Pornography: The Secret Assassin By Ronnie Floyd

Sin is most powerful in the darkness. Sin’s power to operate in secret has destroyed many followers of Jesus. Open sin can be confronted, rebuked, challenged and repented. Secret sin eats away like acid on skin. Jesus warned us the most dangerous things to us come from inside ourselves (Matthew 15:16-20).

Sin is most powerful when secret
Sin is most powerful when unknown, and few sins among Christians are more destructive in secret than pornography. In Bible Studies for Life, Chip Ingram writes, “13 percent of all web searches are related to erotic content [and] almost 9 out of 10 young men (85 percent) and almost half of young women (48 percent) report viewing pornography.”
More troubling than the overall data is that related to followers of Jesus: 50 percent of men and 20 percent of Christian women regularly view pornography. Too many from the body of Christ are being eaten up from the inside by this secret sin. Marriages are suffering. Husbands do not love their wives as they should. Wives are looking for pleasure apart from their husbands. Single adults are allowing pornography to substitute for actual relationships rather than remaining mentally pure. Seven of 10 teens have accidentally been exposed to pornography online.² This exposure could permanently affect their ability to have deep relationships. It could torpedo marriages before the “I do’s” are even spoken.

Pornography wounds not just you, but others
As bad as those things are, pornography does not only affect the person consuming it. Pornography is “like shrapnel [which] will damage and wound those around us.”
The Old Testament hero of the faith, Job, recognized the need for purity saying, “I have made a covenant with my eyes. How then could I look at a young woman?”⁴ The Apostle Paul instructed us, “For this is God’s will, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality, so that each of you knows how to control his own body in sanctification and honor, not with lustful desires, like the Gentiles who don’t know God.”⁵ Mental and physical sexual purity are required by God. Physical impurity is always preceded by mental sin.

Pornography can be overcome
Victory over pornographic use or pornographic addiction should begin with the spiritual root. All sin is a result of wanting selfish desires rather than God’s desires. Sin is a not merely an unwise choice or unhealthy decision. Sin is the replacement of God’s authority with our own. This is why all sin, including the viewing of pornography, must be repented. Followers of Jesus must use the word of God to combat the temptation to indulge in viewing pornography. The power of God’s Word is the power to overcome sin, any sin. Reading it, meditating on it, memorizing it, and internalizing it lead to victory over sin. The work of the Spirit in the power of the Word is the power Jesus’ followers need to overcome temptation. He has not left his people defenseless against sin and temptation. The allure of pornography and the damage that comes from it can be overcome in the power of God’s Word. Saturate your life in every way with God’s Word. Be filled with the Spirit at all times. The Word and the Spirit together will lead you to overcome pornography.

http://pastors.com/pornography-secret-assassin/

On This Day in 1517

It was around two o’clock in the afternoon on the eve of the Day of All Saints, October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther, hammer in hand, approached the main north door of the Schlosskirche(Castle Church) in Wittenberg. There he nailed up his Ninety-Five Theses protesting the abuse of indulgences in the teaching and practice of the Church of his day. In remembrance of this event, millions of Christians still celebrate this day as the symbolic beginning of the Protestant Reformation. October 31 is not a day for the ghosts and ghouls of Halloween but a time to remember the Reformation, especially what Luther wrote in thesis sixty-two: “The true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God.”

What's the Church's Reputation?

Perhaps the greatest indictment on evangelical churches today is that they are not generally known as refuge houses for sinners—places where hurting, wounded, sinful people can run and find love that does not question, an understanding that does not judge, and an acceptance that knows no conditions. To be sure, evangelical churches are usually refuge houses for certain kinds of sinners—the loveless, the self-righteous, those apathetic toward the poor and unconcerned with issues of justice and race, the greedy, the gluttonous, and so on. People guilty of these sins usually feel little discomfort among us. But evangelical churches are not usually safe places for other kinds of sinners—those whose sins, ironically, tend to be much less frequently mentioned in the Bible than the religiously sanctioned sins.

It is rare indeed that a drunkard, drug addict, or prostitute would think of going to church because he or she just needed to feel loved and accepted. These people may go to bars, fellow addicts, drug dealers, or pimps to find refuge and acceptance, but they would not go to a church. In fact, as with the Pharisees in Jesus’ day, the church has generally represented everything people with these kinds of sins want to avoid at all costs. It has most often represented nothing but condemnation for these people. Indeed, churches frequently cultivate a reputation for “cracking down” on sins that fall into their “unsanctioned sin” category. To fail to do this, many have assumed, is to compromise our reputation for being set apart for holiness.

The sins we declare ourselves to be against are invariably selected to not target ourselves. If we were consistent in cracking down equally on all sins, we’d be cracking down on ourselves more than on those outside the church. And if we retained a system of evaluating sin at all, sins such as impatience, unkindness, rudeness, and self-righteousness—all indications that love is absent (1 Cor 13:4-5)—as well as prevalent “church” sins such as gossip, greed, and apathy would rank higher on our list than sins such as homosexuality or heterosexual promiscuity.

Striving for a holy reputation is also self-serving because the whole enterprise is unconsciously designed as a strategy for getting life for ourselves. Though it is mostly unconscious—indeed, though we uniformly deny it—we are feeding ourselves with our devised sin lists. We feel righteous and secure that we are “in” while others are “out” as we compare ourselves favorably with others who don’t measure up (according to our own biased measuring devise).

Above all else, love is that for which the church is called to be known. Sadly, in the name of acquiring for ourselves a reputation of holiness, we have often compromised the one reputation God calls us to have. Jesus was willing to forsake any possibility of having a holy reputation for the sake of loving those who were unholy.

To be sure, Christians are called to be a holy people, set apart by their good works. This is what transforming love looks like as it takes hold of people. But this is not a reputation we should seek to acquire or protect. The one reputation we are called to acquire is identical to the one reality we are called to live in: We are to be, and to be known as, a people who receive and give love in an outrageous, impartial, unconditional way.   —Adapted from Repenting of Religion, 102-104, author Greg Boyd.

- See more at: http://reknew.org/2014/09/what-kind-of-sinners-feel-welcomed-by-your-church/?utm_source=Website+Signup&utm_campaign=86e5766273-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0de6226b5c-86e5766273-28050201#sthash.jMzlns9W.dpuf

Testifying our Faith

Russell Moore says - We ought to be reminded that in a racially divided world, the church of Jesus Christ ought not simply to advocate for racial reconciliation; we ought to embody it. The quest for racial reconciliation comes not just through proclamation but through demonstration.

The church, the Apostle Paul said, is a sign of God’s manifold wisdom, to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places (Eph. 3:10). When God joined together in one church, those who are both Jewish and Gentile, he was doing more than negating the bad effects of ethnic strife. He was declaring spiritual warfare. When those who the world thinks should hate each other, instead love each other, the church is testifying that our identity is in Jesus Christ (Col. 3:11). We cannot be pulled apart from each other, because we are one body, and a body that is at war with itself is diseased.

If we start to see more churches so alive to the gospel that they are not segregated out as “white” or “black” or “Hispanic” or “Asian” or “white collar” or “blue collar,” we will start to reflect something of a kingdom of God made up of those from every tribe, tongue, nation, and language (Rev. 5:9). And as we know one another as brothers and sisters, we will start to speak up for one another, including in the public square.

Leadership

Courageous leadership is like courageous parenting. Don’t do what your kids want you to do; do what you believe is best for them in the end. Eventually, many of them will thank you.

Thoughts on Ferguson, MO

As Christians, we ought to weep for the loss of life in this situation, and we ought to pray for peace in the streets of Ferguson and for justice to be done in this case.

We ought to be reminded though that in a racially divided world, the church of Jesus Christ ought not simply to advocate for racial reconciliation; we ought to embody it. We ought to speak to the structures of society about principles of morality and righteousness, but we also ought to model those principles in our congregations. The quest for racial reconciliation comes not just through proclamation but through demonstration.

The church, the Apostle Paul said, is a sign of God’s manifold wisdom, to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places (Eph. 3:10). When God joined together in one church, those who are both Jewish and Gentile, he was doing more than negating the bad effects of ethnic strife. He was declaring spiritual warfare. When those who the world thinks should hate each other, instead love each other, the church is testifying that our identity is in Jesus Christ (Col. 3:11).

-excerpt from article "Ferguson and the Quest for Racial Justice" by Russell Moore.
 http://www.russellmoore.com/2014/08/14/ferguson-and-the-quest-for-racial-justice/

Our Riches in Christ

This comes from one of my favorite preachers and authors, Timothy Keller:

Imagine you're a billionaire, and you have three ten-dollar bills in your wallet. You get out of a cab, and you hand the driver one of the bills for an eight-dollar fare. Later in the day you look in and find out there's only one ten-dollar bill there, and you say, "Either I dropped a ten-dollar bill somewhere, or I gave the taxi driver two bills."

What are you going to do? Are you going to get all upset? Are you going to the police and demand they search the city for the cabdriver? No, you are going to shrug. You're a billionaire. You lost ten dollars. So what? You are too rich to be concerned about that kind of loss.

This week, somebody criticized you. Something you bought or invested in turned out to be less valuable than you thought. Something you wanted to happen didn't go the way you wanted it to—these are real losses. But what are you going to do, if you're a Christian? Will this setback disrupt your contentment with life? Will you shake your fist at God? Toss and turn at night? If so, I submit that it's because you don't know how truly rich you are. If you're that upset about your status with other people, if you're constantly lashing out at people for hurting your feelings, you might call it a lack of self-control or a lack of self-esteem, and it is. But more fundamentally, you have totally lost touch with your identity. As a Christian, you're a spiritual billionaire and you're wringing your hands over ten dollars.

Tim Keller, The Two Advocates (Encounters with Jesus Series) (Penguin Group, 2014), Kindle Locations 242-244