated it, and I hated men because of it. One thing I think a lot of men really don’t understand, is the reality of the anatomy of it. Physically, it is an external act for you; for a woman it is internal; we are literally taking another person into ourselves.

Reading through this discussion thread, the one thing that stands out to me more than anything is that we in our flesh will do anything we can to justify our sin and hold onto our idols, muddying up the clear counsel of God on the matter of sin (if your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out - so it doesn’t matter if your lust makes you look at porn, or your porn causes you to lust, it’s all sin, so just throw out the porn and seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.)

It wasn’t until recently, since Christ saved me (just last year!) that I have come to see a glorious picture of the Gospel in God’s design for the marriage relationship, and while I do believe that I am not a candidate for dating/marriage given the words of Christ, I love its design and I pray for the marriages of those around me. Here’s the thing I see - If marriage is intended to be a reflection of the relationship between Christ and His church (His Bride), and the intimacy involved in that is intended to be a reflection of the unity between Christ and Christians (John 17) just as it is a reflection of the unity within in the Trinity, and if the covenant of marriage is intended to reflect the covenant between God and His people, then any turning away to satisfy the flesh in a cheapened version of the real thing just - to me - makes porn look like a golden calf, or maybe Asherim. It is not for no reason that God calls it adultery when His people turn to the world and to the flesh instead of to Himself, and He calls out lust as adultery, and I think too of the fact that Christ loves His Bride, He gave Himself up for her, He died for her, and if one’s spouse is a part of that Bride, and you’re (I say “you” in a general way) abusing that relationship (or that spouse) in that way, choosing to sow to the flesh rather than to the Spirit when intimacy is not possible, or if there is a refusal to submit to one another, then there is Another who is angry at you, whether the other spouse is (yet) or not.

44. DR
October 26, 2009
7:15 PM

Mark Driscoll wrote on this subject - Porn Again Christian - downloadable or read online. http://relit.org/porn_again_christian/

May you be given wisdom Tim to stick to scripture and grace on this subject and be succinct.

At 33yo I would not say you are an old man - you’re still young!

45. Mike Toreno
October 26, 2009
7:33 PM

I’m glad you wrote this, your view of the effects of pornography is so true! I don’t have any problem with pornography, but I have experienced an analogous issue. Last year I started watching Bollywood movies, and they have caused me to bring unrealistic expectations to my everyday experiences. Now, whenever any kind of significant event happens, I am disappointed whenever a group of singers and dancers fails to converge and put on a big production number. Just as with pornography, my viewing of Bollywood pictures has caused me to become dissatisfied with ordinary life. And it’s just the same whatever anyone reads, hears, or views. A lot of my friends read “Arabian Nights” and are now dissatisfied with ordinary, non-flying carpets.

46. Yooper
October 26, 2009
7:51 PM

Despite popular belief, there is no such thing as safe sin.

47. kitchen table
October 26, 2009
10:05 PM

I also grew up in the pre-internet days. Sex in my teenage years is not as easy as it is now. And internet has been a big factor for that. We thought what we are doing are not sinful because it is like everybody is doing it, too.

48. ANON
October 26, 2009
11:23 PM

A few observations Tim:
1. Please think of another name for this series. “Sexual Detox” sounds so humanistic and ‘program’ orientated. There is nothing wrong with appropriately expressed God - given human sexuality, within the confines of marriage. In fact it’s a wonderful blessing! Sexual expression within marriage needs no “detox”. For young men (and maybe women) who find themselves addicted to porn or whatever tickles their lust of the flesh … have done with sin!

2. You want to speak to young men you say … well let me tell you that some of us here are older men who have struggled all our Christian lives with the temptations of lust, of committing fornication with the eyes and our minds, of abusing our bodies, of misusing the organs meant for sexual pleasure for our wives and ourselves within the marital bed. The locusts have eaten the years which should have been spent with the wife of one’s youth and given them the second best.

3. The sins of the flesh are rampant but well concealed from one another within the church. I sometimes wonder as I hear some great preacher-teacher whether they too are beset with the same sins we’re taking about here. Having preached - do they then go home to secretly view porn somewhere? (Actually I have heard mature Christian business men - one a Christian bookseller admit that they have to work so hard to keep their mind-heart in check when away from their wife - once it was the temptation of a playboy at the newsagent, for another watching porn movies in the hotel whilst they were away…)

4. The devil wants all Christians dead…. he wanted Adam and Eve dead and he many a Christian man, he has made dead (in ministry and marriage and godliness).

If you are a young man (or woman) - this sounds like a “must read” series and may God give us all grace, and may we be men (and women) of conviction to do that which is right. have done with sin! His grace is sufficient!

49. Jennifer
October 27, 2009
1:56 AM

To Annon, please
I am praising the Lord for the work He has done in you and in your life! He is so good and merciful! I loved your words and hope you keep contributing.
To Tim
Thank you so much for putting your eloquence to this difficult subject. We have three boys and a girl and need to hear what you have to say. I will be praying for you as you craft these posts.
God Bless you.

50. J. B. Hood
October 27, 2009
8:52 AM

Tim,

What is the feminist writer who noted the pornification of sex in the men she was with, and where was that article?

Thanks

51. C
October 27, 2009
10:13 AM

I would like to address Daniel. Porn is indeed evil. It work solely to give people sexual (and not at all spiritual) release one-on-one, when sex is designed to be communion.
Calling out think about all the worse things like rape and child abuse and genocide… that is absurd. Absolutely absurd and pardon, but I would hope you try to purge your soul of the devil working through you.This is an important discussion for everyone to hear, and your comments through it seek only to protect the sin everyone struggles against.
What would you say to a woman who has been sexually assaulted and raped, but not killed? “Don’t focus on that, because it has been a lot worse for others?” That is the same as saying porn is not bad when you look at everything else bad in the world. For shame.
And porn and masturbation are not ok. I have been in the mood when he is not, and I wait or relive in my mind memories that belong to the two of us. To tun to another avenue and leave him out of such a beautiful thing, and to create for me a sexual memory that excludes him, would be to cheat on him and on God, and is wrong.

As for sex itself, when everyone was talking on face-to-face etc, I can speak from personal experience on that. There are a myriad of positions and acts, but when each one is a gift that you give to each other, you feel as pure and whole if you face a pillow or are under covers as when you face each other. The sex acts are acts of love, and when you truly love your partner (or man for me, since I’m a woman), any of them feel like gifts. If it didn’t, you would feel dirty whenever an act was pleasuring one or the other of you, and it doesn’t. If you’re the one giving, the act turns you on as well because you know what you give and how much you light him up, and when he gives to you you know its from the heart and it feels that way. I always feel like a beacon at the close of our sessions, and very close to God, and I think that’s the purpose, to honor and fulfill one another in the eyes of God.

I don’t know if you can post this Tim, since I suppose I’m mildly graphic, but I think it’s important to let people know.

A good standard, for me, I remember telling my younger brother when he got his first girlfriend and was struggling with where the line was, I told him to only do what you were comfortable with God knowing you’re doing. God has to be present.

The sexual relationship- God gave it to us, and it should be held in highest esteem and regard, not degraded and perverted by the obscene and base in pornography.

The same act in a willing marriage partnership and in porn would be entirely different, because one is a mutual glorification, and one a degradation.

52. Brian Roden
October 27, 2009
11:43 AM

Some books to recommend:

The Game Plan: The Men’s 30-Day Strategy for Attaining Sexual Integrity by Joe Dallas
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Plan-Strategy-Attaining-Integrity/dp/0849906334/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256658066&sr=8-4

At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry by Steve Gallagher
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Plan-Strategy-Attaining-Integrity/dp/0849906334/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256658066&sr=8-4

Think Before You Look: 40 Powerful Reasons to Avoid Pornography by Daniel Henderson
http://www.amazon.com/Think-Before-You-Look-Pornography/dp/0899571646/ref=pd_sim_b_1

53. Traylor Lovvorn
October 27, 2009
3:19 PM

Tim-

Thank you for this wonderful post and for addressing the growing epidemic coming at the Church like a tsunami. In my experience, the Church has not talked enough about sex and therefore has created a vacuum that has allowed most of our education about sex to come, as you say, from the pornographers.

The silence of the Church and unwillingness to talk frankly about this subject has robbed many couples of a proper understanding of sex in their relationship. In a series of articles that have come out over the last few months, many Church leaders are even proposing that the solution is to encourage marriage at an earlier age. The sentiment seems to be that if we get kids married earlier then they’ll get to have sex and we won’t have to live with the tension of how to properly address the issue.

I am a recovering sex addict who lost my wife and family after 11 years of marriage because of my addiction. After six years of divorce, God miraculously reconciled my ex wife and I. (Our Story) I facilitate a sexual addiction recovery group and work with many couples and individuals who are living in the pain and brokenness that this epidemic brings.

I look forward to reading your upcoming posts and appreciate you dealing head-on with this all important topic!

Traylor

54. Brad
October 27, 2009
3:33 PM

“Pornography and masturbation can have a role in a healthy marriage. It is very unlikely that you and your spouse will have the same appetite: allowing one of you to have some extra release can reduce the pressure on the other to perform when not in the mood.”

Matthew - can I humbly encourage you to read this article: http://ccef.org/its-all-about-me-problem-masturbation. It really challenged my thinking on the subject, and specifically addresses your scenario.

55. Melanie
October 27, 2009
3:54 PM

Where I live when a man is arrested for picking up a prostitute he is sent to “John School” where he will hear the first hand testimony of former prostitutes that they do not enjoy their trade. It is a BIG, BOLD, LIE to believe that women working in any form of the sex trade are there by choice and because they like it. An overwhelming amount of those women were molested as young girls and have been abused and used their whole lives.
Annie Lobert shares her story on her site (http://www.hookersforjesus.net/anniestestimony.cfm):
“Sex for money is NOT pleasurable, it is NOT fun, us girls DO NOT enjoy it—in fact there were many times I just wanted to hurt the man that was touching me! … I had to be the best actress all of time just to make sure I got paid—men actually thought I enjoyed what I did. How could men think this? It was a flat out LIE! This is SEXUAL ABUSE in its worst form—a jail cell of your mind….Many times I just wanted to die when I went to sleep at night after I worked, I felt so dirty, sleazy—I felt had no way out—because…who would actually RESPECT me or let alone LOVE ME if they found out what I did for a living?”

56. J.P.H.
October 28, 2009
10:52 AM

Melanie- While I’m certainly not going to disagree with you on whether prostitutes “enjoy” the actual act of prostituting themselves, I do think some folks do it “by choice”. I recently read an article about a phenomenon in Hong Kong where high school age girls are prostituting themselves for money to buy clothes, fancy cell phones, etc. If the article is to be believed, they aren’t from the demographic one would normally expect prostitutes to come from. They’re middle class, stable family situation, etc. And not all of them become “career prostitutes”.

After some digging, here’s the article:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/09/24/hongkong.teenage.prostitution/

57. Daniel Holter
October 28, 2009
2:42 PM

@ C (51.) :

Thanks for your response, but I think it’s safe we say we’ll disagree on just about everything regarding the issue at hand. I’ll respect Tim’s wishes and not further a discussion that will likely run (far) off course from his intended topic.

I’m curious, though, how I might “try to purge [my] soul of the devil working through [me].” If you want to pray for me, feel free… or to offer some advice directly, you can reach me by clicking my name.

58. Tim Challies
October 28, 2009
4:16 PM

While I’m certainly not going to disagree with you on whether prostitutes “enjoy” the actual act of prostituting themselves, I do think some folks do it “by choice”.

There are definitely some of both. I would think that the vast majority are in it through force or through perceived necessity (“I have to feed my kids somehow…” or “I need to earn money to support my habit…”). The percentage who would be in it fully voluntarily would be very small. And even then I suspect many of them would come from backgrounds that, in one way or another, would have nudged them toward it, perhaps through abuse or another factor. Prostitution is just so far from God’s design for women that it takes a remarkable hardening of God-given feminine instincts for a women to give herself to it and to enjoy it.

59. Brian
October 28, 2009
5:51 PM

Tim, can you expand on what you mean when you say

I want to be forthright with you and yet I also want to be discreet; I often think we, as Christians, talk entirely too much about sex and in too much detail.

On the face of it I have an exactly opposite view and would love to know what you’re referring to here.

60. Jake Aharonian
October 29, 2009
1:26 AM

JB—I think you mean the article by Naomi Wolf http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/

61. Tim Challies
October 29, 2009
9:00 AM

I want to be forthright with you and yet I also want to be discreet; I often think we, as Christians, talk entirely too much about sex and in too much detail.

Well, maybe the first part isn’t entirely true. Sometimes I think that we talk about it too much these days (e.g. all these sex sermon series being preached in churches today). And I am definitely convinced we often do so in too much detail (and here a series like Driscoll’s on Song of Solomon comes to mind). The Bible is always subtle when it comes to the actual act of sex and I think we do well to follow that example.

62. Sarah R.
October 29, 2009
1:12 PM

In your comment about the feminist writer, you said that feminism gave her no recourse to feelings of being sexually used by men—but this is wrong, and reflects a shallow understanding of feminism.

Feminism provides the greatest recourse of all, which is to give women a voice in their own relationships. If she’s unsatisfied with her relationships, a feminist view would encourage her to speak up and communicate instead of enduring it silently, wondering what’s wrong.

Unfortunately, the writer you used as an example is not a very good example of a feminist, and I hope that your readers don’t come away thinking of feminism as an excuse to throw one’s body around willy-nilly without regard to consequences.

63. Michael
October 29, 2009
1:49 PM

Interesting discussion. Came over from The Point blog. Glad I did. What I find fascinating is that I know everything that’s mentioned here, all the down sides of porn, why we shouldn’t view it, and yet none of that was enough for me to overcome my attraction to it. And I personally didn’t experience many of the down sides to it, except shame and distancing myself from my relationship from God.

Bad enough, I know, but it’s hard to turn away from something you like. I never treated my wife like a porn star. I never got increasingly addicted. It’s not something I HAD to do, it’s something I liked to do. I also never grew increasingly attracted to a wider array of sex. What was disgusting to me 10 or 20 years ago, is still disgusting to me. One down side I should mention is what porn makes a wife feel like when she knows her husband “likes” it. She feels inadequate and betrayed in a way. I never viewed it with her, but she knew. I believe women will always be somewhat insecure in their relationships, but porn doesn’t help.

But I don’t tell all this to say anything talked about here is not legitimate, only that it didn’t work for me. But something did, and I can never view porn the same again. It was so powerful to me that I literally can never “like” porn again. The illusion of consequences free sex, i.e. porn, was torn from me forever.

It was simply something I read at xxx.church.com about women not enjoying making porn movies, which lead me to Shelly Lubben’s Myspace page. She’s an ex-porn star and now she minsters to women who want to get out of “the industry.” You watch some of those videos of ex-porn stars, and watch Shelly’s testimony, and you tell me porn is just a bunch of people having a good time. Porn is abuse of women, pure and simple, and every “actress” is a woman who is dysfunctional in some way. It uses women for male fantasies. Porn is for men, because men want women to be sexually like men, and thus porn has to destroy a woman’s nature to have her act like she enjoys having sex in front of a camera. Even one click supports the abuse of women, and I just can’t do it anymore.

64. Jim Martin
October 30, 2009
11:44 AM

Tim,
A very good and important post. Thanks for taking the time to develop this series. Much damage has come to new marriages because of this issue.

65. Chris Poblete
October 31, 2009
1:44 AM

Tim,

I seriously love this blog. You can bet that I will be sharing this with a lot of dudes my age, and I will surely profit from this series myself.

Thanks again, man!
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1. Chelsey
October 26, 2009
9:19 AM

Thanks so much for this series. I’ve been married about six months and while I’m a female, I’m definitely looking forward to hearing more about this topic from an older saint who has much more wisdom than I or my husband do.

2. Dan
October 26, 2009
9:30 AM

I grew up like you did, in the pre-internet days, but I caught on fast after that and almost ruined everything. That’s as much as I’ll admit in this forum, but let me tell you that detox is much worse after you’re married than before, so I hope that your younger readers take you up on your offer of this sort of mentorship-by-distance and learn from you.

I’m very humbled by your post and I look forward to learning more from you myself.

3. Drew K
October 26, 2009
10:00 AM

Kudos to you Tim for taking on this important and pervasive issue. It is not fun but necessary partof the Lord purifying His church.

4. marriagejunkie
October 26, 2009
10:32 AM

Spot on! Going to RT on Twitter and link on the site for my book, Before “I Do”. (http://fullmarriageexperience.com) A real concern for young (and old) marriages and an issue to address for most young grooms to know about. Kudos and thanks!

5. Candice
October 26, 2009
10:36 AM

Tim, thanks for taking on this topic. I know as a wife affected by porn that it is a powerful tool that the enemy loves to use to tear down men and tear the hearts of their wives apart, too. Satan loves to whisper to men that it will only affect them, and that they aren’t hurting anyone but themselves. I look forward to reading your series that is setting out to debunk that lie.

6. Anonymous
October 26, 2009
10:54 AM

so are your next articles going to list out a “sexual detox” program?

7. Alan
October 26, 2009
10:56 AM

This was good, and I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. One thing I would add goes right in line with the major points of this post.

Once the pornstar expectations are placed on a wife, and she comes up short, it leads to more involvement in pornography to fill the void left by the non-pornstar wife. This only deepens the problem all the way around. The sin goes further, and the expectations become greater on the wife, who will have a harder time fulfilling these new expectations. And on and on it goes.

The whole thing seems so harmless at the very first, and yet it is so incredibly lethal to a person’s soul and marriage—if not more.

8. Dave Dunbar
October 26, 2009
11:00 AM

It is right to carefully address an insidious attack by the enemy upon Christians. Thank you, Tim.

One of the things that men need to remember is the pictures aren’t “real”. What I mean is that our standard of beauty is falsely affected by the parade of perfect bodies on TV, movies, etc. Even then, what percentage of pictures are photo-shopped? In other words, the perfect pictures have been altered, and do not reflect reality.

Or in the case of movies, the women involved in vile acts ACT like they enjoy it, but they are paid actresses (or porn stars, or whatever), and their false enjoyment of degrading activities in no way indicates that an honest and holy wife would enjoy such defilement of the marriage bed.

Please keep up the good work on this series of articles. Just taking a guess, this could become a popular and widely-read (and helpful!) series.

9. Tim Challies
October 26, 2009
11:07 AM

so are your next articles going to list out a “sexual detox” program?

Pretty much. Then plan is to replace truth with lies.

Once the pornstar expectations are placed on a wife, and she comes up short, it leads to more involvement in pornography to fill the void left by the non-pornstar wife. This only deepens the problem all the way around. The sin goes further, and the expectations become greater on the wife, who will have a harder time fulfilling these new expectations. And on and on it goes.

Exactly so. This is the consistent pattern of sin, isn’t it? It spirals, it twists, it is never satisfied.

10. BigNorm
October 26, 2009
11:18 AM

Great Post.

As a newly-wed, we fought hard for a blank canvas to build our marriage on, including keeping the bedroom pure.

Divine innovation and creativity is the ONLY way to go for marriage.

Loving it.
N

11. Matthew
October 26, 2009
11:30 AM

“Pornography is inherently violent, inherently unloving. It is a perversion of sexuality, not a true form of it, and one that teaches violence and degradation at the expense of mutual pleasure and intimacy. It is about conquests, about conquering.”

I think you might be looking at the wrong kind of porn. There is some good stuff out there that is not violent or degrading. Don’t let the bad stuff spoil you on the rest.

Pornography and masturbation can have a role in a healthy marriage. It is very unlikely that you and your spouse will have the same appetite: allowing one of you to have some extra release can reduce the pressure on the other to perform when not in the mood.

12. Mike D
October 26, 2009
11:33 AM

Scripture itself teaches the bondage that sexual sin brings. After speaking of the sin of adultery and of some of the repurcussions (Proverbs 5), Solomon adds the following (v. 22)…”he will be HELD with the CORDS of his sin.”

There is an enslaving nature attached to sexual sin. By God’s grace I have been kept from it in large measure, but I have seen it wrap its tenticals around many a man and not relinquish. There is a reason that Solomon also says or the adulteress in verse 5 of that same chapter, “Her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of hell.”

I am glad you are talking about it, Tim. But please encourage FATHERS to do their duty as watchmen upon the city wall - warning their children of this decieitful enemy. It is time for men, as heads of their households, to call sin what it is, and to be as the angel with the flaming sword, not allowing his family or his friends down that path, God giving him help. This duty should also be pressed upon SHEPHERDS of the flock of God, that they might watch over the souls that God has put under their charge.

May God give you help as you seek to chart a course - faithfully dealing with prevailing sin and men’s souls AND yet not giving such detail and content as would prove a carnal feast to our remaining flesh.

Matt. 11:12…”the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” May God give us grace to do battle. It is a war. May God give us grace to deal ruthlessly with our remaining sin and the sin that so easily besets us. May we be willing to go to all extremes to be rid of it - even to such extremes as represented by an eye plucked out and a hand cut off. As Christ said, such extremes might be necessary if we would enter heaven.

13. Rodica
October 26, 2009
11:35 AM

what about writing a book on this topic? Haven’t seen a good book to recommend to someone with this problem. The book shelves may have many books on pre-marriage and marriage counseling yet I have not seen one that focuses squarely on this topic. Can you suggest any?

14. Ken Davis
October 26, 2009
11:37 AM

“I want to talk to young men as an older man … my thirty-three years…” - Well - you’re older than somebody.

15. Bonnie
October 26, 2009
11:40 AM

Thank you for addressing this topic. From my vantage point (being of a certain age, married 22 years, with a teenaged son), I wonder whether ubiquitous p*rn has simply ramped up something that men are already tempted toward. Even without taking it to base extremes, and absent p*rn, a young man can still develop a selfish sexual view toward women. Later he might be unloving and subtly degrading to his wife because he views her as a means to satisfy his fantasies rather than someone to relate with.

I think it’s important that young men, from the time they are small children, learn to view others, especially their female peers, in terms of relationship as fellow human beings, rather than objects of any type, sexual or otherwise. They need to be guided to learn how to express themselves properly across the board, so that they will be able to do so properly sexually as well, when the time comes. And yes, parents need to talk to their kids about sex, from an early age and age-appropriately, so they grow up to hold it in proper regard.

In this way, when temptation comes, they have strong values to hold onto, and character training from an early age which has strengthened them.

16. Tim Challies
October 26, 2009
11:42 AM

I think you might be looking at the wrong kind of porn. There is some good stuff out there that is not violent or degrading. Don’t let the bad stuff spoil you on the rest.

Matthew - the foundational “badness” in pornography is not the violence. Pornography is bad simply because already it inflames the heart to adultery. Jesus says that adultery is not simply the act of sleeping with another person, but is as much as a lustful thought about another person. It is impossible to watch pornography and not be incited to lust. The whole point of pornography, even pornography that is “normal” as opposed to violent, is to incite sin.

Pornography and masturbation can have a role in a healthy marriage. It is very unlikely that you and your spouse will have the same appetite: allowing one of you to have some extra release can reduce the pressure on the other to perform when not in the mood.

Let’s just call this what it is—a man’s justification to look at porn and masturbate. Why even bother rationalizing?

17. Christina
October 26, 2009
11:47 AM

Thank you for taking this topic on. Until the church starts addressing these issues with the gospel of Jesus Christ we can have no hope that our culture will change. I look forward to this series.

18. Polarbear
October 26, 2009
12:12 PM

Thank you Tim for this post and I look forward to the series this week. This pornification of the marriage bed is perhaps the number one tool that the enemy is using to destroy Christian marriages.

Matthew, I am praying for you man.

19. Jerry
October 26, 2009
12:29 PM

Greetings,
I am excited about this series and will send the link to everyone I know. I think that this topic is of the utmost importance. There should be more conversations about this issue in our local churches. Maybe this will get some to start talking about it.

20. Eddy Alexandre
October 26, 2009
12:51 PM

I will be waiting…

21. Jerod
October 26, 2009
1:00 PM

Great post Tim. This is a deadly sin that so many times stays hidden and is not discussed. Church culture needs to change so that it’s ok to not be ok. Otherwise we will continue to hide sin and not find healing from it.

I hid for a long time. Bringing it to light by talking about it and confessing is extremely difficult, but the only place to find freedom and healing from it. (James 5:16) God forgives, and it’s through confession to one another we find healing!

22. Tom W.
October 26, 2009
1:29 PM

Wow, Matthew. That whole approach is wrong on so many levels; to add to Tim’s reply, consider this verse in your approach to sexual intimacy with your wife:
“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; “
(Philippians 2:3)

23. Mike D
October 26, 2009
1:41 PM

Rodica…

…you asked about a good book on this subject.

I would recommend a small book by Randy Alcorn entitled…
The Purity Principle: God’s Safeguards for Life’s Dangerous Trails (LifeChange Books).

If you want an excerpt from the book, you can go here…
http://www.epm.org/artman2/publish/Randys_books_excerpts_from_Randys_books/Chapter_5_and_6_from_the_Purity_Principle.shtml

It is a small book and an easy read. I hope this helps…

24. Kath
October 26, 2009
1:44 PM

Please, please don’t overlook that this is a very serious issue for women too, too often men in the church have at this point in the porn conversation effectively told women to close their ears because this won’t affect them. The thing is it does. It’s a real and even more taboo struggle for many women who feel unable to be honest about all this because so many people hold the expectation that only men struggle with this. I’m tired of hearing pastors tell me that only the men should listen at these point. Women struggle in this area. Sure, we may struggle differently but it is no less pervasive and all the more dangerous because it’s a whole lot more harder to be honest about it.

25. Josh Reich
October 26, 2009
1:45 PM

Great post.

I just preached a message in a marriage series on pornography and what it does in a marriage. To go with that, my wife and I wrote on how a wife can handle her husband’s addiction and how to find healing: http://missionalthoughts.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/how-a-wife-handles-her-husbands-sexual-addiction/. This comes out of our personal experience and our story and how it shaped our marriage.

Looking forward to the rest of the series.

26. An Honest Question
October 26, 2009
2:14 PM

very needed stuff. excellent post. I would be interested, however, how you develop “right sex” from “porn star sex” in marriage. in Song of Solomon the couple seem to delight in pleasing one another, and she even dresses to delight his eyes. you mention “face to face intimacy” as if any other kind of sexual position might be wrong.

asking your wife to act like a porn star is obviously wrong but just what are the rules? if it delights a husband for his wife to wear “frilly pajamas” (so to speak!) is that wrong of him to ask her to do so? if the wife likes a man with a beard is it wrong for her to ask him to grow one? just how far is one obligated to go to bring sexual pleasure to their mate? I think that is an area a lot of marriage could use some help with. hope you will be able to address that.

27. Tim Challies
October 26, 2009
2:18 PM

asking your wife to act like a porn star is obviously wrong but just what are the rules?

I am planning on covering some of that in a couple of days. There is a bit of ground work first, but we’ll get there.

you mention “face to face intimacy” as if any other kind of sexual position might be wrong.

I don’t mean to be a prude! I more just mean that there are things you can do in sex that personalize it (even without being nose-to-nose) and others that de-personalize it.

28. Grace
October 26, 2009
2:46 PM

Tim,

Looking forward to reading more!

29. Anonymous
October 26, 2009
2:46 PM

Thanks Kath for bringing to light that women struggle too. I am thankful Tim is addressing this issue.

30. Tim Challies
October 26, 2009
2:49 PM

Please, please don’t overlook that this is a very serious issue for women too, too often men in the church have at this point in the porn conversation effectively told women to close their ears because this won’t affect them. The thing is it does.

I have purposely targeted this series to young men because I feel that I understand young men. I am not far removed from being one myself. I have infinitely less experience being a young woman so I hesitate to speak out about such things. However, I do think much of what I say will apply either way. If pornography is shaping a man’s expectation of his wife, it will also shape a wife’s expectation of her husband. And in either case, the solution will be to repent of sin and to replace sin with truth. So do stay tuned. I hope you’ll find the rest of the series relevant.

31. Neil King
October 26, 2009
3:08 PM

Like many others who have already commented, I really appreciate that you’re dealing with this issue, Tim. It’s the area of my life where I can mostly sympathise with Paul when he cries out ‘Who will save me from this body of death?’

In a way, I can thank God for the struggles I have with sexual sin. Obviously, this isn’t because He gave me these evil desires, which is a blasphemous idea to contemplate, but rather that I am constantly struggling with them rather than having them removed, because I truly know that my strength in overcoming sexual sin can only come from Him alone, and not from my own efforts. It is a constant reminder for me that the Christian life is not a holiday; rather it is a day-by-day, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute struggle that we cannot hope to succeed in without God’s grace and mercy.

32. Rodica
October 26, 2009
4:31 PM

Mike D.
thanks for the book recommendation. After scanning the excerpt, I found it to be a very useful book to read, and to pass along to the young men and women in my family life.

…also, planning on passing on the full text of this article series , once complete, to family and friends. I agree with all other comments that speaking truth on this issue, at this time, is very warranted and very welcome.

33. Daniel Holter
October 26, 2009
4:34 PM

“Pornography is bad simply because already it inflames the heart to adultery.”

I’d blame the heart so inflamed, not the fuel.

If it weren’t porn leading to adultery, it’d be something else.

Until one can control vices, no matter the form, one is in danger of being weak and suspect, hypocritical and wicked… all while blaming the vice instead of one’s own character.

34. Tim Challies
October 26, 2009
5:00 PM

I’d blame the heart so inflamed, not the fuel.

While I know what you are getting at, that is a bit of a silly line to take, I think. I’ll grant that pornography is not morally culpable (porn has no soul, will not go to hell, etc) it is still evil simply because it distorts and perverts. It is a medium used to share evil.

35. Tim Irvin
October 26, 2009
5:19 PM

I have to agree, whole-heartedly, with Daniel (#33). A man isn’t a thief because he steals, he steals because he is a thief already in his heart.
Any married person who turns to porn, even if they say they’re just curious, is doing so because adultery is already in their heart.
Discussion is not what is needed. Reproof is what is needed.
Ephesians 5:11-12

36. Daniel Holter
October 26, 2009
5:26 PM

“[Porn] is a medium used to share evil.”

With all due respect, Tim, so is religion. So what?

37. mark
October 26, 2009
5:27 PM

nice try on I’d blame the heart so inflame, not the fuel.”

however porn has no legit use of any kind. it’s express purpose is to incite lust. thus it can be blamed because there is no good thing to be said for it.

and while certainly granting that a heart that is not right with God will find other avenues of sin it is foolish to think that we can’t help the problem by pointing out how depraved this “fuel” really is, and all the effects that come from “consuming” it.

38. Anonymous, please
October 26, 2009
5:38 PM

As a redeemed sinner, one who - pre-conversion - became a feminist “out of necessity”, feeling abandoned by a husband who acted as if I were there to support him and be a playtoy at the same time, and then he would wondered why I began to shudder every time he even touched my shoulder, with both of us investigating what could be wrong with ME and why I was suddenly so frigid; and after the divorce, learning that I was anything but frigid, but became a misandrist due to exactly this sort of thing, I can recall lamenting that it seemed that men got their sex education from the skin flicks. There is nothing more dehumanizing than to be expected to live up to that expectation, and to have all sense of worth and value placed upon my ability to perform in that manner. The sheer selfishness inherent in that kind of mindset destroys women, it destroys marriages, and it destroys families.

39. Daniel Holter
October 26, 2009
5:46 PM

@mark (37.) :

How nice it must be to eradicate one’s life of all inciters and stimulus. :)

I can imagine a life worth living here on planet earth with no lust, no thirst, no desire to escape, no groove to satiate one’s need to grind on the dancefloor, no poetry to open a soul nor images to affect a heart, no food on which to gorge oneself.

Oh, wait… no I can’t.

“Porn” is what you make of it… one man’s porn is another man’s marital aid. One man’s joint is another man’s nausea helpmate. One man’s celebratory feast is another’s gluttonous escapade. One man’s justified vindication is another’s cold-blooded murder. The vice/method/tool/path is not evil. A man’s heart can be. Can be.

40. Daniel Holter
October 26, 2009
5:54 PM

@Anonymous, please (38.) :

“There is nothing more dehumanizing than to be expected to live up to that expectation, and to have all sense of worth and value placed upon my ability to perform in that manner.”

While your personal story is, indeed, sad and regrettable… there are more than a few experiences more dehumanizing than being expected perform like a porn star.

Just off the top of my head : think of being sold as a child sex slave; actual rape; or, you know, enjoying a spontaneous, free, and unplanned vacation in Dachau or Auschwitz circa 1939.

41. Tim Challies
October 26, 2009
6:03 PM

Daniel - You’ve made your view well known. I think it’s probably a good idea for you to back off a bit now. You aren’t going to convince people here of what you’re saying.

42. Daniel Holter
October 26, 2009
6:05 PM

@Tim :

fair enough… all meant in the interest of honest discussion, please know that. :)

I’ll still be reading, with interest.

43. Anonymous, please
October 26, 2009
6:51 PM

Daniel,

You are correct. It’s the end of a long day, and I surely have misspoken to a degree, though perhaps you don’t know what it is to participate in some very dark situations just to please someone enough to keep a roof over your head (again, pre-conversion). But the coldness and callousness that comes through in your response to me is exactly the kind of attitude that makes it very clear that you don’t get it, and that you clearly have no desire to. As a result of all this, I was once quite heavily involved in the whole thing, not realizing it then but after a couple of decades of that kind of expectation, my attractiveness to the opposite sex and my ability to gain and hold their interest in that way was the only place I had any sense of any kind of worth - and I hated it, and I hated men because of it. One thing I think a lot of men really don’t understand, is the reality of the anatomy of it. Physically, it is an external act for you; for a woman it is internal; we are literally taking another person into ourselves.

Reading through this discussion thread, the one thing that stands out to me more than anything is that we in our flesh will do anything we can to justify our sin and hold onto our idols, muddying up the clear counsel of God on the matter of sin (if your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out - so it doesn’t matter if your lust makes you look at porn, or your porn causes you to lust, it’s all sin, so just throw out the porn and seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.)

It wasn’t until recently, since Christ saved me (just last year!) that I have come to see a glorious picture of the Gospel in God’s design for the marriage relationship, and while I do believe that I am not a candidate for dating/marriage given the words of Christ, I love its design and I pray for the marriages of those around me. Here’s the thing I see - If marriage is intended to be a reflection of the relationship between Christ and His church (His Bride), and the intimacy involved in that is intended to be a reflection of the unity between Christ and Christians (John 17) just as it is a reflection of the unity within in the Trinity, and if the covenant of marriage is intended to reflect the covenant between God and His people, then any turning away to satisfy the flesh in a cheapened version of the real thing just - to me - makes porn look like a golden calf, or maybe Asherim. It is not for no reason that God calls it adultery when His people turn to the world and to the flesh instead of to Himself, and He calls out lust as adultery, and I think too of the fact that Christ loves His Bride, He gave Himself up for her, He died for her, and if one’s spouse is a part of that Bride, and you’re (I say “you” in a general way) abusing that relationship (or that spouse) in that way, choosing to sow to the flesh rather than to the Spirit when intimacy is not possible, or if there is a refusal to submit to one another, then there is Another who is angry at you, whether the other spouse is (yet) or not.

44. DR
October 26, 2009
7:15 PM

Mark Driscoll wrote on this subject - Porn Again Christian - downloadable or read online. http://relit.org/porn_again_christian/

May you be given wisdom Tim to stick to scripture and grace on this subject and be succinct.

At 33yo I would not say you are an old man - you’re still young!

45. Mike Toreno
October 26, 2009
7:33 PM

I’m glad you wrote this, your view of the effects of pornography is so true! I don’t have any problem with pornography, but I have experienced an analogous issue. Last year I started watching Bollywood movies, and they have caused me to bring unrealistic expectations to my everyday experiences. Now, whenever any kind of significant event happens, I am disappointed whenever a group of singers and dancers fails to converge and put on a big production number. Just as with pornography, my viewing of Bollywood pictures has caused me to become dissatisfied with ordinary life. And it’s just the same whatever anyone reads, hears, or views. A lot of my friends read “Arabian Nights” and are now dissatisfied with ordinary, non-flying carpets.

46. Yooper
October 26, 2009
7:51 PM

Despite popular belief, there is no such thing as safe sin.

47. kitchen table
October 26, 2009
10:05 PM

I also grew up in the pre-internet days. Sex in my teenage years is not as easy as it is now. And internet has been a big factor for that. We thought what we are doing are not sinful because it is like everybody is doing it, too.

48. ANON
October 26, 2009
11:23 PM

A few observations Tim:
1. Please think of another name for this series. “Sexual Detox” sounds so humanistic and ‘program’ orientated. There is nothing wrong with appropriately expressed God - given human sexuality, within the confines of marriage. In fact it’s a wonderful blessing! Sexual expression within marriage needs no “detox”. For young men (and maybe women) who find themselves addicted to porn or whatever tickles their lust of the flesh … have done with sin!

2. You want to speak to young men you say … well let me tell you that some of us here are older men who have struggled all our Christian lives with the temptations of lust, of committing fornication with the eyes and our minds, of abusing our bodies, of misusing the organs meant for sexual pleasure for our wives and ourselves within the marital bed. The locusts have eaten the years which should have been spent with the wife of one’s youth and given them the second best.

3. The sins of the flesh are rampant but well concealed from one another within the church. I sometimes wonder as I hear some great preacher-teacher whether they too are beset with the same sins we’re taking about here. Having preached - do they then go home to secretly view porn somewhere? (Actually I have heard mature Christian business men - one a Christian bookseller admit that they have to work so hard to keep their mind-heart in check when away from their wife - once it was the temptation of a playboy at the newsagent, for another watching porn movies in the hotel whilst they were away…)

4. The devil wants all Christians dead…. he wanted Adam and Eve dead and he many a Christian man, he has made dead (in ministry and marriage and godliness).

If you are a young man (or woman) - this sounds like a “must read” series and may God give us all grace, and may we be men (and women) of conviction to do that which is right. have done with sin! His grace is sufficient!

49. Jennifer
October 27, 2009
1:56 AM

To Annon, please
I am praising the Lord for the work He has done in you and in your life! He is so good and merciful! I loved your words and hope you keep contributing.
To Tim
Thank you so much for putting your eloquence to this difficult subject. We have three boys and a girl and need to hear what you have to say. I will be praying for you as you craft these posts.
God Bless you.

50. J. B. Hood
October 27, 2009
8:52 AM

Tim,

What is the feminist writer who noted the pornification of sex in the men she was with, and where was that article?

Thanks

51. C
October 27, 2009
10:13 AM

I would like to address Daniel. Porn is indeed evil. It work solely to give people sexual (and not at all spiritual) release one-on-one, when sex is designed to be communion.
Calling out think about all the worse things like rape and child abuse and genocide… that is absurd. Absolutely absurd and pardon, but I would hope you try to purge your soul of the devil working through you.This is an important discussion for everyone to hear, and your comments through it seek only to protect the sin everyone struggles against.
What would you say to a woman who has been sexually assaulted and raped, but not killed? “Don’t focus on that, because it has been a lot worse for others?” That is the same as saying porn is not bad when you look at everything else bad in the world. For shame.
And porn and masturbation are not ok. I have been in the mood when he is not, and I wait or relive in my mind memories that belong to the two of us. To tun to another avenue and leave him out of such a beautiful thing, and to create for me a sexual memory that excludes him, would be to cheat on him and on God, and is wrong.

As for sex itself, when everyone was talking on face-to-face etc, I can speak from personal experience on that. There are a myriad of positions and acts, but when each one is a gift that you give to each other, you feel as pure and whole if you face a pillow or are under covers as when you face each other. The sex acts are acts of love, and when you truly love your partner (or man for me, since I’m a woman), any of them feel like gifts. If it didn’t, you would feel dirty whenever an act was pleasuring one or the other of you, and it doesn’t. If you’re the one giving, the act turns you on as well because you know what you give and how much you light him up, and when he gives to you you know its from the heart and it feels that way. I always feel like a beacon at the close of our sessions, and very close to God, and I think that’s the purpose, to honor and fulfill one another in the eyes of God.

I don’t know if you can post this Tim, since I suppose I’m mildly graphic, but I think it’s important to let people know.

A good standard, for me, I remember telling my younger brother when he got his first girlfriend and was struggling with where the line was, I told him to only do what you were comfortable with God knowing you’re doing. God has to be present.

The sexual relationship- God gave it to us, and it should be held in highest esteem and regard, not degraded and perverted by the obscene and base in pornography.

The same act in a willing marriage partnership and in porn would be entirely different, because one is a mutual glorification, and one a degradation.

52. Brian Roden
October 27, 2009
11:43 AM

Some books to recommend:

The Game Plan: The Men’s 30-Day Strategy for Attaining Sexual Integrity by Joe Dallas
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Plan-Strategy-Attaining-Integrity/dp/0849906334/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256658066&sr=8-4

At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry by Steve Gallagher
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Plan-Strategy-Attaining-Integrity/dp/0849906334/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256658066&sr=8-4

Think Before You Look: 40 Powerful Reasons to Avoid Pornography by Daniel Henderson
http://www.amazon.com/Think-Before-You-Look-Pornography/dp/0899571646/ref=pd_sim_b_1

53. Traylor Lovvorn
October 27, 2009
3:19 PM

Tim-

Thank you for this wonderful post and for addressing the growing epidemic coming at the Church like a tsunami. In my experience, the Church has not talked enough about sex and therefore has created a vacuum that has allowed most of our education about sex to come, as you say, from the pornographers.

The silence of the Church and unwillingness to talk frankly about this subject has robbed many couples of a proper understanding of sex in their relationship. In a series of articles that have come out over the last few months, many Church leaders are even proposing that the solution is to encourage marriage at an earlier age. The sentiment seems to be that if we get kids married earlier then they’ll get to have sex and we won’t have to live with the tension of how to properly address the issue.

I am a recovering sex addict who lost my wife and family after 11 years of marriage because of my addiction. After six years of divorce, God miraculously reconciled my ex wife and I. (Our Story) I facilitate a sexual addiction recovery group and work with many couples and individuals who are living in the pain and brokenness that this epidemic brings.

I look forward to reading your upcoming posts and appreciate you dealing head-on with this all important topic!

Traylor

54. Brad
October 27, 2009
3:33 PM

“Pornography and masturbation can have a role in a healthy marriage. It is very unlikely that you and your spouse will have the same appetite: allowing one of you to have some extra release can reduce the pressure on the other to perform when not in the mood.”

Matthew - can I humbly encourage you to read this article: http://ccef.org/its-all-about-me-problem-masturbation. It really challenged my thinking on the subject, and specifically addresses your scenario.

55. Melanie
October 27, 2009
3:54 PM

Where I live when a man is arrested for picking up a prostitute he is sent to “John School” where he will hear the first hand testimony of former prostitutes that they do not enjoy their trade. It is a BIG, BOLD, LIE to believe that women working in any form of the sex trade are there by choice and because they like it. An overwhelming amount of those women were molested as young girls and have been abused and used their whole lives.
Annie Lobert shares her story on her site (http://www.hookersforjesus.net/anniestestimony.cfm):
“Sex for money is NOT pleasurable, it is NOT fun, us girls DO NOT enjoy it—in fact there were many times I just wanted to hurt the man that was touching me! … I had to be the best actress all of time just to make sure I got paid—men actually thought I enjoyed what I did. How could men think this? It was a flat out LIE! This is SEXUAL ABUSE in its worst form—a jail cell of your mind….Many times I just wanted to die when I went to sleep at night after I worked, I felt so dirty, sleazy—I felt had no way out—because…who would actually RESPECT me or let alone LOVE ME if they found out what I did for a living?”

56. J.P.H.
October 28, 2009
10:52 AM

Melanie- While I’m certainly not going to disagree with you on whether prostitutes “enjoy” the actual act of prostituting themselves, I do think some folks do it “by choice”. I recently read an article about a phenomenon in Hong Kong where high school age girls are prostituting themselves for money to buy clothes, fancy cell phones, etc. If the article is to be believed, they aren’t from the demographic one would normally expect prostitutes to come from. They’re middle class, stable family situation, etc. And not all of them become “career prostitutes”.

After some digging, here’s the article:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/09/24/hongkong.teenage.prostitution/

57. Daniel Holter
October 28, 2009
2:42 PM

@ C (51.) :

Thanks for your response, but I think it’s safe we say we’ll disagree on just about everything regarding the issue at hand. I’ll respect Tim’s wishes and not further a discussion that will likely run (far) off course from his intended topic.

I’m curious, though, how I might “try to purge [my] soul of the devil working through [me].” If you want to pray for me, feel free… or to offer some advice directly, you can reach me by clicking my name.

58. Tim Challies
October 28, 2009
4:16 PM

While I’m certainly not going to disagree with you on whether prostitutes “enjoy” the actual act of prostituting themselves, I do think some folks do it “by choice”.

There are definitely some of both. I would think that the vast majority are in it through force or through perceived necessity (“I have to feed my kids somehow…” or “I need to earn money to support my habit…”). The percentage who would be in it fully voluntarily would be very small. And even then I suspect many of them would come from backgrounds that, in one way or another, would have nudged them toward it, perhaps through abuse or another factor. Prostitution is just so far from God’s design for women that it takes a remarkable hardening of God-given feminine instincts for a women to give herself to it and to enjoy it.

59. Brian
October 28, 2009
5:51 PM

Tim, can you expand on what you mean when you say

I want to be forthright with you and yet I also want to be discreet; I often think we, as Christians, talk entirely too much about sex and in too much detail.

On the face of it I have an exactly opposite view and would love to know what you’re referring to here.

60. Jake Aharonian
October 29, 2009
1:26 AM

JB—I think you mean the article by Naomi Wolf http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/

61. Tim Challies
October 29, 2009
9:00 AM

I want to be forthright with you and yet I also want to be discreet; I often think we, as Christians, talk entirely too much about sex and in too much detail.

Well, maybe the first part isn’t entirely true. Sometimes I think that we talk about it too much these days (e.g. all these sex sermon series being preached in churches today). And I am definitely convinced we often do so in too much detail (and here a series like Driscoll’s on Song of Solomon comes to mind). The Bible is always subtle when it comes to the actual act of sex and I think we do well to follow that example.

62. Sarah R.
October 29, 2009
1:12 PM

In your comment about the feminist writer, you said that feminism gave her no recourse to feelings of being sexually used by men—but this is wrong, and reflects a shallow understanding of feminism.

Feminism provides the greatest recourse of all, which is to give women a voice in their own relationships. If she’s unsatisfied with her relationships, a feminist view would encourage her to speak up and communicate instead of enduring it silently, wondering what’s wrong.

Unfortunately, the writer you used as an example is not a very good example of a feminist, and I hope that your readers don’t come away thinking of feminism as an excuse to throw one’s body around willy-nilly without regard to consequences.

63. Michael
October 29, 2009
1:49 PM

Interesting discussion. Came over from The Point blog. Glad I did. What I find fascinating is that I know everything that’s mentioned here, all the down sides of porn, why we shouldn’t view it, and yet none of that was enough for me to overcome my attraction to it. And I personally didn’t experience many of the down sides to it, except shame and distancing myself from my relationship from God.

Bad enough, I know, but it’s hard to turn away from something you like. I never treated my wife like a porn star. I never got increasingly addicted. It’s not something I HAD to do, it’s something I liked to do. I also never grew increasingly attracted to a wider array of sex. What was disgusting to me 10 or 20 years ago, is still disgusting to me. One down side I should mention is what porn makes a wife feel like when she knows her husband “likes” it. She feels inadequate and betrayed in a way. I never viewed it with her, but she knew. I believe women will always be somewhat insecure in their relationships, but porn doesn’t help.

But I don’t tell all this to say anything talked about here is not legitimate, only that it didn’t work for me. But something did, and I can never view porn the same again. It was so powerful to me that I literally can never “like” porn again. The illusion of consequences free sex, i.e. porn, was torn from me forever.

It was simply something I read at xxx.church.com about women not enjoying making porn movies, which lead me to Shelly Lubben’s Myspace page. She’s an ex-porn star and now she minsters to women who want to get out of “the industry.” You watch some of those videos of ex-porn stars, and watch Shelly’s testimony, and you tell me porn is just a bunch of people having a good time. Porn is abuse of women, pure and simple, and every “actress” is a woman who is dysfunctional in some way. It uses women for male fantasies. Porn is for men, because men want women to be sexually like men, and thus porn has to destroy a woman’s nature to have her act like she enjoys having sex in front of a camera. Even one click supports the abuse of women, and I just can’t do it anymore.

64. Jim Martin
October 30, 2009
11:44 AM

Tim,
A very good and important post. Thanks for taking the time to develop this series. Much damage has come to new marriages because of this issue.

65. Chris Poblete
October 31, 2009
1:44 AM

Tim,

I seriously love this blog. You can bet that I will be sharing this with a lot of dudes my age, and I will surely profit from this series myself.

Thanks again, man!

Sexual Detox II: Breaking Free: Tim Challies

2009-11-02T16:46:00.005-05:00

Sexual Detox II: Breaking Free

This is the second entry in a series dealing with sex and, in particular, challenging young men with the notion that their consumption of pornography has so shaped their perception of sex that they need to detox if they are going to be suitable husbands to their wives. In the first part of the series I wrote about Pornifying the Marriage Bed. I had intended to move to a Theology of Sex but based on feedback from yesterday’s article, I wanted to first share what I’ve written today. This is, I suppose, a kind of parenthetical article in the midst of the series.

Breaking Free

When I meet a young man today, I pretty much assume that he is into pornography or at least that at one time he has been. It is sad but true. The sheer accessibility of pornography almost guarantees that every young man will find it; and once it has been tasted, it is difficult not to indulge.

I know that the issue of pornography is spoken about so often in Christian circles that it is in danger of becoming cliche. But it is a reality we cannot avoid or overlook. The purpose of this short series of articles is not to say, “quit porn” as much as it is to say, “look what porn is doing to your heart.” I hope that this message will help you first see that you do need to quit looking at porn and, second (and even if you’ve already broken free) that you need to find a new way of looking at sex. Just quitting, while it is the right thing to do, is not enough. You need to replace the lies with truth.

I would not want to get through this series without first distilling one of the great lies about pornography and then pleading with guys to find freedom from the clutches of pornography.

Marriage Will Make it Go Away!
I’ve spoken to young men who feel that the answer to their reliance on pornography and their addiction to masturbation is marriage. “If I just get married, I can have legitimate sex and all of this sin will just go away.”

This may seem a logical assumption but it is tragically flawed. It assumes a measure of equality between illegitimate, selfish sex and legitimate sex within marriage. It assumes that the bad can simply be replaced with the good like there is a 1 to 1 relationship between the two. Give the guy a legitimate outlet for his desires and he will no longer desire the illegitimate, right? Legions of men and their hurting wives will testify that it does not work this way at all.

Pornography and sex within marriage are completely different things.. Yes, when you marry you may find that at the beginning you are well satisfied with your wife and find fulfillment in sex with her. But sin may still be lying dormant. If the sin has never been dealt with, it is likely to come back—to make a reappearance. It may be weeks or months or even years. But sooner or later, if that sin has never been repented of, never been put to death, it will rear its ugly head once more. Perhaps it will be at a time when your wife travels for a few days or when you travel out-of-town and find yourself alone in a hotel room in a strange city. Perhaps it will be after the birth of your first baby when there is that waiting time where for several weeks or a couple of months you cannot have sex. But it is very likely that the sin will come back to haunt you and to hurt both you and your wife.

You need to put sin to death! You cannot simply mask over it, cover it up, and believe that this is the same as actually dealing with it. It’s like those people you hear about who murder someone and then stuff the body into a wall or put it in a box in the basement. Who is dumb enough to think that this will actually work? The body is going to start to stink and sooner or later everyone will become aware that something is dead and rotting. It is like this with sin. You can box it up in favor of something legitimate, you can put the box in the basement and throw a blanket over it, but sooner or later that box and the death it contains is going to stink. You won’t fool anyone in the end, least of all the One who sees to the depths of the heart. “Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the Lord; how much more the hearts of the children of man” (Proverbs 15:11). Do not ignore your sin!

Deal With It!

If you want to be a good and godly husband or a good and godly future husband, if you want to be able to treat your wife or your future wife the way she deserves to be treated, you need to stop looking at pornography right now. As in, this instant. Today. And then you need to reshape your understanding of sex, replacing the distortions with pure truth. “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Colossians 3:5,6).

But you already know that you need to stop. There aren’t too many Christian men out there who are looking at pornography and who don’t know that they need to quit. The problem isn’t with knowledge—it’s with desire and ability. Every Christian guy who looks at porn wants to stop, but many of them want to stop just a little bit less than they want to keep going. And so sin prevails. The only way you will stop is if you begin to see the monstrous nature of the sin you are committing. You will only stop if the sin is more horrifying to you than the perceived goodness of the enjoyment of that sin. You will need to hate that sin before you can find freedom from it. Obviously pornography is a sin that is first and foremost a sin against God. God hates pornography as he hates any distortion of his good gifts. You know this already and have been told so innumerable times. In this series I am trying to show you some of the secondary effects of pornography and, most notably, the fact that pornography reshapes your very understanding of sex, of manhood, of womanhood. I want you to hate and fear this as you ought to hate and fear the sin itself. I want you to know that you cannot be a loving husband, an effective husband, a godly man as long as your mind is filled with the lies of pornography. You need to break free and you need to detox.

God is infinitely more willing to deal with your sin than you are to commit your sin. You may love this sin and be committed to it, but if you are a Christian, God is more willing than you are to overcome it and destroy it. He will grant grace for you to put sin to death. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9).

Breaking Free
Time and expertise would fail me to outline a plan for defeating pornography. You can find all kinds of good information online. Just on the main page of two favorite sites I found Breaking the Porn Addiction (at Boundless) and Breaking Pornography Addiction (at CCEF). But, as good as those resources may be, I would not recommend starting at either one of them. If you truly want to overcome pornography, go to your pastor. There is not a pastor in America who is not helping someone deal with the fight against pornography (says I with only a small measure of hyperbole). Take your willingness to talk to somebody about your problem as a sign that you are actually, finally, willing to deal with it. The local church is the ideal context for battling this kind of sin since in the local church you will find the authority and the support to help you fight and, ultimately, to help you win. If you want to overcome pornography, truly overcome it, you will be willing to humble yourself and talk to someone about it. Though God may occasionally suddenly just remove a person’s desire to look at pornography, it is much more likely that it will be a long and difficult process of seeing just how deep inside this sin has gone and slowly drawing out the infection.

Now I know there are some people who do not have this kind of access to their pastors—the kind that can say, “I need help!” If that is the case, find a trusted, mature, Christian man (make sure he meets all four of those qualifiers) to whom you can talk. Do not talk to your eighteen year-old buddy and agree to some sort of accountability. That is not likely to work. Go to a Christian man whom you love and respect and tell him what you are dealing with. It will be humbling and humiliating in all the right ways. But I pretty much guarantee that he will empathize with you and will be both willing and eager to help you fight and vanquish this sin.

Starting the Detox
As I said in the previous article, pornography, like any other sin, comes with a kind of cascade effect. If you have been looking at porn for any length of time, I am certain that you can identify with this. You will know that the things that interested you at the beginning, that got you going, now seem pretty bland. And the things that were once repulsive are already beginning to intrigue you. This is the way sin is. This is the way sin always is. It will always demand more of you. And meanwhile, while you’ve been certain that you’ve been controlling your sin, it has been controlling you. It has reshaped your mind and your heart in certain ways, and has even shaped your understanding of your own wife or wife-to-be! You are looking at your wife through the eyes of a pornographer! Would you want Hugh Hefner staring at your wife’s body? And yet there you are looking at her through his eyes—through the eyes he and others like him have given you through your consumption of their pornography.

What you need to do is to borrow God’s eyes and to look at your wife through that lens, through that filter. You need to replace lies with truth. And God has given you the Bible so you can do just that. Through the Bible we are able to borrow God’s eyes and to see the world as he sees it. And so in the next article in this series we will form a Theology of Sex, seeking to understand the purpose of sex, of purpose of sexual desire and even the purpose of unequal sexual desire.

As I said yesterday, if you have questions or concerns you would like me to address in this series, feel free to use the contact form. Using that form you can get in touch with me anonymously if you like. I have already received some very useful (and sometimes heartbreaking) emails that are really beginning to shape the future articles.

Source:
Sexual Detox II: Breaking Free

1. Dan
October 27, 2009
10:15 AM

I’m so glad that you suggested going to a pastor or trusted male friend instead of websites first. It is vital, in order to break a secret habit, to get out of isolation. I can remain as selfish and addicted as I want when all I’m doing is looking for help from a website, but it is humbling, and more effective, to talk to a real human being about my sin and desire to turn from it.

Also, since the addiction was formed and fed on the internet, my first source of hope and help should not be from the same location. You don’t meet a guy in a bar to talk about accountability with your drinking. Same goes for porn.

2. Tim Irvin
October 27, 2009
10:30 AM

Here is a good place to start: LINK

3. matt
October 27, 2009
10:32 AM

Wow.

Tim, thanks for writing this out. Definately stuff that I benefitted from as a married man, and have already passed on to several unmarried younger men I mentor.

I unfortunately half-grew up in the Internet-era (household Internet came about in my late highschool years).

That said, the ability to remain pure (both in marriage and prior) is getting more difficult every year.

Praise the Lord for the awareness and leadership of individuals that do not stand by and watch sin and temptation run rampant through our society without contention!

4. Kaylene
October 27, 2009
10:49 AM

“God is infinitely more willing to deal with your sin than you are to commit your sin.”

That hit me like a ton of bricks. It applies to so much more than the struggle with porn. Thank you.

5. Terry
October 27, 2009
10:50 AM

I agree with the comments as well as with the article itself. The more light you shine on your sin easier it is to beat it. You can shine light on it by telling your trust worthy friends and walking that much closer to God.

6. Jen
October 27, 2009
12:10 PM

I missed what you wrote yesterday, Tim, but plan to go back and read it. Every man or woman involved in pornography should know that God does give us hope and a way out. I, as a young girl, had pornography shown to me without my parents knowing. It was somewhat easily available to children of my generation even before the internet. So my young life had plenty of exposure to the sin of pornography long before I met my husband. Thank God I wasn’t drawn into it like so many young people are.

Two years ago I borrowed my husbands computer and stumbled on evidence of him looking at porn. I was broken to say the least. We had been married for 9 years, had 3 children and were very happy as far as I knew.

I immediately confronted him with what I found. After and entire night of crying we began a new part of our marriage. I found out that this was something my husband had been doing since he was 11 years old. He had tried over and over to stop. He had never wanted my to find out. He did believe back at 22 years old when we got married that he would quit then. The grip of this sin was too much and returned to it over and over. I found the hardest part being that I thought he was a different man than he really was.

My husband went through a free online program called Setting Captives Free. I believe God used it to help set him free from this sin. God has been good to show me my own sin, as I work through the pain of my husband’s sin. It already feels like a lifetime ago that this happened but still feels like yesterday at times when I give into the thoughts that creep in to steal my love for my husband and family.

As we have matured spiritually through this our marriage has grown stronger. I feel so blessed to be married to my husband. I grieve over the years the locust have eaten but I would not change it all for what he has done to draw me closer to him. I now have a husband who I can say loves the Lord with all his heart. He is a changed man in so many way.

Thank you for addressing this subject.

7. msatty
October 27, 2009
12:53 PM

The primary thing that young men fail to understand about the myth of their porn addiction going away once their married is the way sex works with an actual, living, breathing woman. She must be loved and sacrificed for and cared for and given attention long before the sex act is engaged. Porn and masturbation set a pattern of instant gratification for the man that requires little to no effort, especially emotionally. So the idea that those sin issues will disappear in marriage is naive at best. In fact, marriage can bring them to the surface in a frustrating way because suddenly the man who was isolated in his sexual sin has to deal with a mate who won’t let things simply continue as they have been.

8. Cindy
October 27, 2009
2:18 PM

Tim,

I agree that in person accountability is the way to go. However, I can also attest to the helpfulness of setting captives free. Their website is: http://www.settingcaptivesfree.com/
It is free. They have some accountability and they rely totally on the Word to help people break free from various habitual sins.

9. Fillip
October 27, 2009
3:43 PM

Way to take on this thing with both barrels Tim. Pornography is a beast. Sometimes when young people find out that so many others struggle with it, they almost feel a since of relief, and that maybe it’s not that bad, because so many others struggle with it But you are not taking the “You’re not alone in your struggle” approach, and I find that refreshing.

10. donsands
October 27, 2009
3:57 PM

Fornication is a powerful thing. Paul says to flee. And only by God’s Spirit, and His grace are we able to do so.

If someone says, they have no problem with fornication, nor with porn, then look out. Any husband could committ adultery. We need a lot of help from the Lord in our day. The internet has so many snares and traps set.
But through God’s great grace, and His Church, through faith, we can fight the good fight.

Thanks for the good post.

11. Michael W.
October 27, 2009
5:20 PM

Thanks Tim. I absolutely agree with the importance of finding a mature, godly man to be held accountable with. I couldn’t stress enough how God used that relationship to send me on the road of breaking the power of this sin. It was the most humiliating and rewarding time of my spiritual life, and I continually praise God for that. If you’re struggling with pornography—even a lustful mind—I strongly encourage you to seek godly counsel from a man that will crack open a bible with you about this serious sin. Humiliating, yes. Intimidating, yes. But the growth I received from it (by God’s grace) far exceeded the humiliation. It was priceless and wonderful.

12. Polarbear
October 27, 2009
5:33 PM

This is fantastic stuff this week. If every Christian man in America would take this seriously, it would impact their marriages and non-believers around in ways that we cannot imagine. Thank you!!!

13. L
October 27, 2009
8:31 PM

Tim, this is some of the best stuff I’ve ever read on your blog, brother.

I can attest (as a woman!) to the terror of confessing the sin of porn and masturbation to an accountability partner. Shoot. I was actually shaking when I went to open the door the day I sat down with a dear sister and spilled my guts to her about it. But I can also attest (praise God!) to the freedom and joy that came from having someone else just know, and be willing to walk through that stuff with me. Bringing all that out of the dark recesses is essential. We’re not meant to combat sin alone.

I wonder, too, how many men and women who compulsively view porn would be willing to stop if they found out that, for those involved in making porn, drug addiction, suicide, and accidental overdoses are considered normal occupational hazards — not to mention the almost-inevitable STDs? Or that between 2/3 and 3/4 of women in the porn industry were sexually abused, molested, or raped before they got into the “business”? Kinda makes it less sexy when you realize that, in all likelihood, the woman on the screen has to get high before every scene so she can suppress her memories of sexual abuse, doesn’t it?

14. Joe
October 27, 2009
9:11 PM

Thanks for taking this on. I hope you address the issue of masturbation as that usually comes first before pornography and is always related. I struggled with both for many years and was not able to achieve victory until I understood that masturbation (by oneself) is sin, just like pornography.

15. melissa
October 27, 2009
11:04 PM

@ Jen

when I give into the thoughts that creep in to steal my love for my husband and family.

This is where I struggle so many times…thank you for putting it into clear words: I am allowing my thoughts to steal my love for my husband when I do not think on the things spoken of in Phillipians…

16. A
October 28, 2009
12:05 AM

Thanks for the women who have expressed similar battles. I didn’t know it existed so much in the stronger gender…

17. Brian
October 28, 2009
2:08 AM

Tim, Great stuff. I struggled for years with various addictions and found excellent help at Setting Captives Free http://www.settingcaptivesfree.com. An excellent bible based course with mentors and accountability.

18. Jason Stephens
October 28, 2009
2:22 AM

Tim thanks so much for these great postings! suggestion: make these articles into a small book or something?

Grace and peace in Christ!

19. J
October 28, 2009
6:12 AM

Thank you for addressing this topic in such a helpful manner. I plan to save these articles and share them with our son. It would be great to have them published in booklet form.

20. Tim Challies
October 28, 2009
7:56 AM

It would be great to have them published in booklet form.

Tim thanks so much for these great postings! suggestion: make these articles into a small book or something?

I will seek to do that once the series is complete. Thanks for the suggestion.

21. anonymous
October 28, 2009
9:15 AM

Tim,

Please do seek to publish this in book form. Your words are so refreshingly truthful. Thank you for being SO honest and seeking to expose what pornography can do in a marriage. I have heard so many guys talk about how they are justified in their habit and how its “okay”. These men are all struggling with issues in their marriages and cannot see the link. I struggled for a long time to find the word to describe why I felt “used” even in legitimate sex with my husband when things would happen in a certain way. Thinking about my husband viewing our sex life through the lense of pornography rather than scripture makes so much sense to why that would be.

Might I encourage all the wives and future wives out there to join together in a mighty prayer for our men within the church and for our sons even if they are not of age yet. God answers prayer and I believe that with even a few words from an open honest heart can start a wave throughout the church of this sin being repented from and dealt with. He will heal our land!!!

22. A.J.
October 28, 2009
11:42 AM

http://www.covenanteyes.com/

It works wonders when you have no choice.

God Bless

23. Anonymous
October 28, 2009
2:34 PM

This is perhaps the best literature I’ve read on this issue, and I’ve read a lot. From books like “Not Even a Hint” (now titled: “Sex Is Not the Problem, Lust Is”) and “The Purity Principle” to online resources like Driscoll’s “Porn-Again Christian” and the “Setting Captives Free” materials mentioned above.

None of those things were able to break me free from pornography. These truths (which Challies also captured in this article) were things God taught me that ultimately freed me:
1. “If you want to overcome pornography, truly overcome it, you will be willing to humble yourself and talk to someone about it.”
2. “You will only stop if the sin is more horrifying to you than the perceived goodness of the enjoyment of that sin.”
3. “God is infinitely more willing to deal with your sin than you are to commit your sin.”

Thanks Tim, for writing this.

Sexual Detox III: A Theology of Sex: Tim Challies

2009-11-02T16:19:00.003-05:00

Sexual Detox III: A Theology of Sex

This is the third article in a series targeted specifically at young men but applying, I am learning, to all of us. So far I have written about Pornifying the Marriage Bed and about Breaking Free.Sexual Detox 2

What did God create first: hunger or food? Did God make man hungry and then invent food to fill the need? Or did God first invent food and then give man an appetite which would motivate him, drive him, to pursue that good gift? Where you or I might invent a need before the ability to meet it, God sees the end before the beginning. He creates good gifts and only then does he create a need for them; he does not create a need for which there is no fulfillment. My topic today is sex and I want to offer a brief theology of sex and of sexual desire. I want to help you see why God created sex, why he created sexual desire, and why he has given sexual desire in unequal measure.

Sex
God gives us sex because it has unique power in drawing a husband to his wife and a wife to her husband. He knows this because he is the one who invented it! He made it so that it is far more than the sum of its parts. We could describe sex in terms of body parts and hormones, but we would not be any closer to understanding it than if we were to describe a cake only in terms of its ingredients—flour and milk and eggs (or if we were to describe the Lord’s Supper making reference only to eating bread and drinking wine). Sex goes far beyond merely the physical and instead extends to the emotional, the spiritual. It is through sexual union that two are made one, that they are bound together; there is a mystery to it that can only really be compared in impact to the union of God’s people to God as they are grafted into him.

God gave us something remarkably powerful and was wise to place strict boundaries on it. He has every right to do so because he is the one who has created sex and who has given it its function. Sex, then, is to be shared only between a husband and a wife, and cannot be extended to others either before marriage or during marriage (Matthew 5:27,28). Sex must not be stirred up or awakened until the time is right (Song of Solomon 8:4). Sex is to be practiced regularly throughout a marriage (1 Corinthians 7:1-5). Such boundaries are not intended to inhibit freedom but to enhance freedom. When we use the gift as God intends it, we gain great joy and freedom in it. When we abuse the gift, we ultimately suffer for such abuse.

The purpose of sex, then, is to provide a unique means through which a husband and wife can know one another, serve one another, express vulnerability before one another, give and receive. No other area in marriage offers so much to gain and so much to lose. No other area in marriage so closely grafts the couple together. And no message could be further from what is shown in pornography!

Many theologians have attempted to get at the deepest meaning of sex. “Sex is a picture, a metaphor, to point us to the joys of heaven,” they might say. And perhaps this is so. But I don’t find that the Bible tells us this clearly. Neither am I convinced that we need to find some deeper meaning in sex in order to affirm its goodness. Sex is inherently good because it was created by a good God. We do not need to construct a complex theology around it as if it is only good in some kind of secondary sense. It is perfectly good in and of itself. Even if its ultimate meaning is no deeper than pleasure and mutual fulfillment, it is good because God is good. He could easily have decreed that sex be an integral part of every marriage and then made it inherently unpleasurable. He did not. Instead he made sex almost transcendent in its pleasure. At its best, sex really transcends most of life’s other pleasures in its uniqueness, in its joy, in its freedom and vulnerability. And in these things, sex draws a husband and wife together in a completely unique and unparalleled way.

When you understand this you must also understand why sex is meant to be enjoyed only between a husband and wife. You understand why God forbids pre-marital sex (fornication), why he forbids extra-marital sex (adultery) and why he even forbids selfish sex (masturbation). All these things make a mockery of the real thing. All these things abuse his good gift.

Desire
Along with sex, God created sexual desire. As a young man I, like so many others, battled with the inability to express my awakening sexual desire and even remember crying out to God to ask why he would give it to me. So often sexual desire is a heavy burden. The answer to my questions came only later.

There are some who say that sexual desire is meant only to motivate procreation—that the desire to have sex will draw a husband and wife together with the happy and ultimate result of conception. Here C.S. Lewis applies a helpful corrective (in Mere Christianity). He affirms that the biological purpose of sex is procreation (and let’s not lose sight of this important purpose to sex) but draws a helpful parallel to the appetite for food. The biological purpose of eating is to repair the body and though some people are given to overindulgence, we find that the appetite goes only a little way beyond its biological purpose. A man may eat twice as much food as his body needs for its biological purpose, but few will eat even that much. When it comes to sex, though, the appetite far exceeds its biological purpose. If the sexual appetite matched its biological function either a person would only desire sex a few times in a lifetime or he would have thousands of children. Does this not teach us that God desires that we have sex for reasons beyond procreation? The only other alternative is that this appetite is a product of sin and ought to be suppressed. But no, this cannot be. The Bible is clear that legitimate sexual desire, desire within a marriage and a desire for one’s spouse, is legitimate before God.

God gives a man sexual desire, a sexual appetite, because he wants him to have sex with his wife. Can’t it be just that simple? And what’s more, he gives him a strong appetite that surpasses any kind of biological purpose because he wants the couple to have sex a lot. After all, the only admonition in Scripture regarding the frequency of married sex is to permit a brief pause with a defined end and even then only for the specific reason of dedicating time to prayer (see again 1 Corinthians 7) and still even then only if it is mutually agreed upon. In fact, the Bible goes so far as to say that a wife’s body belongs to her husband—that he has authority over her body—and a husband’s body belongs to his wife—she has authority over his body. The ruling principle is that husbands and wives are to have sex often and not to refuse one another this special gift.

Sex is such an integral part of the relationship of husband to wife and wife to husband that God has given the desire to participate in it, to enjoy it. This sexual desire motivates a man to pursue a wife and to marry her so together they can enjoy sex. This desire motivates a man to keep pursuing his wife even after they are married. Without this desire, this appetite, it would be far easier for us to avoid carrying out our God-given duty to have sex (and lots of it) and through it to experience intimacy and unity (and lots of it). So God gives the desire that is meant to be fulfilled in only that way. If we did not experience pangs of hunger we might not eat. If we stopped eating, our bodies would stop repairing themselves and we would die. If we did not experience sexual desire we might not have sex. And if we stopped having sex, our marriages would suffer and die. Sexual desire, then, is a gift of God given not to torment but to motivate obedience. When a young man inevitably feels sexual desire it is not an invitation to pornography and masturbation, but a nudge toward marriage.

Unequal Desire
Yet sexual desire, the appetite for sex, is not given in equal measure. It is typically given in greater part to men. Why is this? The answer, I’m convinced, goes right to the heart of the husband-wife relationship. God commands that men, husbands, be leaders. Men are to take the leading role while women are to follow. God intends that men take leadership even in sex and, therefore, he gives to men a greater desire for it. This way men can lead their wives, taking the initiative, taking care to love their wives in such a way that they wish to have sex with their husbands. Generally speaking, a man finds intimacy and acceptance through sex while a woman needs to first experience intimacy and acceptance before she can be prepared to enjoy sex. And so God gives the man a sexual appetite so he can in turn provide for his wife’s needs before she provides for his. His sexual appetite cannot be separated from his leadership. If the woman were to lead in this regard, if she were to always be the sexual instigator, the husband would be far less likely to pursue his wife and seek to meet her unique needs. Do you see the beautiful dance here? The husband has a desire that only his wife can meet, a desire for his wife; therefore, he takes the lead in seeking to fulfill that desire. He does this by meeting the desires of his wife that will, in turn, cause her to see and appreciate and eventually fulfill his desires. And then, in that act of consummation, God grants a grace that surpasses the mere union of flesh and blood.

As the husband leads, the wife is called by God to submit to her husband’s leadership even in the marriage bed. As in other areas of life, she is called to defy leadership only if her husband demands of her something that would violate her conscience or God’s law. We can see this as a responsibility of the wife but we must also see it as a particular responsibility of the husband. He is to lead in such a way that his wife will have no reason to refuse him. He must be sensitive to her needs, to her desires. He must acknowledge the times where, for one reason or another, she would find it exceedingly difficult to give herself to him and must keep from cajoling her into acts that would make her uncomfortable or leave her feeling violated. He needs to exemplify leadership as a servant even here in the bedroom. His first thoughts must be for her. A husband may tend towards being either a bully or a push-over in the bedroom—to abuse leadership by domination or abdication. He must do neither.

If Adam and Eve enjoyed sex before their fall into sin (I’m under the impression that the Fall happened soon after Creation but that there was some time between the two events; therefore, they must have enjoyed perfect sex for a while.) there must not have been an occasion where Eve refused Adam because there was never a time when he was not thinking first of her. What reason would she have to refuse? But after they sinned, when Adam stopped thinking first of Eve and when she began to rebel against his leadership, this is when sex became a struggle. And it remains a struggle today. I know that most husbands and wives will testify that they have had more fights and arguments about sex than about anything else. The most special means of grace to a husband and wife has become the greatest cause of strife. And this is exactly as Satan intends it. Satan hates any kind of pleasure but will still use it for his ends. His plan is that people should have as much sex outside of the marriage relationship and as little within the marriage relationship as is possible. His plan is to mask, to hide, the true purpose of sex behind the pleasure it brings simply as a physical act. It is a clever plan and one that has been proven effective time and time again.

Do you see how pornography distorts all of this? Pornography makes a mockery of the purposes of sex, sexual desire and unequal sexual desire. Where God says the purpose of sex is to build unity between a husband and a wife, pornography says it is about fulfilling any perceived need with any partner, willing or unwilling. Where sexual desire is good, given to cause a husband to pursue his wife (and a wife her husband) pornography says it cannot and should not be controlled. All of the messages of pornography go directly against God’s purposes.

We may not understand exactly what sex does within a marriage, but we can trust that God has his reasons for inventing it and commanding it. Sex is a call for a husband to pursue his wife and to lead her, as a servant, into a deeper understanding and appreciation of this gift. It is a call for a wife to serve her husband, trusting him and trusting that God’s gifts, when used as he intends them, always bring good.

OK, so to this point in the series I’ve challenged young men to see that their whole perception of sex may be tainted by their use of pornography and now I’ve attempted to give just a glimpse of God’s purpose for sex. Tomorrow I will talk about “normal” sex. In the meantime, do feel free to continue contacting me if you have questions or concerns you’d like me to address. You are free to contact me anonymously.

Source:
Sexual Detox III: A Theology of Sex

Sexual Detox IV: Detoxification: Tim Challies

2009-11-02T16:05:00.002-05:00

Sexual Detox IV: Detoxification

This is now the fourth entry in a series of articles about sex and, in particular, about sexual detoxification—about replacing lies with truth. First I wrote about Pornifying the Marriage Bed, then about Breaking Free and finally about A Theology of Sex. Today the series continues with Detoxification.

Sexual Detox

The purpose of this series of articles is to lead young men through a kind of sexual detox. The messages about sex taught in society and especially in pornography have left a whole generation of men with false views of the meaning, purpose and act of sex. In the last article we attempted to piece together a bit of a theology of sex, showing why God gave us sex, why he gave us sexual desire and why he gave sexual desire in unequal measure to men and women. Now that we have seen what sex is, let’s see what sex is not and then begin to show you can love your spouse through the act of sex. Now that we understand the meaning and purpose of sex, we are left asking, how does a husband express his love for his wife in the bedroom? This is where we will get to what I know you probably really want or need to know—what should I do and what should I not do in bed?

First, though, let’s pause briefly to look at the negative side of sex to see what sex is not.

Sex Is Not…
Sex is not ultimate. You might not know this from society and certainly not from pornography, but sex is not the ultimate thing. Sex is a good and great gift of God, but it is not an ultimate thing. Within marriage and without there is a tendency to make sex into more than it is, to allow it to be a kind of idol. Our idols are always good things to which we give too much importance. Sex is just that kind of good thing that can be made into too big a thing. A good gift of God can begin to supersede the God who gave it. Few things in life lend themselves to idolatry with greater frequency, with greater power, than sex.

Sex is not to be trifled with. Sex is too powerful to be trifled with. It is near-impossible for a person to trifle with sex and not get drawn into it in a more complete way. It is just too powerful, too captivating. A boyfriend and girlfriend who begin to have sex will very rarely be able to stop, even if they really do want to. A boy who begins masturbating will rarely be able to just quit. As you probably know, a person who begins looking at pornography will soon want to find more and more of it. Of course this is part of the design of sex—God means for it to be alluring and desirable and almost irresistible. But outside of its proper context it is captivating, leading to imprisonment to sin. So sex must not be trifled with. It must be avoided entirely outside of its proper context and then fully embraced within marriage. There is no room for anything more or anything less.

Sex is not primarily about you. Wives may well testify that they have a better understanding of this concept than do their husbands. Yet even then, sex is not ultimately about your spouse. Sex is about God. While a husband may be motivated by desire to pursue his wife and have sex with her, he should be motivated ultimately by an obedience to God’s command that a husband and wife enjoy sex frequently. While a wife may be motivated by a desire to please her husband or to avoid a fight, her primary or ultimate motivation should be obedience to God. Even if you have no desire to have sex, have sex for your spouse’s sake. Even if neither you nor your spouse have a desire to have sex, have sex for God’s sake out of obedience to him.

The Problem With Focusing on Acts
I’ve been saying that pornography has given you wrong ideas about sex and you’re wondering exactly what that means. So here is the big question: what is normal sex? How do normal people normally express normal sexuality? That is the kind of question you might be tempted to ask, but it is probably the wrong question. Normal is a moving target, one that may move from couple to couple, culture to culture, time to time. The better question is this: what is God’s design for sex? This is the broad question that will lead us to an answer that may even include particular acts and exclude others. Yet I would not wish to get too hung up on particular sex acts as it might serve to distract more than it would help. And I hope that this question can take us back through the past three articles, constructing that theology of sexuality. If you have not yet read those articles, this would be a good time to pause and to do so.

The principle we as humans always want to ask is “how far can we go?” But the better, more biblical question when it comes to sex is “what pleases her?” Of course even this good question must be asked with an awareness that there are things that God expressly forbids and others that he expressly commands. There are firm boundaries. Sex is to be only and ever between a husband and wife. To introduce anyone else into the relationship, whether physically or only graphically as in through shared pornography, is a perversion of the one-to-one nature of sexuality. Sex is to be done in love, not in anger (which means that a man can rape his own wife if he violently forces himself upon her. What a violation of sex this is!) Sex, as with everything else in life, is to be done with self-control, not with a reckless lack of self-control.

Within these God-given boundaries, given for our good, there is tremendous freedom. It is a freedom to explore, to discover, to play, to say “yes” or “no” or “never again.” But it is a freedom that may need to be sanctified, to be made holy, especially for those who have had their understanding of sex shaped by pornography. The things that supposedly arouse porn stars are very likely not the things that will arouse your wife or that will make her feel loved and treasured instead of demeaned in your lovemaking. Why? Because the things you have seen in pornography are things that are created to incite lust in those who are already hardened against what is good and pure. They are acts designed to arouse the hardened heart, not the tender heart (I italicize that because I want you to get it, to think about it.). Do you understand what I am saying here? Most of the stuff you see on the screen when watching pornography is not stuff you should ever try to do or to inflict upon your wife. Magazines and advice web sites (both Christian and non-) are full of questions about what constitutes normal sexual behavior. When I see the questions people are asking, it is not difficult to know which people have been looking at pornography. The questions they ask are essentially “Is it okay if my wife and I play out this pornographic act?”

Sex is tender. Do you see tenderness in pornography or do you see violence? Sex is sweet. Do you see sweetness in the pornography you watch or is it degrading? Sex is selfless and giving. But isn’t pornography all about the getting and about the conquest? Is it not about having my needs met now? Sex has boundaries. But doesn’t pornography suppose that anything I feel or anything I desire is acceptable simply because I desire it? Pornography scoffs at boundaries.

But Can’t I…?
If I were to give you a list of do’s and don’ts, this would be the place to do so. I could draw up a long checklist with checks in some boxes and x’s in others. “Yes you can do that, yes you can do that, no you can’t do that.” In some ways I think it would be helpful but, at the same time, it would undoubtedly reflect my conscience, my strengths, my weaknesses. It would unavoidably be legalistic in some ways and licentious in others. What one couple finds blissfully enjoyable may be repulsive for another. One person’s freedom is another person’s captivity. That is one of the strange realities of the way God has made us—he has made us different and has even given us different consciences. So there is great freedom within marriage to explore, to try new things and to enjoy things that are mutually pleasurable.

Instead of that long but ultimately disappointing and useless checklist, let me offer the following guidelines and leave you to fill it in as you see fit. Here are some useful questions to ask.

What is your heart in this? Any act we take, whether in the bedroom or anywhere else, is motivated by the heart. So there is more value in asking, “what is in my heart that I want to do this?” than “is this particular act wrong?” Jesus taught his disciples that it is what comes from within, not external things, that defile a man (Mark 7). All evil things, whether adultery or covetousness or sexual immorality, come from within. So you need to have a tender heart and be willing to look into your heart to seek out your motives. Do only those things that are motivated by a love for your spouse. Avoid things that are motivated by any kind of sin.

Is this the act of a conquerer or of a servant? You know full well that many of the acts within pornography are acts of conquest, not acts of love and service. You know that in pornography the pleasure of the man is generally far greater and far more genuine than that of the woman. Do not subject your wife to acts that would make her feel like the mere means to an end, that would make her feel like she has been conquered instead of loved and nurtured, like she has been defiled instead of treasured.

Does this bring pleasure to one or to both? One of the purposes of sex is to bring mutual pleasure. At its best, sex allows both spouses to give and receive at the same time and through the same acts. It is unique in that way, and uniquely powerful and fulfilling. There may be times when there is some inequity in the giving and receiving of pleasure, but always each spouse should be seeking greater pleasure for the other, not for him or herself. Do not always pleasure yourself at the expense of your spouse; never commit acts which are pleasurable to one and distasteful to the other.

Does this trouble your conscience or your spouse’s conscience? The conscience is a special gift of God and one that he commands us to heed (Titus 1:15). Where God gives us all the same law through his Word, he gives each of us a conscience that is all our own. We are required to heed this conscience and not to violate it. Do not violate your conscience with regards to certain acts and do not cajole your spouse into violating her’s.

Can you thank God for this? It is difficult to thank God for things that we have done in violation of law or conscience. When considering particular acts, it is worth considering whether you would be able to thank God for them. Do nothing for which you could not thank God.

In many cases these guidelines may be disappointing as they convict you that certain porn-fueled fantasies may have to go unfulfilled. You will find that there are things you have seen on the screen that you’ve been wanting to try out, but that these things would violate some of those guidelines. Some of what is normal in pornography is forbidden by God and is a sin against him and a sin against your spouse. But if you trust God you will know that he will give grace not only to get over it—actually, to get over yourself—but also to find greater pleasure in greater, purer things. Scores of committed couples will tell you that they have found great and growing pleasure in years and decades of what according to pornography would be very boring sex. The years of sex with one another have proven far more interesting, far more alluring, far more satisfying than any pleasure they found in running wild. Do you trust God that this can be the case for you and for your bride?

I will attempt to wrap up this series tomorrow. As I’ve said at the end of each of these articles, you are free to contact me (even anonymously) if there is something you would like to add, a question you think I should address, and so on. Already many people have done so and their questions and concerns have helped shape these articles.

Source:
Sexual Detox IV: Detoxification

Comments (16) »

1. Tom Gee
October 29, 2009
11:44 AM

What an excellent series, Tim! Well done!

You really need to put this together as a booklet once your series is complete!

2. Dave Dunbar
October 29, 2009
2:18 PM

Well put and most helpful.

One additional question that could be asked is Is this a normal and God-designed use of the various parts of the body? Our different members have different purposes. Some of them may have more than one purpose. For instance, the lips may be used to speak loving things, and may also be used to kiss. Even as different Christians have differing tasks in the church (1 Cor. 12), the differing parts of our physical structure have differing purposes. And while various couples may have differing levels of freedom within that principle, it is right to ask this question when deciding what is and isn’t a normal or right activity.

I agree with the previous comment — Tim, you need to publish this as a booklet when you’re done!

3. Sam
October 29, 2009
2:32 PM

Brother Tim thank you so much for this series! I do hope that you continue to touch on this subject in the months and years to come. I was addicted to pornography and self-pleasuring for 6 years (I’m currently 17), while today I can stand and say I am free, my mind and heart have been corupted by what the sin did to me.

I have greatly benifited from this series and am praying that God will continue to use it to to mold and shape me into a man of God. I must ask that you give more advice, wisdom, and God’s word in weeks and months to come on this subject. Ecspecially to the one who is ‘free’ (yet prone to fall if not for God’s grace and power) and is seeking to remain pure for God (and perhaps a future wife).

I thank you again brother TIm! I will be in prayer for you!

Fight the good fight of faith!

Samuel

4. Tim Challies
October 29, 2009
2:57 PM

One additional question that could be asked is Is this a normal and God-designed use of the various parts of the body?

I considered that question as one that would be helpful. And I think it would be. However, for various reasons that I won’t discuss, I opted not to. Still, it may well be a good one to ask.

5. Anonimous
October 29, 2009
3:26 PM

Tim:
¿What about of a married man that is far from his home, for example, and masturbate, thinking or talking with her wife and with her consent, for avoid some real temptation?

6. Tim Challies
October 29, 2009
3:30 PM

¿What about of a married man that is far from his home, for example, and masturbate, thinking or talking with her wife and with her consent, for avoid some real temptation?

As I said in the article, I think there is more to lose than to gain in discussing particular acts. But let me say how I’d think this one through. I’m honestly not sure what to say for that one. In my mind it would be somewhere between “no” and “if your conscience allows you.” I could see arguments in both directions. I guess I would probably say that if a husband and wife agree to it in clear conscience it doesn’t directly violate any biblical commands. But I do think it might be getting into dangerous territory in terms of separating the physical act of sex from the presence and body of the spouse. I’d be open to correction here and would want to think about it a lot if I was faced with the situation.

7. Matthew Robbins
October 29, 2009
4:05 PM

Tim,

This is such an important series, and I wanted to thank you for undertaking it. These are not comfortable things to talk about and think through sometimes, but they are eminently vital to consider. I’m hoping lots of young men are reading and really considering the implications of decisions they make when they are young. I’ve been married for 4 and a half years and am benefiting greatly from the reminders.

Thanks again.

8. Steve
October 29, 2009
5:33 PM

Tim:

Add mine to the long list of names that endorses the content of your series. Every time I come to your blog I find something of value. I have yet to win a Free Stuff Friday, but…

I’m reproducing your series on our men’s blog. Spreading the good word!

Oh, and happy anniversary. Six years of blogging daily is pretty impressive, even if it is an irrelevant detail.

SDG!

9. humanitas remedium
October 29, 2009
8:31 PM

tim,
thank you so much for these posts. they are well thought out and amazingly helpful.

10. Tim Irvin
October 29, 2009
9:02 PM

“We are required to heed this conscience and not to violate it.”

Please provide Scriptural support for this statement.

The conscience is as depraved as the will and the emotions. It can’t be trusted. To act on your conscience with no regard for the Word of God is a wicked act. Unfortunately, this is an area where we are prone to bend to the opinions of others. We should be considerate of those with a weaker conscience (one that hasn’t been exercised in the Word) but we should learn to be ruled by Scripture Alone.

11. Virginia
October 29, 2009
10:00 PM

“That is one of the strange realities of the way God has made us—he has made us different and has even given us different consciences. So there is great freedom within marriage to explore, to try new things and to enjoy things that are mutually pleasurable.”

The Christian conscience is a remarkable gift given to guide and instruct the believer in all matters of faith. Accordingly, I believe it wise that your post did not include a list of do’s and don’ts. There are some Christians who have a “hypersensitive” conscience and a list of that nature might have proved to be a stumbling block for them. Again, thanks for the great series.

12. Anakin Niceguy
October 30, 2009
12:24 AM

Hey Tim,

Have you have heard of the Fallacy of Guilt by Association? No, men should not watch porn, but just because a porn star does something doesn’t make it sinful. Something, including sex acts, is wrong when it violates the Word of God, not because non-Christians thought of it first.

You’re treading a thin line of legalism here and opening up a Pandora’s box of puritanism. Many evangelicals are already skittish about sex. Knowing some of them, they’ll take your post to mean lights off, clothes on, and no foreplay—he does everything and she just lies there and thinks of England.

You said something about “conquerer.” Sir, you don’t speak for other Christian couples. Um, some women want to be conquered … and want to conquer. Not all loving sex is “tender” and “sweet” my friend. Not all couples want that. If things are done by mutual consent and with mutual respect and don’t violate the Scriptures, then guys like you to need butt out of the situation. Not everybody is like your wife and or the women you know, Tim.

You write …

But the better, more biblical question when it comes to sex is “what pleases her?”

Wrong! It’s what pleases BOTH of you! She has an obligation to be selfless, too. The giving has to go BOTH ways because that’s what the Bible demands.

13. Shulamit
October 30, 2009
12:43 AM

Tim, I’m Jewish and a radical feminist. (Not your typical demographic!) I’ve been reading your blog for over a year; though I disagree with almost all your theology, I find the issues you raise thought-provoking. I’ve been finding this series fascinating and I want to say THANK YOU! especially for this post. When you wrote, “You know full well that many of the acts within pornography are acts of conquest, not acts of love and service” I thought…”Tim really gets it!” Ands while it may not have been your intent, you’ve perfectly captured one of the main issues radical feminists have been pornography. (Next up…analyzing the male gaze! well, maybe not… ;-) )

14. Matt
October 30, 2009
12:30 PM

@Tim

Your series has been absolutely amazing, devastating, convicting, and encouraging, and has really woken me up out of a deceptive haze of minimizing and toying with sin. Thank-you SO much for not pulling any punches and for being fearless and humble in confronting these issues!!!

Your last paragraph was SO encouraging and helpful, particularly the following:

“But if you trust God you will know that he will give grace not only to get over it—actually, to get over yourself—but also to find greater pleasure in greater, purer things.”

Amen!!!

Thanks Tim!!! May God bless you and give you more of His wisdom!!!

@Shulamit

Wow! I really loved your post! :) As someone who spends lots of time on The Guardian’s “Comment is Free” section, I certainly sympathize with what you said about “not your typical demographic.” :)

Just to encourage you, whatever negative things you may have read, heard, or even experienced concerning Christians—and sadly and shamefully, it seems that an awful lot of it is true— the essence of the true Gospel of Christ and real Christianity can be largely encapsulated in the statement you quoted, “You know full well that many of the acts within pornography are acts of conquest, not acts of love and service.” Jesus’s entire life, death, and resurrection was all about love, service, humility, meekness, tenderness, sacrifice, and putting His Father and others above Himself. Jesus not only taught against the venomous wickedness and selfishness of the conquest mentality that underlies things like pornography, He loved, accepted, and pursued those who had been victimized by this evil.

Oh, that Christians—myself included—would be more like Him in our relationships and in all things! We might end up putting feminists, radical or otherwise, out of a job! ;) :)

15. Noah
October 30, 2009
6:01 PM

Anakin,
If you follow the series throughout the week, you will read that Tim has stated clearly he is not writing the articles as a how-to for marriage or to be a list of what is right or what is wrong. He has also stated to the effect that he speaking generally on a topic where there are many questions to be asked on specifics. His wording for the questions were as guidelines and the reader should “fill in as (he) sees fit.” According to your comment, it sounds like you are sticking up for the specific while Tim is speaking for the general audience. The guidelines he provides as a possible help to specific questions answer your objection: if you and your wife are comfortable with a specific in an appropriate setting (i.e. not in public view), then do so.

“But the better, more biblical question when it comes to sex is “what pleases her?” Wrong! It’s what pleases BOTH of you! She has an obligation to be selfless, too. The giving has to go BOTH ways because that’s what the Bible demands.”

I think you’re alluding to the marriage passage in 1 Corinthians to not withhold sex from eachother. In the context of the post, I think Tim is alluding to Ephesians 5:22-33, although you are correct that the wife should be selfless/submitting to the husband, your understanding of a marriage relationship is lacking. Since the husband is like Christ in the marriage and the wife is like the church, the husband loves the wife as Christ loves the church meaning he dies to himself for her sake. This is what it means to be a husband, dying daily to ourselves for her sake because that is the model Christ has provided for us. Loving her is more important that demanding that she live up to her end of the bargain. Consequently, if your wife is a godly wife she will die to herself in doing anything that you ask of her, but if you are a godly husband you will not ask anything of her that you know she wishes not to give because your job is to love her at that moment and die to what you want, knowing that you love what pleases her more than you love what pleases you. Tim said it best: “Sex is not primarily about you.”

16. mouseinthehouse
October 30, 2009
10:08 PM

Intimacy in marriage just gets better as time goes by, in all aspects not just physically, if a couple work at loving and respecting each other as they grow spiritually in Christ as well as holiness. I respect my husband very much, and more as time goes on.

Personal purity and holiness makes marriage richer and please excuse me if I say this, fun. I don’t know why, but over the last five years of our 20 something years together, we are having a good time enjoying each other’s companionship as well as sex. I believe it is because of us both finally “getting it” as to what marriage between believers looks like. We are pretty slow learners, I guess.

We know each other pretty well but that does not mean that we stop being creative and curious lovers, exploring sex as our bodies change with age. Sex in our fiftties is different from sex while we were in our late twenties. You guys will slow down eventually. The viagra ads will begin to make sense at one point or another. And then the kids leave home, and your wives will go through menopause, which brings on a whole new world of possibilities to explore.

Sexual Detox V: Freedom: Tim Challies

2009-11-02T15:46:00.002-05:00

Sexual Detox V: Freedom

This is the final entry in a series of articles about sex and, in particular, about sexual detoxification. First I wrote about Pornifying the Marriage Bed, then about Breaking Free and A Theology of Sex. The fourth article dealt with Detoxification. The series was written specifically to target young men—those who are newly married or nearly married or who will, like most of us, be married at some time. I chose this narrow focus because this was the kind of person who triggered the series in my mind and because I felt a narrow focus would be more valuable in the end. That means that, though there were some principles in the series that might benefit any reader, there was a lot that I could not say. For example, I had little to say to singles or to the wives whose husbands may be sinning against them.

One immediate effect of the series is that I can see that a lot of Christian men are just awful leaders in their homes. Their wives truly want husbands who will lead them and yet the men have either abdicated leadership or have abused it by leading their wives into sin. Many of the problems exposed through the Sexual Detox series go back to nonexistent or poor or just plain horrible leadership. Therefore I hope to address leadership in a series targeted to husbands (and future husbands) which will address the necessity of being strong, godly leaders.

I will also try to speak to singles in at least one article. Or perhaps I’ll find someone who would be able to do that. In either case, I received a lot of questions about sex and the single.

Finally, as emails came in, I asked Aileen to help me reply to many of the ones that came from women (both for sake of propriety and to benefit from her wisdom). She and I are preparing an article or two that will focus on women, responding to many of the questions and concerns that arose.

For now, I want to offer a final word—a final challenge and encouragement—to the young men who were the target of this series.

Sexual Detox 5: Freedom

My Path
I know your struggles because not too many years ago they were my struggles. It was not long ago that I was a young man, fighting (and sometimes not fighting) against lust and pornography and all the rest. There was a time when it wooed me and drew me and sought to captivate me. And yet today I can say that pornography does not interest me in the least. God delivered me from the desire to indulge. I can understand your struggles and also assure you that it is possible to find freedom.

There were a handful of Scripture passages that were foundational to my understanding of sex when I was young and considering marriage and when I was young and newly married. They were instrumental in my determination not to succumb to the allure of pornography.

The first of these is one of my favorite passages in the whole Bible. Proverbs 5:18-19 says, “Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.” I love the sweetness of this passage. It calls a man to always find joy and satisfaction and intimacy in the wife God has given him. It calls him to recall the delight he had in the days when he and his bride were newly married and to live out of that delight. He has no right to go elsewhere, no right to “drink from another cistern,” to use Solomon’s terminology. And why would he ever want to? The verse both celebrates the gift of sex and the exclusivity of it.

If you are married, God has provided for you the wife of your youth. You are to be intoxicated in her love and not with the body or the heart of another woman or endless series of women. If you are not yet married, then God may well have that woman for you. Every time you look at pornography, every time you give in to lust, you are diminishing your ability to be intoxicated in her love, to find your joy and satisfaction in her.

Just a few verses later in that same passage come these sobering words. “For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his paths. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin. He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is led astray.” Men who refuse to be intoxicated in the love of their wives, men who find delight in the bodies (or images of the bodies) of other women, are committing acts of great folly. This is not foolishness that is akin to silliness, but folly that puts a man in mortal danger. It is a moral foolishness that leads to spiritual death. Their foolishness, their lack of discipline, their lack of concern for their sin, leads them to the paths of death. There are consequences to your sin. When you sin before marriage you bring into marriage all kinds of baggage—all kinds of sexual history that impacts you and your relationship to your wife.

You may be eighteen or twenty and thinking that the occasional look at pornography right now, images to fuel your masturbation, will have no consequences. You are wrong. Even now as you do those things you are sinning against God and against your wife or future wife. You are piling up sin that will make it more difficult for you to be an effective leader and an effective lover. You are thumbing your nose at God’s grace.

Another verse, and a bit of a strange one, I know, is Genesis 26:8. This is the story of Isaac and Abimelech. You remember that Isaac, like his father before him, traveled through a strange land and feared for his life. As a coward he denied his wife rather than risk his life. But then Abimelech looked out of a window and “saw Isaac laughing with Rebekah his wife.” That word laughing is obviously a difficult one to translate and versions of the Bible render it quite differently. When I was young I read a commentary that said, rightly, that it could be translated as sporting. Abimelech looked out of his window and saw Isaac and Rebekah doing something that made him realize that they were clearly not brother and sister; yet he also knew Isaac’s character well enough not to accuse him of anything immoral. Isaac and Rebekah were sporting, they were playing, flirting, undoubtedly just enjoying young love (though perhaps in an inappropriate setting). Somehow that captured a kind of freedom and innocence that I wanted to have with my wife. A freedom and openness that I knew we could not have if we were sinning sexually against one another.

The third verse was 1 Peter 3:7 which commands, “Husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.” Here I realized that my relationship with my wife had huge spiritual importance. If I am not showing honor to my wife, my own prayers (not hers!) will be hindered. As the leader of my home I need to keep growing spiritually and in order to do this I need to be faithful in prayer. I can only do this, I learned, if I treat my wife as she deserves to be treated. Were I to give in to lust and porn and all other kind of sexual sin, I would be devastating my family. I would not be the only one to suffer. How could I bring that kind of pain and devastation upon the people I love most?

The final passage was 1 Timothy 5:1,2 which reads “Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.” I saw here the connection between the women of pornography and God’s command that I treat all young women as sisters. How could I do that if I was leering at them on the screen? And how could I leer at anonymous young women on the screen and then assume that I’d be able to then turn off that lust and treat other young women in my life as sisters? Giving in to lust in one area would impact every area. God commanded me to see young women not as sexual objects but as sisters. I had to treat them in all purity, in my heart, in my mind, in my life.

These verses, though they may be a bit of an eclectic collection, challenged me deeply and reset my mind. I memorized them, pondered them, called them to mind and lived by them. And any desire to pursue lust melted away. I know it was a work of God because he worked through his Word, just as he says he will. In its place he gave me a great (and still-growing) love for her and increased joy and satisfaction in my relationship for her. I would not want it any other way.

Conclusion
My encouragement to you is to find a biblical basis for purity, a biblical basis for avoiding pornography. Some men can turn away from pornography by an act of the will. Some can do it by constructing walls of legalism and forcing themselves to live within those boundaries. But it is best, I’m convinced, to find freedom through the Word of God. We need to fight sin with God’s truth; we need to replace the lies we want to believe with what God says is true. Perhaps some of the verses that God used in my life will help you; perhaps he will help you find others. But in any case, go the Bible and find there both the foundation for purity and the wisdom that can help you moment-by-moment.

The saddest emails I have received in the past few days came from women who are older than you are and perhaps even old enough to be your mother. They told tales of utter devastation—of husbands who got into pornography when they were young and who never cared to give it up. And here they are, all these years later, still damaging themselves and their wives and families. The choices they made as young men threaten to tear apart their families today. The women, the one God calls these men to be intoxicated in for all of their lives, live with gaping holes in their hearts, longing for their husbands to step in and fill them up. Could this be your wife some day?

The fact is, God does not give young men free passes when it comes to sin; he does not allow you to run wild for a time and just “get away with it.” Sin carries with it consequences whether you sin at eighteen or eighty. Turn from your sin today. Pursue freedom. Pursue Christ.

This wraps up the Sexual Detox series. Tomorrow I am going to provide a list of recommended resources for reading, counseling and so on. I will also be putting all of these articles together in a booklet. Stay tuned and I’ll let you know when that is ready to go.

Source:
Sexual Detox V: Freedom Tim Challies

Comments (20) »

1. Reggie Osborne II
October 30, 2009
9:23 AM

Great series, Tim. Only a man who has been freed from sin and a servant of Christ could write a fifth entry so personal after describing the damage of the sin so aptly in the first four entries.

I enjoyed the series this week. Thanks.

2. Steve
October 30, 2009
9:31 AM

I read your stuff occasionally- this post is unbelievable! I have lived with this sin since my teenage years and I have only recently been walking in victory- since 2003. Books that have helped include:

Addiction and Grace- Gerald May
Out of the Shadows- Patrick Carnes, Ph. D.
Every Man’s Battle- Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker
Sexaholics Anonlymous
Samson and the Pirate Monks- Nate Larkin

Hope this will help someone else.

3. Mike
October 30, 2009
9:32 AM

Tim when I first started following your series I thought - here’s another puritan gonna monitor the marriage bed and tell us how we should have sex, but I have found none of that! this would be a great e-book-tract-pamphlet one that I would send to many teenage boys I know including my son.
Thanks Mike

4. Atone
October 30, 2009
9:55 AM

“But it is best, I’m convinced, to find freedom through the Word of God.”

As long as that freedom completely rests on seeing Jesus as a better treasure than what lies in and on the other side of pornography. Otherwise, Scripture becomes just another vehicle for self-gratification and self-justification…i.e. The Pharisees.

Brad

5. Martin Burch
October 30, 2009
11:35 AM

Tim,
I am a pastor and biblical counselor. I have to say that your treatment of this was balanced, biblical, and personally challenging. I am consistently working with Christians who want to see God redeem them from the pornographic violence that damages their souls and their homes. I believe it is rare to find a young man who has not been affected by porn. I will be using this series in counseling and discipleship. May God continue to bless your life and this message for His glory!

6. Craig
October 30, 2009
12:43 PM

Tim,
Terrific series! I am 52 years old (about 45 years old in the Lord.)
When I read, “And yet today I can say that pornography does not interest me in the least. God delivered me from the desire to indulge.”, my first thought was that for me, God has to continually deliver me from this sinful desire. I thought back to your recent post also,
“Outgrowing the Need for Grace.
But as Solomon grew older, he began to depend less on God. I believe he began to depend on his own wisdom and to stray ever-further from God’s instruction. Where there was once humble dependence on God, there was now dependence on himself. In so doing, he strayed from words of knowledge, and strayed from God Himself.”
I have found sexual purity to be a lifelong battle for which I need to constantly be on guard that I do not think I have outgrown the need for grace. How many men of God do we know of and read about that after decades of ministry (and possibly even sexual purity) meet their downfall in the area of sexual immorality?
The message I most highly recommend to others in the area of the battle for sexual purity and sexual detoxification is David Powlison’s message at the 2004 Sex and the Supremacy of Christ Conference. It can be downloaded from www.desiringgod.com.
Keep on.

7. Tim Challies
October 30, 2009
1:00 PM

How many men of God do we know of and read about that after decades of ministry (and possibly even sexual purity) meet their downfall in the area of sexual immorality?

Amazing, isn’t it? While I can say that pornography and other temptations do not torment me now, I also have learned from seeing so many men fall that the temptation may always be just around the corner. Therefore I am constantly trying to avoid those “little sins” that eventually lead to the big ones. I certainly would not wish to portray some kind of bravado in this. I know how vulnerable I am to every kind of sin…

8. John
October 30, 2009
1:22 PM

Tim,

I would add one additional verse, Rom 8:13

For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body,
you will live.

This tells us the consequences of continuing in sin and the only way to successfully fight sin. That is, through the grace of God and his Spirit working in us. We must be reborn and we must turn to God for help.
By yourself you cannot defeat sin.

Great series. John

9. Mike
October 30, 2009
2:31 PM

“I certainly would not wish to portray some kind of bravado in this. I know how vulnerable I am to every kind of sin…”

I agree Tim! Like RC Sproul has said there is no sin he is not capable of committing and I have always been haunted by John Owens statement that when we feel furthest from sin we are closest to it, not an exact quote.
Mike

10. Richard
October 30, 2009
3:30 PM

Thim

Great job! The way you handled this subject matter was very wise, instructive, encouraging, and helpful. As a pastor, this is becoming more and more of an issue within the church. Is there a way you can take your material and put it in a booklet form on you web-page so we can print it. I would love to have it as a resource for young men even for my own sons.

Thanks for addressing the issue with care,
Richard

11. Reg Schofield
October 30, 2009
3:44 PM

Excellent series . Transparency is so vital as well in defeating this insidious deceiver of our souls. Sin is always so sweet to taste at first and how many men , including myself , can drink from these waters without tasting the toxin until its devastating effects take hold.
My sons will be reading this and I have tried my best to show them the evils of pornography . We have had open and honest conversations about sex ,women,a man’s role etc.. Plus as I have showed them form the scriptures , sex is a gift from God for a married couple to show affection,love and its to be a garden protected from the anything that would bring decay .
Well done Tim .

12. Virginia Gay
October 30, 2009
3:49 PM

Tim,

In thinking about the last several responses (#6-#9) I am mindful of how often I say the phrase “there but the grace of God go I.” Tim you said in an earlier article (Outgrowing the Need for Grace) “I will never outgrow my need for this sustaining grace.” Whether unmerited favor (grace) or grace that sustains, it is the ultimate and most glorious gift.

(At the risk of being redundant)
Sola gratia!

13. Polarbear
October 30, 2009
4:32 PM

Fantabulous series!!! I am humbled, convicted, and hopefully a better leader and husband for it. I would encourage you to expand this into a book as it could help so many men and women with their struggles.

14. R Bauman
October 30, 2009
5:41 PM

Tim, thank you. Would you consider publishing this in a booklet? I’ve already given it to my sons.

15. Josh Reich
October 30, 2009
5:56 PM

One of the saddest things about the american church is how much we accomadate boys to be boys. We need to be calling men to be men.

I recently preached on this topic and the response was overwhelming from both men and women. Singles and couples want to know what a man is supposed to be like and what a woman is supposed to be like.

Here is what I mean: http://missionalthoughts.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/why-male-headship-does-not-work/.

16. Nathan
October 30, 2009
6:16 PM

My advice to unmarried people: if you sin by catching a glimpse of one of those videos / magazines to starring in one, it’s NOT the end of future relationships. Don’t get me wrong — sin does damage, but I think people tend to exaggerate. Christmas won’t be ruined because of a few broken ornaments.

I know people here will say that I’m trivializing a serious matter. Realize, though, that people who fall in this trap (of using this garbage) tend to feel crushed — not by the real results of the sin — but by what they assume will be the results: a future family torn apart, a wife with gaping holes in her heart and life-long regret of ruining something perfect. These aren’t necessary results — there IS healing. People CAN put these things behind. A relationship CAN still be very beautiful and fulfilling — unless you fall into another trap of wallowing around in regret and unfaithfulness (to God) assuming you are unforgiven / unforgivable. This trap is way worse than the first!

17. Tim Challies
October 30, 2009
6:16 PM

FYI, I’m working on the booklet. I’ll try to find a way of releasing it free for download and at cost (or close to it) in some kind of a printed format.

18. D.L. Kane
October 30, 2009
6:28 PM

Thomas Watson said, “When you are to resist a temptation, or to mortify a corruption—do not go out in your own strength, but in the strength of Christ. Some go out to duty in the strength of their abilities; and go out against sin in the strength of their resolutions—and they both come home foiled. Alas! What are our resolutions, but like the green cords which bound Samson! A sinful heart will soon break these!

Do as David when he was to go up against Goliath. He said, “I come to you in the name of the Lord!” So say to your Goliath lust, “I come to you in the name of Christ!” Then we conquer, when the Lion of the tribe of Judah marches before us!”

Is not God omnipresent? If pornography is a “battle”, then take the words of Thomas Watson to heart and every time you feel tempted to click that mouse, say, “Hello pornography—I come to you in the name of Christ.” I think the truth is, that it is NOT A BATTLE but an Idol that you prefer over Christ. We bring Christ into our battles. We don’t invite Christ to join you as we worship at the throne of an idol.

Do we not live in the reality of God’s omnipresence and omniscience? Next time you desire to get your dose of pornography, simply acknowledge that what you are really saying is, “Pull up a seat Lord and let’s enjoy ourselves together, shall we?”

He is there with you and watching you, whether you invite Him or not—whether you acknowledge His presence or not. If you can acknowledge those two things and still click the mouse, you should be more concerned about your soul than about your “struggle” with pornography.

19. Grace
October 31, 2009
9:35 AM

Tim,

You did an amazing job with this series…I really enjoyed reading it…especially this last one. I appreciate your honesty. I cannot wait to hear Aileen’s perspective:)

20. Julia
October 31, 2009
8:30 PM

Tim,
Thanks so much for your honesty and maturity in dealing with this subject. My husband and son are doing Douglas Bond’s Stand Fast series and are nearing the section that talks about these issues. Thank you for more than adequately adding to the material my husband can present. You are a blessing!
Julia

Sexual Detox VI: Recommended Resources: Tim Challies

2009-11-02T15:31:00.003-05:00

Sexual Detox: Recommended Resources

Having wrapped up the Sexual Detox series, I thought it would be useful to provide a list of recommended resources for those who wish to do reading on a particular topic.

Pretty much every author who has written more than, say, ten books has written one on the Lord’s Prayer and one on either sex or marriage (or perhaps both). It seems to be some kind of rite of passage. I assume I’ll get a memo about it after I’ve written a few more books. So if you have a favorite author, you may want to check if he or she has written on the topic. Meanwhile, here are some other suggestions. I am relying mostly on books I have read, so the list is somewhat smaller than it would otherwise be.

First off, let me give special mention to the series of mini books published by New Growth Press on behalf of CCEF. Many of their titles are very relevant to this series. For example:
It’s All About Me: The Problem with Masturbation,
Sex Before Marriage: How Far is Too Far?,
Single and Lonely: Finding the Intimacy You Desire,
Help! My Spouse Committed Adultery: First Steps for Dealing with Betrayal, or Renewing Marital Intimacy: Closing the Gap Between You and Your Spouse.

You can learn more about the series from New Growth Press. They are all available through Amazon.

Sex Undefiled - Harry Schaumburg writes about finding redemption from sexual sin and seeks to help couples find restoration for breaking or broken relationships.

False Intimacy - Also by Harry Schaumburg, this book looks to the struggle of sexual addiction, including homosexuality, cybersex and so on.

Sex and the Supremacy of Christ - This book, edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor, is the product of a Desiring God conference so is a compendium of conference talks and other useful essays or articles. It is a bit of a grab bag but there is lots of good stuff.

Intended for Pleasure - This is a nuts and bolts kind of book that is often given to newlyweds to help them get “oriented” in the bedroom. Most couples who aren’t given one before they get married end up trying to track one down during their honeymoon.

Sexual Redemption Bundle - Monergism Books has bundled a whole lot of resources into one “sexual redemption bundle” based around Harry Schaumburg’s Undefiled.

Marriage

This Momentary Marriage - John Piper puts a lot of effort into writing about the link between the union of husband and wife and the union of Christ to his church.

When Sinners Say ‘I Do’ - Dave Harvey’s book is a really good one for the newly married as it deals honestly with the inevitability of sin.

The Intimate Marriage - R.C. Sproul focuses on communication as key to a great marriage. His chapter on Communication and Sex deals with unusual topics like frigidity, impotence and what is permissible within marriage.

Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis has only a couple of chapters dealing with sex and marriage but they are top-notch. You’ve probably got the book somewhere, so pull it out and read those chapters.

A Biblical Guide to Love, Sex and Marriage - Derek and Rosemary Thomas wrote this book on sex and marriage based on Song of Solomon.

Love that Lasts - Gary and Betsy Ricucci cover a wide range of marriage-related topics in this book, one of the better ones I’ve read on marriage.

Men, Sex Is Not the Problem, Lust Is - This book, by Josh Harris, is great reading for any man, married or single. I’ve read it on my own and read it as part of a men’s group. In both cases it was well worth it.

Sex, Romance and the Glory of God - C.J. Mahaney does a good job of challenging men to be godly husbands. The enduring wisdom here is never to touch your wife’s body until you’ve touched her heart and her mind.

Women Feminine Appeal - Carolyn Mahaney writes a book for women in which she challenges them on a host of issues related to love, sex and marriage.

Becoming the Woman of His Dreams - I haven’t done more than skimmed this one, but this one by Sharon Jaynes comes highly recommended by Aileen. I found Jaynes particularly strong in her description of how men perceive sex and its importance to them.

Web Sites

CCEF - Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation offers counseling and excellent resources on any number of issues (including the New Growth Press titles mentioned earlier).

Boundless - Targeted at Christian singles and young adults, Boundless features all kinds of great resources in their blog and webzine.

Stone Gate Resources - At Stone Gate Resources offers Brief Intensive Counseling for couples who are in need of intensive and immediate help. If your marriage is on the rocks due to sex-related issues, this is a good place to seek help.

Source:
Sexual Detox: Recommended Resources Tim Challies

Comments (10) »

1. Devin
October 31, 2009
10:20 AM

So glad “Every Man’s Battle” is not on the list. That book was entirely unhelpful for me.

2. Nick Hill
October 31, 2009
10:34 AM

Tim,

Did you read Pure Sex by Philiip Jensen and Tony Payne (Matthias Media)? Was it helpful? I thought that I would see it on the list.

Nick

3. Anonymous
October 31, 2009
10:39 AM

Tim, I know it’s been said before - but thank you for writing this series. It is providentially timely. I saw and investigated an original ad for Undefiled on your blog site. I have been very impressed with Stone Gate Resources. These articles of yours and finding out about Stone Gate have felt like they are intended as God’s provision for my ex-fiance and me as we struggle to rebuild a relationship that has been deeply impacted by the fall-out of these patterns of sin; established in a pre-redeemed life - and still bearing “fruit.”

I have passed the articles on to my ex-fiance and talked much about the hope for restoration/obedience from an intensive Bible-centered program like Stone Gates. There has been resistance to recognizing the depth of the problem, and continuing denial of the extent of the taint and damage, and the need for more than just “God and me” to break the bondage and bring real change. I have struggled with feeling hopeless and helpless to do anything more to break the legacy of pain and death. I have presented. “All” I can do now is pray that the Holy Spirit will work mightily - recognizing that He desires obedience in this area more than I ever can - and promises to “will and to do for His good pleasure.”

4. Brother Eugene
October 31, 2009
11:33 AM

Great list of resources!

One more just came to mind that I wanted to share:

In “The Four Loves” by C.S. Lewis, the chapter about the love of “eros” is also a helpful one regarding sex and marriage.

5. Bob
October 31, 2009
1:09 PM

Another great book on marriage is “Sacred Marriage” by Gary Thomas. The message that marriage is not so much about our happiness as it is about our holiness is one that our culture needs to hear.

6. Ricky
October 31, 2009
6:08 PM

This was a great, thought-provoking, and helpful series. I really needed this, so thanks!

I just wanted to add that a few of the Piper books you recommend (including the ones listed in the Sexual Redemption Bundle) are available for free PDF download from his website, www.desiringgod.org, on the http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/OnlineBooks/ByTitle/ page. You’ll find “Sex and the Supremacy of Christ”, “Finally Alive”, “This Momentary Marriage”, “What Jesus Demands from the World”, and “What’s the Difference?” available.

Of course, nothing beats actual paper. :P

7. Jerry Sinclair, Marriage Missionary for Faithful & True of Jacksonville, FL USA
October 31, 2009
9:47 PM

Tim,
I came across your website & I am very impressed with your credentials & desire to speak the truth. Allow me to do the same in love after I quote you:

“…And yet today I can say that pornography does not interest me in the least. God delivered me from the desire to indulge. I can understand your struggles and also assure you that it is possible to find freedom.”

Tim, I am aware of the struggle of lust & I relate to the writings of the Apostle Paul in Romans 7:15ff. My 15 years of recovery was not an easy journey. I cringe slightly from the subject of “being delivered”. I relate the verbage to certain religious groups that want to “name it, claim it” or “Proclaim victory now in the name of Jesus Christ”. The men I work with ‘know’ for sure that they are never imune from temptation. They live one day at a time.

The few that have departed our program because they no longer had a problem were not able to explain why their wife was still filing for divorce… OR not shared their sinful behavior with parents, siblings or age appropiate children.

Our Christ-centered support groups challenge men to live a life of purity while examining other sinful defects of character. Thus, this can be a lifelong journey towards purity. We follow Scripture along the way & use a workbook written by dr. Mark Laaser. He & his wife have written several books about sexual addiction, recovery, spouse recovery, spritual abuse, etc. I encourage you & others to visit his website www.faithfulandtrueministries.com

8. Anonymous
November 1, 2009
12:11 AM

As a student in the MS in counseling program at PBU, I have had to read a lot of books on marriage and sex, a few good ones:
-Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas, brings the focus back to God after disillusionment with marriage… it is a very good book, particularily if the couple is having problems in their marriage.
- Hold Me Tight, seven conversations for a lifetime of love: not a christian book, but a really good book that teaches couples how to have good conversations
- I Surrender All: Rebuilding a Marriage Broken by Pornography by Clay Crosse- this is a book written by a famous christian musician about the struggle of pornography in his own marriage.

9. Philip
November 1, 2009
1:10 AM

My wife and I separated in the spring of 2008, with divorce likely. I attended Stone Gate BIC (Brief Intensive Counseling),and God used Dr. Schaumburg and Stone Gate mightily in my life as God worked to change me from the heart out. After over a year of separation, we are together again, and I think it is safe to say that no one who knew our situation would have believed it possible for true reconciliation to happen. I would highly, highly recommend it for any couple devastated by the consequences of sexual sin to consider Stone Gate BIC, as well as his book “Undefiled” and the corresponding workbook .

10. Brian
November 1, 2009
5:13 AM

Tim:

Great series; thank you.

May I recommend a biblical counseling website that is perfect for anyone struggling with sexual sin? http://www.settingcaptivesfree.com is an outstanding resource based on nouthetic counseling and biblical solutions, not worldy psychology. I have mentored with them and they are solid.

Conclusive Scientific Evidence That Homosexuality is Treatable

2009-06-26T11:37:00.001-04:00

Dear Chris,

I am pleased to announce that the U.S.-based National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) has just released its long-awaited comprehensive review of over 125 years of scientific research on homosexuality. This groundbreaking report, “What Research Shows,” dispels the myths that are commonly used to promote the legalization of same-sex marriage and the mainstreaming of homosexuality throughout society and in the public schools by force of law.

NARTH is a professional association of scientists and mental health professionals whose stated mission is to conduct and disseminate scientific research on homosexuality, promote effective treatment, and to protect the right of individuals with unwanted same-sex attraction to receive effective care. While one might think that such a mission would be viewed as both commendable and relatively non-controversial, the reality is just the opposite.

Homosexual activists try to suppress research on same-sex attraction because one of the pillars of homosexual advocacy is the falsehood that homosexuals are “born that way” and cannot change their orientation. Since the NARTH report proves that homosexuality can be changed through therapy in the same way conditions like alcoholism and other addictions can be changed, the whole case for mainstreaming homosexuality into society crumbles. Another myth the NARTH report disproves is that therapy to help people with unwanted same-sex attraction is ineffective and even harmful.

The extensive research and clinical experience reviewed by NARTH makes it clear even to a layman that these claims are false.

Homosexual activists spread these misconceptions about homosexuality and even persecute their own who seek treatment because they know that public opinion polls show that people who believe homosexuals are born that way are more likely to support the homosexual agenda. NARTH is one of the very few credible, professional organizations anywhere in the world that is successfully challenging this propaganda.

Specifically, the NARTH report substantiates the following conclusions:

1. There is substantial evidence that sexual orientation may be changed through reorientation therapy.

“Treatment success for clients seeking to change unwanted homosexuality and develop their heterosexual potential has been documented in the professional and research literature since the late 19th century. ...125 years of clinical and scientific reports which document those professionally-assisted and other attempts at volitional change from homosexuality toward heterosexuality has been successful for many and that such change continues to be possible for those who are motivated to try.”

2. Efforts to change sexual orientation have not been shown to be consistently harmful or to regularly lead to greater self-hatred, depression, and other self-destructive behaviors.

“We acknowledge that change in sexual orientation may be difficult to attain. As with other difficult challenges and behavioral patterns—such as low-self-esteem, abuse of alcohol, social phobias, eating disorders, or borderline personality disorder, as well as sexual compulsions and addictions—change through therapy does not come easily.”

“We conclude that the documented benefits of reorientation therapy—and the lack of its documented general harmfulness—support its continued availability to clients who exercise their right of therapeutic autonomy and self-determination through ethically informed consent.”

The NARTH report warns that “The limited body of clinical reports that claim that harm is possible—if not probable— if a person simply attempts to change typically were written by gay activist professionals.”

3. There is significantly greater medical, psychological, and relational pathology in the homosexual population than the general population.

“Researchers have shown that medical, psychological and relationship pathology within the homosexual community is more prevalent than within the general population. …In some cases, homosexual men are at greater risk than homosexual women and heterosexual men, while in other cases homosexual women are more at risk than homosexual men and heterosexual women. …Overall, many of these problematic behaviors and psychological dysfunctions are experienced among homosexuals at about three times the prevalence found in the general population—and sometimes much more. …We believe that no other group of comparable size in society experiences such intense and widespread pathology.”

You can read NARTH’s executive summary of the report on our Web site here.

Good public policy cannot be based on lies, misconceptions and fallacies. That is why it is essential that we do all we can to spread the information in the NARTH report far and wide, but especially that we get it into the hands of legislators and policymakers around the world. Because of a political agenda, thousands of people around the world with unwanted same sex-attraction are being denied the help and the basic facts about their affliction.

In light of the clear health problems the report documents, homosexual activists are putting many lives at even greater risk by suppressing the truth about unwanted same-sex attraction. We hope you will join us in spreading this information far and wide.

Sincerely,

Sharon Slater
President

The ethical and moral quagmire we are speeding into

2009-06-25T10:32:00.005-04:00

Congressman Christopher H. Smith outlines the challenges facing America today. A very perceptive address worth reading.

Recommended!

click here

The Marrow of the Gospel

2009-06-19T10:03:00.001-04:00

Bill VanDoodewaard - Marrow Lecture from Puritan Reformed on Vimeo.

What does religious freedom of speech mean in Saudi Arabia, China and Canada?

2009-04-24T19:49:00.006-04:00

What could Mark Steyn's punishment look like? Look at Alberta
By Ezra Levant

What could Mark Steyn's punishment look like, if he's convicted by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal?

It could look like this order, issued by Alberta's human rights commission, against a Christian pastor named Rev. Stephen Boission. (The substantive ruling against Rev. Boissoin can be found here. See paragraph 357 where the right not to be offended "trumps the freedom of speech afforded in the Charter." And see a thoughtful response by the former executive director of the gay rights lobby, EGALE, here.)

The kangaroo court judge in this case is a Tory patronage appointee, a divorce lawyer from Lethbridge named Lori Andreachuk, That's her expertise: divorce law. Not constitutional law; not freedom of speech or freedom of religion. And it shows.

Last November, she convicted Boissoin. Last week she ordered her "remedy".

It is the most revolting order I have ever seen in Canada. Ever.

I'll excerpt a few lines from her ruling:

In this case, there is no specific individual who can be compensated as there is no direct victim who has come forward...

That's insane already. No-one was hurt. The complainant was an officious intermeddler, a busybody, the town scold, an anti-Christian activist named Darren Lund who had an axe to grind, and Andreachuk gave it to him.

Dr. Lund, although not a direct victim, did expend considerable time and energy and suffered ridicule and harassment as a result of his complaint. The Panel finds therefore that he is entitled to some compensation.

So a busybody with no standing spends time filing complaints -- and gets a tax-free reward for doing so. Oh -- and for his "suffering". Not suffering at the hands of Rev. Boission, but "as a result of his complaint". People in the community ridiculed Lund for filing the complaint -- as they should. And so Andreachuk will get the pastor to pay for that. Why the h**l not? Who's going to stop her? Her political patron, Ed Stelmach?

Mr. Boissoin and [his organization] The Concerned Christian Coalition Inc. shall cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.

There's a lot there, starting with a small but telling point. Darren Lund is a not a medical doctor. He's a professor. But Andreachuk refers to him as Dr. Lund. Stephen Boissoin is a pastor. But Andreachuk calls him "Mr. Boissoin". No "Rev. Boissoin" for her.

But look at the staggering order there. Boissoin can never -- ever -- communicate anything "disparaging" about gays. It's a lifetime ban -- and it applies to every conceivable medium, including his private e-mails.

But nothing "disparaging"? That means nothing critical.

She didn't order him not to communicate anything "illegal" or even anything "hateful". She ordered him to say nothing disparaging. Ever. For the rest of his life.

A divorce lawyer from Lethbridge with a second-rate patronage job just ordered a Canadian pastor to stop communicating to anyone, ever, about gays. Not to stop "hate speech" -- whatever that malleable legal definition is. She just told him to shut up, period.

And then she orders that Rev. Boissoin and his group are:

...prohibited from making disparaging remarks in the future about Dr. Lund or Dr. Lund's witnesses relating to their involvement in this complaint..

Again, not banned from "hate speech", whatever that is today; but banned from disparaging remarks about Lund, an anti-Christian activist, who now is "protected" not just from Rev. Boissoin's alleged anti-gay remarks, but from his political criticism of his own tormentor. Apparently, being a busy-body human rights complainant-of-fortune is a new "protected ground" of hate speech. Become one, and no-one can ever say anything "disparaging" about you again. Ever. Not even in an e-mail.

But Chief Kangaroo Andreachuk is just getting warmed up.

Mr. Boissoin and The Concerned Christian Coalition Inc. provide Dr. Lund with a written apology for the article in the Red Deer Advocate which was the subject of this complaint.

So Ed Stelmach's "conservative" government now believes that if it can't convince a Christian pastor that he's wrong, it will just order him to condemn himself? Other than tribunals in Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China, where is this Orwellian "order" considered to be justice?

This is like a Third World jail-house confession -- where accused criminals are forced to sign false statements of guilt. But the thing about jail-house confessions is that they at least pretend to be real. The forcible nature of them is kept secret. Not here: Andreachuk just comes out and says it: you're going to say you're sorry, even if you aren't.

That's a bizarre "remedy". It's meaningless, other than as a thought crime. We don't even "order" murderers to apologize to their victims' families. Because we know that a forced apology is meaningless. But not if your point is to degrade Christian pastors.

Oh, and by the way, Rev. Boissoin and his organization are ordered to:

request their written apology for the contravention of the Act be published in the Red Deer Advocate.

That's the local newspaper. So Rev. Boissoin doesn't just have to issue a false apology. He has to publicly humiliate himself, by publicly declaring his contrition -- contrition he does not feel -- and his abandonment of his deeply-held religious beliefs. A second-rate government bureaucrat has ordered a Canadian pastor to publicly renounce his religious beliefs.

Does that happen anywhere outside of Communist China, or theocratic Saudi Arabia?

OK. Now the cash. Rev. Boissoin and his group:

shall pay to Dr. Lund an award for damages, jointly and severally, in the amount of $5,000.00.

Andreachuk already said Lund suffered no damages. But so what. When you're forcing a man to publicly renounce his conscience, why not stick him with the bill? In Communist China, the family of prisoners who are executed are sent the bill for the bullet that killed them. So while Rev. Boissoin's money is being divvied up, why not make him pay for the hearing, too? A witness against Rev. Boissoin, Janelle Dodd, will get her expenses paid,

up to the maximum amount of $2,000.

So, let's re-cap.

A Christian pastor has been given a lifetime ban against uttering anything "disparaging" about gays. Not against anything "hateful", let alone something legally defined as "hate speech". Just anything negative.

So a pastor cannot give a sermon.

But he must give a false sermon; he is positively ordered to renounce his deeply held religious beliefs, and apologize to his tormentor for having those views.

And then that pastor is ordered to declare to his entire city that he has renounced his religious views, even though he has not.

That's Alberta's human rights commission. That's the group where 15 bureaucrats are busily beavering away against me, because I published some Danish cartoons two years ago.

That's the same "law" under which Maclean's and Mark Steyn are charged.

Fire. Them. All.

FROM EZRA LEVANT's blog.

UNDERSTANDING OUR CULTURE

2009-03-30T10:44:00.001-04:00

Our relativistic culture is pressing mightily on us. We need to understand the process in order to remain counter-cultural principled lights in consensual darkness.

LISTEN TO THE VIDEO (below): very revealing.

Why Are (Some) Reformed People Such Jerks? - by Dr. R. Scott Clark

2009-03-20T12:12:00.000-04:00

GLOBAL WARMING: a religion

2009-03-02T20:14:00.002-05:00

Lorne Gunter: Climate change double-think - Full Comment

Source: network.nationalpost.com

The global warming hoax.

Come on now Al Gore, when is global warming going to start? I can't wait.

For the past 10 years the average temperature has generally been lower than the previous year.

650 international scientists have signed a document outlining that there is no global warming. Mutations in temperature are caused by the sun, and are cyclical. All man's activities contribute a negligible percentage to global temperatures.

U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works :: Minority Page :.

Source: epw.senate.gov

U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

IN CASE YOU ARE A BELIEVER IN "GLOBAL WARMING", HERE IS THE DOCUMENT.

U. S. Senate Minority Report:

More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

Scientists Continue to Debunk “Consensus” in 2008
Update: January 28, 2009: James Hansen's Former NASA Supervisor Declares Himself a Skeptic - Says Climate Fears "Embarrassed NASA"

Update: December 22, 2008: 11 More Scientists Join Senate Report

WE NEED TO BE SKEPTICAL OF THE LEFTIST AGENDA.

AND WHAT DO THE SCIENTISTS ACTUALLY SAY? a few comments:

“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?" - Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.

“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” - Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.

“I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken...Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science.” - Award Winning Physicist Dr. Will Happer, Professor at the Department of Physics at Princeton University and Former Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy, who has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences.

“Nature's regulatory instrument is water vapor: more carbon dioxide leads to less moisture in the air, keeping the overall GHG content in accord with the necessary balance conditions.” – Prominent Hungarian Physicist and environmental researcher Dr. Miklós Zágoni reversed his view of man-made warming and is now a skeptic. Zágoni was once Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol.

“Earth has cooled since 1998 in defiance of the predictions by the UN-IPCC….The global temperature for 2007 was the coldest in a decade and the coldest of the millennium…which is why ‘global warming’ is now called ‘climate change.’” - Climatologist Dr. Richard Keen of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado.

“I have yet to see credible proof of carbon dioxide driving climate change, yet alone man-made CO2 driving it. The atmospheric hot-spot is missing and the ice core data refute this. When will we collectively awake from this deceptive delusion?” - Dr. G LeBlanc Smith, a retired Principal Research Scientist with Australia’s CSIRO. (The full quotes of the scientists are later in this report)

This 12 year old has something important to say:

2009-02-16T18:31:00.004-05:00

She did win the best speaker award in her (Toronto) school but was disqualified because of the politically incorrect subject. (Freedom of speech in Canada!)

The video of 12-year Lia's presentation on abortion is amazing. This young girl puts most of the rest of us to shame. She is so confident, so logical and unapologetic as she defends what all people should understand is the most reasonable position in the world. Of course abortion is wrong. Even a child can figure that out. How could anyone think otherwise - and yet, many do.

In Canada, full term babies may be aborted as long as the doctor, at the birth, can prevent the baby from taking its first breath. If the baby breathes, it is murder, before that it is abortion. President Obama has attempted to have this legalized in Illinois, and vowed to promote it if he was elected.

The video below shows, using a doll, how the "procedure" is done.

Peace with God through the blood of Jesus.

2009-02-13T17:19:00.005-05:00

William Reid; London England, 1860

I. FORGIVENESS OF SINS THROUGH THE BLOOD OF JESUS

The God of love, dear reader, in His written Word, gives an account of the rich mercy He has provided for the guilty, and tells you that you may be saved. His Word assures you that you may be saved from guilt, sin, and wrath. And that Word also informs you that your salvation depends not on anything you may do, but on what God has already done. Good news about God has reached our world, and in believing these glad tidings, you shall be saved.

This is the good news,

“God commends His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” (ROM 5:8).
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” (John 3:16).
“Christ died for the ungodly,” (ROM 5:6).
“He has made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him,” (2 Cor 5:21).

If, by simply believing the good news about what God through Christ has done for sinners, we become “partakers of Christ” (Heb 3:14), and are “accepted in the Beloved,” (Eph 1:6), it will become matter of personal consciousness and spiritual joy that “we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace,” (Eph 1:7). “Be it known unto you therefore, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; and by Him all that believe are justified from all things,” (Acts 13:38).

I ask you to settle it in your mind that “forgiveness of sins” (Acts 13:38) lies at the very threshold of the Christian life. It is a blessing needed and obtainable now. You must have forgiveness, or perish for ever; you must have it now, or you cannot have peace.

It is surely a delightful thought that you may have the guilt of all your past sins blotted out at once and for ever! God pardons freely and at once. He does not need any preparation on your part in order to pardon. One who knew the blessedness of enjoying His pardoning mercy testifies:
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness;” and this testimony was given on the ground of what he had affirmed in the same letter, that “the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin,” (1 John 1:7,9).

He does not say: After you have repented more thoroughly, after you have spent days and weeks in agonizing prayer, after you become more thoroughly instructed in divine things, and after you pass through years of “trouble and sorrow,” then you may dare to hope for forgiveness. No; but, knowing that Christ died to put away sin, you are allowed to, by simply taking the place of a sinner, and accepting of Jesus as your Savior, to believe that, through the all-perfect merits of Christ, you are pardoned that very moment, and enjoy perfect peace with God; for God “justifies the ungodly,” (ROM 4:5).

Peace with God through the forgiveness of all your sins may be obtained at any moment, seeing that you do not have to repent for it, work for it, or wait for it, but simply believe what God says regarding Christ “having made peace by the blood of His cross,” (Col 1:20). “And being justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,” (ROM 3:24)—and being fully satisfied that your sin has been forgiven you in a righteous way, being put away by “the precious blood of Christ,” (1 Pet 1:19)—God being “well pleased for His righteousness’ sake,” (Isa 42:21)—“just, and the justifier of him that believes in Jesus,” (ROM 3:26)—“peace that passes all understanding” (Phil 4:7) will spring up spontaneously within your soul, like the fresh, flowing current of a continuous fountain.

For the pardon of your sins, there is no time to be lost, for “the Holy Spirit says, Today,” (Heb 3:7); and if you now refuse to listen, and die in your sins before tomorrow’s sun rises, you would inevitably perish eternally, notwithstanding your conviction of sin, and anxieties of soul; for Jesus Himself assures us that “he that believes not shall be damned,” (Mark 16:16).

Besides, you can do nothing that will be helpful to yourself, or well pleasing to God, until you have obtained the forgiveness of your sins. And as pardon of sin is the first thing that you feel in need of, so it is the first thing which is presented by the God of love for your acceptance; for God is still to be found “in Christ reconciling sinners unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them,” (2 Cor 5:19).

Also, you will have your whole life and character affected in a most striking way by the scripturalness or unscripturalness of the views you now entertain of “the God of all grace,” (1 Pet 5:10), and the heartiness or hesitance with which you embrace His pardoning mercy.

The most useful life must ever be that which is firmly based on a knowledge of Christ crucified as the sole ground of acceptance with God, and on being justified, and having peace “through our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us,” (1 Thess 5:9,10). It will be found that those who do most for God and their fellow-sinners are such as he. Rev. Robert M’Cheyne, who knew himself to be forgiven by God and safe for eternity—of whom his biographer says, that “he walked calmly in almost unbroken fellowship with the FATHER and the SON”; and who himself thus describes his own undoubted conversion in the only record he has left of it:—

“When free grace awoke me, by light from on high,
Then legal fears shook me, I trembled to die;
No refuge, no safety in self could I see—
The Lord our Righteousness (Jehovah Tsidkenu) (5) my Savior must be.
“My terrors all vanish’d before the sweet name,
My guilty fears banish’d, with boldness I came
To drink at the Fountain, life-giving and free—
The Lord our Righteousness (Jehovah Tsidkenu) is all things to me.”

II. HOW OUR SINS ARE TAKEN AWAY BY THE BLOOD OF JESUS

There is every reason why you should now intelligently and believingly behold the Lamb of God, “which takes away the sin of the world,” (John 1:29). You are not directed in this passage to a Savior who has already “taken away the sin of the world,” but to Him who “takes away the sin of the world.” The meaning plainly is, that Jesus is the God-appointed Taker-away of sin for the world. We find him asserting this, when He says, “The Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins,” (Matt 9:6); “All power” (or authority) “is given me in heaven and on earth,” (Matt 28:18). Jesus is the only and the all-sufficient, as He is the authorized, Taker-away of sin, for the world at large. The whole world is brought in guilty before God, “for all have sinned,” (ROM 3:23); and the true gospel of God is, that when any one belonging to our sinful world feels his sin to be oppressive, and comes straight to “the Lamb of God” with it, and frankly acknowledges it, and tells out his anxieties regarding it, and his desire to get rid of it, he will find that Jesus has both the power and the will to take it away; and on seeing it removed from him by “the blood of His cross,” (Col 1:20), “as far as the east is from the west,” (Psa 103:12), he will be enabled to sing with a grateful heart and “joyful lips:”—

“I lay my sins on Jesus,
The spotless Lamb of God;
He bears them all, and frees us,
From the accursed load.”

You can never make an atonement for your past sins, nor by personal obedience receive the inheritance of glory; but Jesus is willing to take away all your sins, and to give you His own title to the glorious kingdom, if you will only consent to entrust Him alone with your salvation.
“Well,” you may perhaps resolve, “I will go to Him, and cast myself upon His mercy, and if I perish, I perish.” Ah, but you need not go to Him in that spirit, for it throws a doubt upon the all-sufficiency of His completed atonement for sin, and His perfect, spotless life of obedience.

Jesus Himself says, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” (John 3:16). These being the “true sayings of God,” (Rev 19:9), where, my friend, is there the least cause for you saying, with hesitancy and doubt, “If I perish, I perish?” (Esther 4:16). The proper thought you ought to have in reference to the glorious Gospel is this—God has so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son to die for sinners, and He assures me that if I, a perishing sinner, believe in Him, I shall not perish, but have everlasting life; I believe His Word, and reckon that if He gave His Son to die for us when we were yet sinners, He will with Him also freely give all such things as pardon and purity, grace and glory; and if, in accordance with His own gracious invitation, I rest my soul upon His manifested love in Christ Jesus, I believe that it will be as impossible for me to perish, as for God to change His nature, or to cancel the word of grace and truth, that the “blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin,” (1 John 1:7).
God the Father loved sinners so much as to send Jesus to die for them. Jesus loved sinners so much as to lay down His life for their redemption. The Holy Spirit loved sinners so much that he has written a record of God’s manifested love to them in Jesus Christ, and He Himself has come down in person, to reveal that love to their souls, that they may be saved.

If you, O anxious one, will now agree to God’s method of transferring all that Divine justice demands of you to Jesus, “who was made of a woman, made under the law,” who perfectly obeyed and pleased the Father in His holy life, and in death endured and exhausted the penalty due to sin, you will obtain pardon, peace, grace, and holiness; the full tide of the love of God, which passes knowledge, will flow into your soul, and, in the spirit of adoption, you will cry, “Abba, Father,” (Gal 4:6), feel the constraining influence of the love of Christ, and live to the glory of “Him who died for us and rose again.”

That I may make the method of a sinner’s salvation so “plain, that he that reads it” (Hab 2:2) may have his mind’s eye so full of its meaning, “that he may run” at once to Jesus Christ, as his Divine sinbearer, I will present the following illustration:—

While standing one day on the platform of the Toronto Station of the CPR, I saw a carriage with a sign on it stating that it ran all the way from Toronto to Edmonton. The doors open, and a few individuals were entering. They looked for this particular train as soon as they had passed through the ticket-office, and on seeing “Edmonton” on it, they carried in their luggage and sat down, ready to travel. Having bought tickets, and satisfied themselves that they were in the right train, they were relaxed and confident that they would soon be on their way to Edmonton. I did not see any one of them coming out of the train, and running about in a state of excitement, calling to those around them, “Am I on the right train? Am I on the right train?”
Nor did I see any one refusing to enter, because the train provided for only a limited number of seats. There might be 1,000,000 inhabitants in and around the city; but still there was not one who talked of it as absurd to provide accommodation for only three-hundred people on the train, for experience taught that this was sufficient. Trains leave the city continually all day, and it is found that one train for Edmonton daily is quite sufficient. On the particular day to which I now refer, I noticed that so ample was the accommodation, that one of the passengers had a whole compartment to himself. The carriage is for the whole city, but carries only as many as come.

God, in His infinite wisdom, has made provision of a similar kind for our lost world. He has provided a train of grace to carry as many of its inhabitants to heaven, the great metropolis of the universe, as are willing to avail themselves of His gracious provision.

When we call you by the preaching of the gospel, the meaning is, that all who will may come, and passing through the ticket-office of justification by faith alone, seat themselves in a train marked, “From Guilt to Glory.” Whenever you hear the free and general offer of salvation, you need not stand revolving the question in your own mind, “Is it for me?”—for just as the railway carries all who comply with their printed regulations, irrespective of moral character, so if you come to the station of grace at the advertised time, which is “now,”—for “Behold now is the accepted time,” (2 Cor 6:2),—you will find the train of salvation ready; and the only regulation to be complied with by you, in order to board it, is that you consent to let the Lord Jesus Christ charge Himself with paying for your seat,—which cannot surely be anything but an easy and desirable arrangement, seeing you have no means of paying for yourself.

Now if you came to the railway-station with no money in your pocket, and were running to catch a train about to leave, because you wanted to receive a valuable inheritance left to you by a friend; and if you would meet a kind gentleman at the ticket-office, who offered, “I will pay your fare for you,” you would not feel anything but thankfulness to this stranger.

It is not an easy matter for you, coming to the station of mercy, to submit to the regulation of the gospel, to let Jesus pay your fare for the train of grace, that you may take your seat with confidence, and be carried along the new and living way to everlasting glory?

If we want to know the gospel and be saved, we must know Jesus as our Sin bearer; for Christ crucified is the sum and the richness of the gospel. Paul was so taken with Jesus that nothing sweeter than Jesus could drop from his pen and lips. It is observed that he has quoted the precious name of JESUS five hundred times in his epistles.
“Jesus” was his constant subject of meditation, and out of the good treasure of the heart his mouth spoke and his pen wrote. He felt that Christ was made of God unto him “wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption,” (1 Cor 1:30), and glorying in the Lord and in His cross, he determined not to know anything among those to whom he preached and wrote, “save Jesus Christ and Him crucified,” (1 Cor 2:2). That faith which is not built on a dying Christ is but a perilous dream: God awaken all from it that are in it!

“Christ alone is our salvation—
Christ the rock on which we stand;
Other than this sure foundation,
Will be found but sinking sand.
Christ, His Cross and resurrection,
Is alone the sinner’s plea;
At the throne of God’s perfection,
Nothing else can set him free.
“We have all things, Christ possessing;
Life eternal, second birth;
Present pardon, peace, and blessing,
While we tarry here on earth;
And by faith’s anticipation,
Foretastes of the joy above,
Freely given us with salvation,
By the Father in His love.
“When we perfect joy shall enter,
‘Tis in Him our bliss will rise;
He’s the essence, soul, and centre,
Of the glory in the skies:
In redemption’s wondrous story,
(Plann’d before our parents’ fall),
From the Cross unto the Glory,
Jesus Christ is all in all.”

III. THE BLOOD OF JESUS, NOT CONVICTION OF SIN, IS THE FOUNDATION OF OUR PEACE AND JOY

If the Holy Spirit is awakening you to a true apprehension of your danger as a rebel against God’s authority,—a guilty, polluted, hell-deserving sinner,—you must be in a deeply anxious state of mind, and questions as these must be ever present with you:—

“What must I do to be saved?
What is the true ground of a sinner’s peace with God?
What am I to believe in order to be saved?”

Well, in so far as laying the foundation of your reconciliation is concerned, I need to tell you that you have nothing to do; for the Almighty Surety of sinners said on Calvary, “It is finished,” (John 19:30). Jesus has done all that the Holy Jehovah deemed necessary to be done to insure complete pardon, acceptance, and salvation to all who believe in His name. If you take Jesus as your Savior, you will build securely for eternity. “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ,” (1 Cor 3:11). He is the foundation-stone of salvation laid by God Himself, and on His finished atoning work alone you are instructed to rest the salvation of your soul, and not on anything accomplished by you, wrought in you, felt by you, or proceeding from you.

It is of the utmost importance to be clear as to the fact that it is the work of Christ without you, and not the work of the Spirit within you, that must form the sole ground of your deliverance from guilt and wrath, and of peace with God.

You must beware of resting your peace on your feelings, convictions, tears, repentance, prayers, duties, or resolutions. You must begin with receiving Christ, and not make that the end of a course of preparation. Christ must be the Alpha and Omega. He must be EVERYTHING in our salvation, or He will be nothing.

Be careful that you don’t fall into the common mistake of supposing that you will be more welcome and accepted of Christ if you are brought through a terrible process of “law-work.” You are as welcome to Christ now as you will ever be. Don’t wait for deeper convictions of sin, for why should you prefer conviction to Christ? And you would not have one iota more safety though you had deeper convictions of sin than any sinner ever had. “Convictions of sin are precious; but they bring no safety, no peace, no salvation, no security, but war, and storm, and trouble. It is well to be awakened from sleep when danger is hanging over us; but to wake from sleep is not to escape from danger. It is only to be sensible of danger, nothing more.
Likewise, to be convinced of your sins is merely to be made sensible that your soul is in danger. It is no more. It is not deliverance. Of itself, it can bring no deliverance; it tells of no Savior It merely tells us that we need one. Yet there are many who, when they have had deep convictions of sin, strong terrors of the law, congratulate themselves as if all were well. They say, “Ah, I have been convinced of sin; I have been under terrors; it is well with me; I am safe.” Well with you? Safe?

Is it well with the seaman when he wakes up and finds his vessel going to pieces on the rocks in the fury of the roaring tide? Is it well with the sleeper when he wakes up to the smell of smoke and a roaring blaze beside his bed? Does he say, “Ah, it is well with me; I have seen the flames?”

In this way sinners are not infrequently led to be content with some resting-place short of the appointed one. Anxiety to have deep convictions, and contentment with them after they have been experienced, are too often the means which Satan uses for turning away the sinner’s eye from the perfect work of Jesus, who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree.

Our peace with God, our forgiveness, our reconciliation, flow wholly from the sin-atoning sacrifice of Jesus.
Listen then, O Spirit-convinced soul, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world!

In His death on the cross, behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world! In His death on the cross, behold the mighty sacrifice, the ransom for the sins of many!
Behold there the sum of all His obedience and sufferings!
Behold the finished work!—a work of astonishing magnitude, which He alone could have undertaken and accomplished!
Behold our sacrifice, our finished sacrifice, our perfected redemption, the sole foundation of our peace, and hope, and joy. “He His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree,” (1 Pet 2:24). It is not said that our duties, or our prayers, or our fasting, or our convictions of sin, or our repentance, or our honest life, or our generosity and tithing, or our faith, or our grace—it is not said that these bore our sins; it was Jesus, Jesus Himself, Jesus alone, Jesus, and none but Jesus, “bore our sins in His own body on the tree.” Rest, then, in nothing short of peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Christ has done the mighty work;
Nothing left for us to do,
But to enter on His toil,
Enter on His triumph too.
“His the labor, ours the rest;
His the death, and ours the life;
Ours the fruits of victory,

to be continued.
edited by CVD.

Marriage, Same sex "marriage' , Polygamy

2009-01-22T11:10:00.006-05:00

Edmonton Journal - January 17, 2009

Polygamy case shows marriage matters

By Walt Brouwer

Unless you secluded yourself from any and all media outlets recently, you won't have been able to miss the news that, finally, after almost two decades of allegations of polygamy, sexual abuse, exploitation of children, and the trafficking of teenage brides across the Canada-U.S. border, Winston Blackmore of Bountiful, B.C., has been arrested on charges of polygamy. As the leader of a religious cult called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Blackmore defends polygamy as an article of his faith. Polygamists present a serious constitutional challenge, which may explain why B.C.'s attorney general waited so long to arrest Blackmore. With the approval of gay marriage, the boundaries of what constitutes marriage have been seriously blurred.

The re-emergence of the crisis in defining marriage provides an opportunity to remind ourselves as Christians what marriage is and why. As a Christian, I understand that marriage is founded on the biblical account of the creation of man and woman in Genesis 1 and 2, and Jesus' affirmation of this account in Matthew 19. Christians therefore define marriage as the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others.

It is important to recognize, however, that this understanding of marriage is not restricted to Christianity. After an extensive study of the world's cultures and religions, Dr. Katherine Young of McGill University in Montreal affirmed that all the world's major religions, and all cultures and societies have from time immemorial recognized marriage as the union of male and female. Of gay relationships she says, "'Same-sex marriage' is an oxymoron, because it lacks the universal, or defining, feature of marriage according to religious, historical, and anthropological evidence."

Thus, marriage is not unique to Christianity and not just a religious institution; it has been recognized by all societies. Marriage is a social, cultural as well as a religious institution, and the relationship upon which human society is founded. This is why up until recently marriage has been recognized in law and public policy as the voluntary union between one male and one female. This historic and universal understanding of marriage means that it predates both the dominion of Canada and English common law upon which most of our legal system is based. Governments and the courts are not the creators of marriage; it is not a legal institution enacted by law.

Marriage is rooted in the way we are created. It is based upon the biological reality that humanity exists in two sexes. Marriage expresses the complementary nature of the sexes and thus it requires both sexes. Yet marriage is more than sexual - it creates out of two persons one unique entity (becoming "one flesh," Genesis 2:24). Marriage is the supreme form of heterosexual bonding. Marriage also is procreative even though it cannot be reduced to this, for marriage is possible between a man and a woman who choose not to or cannot procreate (due to infertility or old age).

When Canada became the fourth nation in the world on July 20, 2005, to legalize same-sex marriages, gay couples already enjoyed legal protection as civil partnerships. Since marriage has been redefined to accommodate such relationships, the question before the courts today is, what about polygamy? The reason we define something is to preserve its unique distinctions and essence. If Canadian courts continue to redefine marriage, what other domestic relationship is next? This is why marriage should continue to be legally defined as the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others.

Rev. Dr. Walt Brouwer is the lead pastor at Bethel Community Church, a Christian Reformed congregation in northeast Edmonton.

A Prayer for President Obama by Albert Mohler

2009-01-20T20:38:00.001-05:00

A Prayer for President Obama

Posted: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 2:00 am ET

Our Father, Lord of all creation, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: We pray today with a sense of special urgency and responsibility. We come before you to pray for our new President, Barack Obama, and for all those in this new administration who now assume roles of such high responsibility.

We know that you and you alone are sovereign; that you rule over all, and that you alone are able to keep and defend us. We know that our times are in your hands, and that "the king's heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord" [Proverbs 21:1]. Our confidence is in you and in you alone. We come before you as a people who acknowledge our constant need for your provision, wisdom, and protection.

Father, we pray today for Barack Obama as he takes office as President of the United States. We pray that you will show the glory of your name in our times and in these days, confounding the wisdom of the wise, thwarting the plans of the arrogant, and vindicating those who do justice and practice righteousness.

Father, we pray with thanksgiving for the gift of government and the grace of civic order. Thank you for giving us rulers and for knowing our need for laws and ordered life together. Thank you for this nation and the blessings we know as its citizens. Thank you for freedoms unprecedented in human history. We understand that these freedoms come with unprecedented opportunities.

Lord, we pray with thanksgiving for the joy and celebration reflected on millions of faces who never expected to look to the President of the United States and see a person who looks like themselves. Father, thank you for preserving this nation to the moment when an African-American citizen will take the oath of office and become our President. Thank you for the hope this has given to so many, the pride emerging in hearts that had known no such hope, and the pride that comes to a people who have experienced such pain at the hands of fellow citizens, simply because of the color of their skin. Father, we rejoice in every elderly face that reflects such long-sought satisfaction and in every young face that expresses such unrestrained joy. May this become an open door for a vision of race and human dignity that reflects your glory in our differences, and not our corruption of your gift.

Father, protect this president, we pray. We pray that you will surround this president and his family, along with all our leaders, with your protection and sustenance. May he be protected from evil acts and evil intentions, and may his family be protected from all evil and harm.

We pray that the Obama family will be drawn together as they move into the White House, and that they will know great joy in their family life. We are thankful for the example Barack and Michelle Obama have set as parents. Father, protect those precious girls in every way -- including the protection of their hearts as they see their father often criticized and as he is away from them on business of state. May their years in the White House bring them all even closer together.

Father, we pray for the safety and security of this nation, even as our new president settles into his role as Commander in Chief. We know that you and you alone can be our defense. We do not place our trust in horses or chariots, and we pray that you will give this president wisdom as he fulfills this vital responsibility.

Father, grant him wisdom in every dimension of his vast responsibility. Grant him wisdom to deal with a global financial crisis and with the swirling complex of vexing problems and challenges at home and abroad. May he inspire this nation to a higher vision for our common life together, to a higher standard of justice, righteousness, unity, and the tasks of citizenship.

Father, we pray that you will change this president's heart and mind on issues of urgent concern. We are so thankful for his gifts and talents, for his intellect and power of influence. Father, bend his heart to see the dignity and sanctity of every single human life, from the moment of conception until natural death. Father, lead him to see abortion, not as a matter of misconstrued rights, but as a murderous violation of the right to life. May he come to see every aborted life as a violation of human dignity and every abortion as an abhorrent blight upon this nation's moral witness. May he pledge himself to protect every human life at every stage of development. He has declared himself as an energetic defender of abortion rights, and we fear that his election will lead directly to the deaths of countless unborn human beings. Protect us from this unspeakable evil, we pray. Most urgently, we pray that you will bring the reign of abortion to an end, even as you are the defender of the defenseless.

Father, may this new president see that human dignity is undermined when human embryos are destroyed in the name of medical progress, and may he see marriage as an institution that is vital to the very survival of civilization. May he protect all that is right and good. Father, change his heart where it must be changed, and give him resolve where his heart is right before you.

Father, when we face hard days ahead -- when we find ourselves required by conscience to oppose this president within the bounds of our roles as citizens -- may we be granted your guidance to do so with a proper spirit, with a proper demeanor, and with persuasive arguments. May we learn anew how to confront without demonizing, and to oppose without abandoning hope.

Father, we are aware that our future is in your hands, and we are fully aware that you and you alone will judge the nations. Much responsibility is now invested in President Barack Obama, and much will be required. May we, as Christian citizens, also fulfill what you would require of us. Even as we pray for you to protect this president and change his heart, we also pray that your church will be protected and that you will conform our hearts to your perfect will.

Father, we pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, the ever-reigning once and future King, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He and he alone can save, and his kingdom is forever. Above all, may your great name be praised. Amen.

White as snow

2008-12-17T09:41:00.000-05:00

Snow White from Puritan Reformed on Vimeo.

Prayer for our Churches.....

2008-11-06T18:20:00.005-05:00

Prayer for our Churches and Country.
On the Institution of Government …
and its total dependence on the people of God for its right functioning
________________________

This prayer is a prayer of Confession and Repentance

Our prayer today will be based on two sections of Scripture

… Our First Scripture speaks to our problem …

It is the Lord Jesus Christ speaking to His church in Revelation 3:15-16 …
"I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold not hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth."

Our Second Scripture speaks to the solution to our problem …

It is God the Father speaking to His people in 2 Chronicles 7:14 …
"If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7:14)

Let me also say that I very seriously direct the words of this prayer to myself
… as much as to anybody else …

Father … You have commanded us
"You shall have no other gods before me."

Yet our government seeks to eradicate You from every aspect of public life
… our media makes a laughingstock of Your people …
… virulent God-haters rule in our Universities …
And we Your people …
for the most part sit by and watch and do nothing … we make no protest at all

Instead, we ourselves also put other things "before" You …
… we want, above all else, to be happy and filled in all our personal desires …
… and we want to have our self-image stroked and nourished …

Our Lord Jesus said … "You shall love the LORD your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment." (Matthew 22:37-38)

BUT … We spend very little personal time in prayer and in Your word …
… because we are so self-indulgent
… and have much more important things to do …
"Moments for Christ … Hours for the world!"

Many of us will not go to any of our church prayer meetings …
many of us will not attend bible study meetings
… to learn more about You and Your word
Indeed … some of us will not even come back for your evening Worship Service …
We beg you Father … Please forgive our sin and heal our land.

Father … You have commanded us
"You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain."

Yet many of our media and our comedians make a laughingstock of Your name …
… and we Your people not only sit by …
… but often watch and laugh along with them
We beg you Father … Please forgive our sin and heal our land.

Father … You have commanded us
"Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy."

Yet our Government and Society will purposely schedule events on your Sabbath
To us, your people … it is as if the 4th Commandment no longer exists …
Sunday is the 2nd biggest retail day of the week …
how many of us will eat out today …
how many of us will go shopping today …
how many of us will watch paid sporting events on TV today …
how many of us will sit here and get angry about this even being brought up …

You know, LORD … You know
We beg you Father … Please forgive our sin and heal our land.

Father … You have commanded us
"You shall not murder."

Yet … Our government has presided over a holocaust of over one hundred thousand abortions each year …
The prime minister of our land …proclaims his apathy and unwillingness to work for eradicating
one of the greatest, cruelest and vilest evils of our time
late-term … partial-birth abortions, as well as “normal” abortions
and he has multitudes backing him up …

O Lord, change such leaders, or deliver us from leaders who hold such evil beliefs
And all the while, Father, we Your people, for the most part
are so weak in our response to these great evils …
We beg you Father … Please forgive our sin and heal our land.

Father … You have commanded us
"You shall not commit adultery."

Yet we are a sex-crazed nation …
… Promiscuous open sex is ever before us in all the media
Arrogant Sodomite perversion and blatant homosexuality stalk our land
and are becoming firmly entrenched in our educational institutions
… even at the elementary level …
… both Soft and Hard-core pornography abound
… almost half of our marriages fail …
And what do we Your people do?

We largely go to movies and watch TV programs …
that we know beforehand contain such things …
… and then, to show just how much we really do care,
we mildly protest "Oh, Why do they have to do that" …
and then, we Your people go right back to the slop trough for more …
and, worst of all, we bring it into our homes and parade it before our children
And we let our children listen to decadent and psychotic filth on the radio and TV …
And we, Your people, often let our own daughters dress and act immodestly …
At church… at the beach … at the pool … at sporting events …
We beg you Father … Please forgive our sin and heal our land.

Father … You have commanded us
"You shall not steal"

YET … Our government wastes our hard-earned money on perverse art …
But LORD … we do as we should … as Jesus commanded, we pay our taxes …
We protest and chaff about it …
But, then … we Your people turn right around and rob You of Your tithe …
We beg you Father … Please forgive our sin and heal our land.

LORD … it is no wonder that our civilization
… is rift with moral decay and economic collapse
The TRUE WONDER is that it is not worse
LORD … You have commanded us all these things …
"You shall have no other gods before me."
"You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain."
"Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy."
"Your shall not murder."
"Your shall not steal."
But, we your people, have done very little about the UNGODLINESS and UNRIGHTEOUSNESS that stalks our land …
Indeed … we have participated in much of it ourselves …
We keep one foot in heaven and the other firmly planted on the earth …
And our Lord Jesus continues to say …
"I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because You are lukewarm, and neither cold not hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth."
Father … You have told us exactly what should we do about all this … YOU HAVE SAID …
"If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7:14)

Father … WE BEG YOU … By Your grace, help us to humble ourselves
… and pray
… and seek Your face …
… and confess our wicked ways and our lukewarmness …
Knowing that You in Your mercy
will forgive our sin and heal our land …
It is all our fault, Father … ours and none others …
… the wicked do but what their father bids them do …
… it is us, Your children, that do not do what You, our Father, bids us do.
Again we beg you Father …
Please forgive our sin and heal our land.

Have mercy on us … and do not give us what we so richly deserve
But Please … by your grace and mercy
… send revival among Your people at the St. Thomas FRC
Please … Help us to leave our lukewarmness
Please … help us to "love the LORD our God" …
… with all our heart,
and with all our soul,
and with all our mind.

It is in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that we pray our prayer.

Amen.

________________________________

This prayer was used at Woodruf Road Presbyterian Church in Greenville, SC., on November 2, 2008, and amended to Canadian context by CVD.

Considering Moving to Washington state? Think again.......

2008-11-06T10:42:00.007-05:00

OLYMPIA, Washington, November 5, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) –

"The state of Washington voted to allow legal assisted suicide according to the Oregon model in yesterday’s ballot. Initiative 1000, the Washington “Death with Dignity Act,”

which allows physicians to prescribe a fatal dose of medication to patients whom a doctor feels is likely to die

within six months,

passed in the state 59% to 41%."

Comment: Can anyone know who is likely to, or who is going to die in six months time?

US rejects "gay" "marriage" articles by Timothy Bloedow and Lifesite News

2008-11-05T11:10:00.007-05:00

Timothy Bloedow:
From his newsletter:
November 5, 2008

Americans crush homosexual "marriage" and adoption agenda in U.S. election

Yesterday black Americans revealed their strong opposition to abusive and fraudulent attempts to link homosexual "sex" with the civil rights movement.

Voters turned out at levels not seen in 100 years, said some media. Most people credited this turn-out primarily to Barak Obama, which means that more of these voters were Democrats and a disproportionate number were black people. It was these people who demonstrated yesterday the broad-based contempt that thoughtful Americans have for the bigoted and perverse agenda of the radical homosexualist movement.

What the results show is that opposition to sexual perversion extends across the political spectrum and is a true bi-partisan position. The results also demonstrate that the more Americans who vote, the greater the demonstrated opposition is to homosexual "marriage" and adoption.

The homosexual "marriage" agenda was decimated in Florida. A ballot measure to ban the practice was passed with a huge majority of 62% to 38% (with 99% of precincts reporting as of this writing). Even easy-going Floridians want nothing to do with the ideological construct of "gay marriage."

Even in America's ghetto of rabid liberalism, California, the measure to ban homosexual "marriage" is winning with 52% over 48% (with 91% of precincts reporting). If the sexually perverse notion of same-sex "marriage" can't pass in California, that's as much evidence one needs that the idea is a political liability, a noose around a politician's neck - certainly not something of benefit.

Homosexual activists and their secular-fundamentalist fellow-travelers put millions and millions of dollars into this fight. The psychological impact of this defeat - especially knowing that this defeat came largely at the hand of Democrat voters - must be devastating.

How are conservatives going to take advantage of these results to press home their advantage - despite a Barak Obama presidency? Will conservatives take advantage of these results?

Americans in Arizona also voted against homosexual "marriage" by voting in favour of their ballot to ban homosexual "marriage" by 56% to 44% (with 99% of precincts reporting).

And in Arkansas, Americans showed their disgust for homosexual adoption. A ballot measure banning homosexual adoption won in Arkansas by 57% to 43% (with 96% of precincts reporting). Congratulations Arkansas for protecting your children from this proven risk to healthy upbringing. You voted with reason instead of siding with anti-rational homosexualist fundamentalism.

LIFESITE NEWS REPORTS THE FOLLOWING TODAY:

November 5, 2008

Victory: California Marriage Proposition 8 Passes in Historic Battle

By John Jalsevac

November 5, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The homosexualist lobby received one of its stiffest blows in years, and one which may ultimately serve as a permanent setback for same-sex “marriage” in the US, after California’s Proposition 8, the ballot measure to define marriage as being exclusively between a man and a woman, is projected to pass by a narrow majority vote.

The proposition was ahead by margin of 52% to 48% with 95% of precincts reporting as of 8am today. The referendum called for the California constitution to be amended by adding the phrase: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

The vote marks the second time that Californian voters have voted to protect natural marriage in the state. In a 2000 referendum Californians overwhelmingly voted for marriage, passing Proposition 22 with a 61% to 38% majority.

Proposition 8 proponents emerged victorious despite a difficult uphill battle that pitted grassroots Californians against a hostile political establishment, judiciary, and Hollywood elite that pulled out all the stops in the fight to defeat the initiative.

The battle for marriage was given a seemingly insurmountable setback earlier in the year after the California Supreme Court decided in a 4-3 vote on May 15 to ignore the 2000 referendum, and to force same-sex “marriage” on the state. Since then thousands of homosexual couples have been “married” under the court decision. Those “marriages,” however, will now be invalidated.

The strategically timed Supreme Court decision had numerous far reaching effects for the Yes on 8 campaign, one of which is that it permitted the Attorney General to alter the language of the initiative as it would appear on the ballot, so that, rather than positively defining marriage as between a man and a woman, the ballot read that Proposition 8 “eliminates (the) right of same-sex couples to marry."

Despite the high-level opposition, however, "we caused Californians to rethink this issue," Proposition 8 strategist Jeff Flint said last night, according to the LA Times.

In the beginning, he said, "I think the voters were thinking, well, if it makes them happy, why shouldn't we let gay couples get married. And I think we made them realize that there are broader implications to society and particularly the children when you make that fundamental change that's at the core of how society is organized, which is marriage.”

The victory is significant not only for California, but for the whole country, and for the West as a whole. The $70 million battle over Proposition 8 was one of the most heated battles of the 2008 election, even at times appearing to eclipse the presidential campaign in the state.

California, as the largest, and one of the most influential and liberal states in the Union, was perceived as being a key state for homosexualists bent on forcing same-sex “marriage” throughout the country. Opponents and supporters of Proposition 8 both recognized that if homosexual “marriage” was allowed to stay in California, the state would serve as an effective platform to spread this radical social engineering throughout the US, setting off a domino effect.

"No one can underestimate the impact of the largest state in the nation treating all of its citizens equally," said Lorri Jean, head of the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center, and head of the No on 8 campaign.

Despite early polls showing that Proposition 8 would lose, in the final weeks leading up to the vote, thanks to an effective ad campaign, the Yes on 8 campaign was able to warn Californians about the far-reaching effects of permitting same-sex “marriage.” In particular, Prop. 8 supporters focused on educating voters on the effects that same-sex “marriage” would have on the school systems, pointing to the experiences of parents in Massachusetts as a prime example.

The No campaign, despite repeated attempts to paint marriage supporters as liars for warning that same-sex “marriage” will have a profound impact on public schools, suffered significant setbacks after two embarrassing high profile cases emerged one after another in the news in the final few weeks: one of a kindergarten teacher who was found to be holding a “gay day” in her class, and another in which a whole class of grade school students attended their teacher’s same-sex “wedding” at the San Francisco City Hall. The latter case was particularly embarrassing since the minister at the wedding was none other the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom.

While the final votes continue to be tallied in California, most major networks have declared that Proposition 8 is victorious. "Thanks be to God! Marriage won in California," wrote Brian Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage, in an e-mail to supporters this morning.

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ORGAN DONATION

2008-10-22T11:53:00.006-04:00

Many people thoughtlessly sign the organ donor card thinking they would like to help other people when they are no longer alive, by donating their organs.

Can organs be harvested from a truly "dead" body?
The answer (see below) apparently is NO.

This gives way to some thought:

What takes precedence: fighting to restore you to health or harvesting your organs which may be needed for another patient?
Who makes this decision if you have signed over your body?
What criteria are used to make this decision? Christian criteria, that life is given, and taken by God at His time?

If you are alive when your organs are harvested, when do you die? On the operating table?
Do the physicians cause your death?
Do you feel pain?
Can you hear what is happening?
What is the definition of cardiac death?
What is the definition of brain death?

Life Site News has the following on the subject:

However, although Tibballs' opponents stress that his opinions are in the minority, there has been growing concern about aggressive organ harvesting policies that fail to ensure that the patient is actually dead.

Lifesite News has reported several recent cases in which patients deemed "brain dead" resuscitated only moments before their organs were to be removed. Such cases have brought more evidence to the table showing that the highly contested definition of "brain death," and the later idea of "cardiac death," do not eliminate the possibility that donors may yet recover from seeming lifelessness.

Lifesite News published the story in June of a French man who, after suffering cardiac arrest for at least ninety minutes, was being prepared for organ removal when doctors noticed the patient breathing, his pupils dilating, and the patient reacted to pain. Within weeks, the patient that had been considered "brain dead" was walking and talking. (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jun/08061308.html)

In another example, earlier this year 21-year-old Zack Dunlap was spared from dissection when a relative saw him react to touch minutes before he was scheduled to have his organs removed. Zack was originally deemed eligible to donate his organs when doctors could detect no blood flow to his brain. He later said, however, that he could hear the doctors pronouncing him dead as he lay seemingly unconscious. (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/mar/08032709.html)

In his article "Organ Donation: The Inconvenient Truth," LSN medical advisor Dr. John Shea reveals the disturbing similarity between these "miraculous" cases and other organ donors whose surgeries were successful:

"Some form of anesthesia is needed to prevent the donor from moving during removal of the organs. The donor's blood pressure may rise during surgical removal. Similar changes take place during ordinary surgical procedures only if the depth of anesthesia is inadequate. Body movement and a rise in blood pressure are due to the skin incision and surgical procedure if the donor is not anesthetized.

"Is it not reasonable to consider that the donor may feel pain? In some cases, drugs to paralyze muscle contraction are given to prevent the donor from moving during removal of the organs. Yet, sometimes no anesthesia is administered to the donor. Movement by the donor is distressing to doctors and nurses. Perhaps this is another reason why anesthesia and drugs to paralyze the muscles are usually given."

Dr. Paul Byrne, an expert in organ donation and neonatologist, has continuously fought against policies and practices that put donors at extreme risk for being pronounced dead prematurely in order to lay hold of their organs.

Read the attached medical report on brain death

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008_docs/BrainDeath.pdf

Brain Death - An Opposing Viewpoint Paul A. Byrne, MD; Sean O1ReilIy MD, FRCP; Paul M. Quay, SJ, PhD
• Recent and proposed legislation to establish “brain-related” criteria of death has uniformly confounded irreversible cessation of total brain function with the death of the human person. Much of the confusion comes from widespread misunderstanding of how the word “death” is used and what it means. Cessation of total brain function, whether irreversible or not, is not necessarily linked to total destruction of the brain or to the death of the person. Further, to take vital organs or to otherwise treat people as though they were dead already on the basis of these recent criteria is morally unacceptable to most Orthodox Jews and Christians.
(JAMA 242:1985-1990, 1979)

extract from page 7:
"If someone's head has been completely crushed by a truck or vaporized by a nuclear blast, or if his brain has been dissolved by a massive injection of sulfuric acid, then a cessation of function has occurred that we rightly see as absolutely irreversible. But it is the manifest destruction of his brain that convinces us of this total irreversibility, not vice versa.

But if there is no proof of complete destruction, then any declaration that a cessation of function is absolutely irreversible is a presumption, even if well grounded, which is contingent on the current state of medical knowledge and on the availability of adequate life-support systems in the concrete circumstances. Even if the presumption is correct, it establishes, as seen above, no necessary link with destruction of the brain.

If it is incorrect, the patient may possibly be cured. Thus, whether right or wrong, a presumption as to the irreversibility of a lack of brain function is insufficient ground for removing a patient's vital organs or for immediate autopsy, cremation, or burial."

and from page 10:
"Many today argue that midbrain activity or brainstem activity is peripheral once the cortex has ceased to function.1, 19 There is no limit to what real functions may be declared peripheral when the only non-peripheral function is imaginary.
Further, if complete destruction of the brain were what really is intended, then why is so much written concerning indefinite ventilation of corpses and the like? If a patient whose whole brain has been destroyed is on a respirator, then, even by the older criteria, with only the rarest of exceptions would he survive more than a week.5, 20 If, however, his brain is not dead but merely nonfunctioning because of some CNS depressant, say, then ventilatory support should be continued, at least as long as there is any chance of effecting a recovery or even of seeking an as yet unknown way to reverse his presently irreversible lack of function."

The harvesting of organs is a huge business. The medical profession has generally lost its ethics.
Organs cannot be harvested from a truly "dead" body. Decay will have set in.
Signing the card places your death in the hands of a physician.

Food for thought.

EVOLUTION: a Religion

2008-10-22T10:14:00.003-04:00

If you are being taught that evolution is true,below you will find material to help you refute that claim. What are the seven most RIDICULOUS claims of evolution?	Print Page

1. Acquired characteristics can become inherited characteristics.

One of the things that has always fascinated me about the theory of evolution is the insistence of its proponents that animal and plant species "learned" to adapt in order to survive. Of course, this assumes that a particular species was dying off due to lack of adaptation and continued to die off over a period of thousands, or perhaps millions, of years until the animal finally mutated a gene that changed its behavior allowing it to survive. But wait a minute! If it took the animal thousands or millions of years to develop the "survival gene," then it was obviously able to survive during that time without the genetic mutation that evolution says it needed for survival. So, in reality, it did not need to evolve because it was already surviving for that length of time without the need for genetic change. The logic of evolutionists on this point is truly baffling. Most would fail a college course in basic classical logic.

Add to the above the assumption that plants and animals somehow "learn" through the process of evolution. In the evolutionary explanation there is an almost mystical implication that there is a conscious process going on that has allowed species to become other species or to evolve new processes or appendages for the sake of survival. The assumptions involved in this kind of thinking are staggering.

One of the things that scientists should have learned from their study of the peppered moth in England (touted as "proof" of evolution) is that even though adaptations can take place within species, a peppered moth is still a peppered moth. (1) This remains true whether the dark or light variety predominates due to its ability to camouflage itself from predators. To date, none has ever been observed evolving into an Emperor Gum Moth or a Gypsy Moth (see the Sept-Oct 2005 edition of The Sabbath Sentinel for a thorough discussion of the peppered moth).

2. Matter came into existence from nothing.

Taken at face value, this is exactly what the book of Genesis says that God did. In our case however, we have evolutionists making the same statement with no causal agent. I have done quite a bit of research on this point, and it is evident that most evolutionists agree that matter is not eternal, that it came into existence at some point in the past. On the other hand, if matter were eternal, then it would be completely inert and disorganized because all energy tends to render itself less usable over time as it changes form; that is, it follows the second law of thermodynamics. Nothing in the universe would be radioactive because all radioactive matter would have exhausted its half lives in aeons past. Of course, the whole idea of radioactivity and half lives is not even workable in a universe in which matter is eternal. Half lives assume a beginning, and if matter is eternal, radioactivity can have no beginning. Again, it’s a matter that most evolutionists do not understand the logic of their own premises or are not willing to take those premises all the way out to their logical conclusions.

Most evolutionary scientists believe that the universe came into being 12.7 billion years ago, and that it started from a "Big Bang," which is evolutionary lingo for an enormous explosion somewhere in the nothingness of space. The "Big Bang" theory assumes that there was once a super-concentrated glob (not to be confused with the physics term "mass") of subatomic particles (all the mass and energy in the universe) that exploded, hurling mass and energy outward from that explosion point. The story (sometimes called Cosmology (2) ) goes that as the matter raced outward, it began to cool and coagulate into the celestial balls we see at night called stars and planets. This is, of course, a very simplistic explanation of the Big Bang theory, but I think you get the gist of it.

If I were in a classroom, I would have to ask a few questions at this point. Where did the subatomic particles come from? What physical laws in a nonexistent universe caused the Big Bang to occur? Why 12.7 billion years ago? Why not 107.7 billion years ago? What was the causal agent of the Big Bang? Where did the physical laws originate that govern the cooling and coagulating of the matter into stars and planets that was hurled outward by the Big Bang.

One of the problems with the Big Bang theory is the concept of time. Time is important to us on earth, but in the rest of the universe there is only mass, motion, and energy. So, when we say 12.7 billion years, can we say for certainty that time has always been a constant factor in determining the age of the universe?

Probably the biggest problem with the Big Bang theory is that it starts with a preexistent "something" instead of "nothing." No matter how far back you push the beginning of the universe, you still have to answer the question of how the first matter and energy came into being.

3. Evolution is statistically possible.

To avoid allowing this discussion to become too complicated, let me quote a number of well-known scientists.

"The occurrence of any event where the chances are beyond one in ten followed by 50 zeros is an event which we can state with certainty will never happen, no matter how much time is allotted and no matter how many conceivable opportunities could exist for the event to take place" (Dr. Emile Borel, who discovered the laws of probability).

"The probability for the chance of formation of the smallest, simplest form of living organism known is 1 in 10 ^340,000,000. This number is 10 to the 340 millionth power! The size of this figure is truly staggering since there is only supposed to be approximately 10⁸⁰ (10 to the 80th power) electrons in the whole universe!" (Professor Harold Morowitz, Biophysicist of George Mason University)

"I could prove God statistically; take the human body alone; the chance that all the functions of the individual would just happen, is a statistical monstrosity" (George Gallup, famous statistician).

"The idea of spontaneous generation of life in its present form is therefore highly improbable even to the scale of the billions of years during which pre-biotic evolution occurred" (Dr. Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize winner).

"The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop" (Dr. Edwin Conklin, evolutionist and professor of biology at Princeton University).

"All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that life’s complexity is so great, it is hard for us to imagine that it did" (Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Prize winner).

"One may well find oneself beginning to doubt whether all this could conceivably be the product of an enormous lottery presided over by natural selection, blindly picking the rare winners from among numbers drawn at utter random... nevertheless although the miracle of life stands ‘explained,’ it does not strike us as any less miraculous...." (French biochemist and Nobel Prize winner, Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity).

"A further aspect I should like to discuss is what I call the practice of infinite escape clauses. I believe we developed this practice to avoid facing the conclusion that the probability of self-reproducing state is zero. This is what we must conclude from classical quantum mechanical principles as Wigner demonstrated" (Sidney W. Fox, The Origins of Prebiological Systems).

"Evolutionary biologists have been able to pretend to know how complex biological systems originated only because they treated them as black boxes. Now that biochemists have opened the black boxes and seen what is inside, they know the Darwinian theory is just a story, not a scientific explanation" (Professor Phillip E. Johnson).

"An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going" (Dr. Francis Crick, biochemist, Nobel Prize winner, Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature , pg. 88).

I have about two more pages of quotes from famous scientists, some Nobel laureates, putting into doubt the notion that evolution is at all possible. However, even from the sample of quotes given above, the reader should be able to see that even evolutionists often embrace their theory as a matter of faith (like a religion), and not because there is any evidence to support it.

4. Evolution produces improvements in species and a more highly organized universe.

Evolution assumes the increase in order in the universe and the increase in the usability of energy, in addition higher complexity in supposed "evolved" organic species of plants and animals.

However, the second law of thermodynamics (called "entropy"—the universal law of decay) states that matter tends toward chaos and that energy becomes less usable over time. This universally known and recognized law directly contradicts the brazen postulation of the theory of evolution that matter has become more organized over time and that the evolution of living organisms has somehow produced greater order and provided us with more usable energy.

What evolutionists seem not to recognize is that candles burn out, flowers wilt, and people get old and die. Fight as we might against the forces of nature, given enough time, our sun will one day burn up all its fuel, and this planet will grow cold and incapable of sustaining life. What happens then with this thing called evolution? We only continue to exist by taking in energy from outside this planet. Once that outside energy source is gone, so is biology. Life ceases.

5. The geological strata prove organic evolution.

Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. If the strata prove anything, it is that evolution has never taken place. What we observe in the strata are fully-formed animal and plant species. We do not see half-lizard-half-bird species, but we do see lizards and birds embedded in the rock layers as fully-formed lizards and birds.

I use the example of lizards and birds because evolutionary biologists contend that birds evolved from reptiles. However, nowhere in the geological strata do we find any evidence of this. Science required evidence, and there is none.

When fossils are found in rock layers, it is most often the result of alluvial sedimentation. What occurs in every flood event that causes these deposits is a natural sifting of sediment. Small particles settle to the bottom and larger particles are on top. The same is true of the animal and plant species that are caught in the watery catastrophe. Because of this natural phenomenon, we cannot assume that "older and less complicated" species are found in the lower layers of rock. It is very possible that small and large animals were deposited together in the same flood, and that the smaller plants and animals sifted to the bottom of the layers. Where a fossil is found in the strata proves nothing about the age of the fossil—only that the layering of sediment is exactly the same as can be observed on any river shore or beach in the world.

6. We can date the age of fossils by looking at the surrounding strata.

One of the assumptions of evolutionists is that geological strata in places like the Grand Canyon or Williston Basin in North Dakota can be used as a measuring stick for the evolution of plant and animal species. What is generally not revealed in geology or biology text books is that any animal or plant species is likely to be found resting conformably (i.e., without upheaval or disruption) in any set of rock layers anywhere in the world. In other words, trilobites might be found at the bottom of a geological column in the Grand Canyon. In another part of the world, or even in the state of Arizona for that matter, trilobites might be found resting conformably in what are considered to be the "newer" layers in the column. (3) There is no such thing as a geological column that can be used as a standard by which to measure the likelihood of "old" or "recently evolved" species of plants or animals. The truth is, the geological column has been pieced together from exposed layers and core drilling from around the world. It is a patchwork.

In actual fact, the strata are "dated" by the fossils contained in them. You read that correctly; the strata are dated by the fossils, and the fossils are dated by the strata. This kind of circular reasoning is very tricky, but biologists and geologists have been using it for years to "prove" their case for evolution. It has been a winning strategy for a long time, but many biologists and geologists are beginning to question its validity (of course, the average Joe on the street could spot such faulty reasoning in less than the 100 plus years that it has taken scientists). As some paleontologists state:

"It is a problem not easily solved by the classic methods of stratigraphical paleontology, as obviously we will land ourselves immediately in an impossible circular argument if we say, firstly that a particular lithology [theory of rock strata] is synchronous on the evidence of its fossils, and secondly that the fossils are synchronous on the evidence of the lithology" (Derek V. Ager, The Nature of the Stratigraphic Record, 1973, p. 62).

"The procession of life was never witnessed, it is inferred. The vertical sequence of fossils is thought to represent a process because the enclosing rocks are interpreted as a process. The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning, if it insists on using only temporal concepts, because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales" (O’Rourke, J.E., "Pragmatism Versus Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, vol. 276, 1976, p. 53).

"Paleontologists cannot operate this way. There is no way simply to look at a fossil and say how old it is unless you know the age of the rocks it comes from....And this poses something of a problem: If we date the rocks by the fossils, how can we then turn around and talk about the pattern of evolutionary change through time in the fossil record?" (Eldridge, Niles, Time Frames, 1985, p. 52).

In addition to the problem of circular reasoning, there is the dilemma of rapid fossilization. Specifically, what do paleontologists do with fossilized trees that protrude through layers of rock that are supposedly millions of years apart in age? It has always been assumed that fossilization required long periods of time, but that myth was shattered with the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in May of 1980. Since that catastrophe, scientists have discovered that many fossils formed within months or a few years as a direct result of the eruption. In addition to trees poking through "millions of years" of strata, other interesting modern fossils have been found, such as a cowboy boot and a modern human finger.

7. Evolution is "scientific."

Evolution is not observable, it is not measurable, and it is not repeatable—three absolutely necessary ingredients for any theory to be deemed scientific. To be scientific, evolution must be based on theories that are falsifiable, which means that such theories can be repeated and disproved (if false) by others. The assumptions for any experiment cannot be rigged to lead only to the conclusion that the theory is true (which evolutionists have done). It has to allow the scientist the option of concluding that the theory is false. The scientific method has four steps:

Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
Formulation of a hypothesis to explain the phenomenon.
Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

If the experiments bear out the hypothesis, it may come to be regarded as a theory or law of nature. It is often said in science that theories can never be proved, only disproved.

What makes evolution unscientific is that it cannot be tested. Some may object to this statement by saying that we can observe evolution by looking at the rocks and fossils in the Grand Canyon and many other places. The problem with that objection is that evolution, as it is defined, is not rocks and fossils, it is a process of the mutation of one species into another that supposedly continues to this day.

Since any hypothesis has to be based on observation, where can we observe the process of evolutionary mutations taking place? We can’t, because they are not taking place. In actual fact, if evolution were true, we should see many more transitional (intermediate) species of plants and animals than we see fully-formed species, yet we see none. We do not see them in the fossil layers; we do not see them around us in living "half-species." They do not exist.

However, evolutionists are not even looking at the process of evolution. They are looking at what they assume are the results of some hitherto unobserved process that they call organic evolution. They assume the results of that process are recorded in the fossil record. Their theory is based on two mutually supportive (and faulty) assumptions: that the fossils date the rocks, and the rocks, in turn, date the fossils. It cannot be both. You have to pick one or the other and test it.

Conclusion

It was not possible to cover all the baseless claims that evolutionists adduce to try to convince the public that God is not the Creator of all things, and that man really is the final answer to all moral and spiritual questions. One of the problems with evolution that I did not even address in this article is how our world, once full of nothing but dead matter (at least according to evolutionary thought) came to produce all the rich variety of life that we see all around us. Nowhere do we see this taking place, yet evolutionists tell us that it happened not just once, but an almost infinite number of times. Nonetheless, like macro evolution, we cannot go to any spot on earth to observe it for ourselves.

I realize that many Christians are intimidated by scientists and the mass of data they display in favor of evolution. What is seldom publicized is that in all fields of science, there is very little agreement on how evolution supposedly took place. We are constantly told that we are more than foolish if we do not believe their story of our origins. Who are the real fools? Those who see that there is no evidence for evolution or those who have wasted their lives pursuing the fool’s gold of a world full of dreams, myths, and vapors that has no originator and no source of life?

There is only one principle that evolutionists live by—that evolution is true. It is to them an article of faith that colors all of their conclusions. It is indeed a religion, not science.

End Notes

1. The use of the peppered moth as an example of natural selection that supports the theory of evolution has come under fire in recent years. Sunday Telegraph journalist Robert Matthews wrote:

"Evolution experts are quietly admitting that one of their most cherished examples of Darwin’s theory, the rise and fall of the peppered moth, is based on a series of scientific blunders. Experiments using the moth in the Fifties and long believed to prove the truth of natural selection are now thought to be worthless, having been designed to come up with the ‘right’ answer." (http:/ / e n .wi k i p e d i a . o r g /wi k i / C r e a t i o n i sm_ and_the_peppered_moth)

2. Cosmology: The Study of the Universe

"Cosmology is the scientific study of the large scale properties of the Universe as a whole. It endeavors to use the scientific method to understand the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the entire Universe. Like any field of science, cosmology involves the formation of theories or hypotheses about the Universe which make specific predictions for phenomena that can be tested with observations. Depending on the outcome of the observations, the theories will need to be abandoned, revised or extended to accommodate the data. The prevailing theory about the origin and evolution of our Universe is the so called Big Bang theory..." (http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni.html)

3. "conformable" Successive beds or strata are conformable when they lie one upon another in unbroken and parallel order and no disturbance or denudation took place at the locality while they were being deposited. If one set of beds rests upon the eroded or the upturned edges of another, showing a change of conditions or a break between the formations of the two sets of rocks, they are unconformable. (Dictionary of Mining, Mineral, and Related Terms, http:// www.maden.hacettepe .edu.tr/dmmrt/index.html)

Written By: Kenneth Ryland

this article may be seen at:

http://www.biblestudy.org/basicart/what-are-the-seven-most-ridiculous-claims-of-evolution.html

RAISING CHILDREN

2008-02-02T10:50:00.001-05:00

Raising Godly children is a difficult task, that can only be accomplished by much prayer and adherence to scriptural principles. It also takes a lot of work.

Still, children have to be taught first time obedience. You will not always be successful in reaching that goal, but it must be the principle of your child development efforts. It starts in the cradle. If you pick up your baby every time it cries or whimpers, your baby is training you to be at its service whenever it wants. You can inspect it and if everything is all right, and the baby has been fed just an hour ago and is dry and clean, then just put it back (particularly at 3 AM!) and let it have its cry. Crying is good for its lungs. It is best to not have the baby in your bedroom for that reason. Then parents, who are already interrupted, can also get some sleep.

Some parents find it too much bother to discipline their children. And it is true, it is a lot of work. But not disciplining gives chaos in the household and children who are self centered. They yell and scream and kick and bite. Mom yells back at the top of her lungs and gets no response whatsoever. When nothing works she yells “ if you want an ice cream cone you had better be quiet”. Silence ensues. The children have been taught, that next time they want something they should ignore their mother and fight and make a terrible noise, it always works………….. The baby in the cradle has graduated and continues to use the same techniques.

Toddlers take a lot out of Moms (and Dads). It is in this phase that important training takes place. The child should clearly know what it may touch and what it may not touch. This is both a safety and obedience issue. Never yell at your children. (probably impossible, but certainly the goal) The bible teaches that you must use the rod, so apply the today so unpopular corporal punishment. Scripture is normative, and not what society says. When you have told your toddler: NO and he or she does not listen: give a good slap on the hand that will sting. Repeat this when needed and each time firmly explain (Mommy (or Daddy) said NO!) (Now the hard part: DO NOT GET ANGRY.) Love and punishment must go together. When they are able to understand, (and that is very soon) explain that they are sinning against God by rebelling against you. Teach them that they must repent. Every time they sin, they need to repent. (As do the parents) If you do not teach them this, how will they practically know what sin is, and know what sins they need to fight against? They will not understand that God's Word has a real impact on their daily lives, and that God's Word is not only the story they hear at Bible reading time.

All our children were able to understand the biblical language of discipline, and so will yours when you just persist. Children need clear boundaries, and it is your job to provide them. It is a lot of work, but the fruits are marvelous.

No chaos, no mouthy children (generally) and response and obedience when you call them. This is not utopia, it can really happen in your household if you just take up your duties. Teach them to be polite to you (you are their Mother (or Father) (honour your father and mother) and to other adults, and to each other. Teach them to share and have care for others.

Show love for your wife by getting up from the couch and helping her even when you are tired. There are times she really needs help. This is a valuable lesson for your children. Children learn best by example. So watch how you speak to your wife (husband).

I sometimes hear some say, I wonder why so and so is never nominated for the office of elder or deacon, or you may think that of yourself. His family life may provide the answer. If children are insulting and disobedient to their parents, and home is a war zone, the father is not living up to his responsibilities. He cannot blame his wife, because he is the authority in the home. How can he, who cannot rule his own household well, rule the church of God? It is the husband’s responsibility to guide his wife and children to live according to the Word.

Maybe your parents did not raise you well either. Don’t perpetuate the mistakes of the forefathers. Discipline translates into self discipline in adults. Self discipline is something your children will badly need to study, and in the teenage years and to be dependable Christians in their vocations. Remember, when you are raising children you are shaping adults. How you raise your baby will impact your great grand children.
May the Lord bless you, and make you a blessing as you consider the above and what Mr. Ryle has to say below. CVD

The Duties of Parents

By J. C. Ryle (1816-1900)

"Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it."
[Proverbs 22:6]

I believe that most professing Christians are acquainted with our text. The sound of it is probably very familiar to your ears, like an old tune. It is likely that you have heard it, or read it, talked of it, or quoted it, many times. Is that not true?

But, despite it being a well-known Bible verse, how little do we regard its truth! The doctrine it contains appears scarcely known, the duty it puts before us is seldom put into practice. My friends, am I not speaking the truth?

It cannot be said that the subject is a new one. The world is old, and we have the experience of nearly six thousand years to help us. We live in days when there is a mighty zeal for education. We hear of new schools rising up everywhere. We are told of new systems, and new books for the young, of every sort and description. And still for all of this, the vast majority of children are clearly not trained in the way they should go, for when they grow up, they do not walk with God.

Now how do we account for this state of affairs? The plain truth is, the Lord's commandment in our text is not regarded; and therefore the Lord's promise in our text is not fulfilled.

Friends, these things may cause you to seriously search your hearts. Permit a word of exhortation from a minister, about the right training of children. Believe me, the subject is one that should hit home to every conscience, and make every one ask himself the question, "In the matter of training children, am I doing what I am supposed to do?"

It is a subject that concerns almost everyone. There is hardly a household that it does not touch. Parents, teachers, grandfathers, grandmothers, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters—all have an interest in it. Few can be found, I think, who might not influence some parent in the management of his family, or affect the training of some child by suggestion or advice. All of us, I suspect, can do something here, either directly or indirectly, and I wish to stir up everyone to remember this.

It is also a subject, on which everyone concerned are in great danger of falling short of their duty. This is notably a point in which men can see the faults of their neighbors more clearly than their own. They will often raise their children in the very path which they have denounced to their friends as unsafe. They will see little problems in other people's families, and overlook major ones in their own. They will have the eyesight of an eagle in detecting mistakes everywhere else, and yet be blind as bats to the fatal errors which are daily going on in their own homes. They will be wise about their brother's house, but foolish about their own flesh and blood. Here, if anywhere, we have need to suspect our own judgment. This, too, you will do well to keep in mind.

As a minister, I cannot help remarking that there is hardly any subject about which people seem so stubborn as they are about their own children. I have sometimes been absolutely astonished at the slowness of sensible Christian parents to accept the fact, that their own children are at fault, or deserve blame. There are many persons to whom I would much rather speak about their own sins, than to tell them that their children had done anything wrong.

Come now, and let me place before you a few hints about the proper training of children. May God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit bless them, and make them timely words to everyone of you. Do not reject them because they are blunt and simple; do not despise them because they contain nothing new. You can be sure, that if you want to train your children for heaven, then the hints that that follow ought not to be lightly set aside.

Hint #1. If you want to train your children correctly, train them in the way they should go, and not in the way that they want to go.

Remember children are born with a definite bias towards evil, and therefore if you let them choose for themselves, they are certain to choose wrong.

The mother cannot tell what her tender little infant may grow up to be—tall or short, weak or strong, wise or foolish—he may be any of these things or not—it is all uncertain. But one thing the mother can say with certainty: he will have a corrupt and sinful heart. It is natural for us to do wrong. "Folly," says Solomon, "is bound up in the heart of a child" [Proverbs 22:15]. "A child left to himself disgraces his mother" [Proverbs 29:15]. Our hearts are like the earth on which we walk; leave it alone, and it is sure to bear weeds.

If, then, you want to be wise in dealing with your child, then you must not leave him to the guidance of his own will. Think for him, judge for him, act for him, just as you would for one who is weak and blind; but for pity's sake, do not allow him to pursue his own unruly tastes and inclinations. It must not be his tendencies and wishes that are favored. He does not yet know what is good for his mind and soul, any more than what is good for his body. You do not let him decide what he will eat, and what he will drink, and how he will be clothed. Be consistent, and deal with his mind in the same manner. Train him in the way that is scriptural and right, and not in the way that he thinks is right.

If you cannot agree with this first principle of Christian training, then it is useless for you to listen any further. Self-will is almost the first thing that appears in a child's mind; and it must be your first step to resist it.

Hint #2. Train your child with all tenderness, affection, and patience.

I do not mean that you are to spoil him, but I do mean that you should let him see that you love him.

Love should be the golden thread that runs through all your actions in dealing with the child. Kindness, gentleness, tolerance, patience, sympathy, a willingness to enter into childish troubles, a readiness to take part in childish joys—these are the cords by which a child may be led most easily—these are the clues you must follow if you would find the way to his heart.

Most persons, even among grown-up people, are more easily led than they are to be pushed. There is that in all of our minds which rises up against compulsion; we straighten up our backs and stiffen our necks at the very thought of a forced obedience. We are like young horses in the hand of a trainer: handle them kindly, and they will learn quickly, and in time you may guide them with a piece of thread; but treat them and use them roughly and violently, and it will be many months before you get mastery over them—if at all.

Now children's minds are cast in much the same mold as our own. Sternness and severity of manner causes them to be unresponsive and to back away. It shuts up their hearts, and you will wear yourself out trying to find the door. But only let them see that you have an affectionate feeling towards them—that you really desire to make them happy, and do them good—that if you punish them, it is intended for their good, and that, like the pelican, you would give your heart's blood to nourish their souls; let them see this, and they will soon be yours to mold and shape. But they must be wooed with kindness, if you ever hope to win their attention.

And surely reason itself might teach us this lesson. Children are weak and tender creatures, and, as such, they need patient and considerate treatment. We must handle them delicately, like frail objects, lest by rough handling we do more harm than good. They are like young plants, and need gentle watering—often, only a little at a time.

We must not expect everything at once. We must remember what children are, and teach them as they are able to bear. Their minds are like a lump of metal—not to be forged and made useful all at once, but only after a succession of little blows of the forger’s hammer. Their ability to understand what we are teaching them is like the small opening of a wine bottle: we must pour in the wine of knowledge gradually, or else most of it will be spilled and lost. Our rule must be, "Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, a little here and a little there." The hard stone used to sharpen knives does its work slowly, but frequent rubbing will bring it to a fine edge. Truly there is a need of patience in this training of a child, for without it nothing can be done.

Nothing will compensate for the absence of this tenderness and love. A minister may speak the truth as it is in Jesus, clearly and with all authority; but if he does not speak it in love, few souls will be won. Likewise, you must set before your children their responsibilities to God—you can command, threaten, punish, and try to reason with them—but if love is missing in the way you treat them, then your labor will be all in vain.

Love is the one great secret of successful training. Anger and harshness may frighten them, but they will not persuade the child that you are right; and if he often sees you angry and harsh, you will soon cease to have his respect. A father who speaks to his son as Saul did to Jonathan, saying. "You son of a perverse and rebellious woman! Don't I know that you have sided with the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of the mother who bore you?" [1 Samuel 20:30], that father who speaks like this cannot expect to retain his influence over that son's mind.

Try hard to maintain your child's affections. It is a dangerous thing to make your children afraid of you. Anything is almost better than the coldness and bitterness that will come between you and your children, because they are afraid of you. Fear puts an end to openness between the parent and child—fear leads to concealment—fear sows the seed of hypocrisy, and leads to many lies. There is a great deal of truth in the Apostle's words to the Colossians: "Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged. [Colossians 3:21] Do not ignore his advice.

Hint #3. Train your children with a lasting conviction in your mind, that most of it depends on you.

Grace is the strongest of all principles. See what a great change grace effects when it comes into the heart of an old sinner—how it overturns the strongholds of Satan—how it throws down mountains, and fills up valleys—makes crooked things straight—and newly creates the whole man. Truly nothing is impossible for grace.

Nature, too, is very strong. See how it struggles against the things of the kingdom of God—how it fights against every attempt to be more holy—how it keeps up an unceasing warfare within us to the very last hour of life. Indeed, nature is strong.

But after nature and grace, undoubtedly, there is nothing more powerful than education. Early habits are very important. We are made what we are by training. Our character takes the form of that mold into which our first years are cast. It has been said, that, "Education has a tremendous effect on men's opinions and thinking habits. What children learn in the nursery, will be displayed throughout their lives."—Cecil.

We heavily depend on those who bring us up. We get from them a taste and a bias which clings to us most of the days of our lives. We learn the language of our mothers and fathers, and learn to speak it almost without thinking, and unquestionably we catch something of their manners, ways, and mind at the same time. Time will tell, how much we all owe to early impressions, and how many things in us may be traced back to the seeds sown in the days of our infancy, by those who were around us. A very educated Englishman, has gone so far as to say: "That of all the men we meet with, nine out of ten are what they are, good or bad, useful or not, according to their education"—Locke

And all this is one of God's merciful arrangements. He gives your children a mind that will receive impressions like moist clay. He gives them a disposition at the starting-point of life to believe what you tell them, and to take for granted what you advise them, and to trust your word rather than a stranger's. He gives you, in short, a golden opportunity of doing them good. See that you do not neglect such an opportunity. Once you let it slip, it is gone forever.

Beware of that miserable delusion into which some have fallen—that parents can do nothing for their children, that you must leave them alone, wait for grace, and sit still. These parents would like their children to die the death of the righteous person, but they do nothing to help them live a righteous life. They have great hope, but they receive nothing. And the devil rejoices to see such thinking, just as he always does over anything which seems to excuse laziness, or to encourage neglect.

I know that you cannot convert your child. I know that they who are born again are born, not of the will of man, but of God. But I also know that God specifically says, "Train a child in the way he should go," and that He never gave a command to men and women which He would not give them the grace to perform. And I also know that our duty is not to stand still and dispute the command, but to go forward and obey it. It is only when we move out in obedience that God will meet us. The path of obedience is the way in which He gives the blessing. We only have to do as the servants were commanded at the marriage feast in Cana, to fill the water-pots with water, and we may safely leave it to the Lord to turn that water into wine.

Hint #4. Train with this thought continually before your eyes—that the soul of your child is the first thing to be considered.

Precious, no doubt, are these little ones in your eyes; but if you truly love them, then often think about their souls. Nothing should concern you as greatly as their eternal destiny. No part of them should be so dear to you as that part which will never die. The world, with all its glory, will pass away; "The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare." But the spirit which dwells in those little creatures, whom you love so well, will outlive them all, and whether they spend eternity in happiness or misery will depend a lot on you (speaking from man’s perspective).

This is the thought that should be uppermost on your mind in all that you do for your children. In every step you take about them, in every plan, and scheme, and arrangement that concerns them, do not leave out that mighty question, "How will this affect their souls?"

To love the soul is to really love. To pet and pamper and indulge your child, as if this world was all he had to look forward to, and this life the only period of happiness—to do this is not true love, but cruelty. It is treating him like some beast of the earth, which has only one world to look to, and nothing after death. It is hiding from him that grand truth, which he ought to be made to learn from his very infancy—that the number one goal of his life is the salvation of his soul.

A true Christian must not be a slave to what’s currently "in-fashion," if he wants to train his child for heaven. He must not be content to teach them and instruct them in certain ways, merely because it is customary, or to allow them to read books of a questionable sort, merely because everybody else reads them, or to let them form bad habits, merely because they are the habits of the day. He must train with an eye to his children's souls. He must not be ashamed to hear his training called odd and strange. What if it is? The time is short—the customs of this world are passing away. He that has trained his children for heaven, rather than for the earth—for God, rather than for man—he is the parent that will be called wise in the end.

Hint #5. Train your child to have a knowledge of the Bible.

You cannot make your children love the Bible, I admit. No one but the Holy Spirit can give us a heart to delight in the Word. But you can make sure that your children are acquainted with the Bible; and remember that they can never become acquainted with that blessed book too soon, or too well.

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is the foundation of all proper views of true religion. He that is well-grounded in the Bible will not generally be found to be a person who wavers in his beliefs. He will not be blown and tossed by every wind of new doctrine. Any system of training which does not make the knowledge of Scripture the first priority is unsafe and unsound.

You need to be very careful on this point, for the devil is in the world, and false doctrine abounds. Some are to be found among us who wrongly give to the Church the honor that is due to Jesus Christ. Some are to be found who make "rituals and forms" into saviors and passports to eternal life. And some are to be found in like manner who honor a catechism more than the Bible, or fill the minds of their children with miserable little story-books, instead of the Scripture of truth. But if you love your children, let the simple truths of the Bible be everything in the training of their souls; and let all other books take second place.

Do not care so much for your children being mighty in the catechism, as for them being mighty in the Scriptures. This is the training, believe me, that God will honor. The Psalmist says to God, "You have exalted above all things Your name and Your word." [Psalm 138:2] and I think that He gives a special blessing to everyone who tries to magnify His Word and His Name among children.

See that your children read the Bible reverently. Train them to look upon it, not as the word of men, but as it truly is, the Word of God, written by the Holy Spirit Himself—all true, all profitable, and able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

See that they read it regularly. Train them to regard it as their soul's daily food—as something essential to their soul's daily health. I well know that you cannot make this anything more than a form; but there is no telling the amount of sin which a mere form may indirectly restrain.

See that they read it all. You need not shrink from bringing any doctrine before them. You need not assume that the leading doctrines of Christianity are things which children cannot understand. Children understand far more of the Bible than we are apt to suppose.

Tell them of sin, its guilt, its consequences, its power, its vileness: you will find they can comprehend this.

Tell them of the Lord Jesus Christ, and His work for our salvation—the atonement, the cross, the blood, the sacrifice, the intercession: you will discover that it is not beyond them to understand.

Tell them of the work of the Holy Spirit in man's heart, how He changes, and renews, and sanctifies, and purifies: you will soon see they can follow your teaching to some degree. In short, I believe that we have no idea how much a little child can take in of the length and breadth of the glorious gospel. They understand far more of these things than we suppose.

As to the age when the religious instruction of a child should begin, no general rule can be laid down. The mind seems to open in some children much more quickly than in others. We seldom begin too early. There are wonderful examples on record of what a child can attain to, even at three years of age.

Fill their minds with Scripture. Let the Word dwell in them richly. Give them the Bible, the whole Bible, even while they are young.

Hint #6. Train them to have a habit of prayer.

Prayer is the very life-breath of true religion. It is one of the first evidences that a man is born again. "Behold," said the Lord of Saul, in the day he sent Ananias to him, "Behold, he is praying" [Acts 9:11, KJV]. He had begun to pray, and that was proof enough. Prayer was the distinguishing mark of the Lord's people in the day that there began to be a separation between them and the world. The Bible says, "At that time men began to call on the name of the LORD" [Genesis 4:26].

Prayer is the distinction of all real Christians. They pray—for they tell God their needs, their feelings, their desires, their fears; and they mean what they say. The person who is a Christian in name only may repeat prayers over and over, but he goes no further. Prayer is the turning-point in a man's soul. Our ministry is unprofitable, and our labor is in vain, until you are brought to your knees. Till then, we have no hope for you.

Prayer is the one great secret of spiritual prosperity. When there is frequent private communion with God, your soul will grow like the grass after the rain; when the communication is infrequent, everything will come to a stop, you will barely keep your soul alive. Show me a growing Christian, a strong Christian, a flourishing Christian, and I am sure, that he is one that speaks often with his Lord. He asks much, and he has much. He tells Jesus everything, and so he always knows how to act.

Prayer is the mightiest weapon that God has placed in our hands. It is the best weapon to use in every difficulty, and the surest remedy in every trouble. It is the key that unlocks the treasury of promises, and the hand that draws forth grace and help in time of need. It is the silver trumpet that God commands us to sound in all our necessity, and it is the cry He has promised always to listen to, just as a loving mother listens attentively to the voice of her child.

Prayer is the simplest means that man can use in coming to God. It is within the reach of everyone—the sick, the aged, the paralytic, the blind, the poor, the uneducated—everyone can pray. It gains you nothing to plead your need of learning, and need of books, and your need of scholarship in this matter. So long as you have a tongue to speak of your soul's state, you must and should pray. Those words, "You do not have, because you do not ask God." [James 4:2], will be a fearful condemnation to many in the day of judgment.

Parents, if you love your children, do all that lies within your power to train them to have a habit of prayer. Show them how to begin. Tell them what to say. Encourage them to persevere. Remind them that if they become careless and slack about it. Let it not be your fault, if they never call on the name of the Lord.

Remember, that this is the first step in religion which a child is able to take. Long before he can read, you can teach him to kneel by his mother's side, and repeat the simple words of prayer and praise which she puts in his mouth. And as the first steps in any undertaking are always the most important, so is the manner in which your children's prayers are prayed, a point which deserves your closest attention. Few seem to know how much depends on this. You must be careful that they don’t say their prayers in a hasty, careless, and irreverent manner. You must beware of giving up the oversight of this matter to others, or of trusting too much to your children doing it when left to themselves. I cannot praise that mother who never personally looks after this most important part of her child's daily life. Surely if there is any habit which your own hand and eye should help in forming, it is the habit of prayer. Believe me, if you never hear your children pray yourself, you are much to blame. You are not much wiser than the bird described in the Book of Job, "She lays her eggs on the ground and lets them warm in the sand, unmindful that a foot may crush them, that some wild animal may trample them. She treats her young harshly, as if they were not hers; she cares not that her labor was in vain." [Job 39:14-16]

Prayer is, of all habits, the one which we remember the longest. Many an elderly man could tell you how his mother used to make him pray in the days of his childhood. Other things have passed away from his mind perhaps, but not this. The church where he was taken to worship, the minister whom he heard preach, the companions who used to play with him—all these have passed from his memory, and left no mark behind. But you will often find it is far different with his first prayers. He will often be able to tell you where he knelt, and what he was taught to say, and even how his mother looked while they prayed together. It will be as fresh in his mind as if it was only yesterday.

Oh, dear friend, if you love your children, I charge you, do not let the early impression of a habit of prayer slip by. If you train your children to do anything, train them, at least, to have a habit of prayer.

Hint #7. Train them to be faithful and regular in attending church and the Lord’s Supper.

Tell them of the duty and privilege of going to Church, and joining in the prayers of the congregation. Tell them that wherever the Lord's people are gathered together, there the Lord Jesus is present in a special way, and that those who are absent must expect, like the Apostle Thomas, to miss out on a blessing. Tell them of the importance of hearing the Word of God preached, and that it is God's ordained way of converting, sanctifying, and building up the souls of men. Tell them how the Apostle Paul commands us not to "give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but to encourage one another—and all the more as we see the Day approaching." [Hebrews 10:25]

It is a sad sight in a church when nobody comes to the Lord's Table but the older people, and the young men and the young women all turn away. But it is a sadder sight still when no children are to be seen in a church, except those who come to the Sunday School, and are often obliged to attend. Let none of this guilt lie at your doors. There are many boys and girls in every city, besides those who come to Sunday School, and you who are their parents and friends should see to it that they come with you to church.

Do not allow them to grow up with a habit of making vain excuses for not coming. Make them clearly understand, that so long as they are under your roof, it is the rule of your house for every one in good health to honor the Lord on the Lord's day, and that you believe that the healthy person who refuses to go to church on the Lord’s Day brings great harm to his soul.

Also see to it, if it can be arranged, that your children go with you to church, and sit near you when they are there. To go to church is one thing, but to behave well at church is quite another. And believe me, there is no guarantee for good behavior like that of having them under your own watchful eye.

The minds of young people are easily distracted, and their attention lost, and every possible means should be used to counteract this. I do not like to see them coming to church by themselves—they often get into bad company, and so learn more evil on the Lord's day than in all the rest of the week. Neither do I like to see what I call "a young people's corner" in a church. They often catch habits of inattention and irreverence there, which it takes years to unlearn, if they are ever unlearned at all. What I like to see is a whole family sitting together, old and young, side by side—men, women, and children, serving God as a family.

But there are some who say that it is useless to urge children to attend church and the Lord’s Supper, because they are too young to understand them.

Do not listen to such reasoning. I find no such doctrine in the Old Testament. When Moses goes before Pharaoh, I observe that he says, "We will go with our young and old, with our sons and daughters, because we are to celebrate a festival to the LORD." [Exodus 10:9] When Joshua read God’s Law, I notice that the Bible says, "There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshua did not read to the whole assembly of Israel, including the women and children." [Joshua 8:35] And when I turn to the New Testament, I find children mentioned there as partaking in public acts of religion as well as in the Old Testament. When Paul was leaving the disciples at Tyre for the last time, he said, "We left and continued on our way. All the disciples and their wives and children accompanied us out of the city, and there on the beach we knelt to pray." [Acts 21:5]

Samuel, in the days of his childhood, appears to have ministered to the Lord some time before he really knew Him, the Bible says, "Samuel did not yet know the LORD: The word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him." [1 Samuel 3:7] The Apostles themselves do not seem to have understood all that our Lord said at the time that it was spoken: "At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about Him." [John 12:16]

Parents, comfort your minds with these examples. Do not be discouraged because your children do not see the full value of church and the Lord’s Supper now. Just train them to have a habit of regular attendance. Set it before their minds as a high, holy, and solemn duty, and believe me, the day will very likely come when they will bless you for your efforts.

Hint #8. Train them to have a habit of faith.

By this I mean, you should train them to believe what you say. You should try to make them feel confidence in your judgment, and respect your opinions, as better than their own. You should cause them to think that, when you say a thing is bad for them, it must be bad, and when you say it is good for them, it must be good; that your knowledge, in short, is better than their own, and that they may rely implicitly on your word. Teach them to feel that what they do not know now, they will probably know later, and to be satisfied there is a reason for everything you require them to do.

Who can describe the blessedness of a real spirit of faith? Or rather, who can tell the misery that unbelief has brought on the world? Unbelief made Eve eat the forbidden fruit—she doubted the truth of God's word: "You will surely die." Unbelief made the old world reject Noah's warning, and so perish in their sin. Unbelief kept Israel in the wilderness—it was the barricade that kept them from entering the promised land. Unbelief made the Jews crucify the Lord of glory—they did not believe the voice of Moses and the prophets, even though they were read to them every day. And unbelief is the reigning sin of man's heart down to this very hour—unbelief in God's promises—unbelief in God's wrath and discipline—unbelief in our own sinfulness—unbelief in our own danger—unbelief in everything that runs counter to the pride and worldliness of our evil hearts. Your training of your children is worth very little if you do not train them to have a habit of implicit faith—faith in their parents' word, confidence that what their parents say must be right.

I have heard it said by some, that you should require nothing of children which they cannot understand, and that you should explain and give a reason for everything you desire them to do. I solemnly warn you against such a notion. I tell you plainly, I think it is an unsound and corrupt principle. No doubt it is absurd to make a mystery of everything you do, and there are many things which it is good to explain to children, in order that they may see that what we say is reasonable and wise. But to bring them up with the idea that they must take nothing on trust, that they, with their weak and imperfect comprehension, must have the " why " and the "wherefore" made clear to them at every step they take—this is indeed a fearful mistake, and likely to have the worst effect on their minds.

At certain times, if you are so inclined, reason with your child, but never forget to keep in mind (if you really love him) that he is only a child—that he thinks as a child, he understands as a child, and therefore must not always expect to know the reason for everything.

Set before him the example of Isaac, in the day when Abraham took him to offer him as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah [Genesis 22]. Isaac asked his father a simple question, "Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" and he got no answer but this, "Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb." How, or where, or when, or in what manner, or by what means—all this Isaac was not told; but the answer was enough. He believed that it would all be okay, because his father said so, and he was content.

Also, tell your children, that we must all be learners in all of our beginnings, that there is an alphabet to be mastered in every kind of knowledge—that the best horse in the world once needed to be broken—that a day will come when they will see the wisdom of all your training. But in the meantime if you say a thing is right, it must be enough for them—they must believe you, and be content.

Parents, if any point in training is important, it is this. I charge you by the love that you have for your children, use every means to train them to have a habit of faith.

Hint #9. Train them to have a habit of obedience.

This is a goal which is worth any amount of effort to attain. No habit, I believe, has such an influence over our lives as this. Parents, determine to make your children obey you, though it may cost you a lot of trouble, and cost them many tears. Let there be no questioning, and reasoning, and disputing, and delaying. When you give them a command, let them clearly see that you expect them to do it.

Obedience is the only reality. It is faith visible, faith acting, and faith manifest. It is the test of real discipleship among the Lord's people. Jesus said, "You are my friends if you do what I command." [John 15:14] It ought to be the mark of well-trained children, that they do whatever their parents command them. Where, in fact, is the honor which the fifth commandment directs, if fathers and mothers are not obeyed cheerfully, willingly, and at once?

Early obedience has all Scripture on its side. It was Abraham who said, that he will not only train his family, but "that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just." [Genesis 18:19 It is said of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, that when He was young, He was obedient to Mary and Joseph. [Luke 2:51] Observe how implicitly Joseph obeyed the order of his father Jacob in Genesis 37:13. See how Isaiah speaks of disobedience as an evil thing, when he says, "the young will rise up against the old." [Isaiah 3:5] Note how the Apostle Paul names disobedience to parents as one of the terrible sins of the last days. [2 Timothy 3:2] Note how he singles out the obedience of children as one of the requirements of a Christian minister, saying, "He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect." [1 Timothy 3:4] And again that, "a deacon must manage his children and his household well." [1 Timothy 3:12] And again, an elder must be "a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient." [Titus 1:6]

Parents, do you want to see your children happy? Be careful, then, that you train them to obey when they are spoken to—to do as they are told. Believe me, we are not made to be entirely independent—we are not fit for it. Even those whom Christ has set free have a yoke to wear, they "are serving the Lord Christ." [Colossians 3:24] Children cannot learn too soon that this is a world in which not everyone was intended to rule, and that we are never in our right place until we know how to obey those over us. Teach them to obey while they are young, or else they will be protesting against God all their lives, and wear themselves out with the vain idea of being independent of His control.

My friends, what I suggest to you is greatly needed. You will see many in this day who allow their children to choose and think for themselves long before they are able, and even make excuses for their disobedience, as if they were not to be blamed for it. In my eyes, a parent who is always yielding, and a child who always has its own way, are a most painful sight—painful, because I see God's appointed order of things inverted and turned upside down—painful, because I feel sure the consequence to that child's character in the end will be self-will, pride, and conceit. Is it any wonder that men refuse to obey their Father who is in heaven, if you allow them, when children, to disobey their father who is on earth.

Parents, if you love your children, let obedience be a motto and a watchword continually before their eyes.

Hint #10. Train them to have a habit of always speaking the truth.

Speaking the truth is far less common in the world than we may suspect. The whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is a golden rule which many would do well to bear in mind. Lying and deception are old sins of the past. The devil was the father of them—he deceived Eve by a bold lie, and ever since the fall of man it is a sin which all the children of Eve have to guard against.

Think about how much falsehood and deceit there is in the world! How much exaggeration! How many untruths are added to a simple story! How many things are left out, if it does not serve the speaker's interest to tell them! How few there are around us of whom we can say, that we trust their word without question! Truly, the ancient Persians were wise in their generation: it was a most important rule with them in educating their children, that they should learn to speak the truth. What an awful evidence of man's natural sinfulness, that we should have to mention such a point at all!

My friend, think how often God is spoken of in the Old Testament as the God of truth. Truth seems to be especially set before us as a leading feature in the character of Him to whom we are subject to. He never swerves from the straight line. He abhors lying and hypocrisy. Try to keep this continually before your children's minds. Press upon them at all times, that anything less than the truth is a lie; that evasion, making excuses, and exaggeration are all halfway houses towards what is false, and ought to be avoided. Encourage them in any circumstances to be straightforward, and, whatever it may cost them, to always speak the truth.

I bring this subject to your attention, not merely for the sake of your children's character in the world, but rather for your own comfort and assistance in all your dealings with them. You will find it a great help, to always be able to trust their word. It will go far to prevent that habit of concealment, which so often prevails among children. Openness and straightforwardness depends a lot on a parent's treatment of this matter in the early days of our childhood.

Hint #11. Train them to have a habit of always redeeming the time.

Idleness is the devil's best friend. It is the surest way to give him an opportunity of doing us some harm. An idle mind is like an open door, and if Satan does not come through it himself, it is certain he will throw something in to arouse bad thoughts in us.

No created being was ever meant to be idle. Service and work is the appointed portion of every creature of God. The angels in heaven work—they are the Lord's ministering servants, always doing His will. Adam, in Paradise, had work—he was appointed to work and take care of the garden of Eden. And man, weak, sinful man, must have something to do, or else his soul will soon get into an unhealthy state. We must keep our hands busy, and our minds occupied with something, or else our imaginations will soon ferment and breed mischief.

And what is true of us, is true of our children too. The Jews thought idleness was an absolute sin: it was a law of theirs that every man should train his son in some useful trade—and they were right. They knew the heart of man better than some of us appear to today.

Idleness made the wicked city of Sodom what she was. [Ezekiel 16:49] Idleness had a lot to do with King David's awful sin with the wife of Uriah. I see in the Book of 2 Samuel, chapter 11, that Joab went off to war against the Ammonites, "but David remained in Jerusalem." Was that not idleness? And it was during that time of idleness that he saw Bathsheba—and the next step we read of is his tremendous and miserable fall into the sin of adultery.

Truly, I believe that idleness has led to more sin than almost any other habit that could be named. I suspect it is the mother of many sins of the flesh—the mother of adultery, sexual immorality, drunkenness, and many other deeds of darkness that I do not have time to name. Let your own conscience say whether I speak the truth or not. You were once idle, and immediately the devil knocked at the door and came in.

And why should this surprise us—everything in the world around us seems to teach the same lesson. It is the still water which becomes stagnant and impure: the running, moving streams are always clear. If you have machinery, you must run it now and then, or it soon begins to rust or break down. If you have a horse, you must exercise him; or he will not be strong for regular work. If you want to have good bodily health yourself, you must exercise. If you always sit still, then in time your body will complain. And so is it with the soul. The active moving mind is a hard target for the devil to shoot at. Try to be always full of useful employment, and thus your enemy will find it difficult to get room to plant evil thoughts.

My friend, I ask you to set these things before the minds of your children. Teach them the value of time, and try to make them learn the habit of using it well. It pains me to see children wasting time. I love to see them active and industrious, and giving their whole heart to all they do; giving their whole heart to lessons, when they have to learn—giving their whole heart even when they are playing.

But if you really love your children, then let idleness be counted as a sin in your family.

Hint #12. As you train your children, make sure that you maintain a constant fear of being an over-indulgent parent.

This is the one point out of all the rest on which you have the most need to be on your guard. It is natural to be tender and affectionate towards your own flesh and blood, and it is the excess of this very tenderness and affection which you have to fear. Be careful that it does not make you blind to your children's faults, and deaf to all the advice that I am giving to you. Be careful that your love for them does not make you overlook their bad conduct, rather than you experiencing the pain of inflicting punishment and correction.

I am very aware that punishment and correction are disagreeable things. Nothing is more unpleasant than giving pain to those we love, and causing them to cry. But so long as hearts are what hearts are, it is vain to suppose, as a general rule, that children can ever be brought up without correction.

Spoiling is a very expressive word, and sadly full of meaning. Now the quickest way to spoil children is to let them have their own way—to allow them to do wrong and not to punish them for it. Believe me, you must not do this, whatever pain it may cost you unless you wish to ruin your children's souls.

You cannot say that Scripture does not specifically speak on this subject, listen to God’s Holy Word:

"He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him." [Proverbs 13:24]

"Discipline your son, for in that there is hope; do not be a willing party to his death." [Proverbs 19:18]

"Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him." [Proverbs 22:15]

"Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die. Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death." [Proverbs 23:13, 14]

"The rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a child left to himself disgraces his mother." [Proverbs 29:15]

"Discipline your son, and he will give you peace; he will bring delight to your soul." [Proverbs 29:17]

Oh, how strong and compelling are these verses! How sad it is, that in many Christian families they seem almost unknown! Their children need reproof, but it is hardly ever given; they need correction, but it is hardly ever employed. And yet this book of Proverbs is not obsolete and unfit for Christians. It is given by the inspiration of God, and is beneficial. It is given for our learning, even as the Epistles to the Romans and Ephesians. Surely the believer who brings up his children without paying attention to the wisdom of these verses is making himself wise above that which is written, and greatly errs.

Fathers and mothers, I tell you plainly, if you never punish your children when they are at fault, you are doing them a grievous wrong. I warn you, this is the great mistake made by saints of God, in every age, and they have suffered greatly because of it. I beg you to be wise, and avoid making such foolish mistakes. We can see it in Eli's case. His sons Hophni and Phinehas "made themselves contemptible, and he failed to restrain them." [1 Samuel 3:13] He gave them no more than a tame and lukewarm reproof, when he ought to have rebuked them sharply. In one word, he honored his sons above God. And what was the final result? Eli lived to hear of the death of both of his sons in battle, and upon hearing the news he fell over and died, taking the sorrow with him, down to the grave [1 Samuel 2:22-29].

See, also, the case of David. Who can read without pain the history of his children, and their sins? Amnon's incest—Absalom's murder and proud rebellion—Adonijah's scheming ambition: truly these were grievous wounds for the man after God's own heart to receive from his own house. But was he not at fault? I fear there can be no doubt that he was. I find a clue to it all in the account of Adonijah in 1 Kings 1:6, listen to the Scriptures, "His father had never interfered with him by asking, ‘Why do you behave as you do?’" That was the foundation of all the evil. David was an over-indulgent father—a father who let his children have their own way—and he reaped according to what he had sown.

Parents, I plead with you, for your children's sake, beware of over-indulgence. I call on you to remember, that it is your primary duty to consult their real interests, and not their whims and fantasies—to train them, not to humor them—to train them for their benefit, not merely to please them.

You must not give way to every wish and whim of your child's mind, no matter how much you may love him. You must not let him assume that his will is all-important, and that he has only to desire something and it will be done. Do not, I beg you, make your children idols, lest God should take them away, and break your idol, just to convince you of your folly.

Learn to say "No" to your children. Show them that you are able to refuse whatever you think is not right for them. Show them that you are ready to punish disobedience, and that when you speak of punishment, you are not only ready to threaten, but also to perform. Do not threaten too much. Seldom punish, but when you do, make it sincere and firm—frequent and light punishment is truly a wretched system of discipline.

Some parents have a way of saying, "Naughty child," to a boy or girl on every slight occasion, and often without good cause. It is a very foolish habit. Words of condemnation should never be used without real reason.

As to the best way of punishing a child, no general rule can be laid down. The characters of children are so vastly different, that what would be a severe punishment to one child, would be no punishment at all to another. I am emphatically opposed to the modern notion that no child ought ever to be whipped. Doubtless some parents use bodily correction far too much, and far too violently; but many others, I fear, use it far too little.

Beware of letting small faults pass unnoticed under the idea "it is a little one." There are no little things in training children; all are important. Little weeds need plucking up as much as any. Leave them alone, and they will soon be large and overpowering.

Friend, if there is any point which deserves your attention, believe me, it is this one. It is one that will give you trouble, I know. But if you are not willing to put forth the effort, it will take, to discipline your children when they are young, then be assured they will give you plenty of trouble when they are old. Choose which you prefer.

Hint #13. As you train your children, continually remember how God trains His children.

The Bible tells us that God has an elect people—a family in this world. All sinners who have been convinced of sin, and fled to Jesus for peace, make up that family. All of us who really believe in Christ for salvation are its members.

Now God the Father is always training the members of this family for their everlasting home with Him in heaven. He acts like a farmer pruning his vines, that they may bear more fruit. He knows the character of each one of us—our besetting sins—our weaknesses—our special needs. He knows our deeds and where we live, who our companions in life are, and what our trials are, what our temptations are, and what our privileges are. He knows all these things, and is always working out everything for our good. He allots to each of us, in His providence, the very things we need, in order to bear the most fruit—He gives us as much sunshine and rain as we can stand—as much of bitter things as we can bear, and as much of sweet things that would be good for us. Dear friend, if you want to train your children wisely, note well how God the Father trains His children. He does all things well; the plan which He adopts must be right.

Notice, too, how many things there are which God withholds from His children. The majority of His children, have had desires which God has determined not to fulfill. There has often been some one thing they wanted to attain, and yet there has always been some barrier to prevent fulfillment. It has been just as if God was placing it above our reach, and saying, "This is not good for you; this must not be." Moses greatly desired to cross over the Jordan, and see the land of promise; but you will remember his desire was never granted.

Notice, also, how often God leads His people by ways which seem dark and mysterious to our eyes. We cannot see the meaning of all His dealings with us; we cannot see the reasonableness of the path in which our feet are walking. Sometimes so many trials have assaulted us—so many difficulties surrounded us—that we have not been able to discover the purpose of it all. It has been just as if our Father was taking us by the hand into a dark place and saying, "Don’t ask any questions, but just follow Me." There was a direct road from Egypt to Canaan, yet Israel was not led into it; but round and round, through the wilderness. And this seemed very hard at the time. "The soul of the people," we are told, "became very discouraged on the way." [Exodus 13:17; Numbers 21:4]

Also, see how often God chastens His people with trial and affliction. He sends them crosses and disappointments; He lays them low with sickness; He strips them of property and friends; He changes them from one position in life to another; He visits them with things that are most difficult to flesh and blood; and some of us have almost fainted under the burdens laid on us. We have felt pressed beyond strength, and have been almost ready to murmur at the hand which chastened us. Paul the Apostle had a thorn in the flesh assigned to him, some bitter bodily trial, no doubt, though we do not know exactly what it was. But this we do know—he pleaded with the Lord three times that it might be removed; yet it was not taken away [2 Corinthians 12:8, 9].

Now, dear friends, despite all these things, did you ever hear of a single child of God who thought his Father did not treat him wisely? No, I am sure you never did. God's children will always tell you, in the long run, it was a blessed thing they did not have their own way, and that God had done far better for them than they could have done for themselves. Yes! And they could tell you, too, that God's dealings had provided more happiness for them than they ever would have obtained themselves, and that His way, however dark at times, was the way of joy and the path of peace.

I ask you to take to heart the lesson which God's dealings with His people is meant to teach you. Do not be afraid to withhold from your child anything you think will do him harm, whatever his own wishes may be. This is God's plan.

Do not hesitate to give him commands, of which he may not presently see the wisdom, and to guide him in ways which may not now seem reasonable to his mind. This is God's plan.

Do not shrink from chastising and correcting him whenever you see his soul's health requires it, however painful it may be to your feelings; and remember medicines for the mind must not be rejected because they are bitter. This is God's plan.

And, above all, do not be afraid that such a plan of training will make your child unhappy. I warn you against this delusion. Depend on it, the road to unhappiness is always having our own way. To have our wills checked and denied is a blessed thing for us; it makes us value enjoyments when they come. To be perpetually indulged is the way to become selfish; and selfish people and spoiled children, believe me, are seldom happy.

Brethren, do not pretend to be wiser than God—train your children as He trains His.

Hint #14. Train them, remembering continually, the influence of your own example.

Instruction, and advice, and commands will profit little, unless they are backed up by the pattern of your own life. Your children will never believe you are serious, and really wish them to obey you, so long as your actions contradict your instruction. One minister I know, made a wise remark when he said, "To give children good instruction, and a bad example, is the same as pointing out to them the way to heaven, while we take them by the hand and lead them down the road to hell." [Tillotson]

We have no idea of the force and power of example. None of us can live to himself in this world; we are always influencing those around us, in one way or another, either for good or for evil, either for God or for sin. They see our ways, they note our conduct, they observe our behavior, and what they see us do, they assume we think is right. And never, I believe, does example tell so powerfully as it does in the case of parents and children.

Fathers and mothers, do not forget that children learn more by the eye than they do by the ear. No school will ever make such deep marks on character as does the examples found in the home. The best of school teachers will not imprint on your children’s minds as much as they will pick up in your living room. Imitation is a far stronger principle with children than memory. What they see has a much stronger effect on their minds than what they are told.

Be careful, then, how you act in front of a child. It is a true adage, "He who sins in front of a child, sins double." Strive to be a living epistle of Christ, so your families can clearly read it. Be an example of reverence for the Word of God, reverence in prayer, reverence at the Lord’s Table, reverence for the Lord's day. Be an example in words, in temper, in diligence, in moderation, in faith, in love, in kindness, and in humility. Do not think for a moment that your children will practice what they do not see you do. You are their model, and they will copy what you are. Your reasoning and your lecturing, your wise commands and your good advice; all this they may not understand, but they can understand your life.

Children are very quick observers; very quick in seeing through some kinds of hypocrisy, very quick in finding out what you really think and feel, very quick in adopting all your ways and opinions. You will often discover that, as the father is, so is the son.

Remember the word that the conqueror Caesar always used to his soldiers in a battle. He did not say "Go forward," but "Come." So it must be with you in training your children. They will seldom learn habits which they see you despise, or walk in paths in which you do not walk yourself. He that preaches to his children what he does not practice, is wasting his time. It is like the old fabled web of Penelope, who wove all day, and unwove all night. Even so, the parent who tries to train without setting a good example is building with one hand, and tearing down with the other.

Hint #15. Train them, remembering continually, the power of sin.

You must not expect to find your children's minds a sheet of pure white paper, and to have no trouble if you only use right means. I warn you plainly you will find no such thing. It is painful to see how much corruption and evil there is in a young child's heart, and how soon it begins to bear fruit. Violent tempers, self-will, pride, envy, irritability, passion, idleness, selfishness, deceit, cunning, lying, hypocrisy, a terrible aptitude to learn what is bad, a painful slowness to learn what is good, a readiness to pretend anything in order to gain their own ends—all these things, or some of them, you must be prepared to see, even in your own flesh and blood. In little ways they will creep out at a very early age; it is almost startling to observe how naturally they seem to spring up. Children require no schooling to learn how to sin.

But you must not be discouraged and depressed by what you see. You must not think it a strange and unusual thing, that little hearts can be so full of sin. It is the only inheritance which our father Adam left us; it is that fallen nature with which we come into the world; it is that inheritance which belongs to us all. May the awareness of it make you more diligent in using every possible means which seem most likely, by God's blessing, to counteract the evil. Let it make you more and more careful, so far it lies with you, to keep your children out of the way of temptation.

Never listen to those who tell you your children are good, and well brought up, and can be trusted. Rather, remember that their hearts are always ready to burst into flame like dry tinder. At their very best, they only need a spark to ignite their evil. Parents are seldom too cautious. Remember the natural depravity of your children, and be careful.

Hint #16. Train them, remembering continually, the promises of Scripture.

This point is meant to guard you against discouragement.

You have an absolute promise on your side, "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." [Proverbs 22:6] Think what it is to have such a promise like this. Promises were the only lamp of hope which cheered the hearts of the patriarchs before the Bible was written. Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph—all lived on a few promises, and prospered in their souls. Promises are the energizers which in every age have supported and strengthened the believer. He that has a clear text of Scripture on his side need never be depressed. Fathers and mothers, when your hearts are failing, and ready to give up, look at the words of this text, and take comfort.

Think about who it is that promises. It is not the word of a man, who may lie or repent; it is the Word of the King of kings, who never changes. Has He ever said something, and not done it? Or has He ever spoken a promise, that He will not make good? Neither is anything too hard for Him to perform. The things that are impossible with men are possible with God. Oh, my friend, if we do not receive the benefit of the promise we are dwelling upon, then the fault is not in Him, but in ourselves.

Think, too, what the promise contains, before you refuse to take comfort from it. It speaks of a certain time when good training will especially bear fruit—"when he is old." Surely there is comfort in this. You may not see with your own eyes the result of careful training, for you do not know what blessed fruits may spring from it, long after you are dead and gone. It is not God's way to give everything at once. "Later" is the time when He often chooses to work, both in the things of nature and in the things of grace. "Later" is the season when affliction bears the peaceable fruit of righteousness. [Hebrews 12:11] "Later" was the time when the son who refused to work in his father's vineyard repented and went [Matthew 21:29]. And "later" is the time to which parents must look forward to if they do not quickly see success—you must sow in hope and plant in hope.

"Cast your bread upon the waters," says the Spirit, "for after many days you will find it again." [Ecclesiastes 11:1] I do not doubt, that many children, will rise up in the day of judgment, and bless their parents for good training, who never gave any signs of having profited by it during their parents' lives. Go forward then in faith, and be sure that your labor will not totally be wasted. Three times, Elijah stretch himself upon the widow's child before it revived. Use him as an example and persevere.

Hint #17. Lastly, train them with continual prayer for a blessing on all you do.

Without the blessing of the Lord, your best efforts will do no good. He has the hearts of all men in His hands, and unless He touches the hearts of your children by His Spirit, you will wear yourself out for nothing. Therefore, water the seed you sow in their minds with unceasing prayer. The Lord is far more willing to hear than we are to pray; far more ready to give blessings than we are to ask them—and, oh, how He loves to be petitioned for our children. And I set this matter of prayer before you, as the capstone and seal of all you do. I believe the child of many prayers is seldom cast away.

Look upon your children as Jacob did on his; he tells Esau they are "the children God has graciously given your servant." [Genesis 33:5] Look on them as Joseph did on his; he told his father, "They are the sons God has given me here," [Genesis 48:9] Count them with the Psalmist to be "a heritage from the LORD. . . .a reward from Him." [Psalm 127:3] And then ask the Lord, with a holy boldness, to be gracious and merciful to His own gifts. Note how Abraham intercedes for Ishmael, because he loved him, "And Abraham said to God, "If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!" [Genesis 17:18] See how Manoah speaks to the angel about Samson, saying, "what is to be the rule for the boy's life and work?" [Judges 13:12] Observe how tenderly Job cared for his children's souls, "He would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, ‘Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.’ This was Job's regular custom." [Job 1:5] Parents, if you love your children, go and do likewise. You cannot name their names before the mercy-seat too often.

And now, friends, in conclusion, let me once more press on you the necessity and importance of using every single means in your power, if you would train children for heaven.

I well know that God is a sovereign God, and does everything according to the counsel of His own will. I know that Rehoboam was the son of Solomon, and Manasseh the son of Hezekiah, and that you do not always see godly parents having a godly offspring. But I also know that God is a God who works by means, and I am sure, that if you ignore the suggestions I have mentioned, then your children are not likely to turn out well.

Fathers and mothers, you may have your children baptized, and have them enrolled as members of the Church—you may send them to the best of schools, and give them Bibles, and fill them with head knowledge but if all this time there is no regular training at home, I tell you plainly, I fear it will go hard in the end with your children's souls. Home is the place where habits are formed—home is the place where the foundations of character are laid—home gives the bias to our tastes and opinions. Be sure, I beg you, that there is careful training at home.

Fathers and mothers, I charge you solemnly before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, make every effort to train your children in the way they should go. I charge you not merely for the sake of your children's souls; I charge you for the sake of your own future comfort and peace. Truly it is your best interest to do so. Truly your own happiness in great measure depends on it. Children have always been the bow from which the sharpest arrows have pierced man's heart. Children have mixed the bitterest cups that man has ever had to drink. Children have caused the saddest tears that man has ever had to shed. Adam could tell you so; Jacob could tell you so; David could tell you so. There are no sorrows on earth like those which children have brought upon their parents. Oh! be careful, lest by your own neglect you should store up misery for yourself in your old age. Be careful, lest you weep under the ill-treatment of a thankless child, in the days when your eyes are weak, and your body is dying.

If you ever wish that your children would be the restorers of your life, and the nourishers of your old age—if you want them to have blessings and not curses—joys and not sorrows: if this is your wish, then remember my advice, train them while they are young, and in the right way.

And as for me, I will conclude by saying a prayer to God for all who listen to this sermon, that you may all be taught of God to feel the value of your own souls. This is one reason why baptism often is a mere form, and Christian training despised and disregarded. Too often parents are not concerned about themselves, and therefore they are not concerned about their children. They do not realize the tremendous difference between man’s natural state and the state of grace, and therefore they are content to leave their children alone.

Now may the Lord teach everyone of you, that sin is that abominable thing which God hates. Then, I know you will mourn over the sins of your children, and strive to get them off of the road to hell.

May the Lord teach everyone of you how precious Christ is, and what a mighty and complete work He has done for our salvation. Then, I feel confident you will use every means possible to bring your children to Jesus, that they may live through Him.

May the Lord teach everyone of you your need of the Holy Spirit, to renew, sanctify, and quicken your souls. Then, I feel sure that you will urge your children to pray without ceasing, and never rest till the Holy Spirit has come down into their hearts with power, and made them new creatures.

May the Lord grant this, and then will I have a good hope that you will indeed train your children well—train well for this life, and train well for the life to come; train well for earth, and train well for heaven; train them for God, train them for Christ, and train them for eternity.

J.C. Ryle