Word from the Battle: Dedication to Purity

As men of the Purity Platoon, we dedicate ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ whose Spirit is a Holy Spirit and whose job it is to produce holiness in His Bride.

Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.

+ 2 Corinthians 7:1

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If You Conquer Your Lust

Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. To everyone who conquers, I will give permission to eat from the tree of life that is in the paradise of God.

+ Revelation 2:7

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Facing Aloneness

What a struggle we have, to keep the reality of our aloneness at bay! We use background music, cell phones and ear-pieces like umbilical cords to distract us from the dread sense of isolation. The city is full of people talking into phones to keep some sense of communion. Most of our talk does not really breach our loneliness. Remember Pascal’s comment, “The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.”

When Jesus had been with the crowds all day, talking to them, laying hands on the sick, he felt the urgent need to be alone and pray. On the hillside the Holy Spirit linked him to his Father. The same spirit dwells in us, as St Paul describes (Romans 8:26) “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

+ Reflection from Sacred Space

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Purity Platoon – Prayer to Identify Wounds & Unmet Needs

One of the themes of discussion in our Purity Platoon has been to look for the underlying causes of fantasy and acting out.  While the first step to sexual purity is avoiding these behaviors, long-term change in this area requires that we examine the underlying causes of seeking fantasy.  Two of the causes of fantasizing are to escape our wounds and to help nurture unmet needs.  Until we recognize these wounds and/or unmet needs, we will not be able to trust Jesus fully for the healing and nurturing needed to live a life of purity.  And so we have been instructed to pray to Jesus to help us identify wounds – especially childhood wounds – and unmet needs in our life.

Lord Jesus:

You are the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  True serenity and purity comes from knowing you, accepting you as our Savior, and surrendering to you as Lord.  Please help me to identify the wounds in my life which need to be healed.  Help me also to identify unmet needs in my life which I am trying to meet through fantasy, pornography, and sexual sin.  Open my eyes to the true nature of these wounds and unmet needs and send your Holy Spirit to help me surrender these wounds and need to you and you alone.

Thank you, Lord Jesus.

Amen.

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Fight Lust with Lust! (Luke Gilkerson)

For thousands of years God’s men have been asking the same question, “How can a young man keep his way pure?” (Psalm 119:9a). The answer the Bible gives is a searching one: “By guarding it according to Your word” (v.9b). When the pattern of our thoughts, motives, actions, and words conform to a path marked out for us by divine revelation, then we will walk the path of purity.

But how does this really happen in the day-to-day? How do we overcome unholy lusts? When our bodies and habits of thinking seem to pull away from God’s will every moment, how do we fight such urges?

The Bible’s answer: Fight Lust with Lust.

Luke Gilkerson has an excellent article today on the positive use of spiritual lust to combat the fleshly lust in our hearts. Read the rest of his article at the Breaking Free Blog.

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Gospel of the Body

Christ’s body, above all, justifies the expression “the Gospel of the body.” Christ’s body conceived of a virgin, born in a stable in Bethlehem, circumcised on the eighth day, raised by Mary and Joseph, baptized in the Jordan river, transfigured on the mountain, “given up for us” in his passion and death, risen in glory, ascended to the Father and participating eternally in the life of the Trinity – the story of this body and the spiritual mystery it points to is the Gospel. And everybody that comes into the world is destined to share in this Gospel by becoming “one body,” one spirit with Christ.

+ Christopher West, Theology of the Body Explained

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Sexuality & The Sermon on the Mount – Condemnation or Promise?

‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

+ Matthew 5:27-28

Are we to fear the severity of [Christ’s] words, or rather have confidence in their salvific content, in their power?

+ Pope John Paul II

Jesus challenges his listeners with radical and powerful ideas in his “Sermon on the Mount” (Chapter 5 of the Gospel of Matthew). But for men none of his words hit harder than the charge that “everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28).

For most men these are words of condemnation — hopeless condemnation. We have all looked at women with lust. Is there any hope for us?

But John Paul II has a different view of the purpose of Jesus’ words. For John Paul, these words could not have been uttered by Jesus unless they implicitly carried the promise of grace represented by Jesus himself. Yes, we have lusted with our eyes, but this is not the end. Jesus Christ has come to us and emptied himself in order to redeem us. And while in our broken nature resisting lust may be impossible, Jesus has sent us the Holy Spirit and now calls us to a higher ideal that can be met with the assistance of Christ and the Spirit.

“Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery in his heart.”

Without Christ, these words stand as condemnation. But fear not, Christ has come, and now these words are a promise — a promise that we can aspire to a life without lust.

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Battle Verse – We Are Called to Sanctification

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from fornication; that each one of you knows how to control your own body in holiness and honour, not with lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one wrongs or exploits a brother or sister in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, just as we have already told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness. Therefore whoever rejects this rejects not human authority but God, who also gives his Holy Spirit to you.

+ 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8

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Battle Verse – Avoid Sexual Sin

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins people commit are outside their bodies, but those who sin sexually sin against their own bodies.

+ 1 Corinthians 6:18

The apostle Paul admonishes us to avoid sexual sin not because sex is bad, but because it is tied so closely to the sacramental nature of our bodies. Sexual sin is unique in that it degrades the body as well as the heart. Our bodies were created as the image of God and as a temple of the Holy Spirit, so this type of sin can be especially destructive both to ourselves and to our relationship with the Father.

+++

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Turtle Pulse Check – Promises Fulfilled

It has now been three weeks since I began Every Man’s Battle for Purity and two weeks since the end of Purity Boot Camp.  A number of promises were made for those who would follow the program – promises which seemed unbelievable.

Every Man’s Battle for Purity is based on discipline, fellowship, the grace of Christ, and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.  Much of the program is akin to a twelve-step program in that recovery is based on regular meetings between men who will disclose their struggles with rigorous honesty and who will hold each other accountable.  But the Battle has also included the introductions of some more basic tools.

As I have written before, the Battle is not based on achieving base-line sobriety.  Rather this is an all-out fight for Purity – complete abstinence from pornography of any kind, masturbation, sexual stimulation outside of marriage, and even looking at another woman with lust.  We are called to be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect.

To reach total purity, we begin with setting up a perimeter around our eyes and our mind.  We make a covenant with our eyes not to look at a woman with lust (Job 31:1).  Then we take up the practice of bouncing our eyes away from attractive women.  If we see an attractive woman, we bounce our eyes away immediately!  And we don’t turn back.  If we are watching the tv and a sexually charged commercial comes on, we flip the channel immediately and come back to our program in a minute.  If we stumble into a web site that has attractive women on it, we click to another site immediately.

The goal is to starve our minds of the images it uses to create sexual fantasy.  If we do not feed the mind, it will not fantasize.  So the first promise was that by engaging in the practice of starving our eys, we would also struggle less with fantasies in our mind.  A second promise was that as we got rid of this source of unwanted, extra-marital sexual stimulus, our eyes would be opened again to the sexuality and beauty of our wives.  They would become the focus of all of our sexual energy.

I am happy, and surprised, to report that these promises can be true!  I had assumed that sexual fantasy would run rampant in my mind no matter what, but as I have practiced starving my eyes, the fantasies have gone away.  And I DO find that I have more appetite for and loyalty to my wife!

Again, it has only been three weeks, but I am finding these promises to be true and I am finding greater joy and peace in living in Christ than ever before!!!

I give thanks to God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – for the good work that he has begun in my life.  May he bring His good work to completion in me, His servant.

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