Stephen Kuhn's Blog, page 36

Weekly Web (W)roundup

Each week, I round up the best resources, articles, and videos I find that are relevant to finding freedom from porn addiction. Please note that by posting a link here it does not mean I agree with everything in the linked article. It just means I found it interesting enough to share.

Tim Challies: When God Flips That Switch

“The point and the purpose is simple. When we take action, we find only destruction. When God begins to move, we are given grace.”

CCEF: Inside Out—Lessons in Sadness, Sonship, and Prodigals

“Our emotions do all kinds of things. But perhaps most importantly, they are meant to alert us to the brokenness of life and drive us to cry out to our loving Father through the Spirit of the Son. They drive us first and foremost into his arms, and then into the arms of one another.”

Relevant: Christians Shouldn’t Be Culture’s Morality Police

“Church, the world is watching us. They see the articles we float around the Internet, they read our billboards and bumper stickers, and for many outside of the Body, they feel one thing with crushing weight: judgment. There is no invitation in condemnation and no love in passive-aggressive battles fought along the lines of a newsfeed.”

Storyline: Who You Should Date After a Hard Break Up

“I was having breakfast with a good friend when he told me that he’d just broken up with his girlfriend of several years. It had been a hard few weeks. During this time, he decided to take a break from dating for a while. Instead, he wanted to focus on growing his newfound relationship with Christ. However, he didn’t really know how to do that.”

C.S. Lewis: On “Sexual” Morality

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DONE: You Have Been Given the Incomparable Riches of God’s Grace

God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:7).

Now that my daughter is getting a bit older, I decided it was finally time to introduce her to the world of Harry Potter. Ideally, this would have been done through the books, but since I only have her for short periods of time each week, we chose to watch the movies instead.

At the beginning of the first film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry still doesn’t know the truth about himself, and much of the movie is dedicated to him discovering that he’s actually a powerful wizard. This has been true about him all along, but it had been hidden from him. Without knowing his true identity, he believed the false description of himself he’d received from his abusive foster parents—that he was unwanted, unloved, and a worthless nuisance.

In one of the scenes where Harry begins to discover the truth, we see him shopping for all the supplies he will need as a student. He asks Hagrid, the giant-man who has come to take Harry to wizard school, how in the world he’s supposed to pay for all the required items. Hagrid responds by casually telling Harry not to worry about all that. In the next scene, we see Harry’s face begin to glow as the door to his family’s vault swings open. It’s full of gold coins—more than Harry will ever need—and it all belongs to him.

As I watched this scene, I was reminded of how we as believers have already received the incredible wealth of God’s grace and kindness. How many of us, though, have lived much of our lives unaware of the treasure we’ve been given? Much like Harry, we still believe we’re penniless beggars relying on the generosity of others to meet our daily needs. In reality, we have been given the key to heaven’s vault and received full access to God’s grace for our lives today.

But that’s not really the main idea of this verse. What Ephesians 2:7 is telling us, is that God’s main purpose for showering us with His grace and kindness wasn’t for our glory—it was for His. He did it, in today’s language, to show off.

I like to think this is already playing out in heaven today. I imagine the angels looking down as they watch mankind destroy our own lives and the lives of those around us, which would lead them to question how anyone could see anything worth saving in humanity. But then I imagine God responding, “Just wait. You’ll see. When the time comes and heaven is full of My redeemed saints, you will understand. My grace and kindness will never be more apparent to you—or to all of creation—than it will be in that day.”

Our salvation will be a shining example for all eternity of how vast and powerful God’s grace and kindness truly are.

This post was an excerpt from my book, DONE. 52 Amazing Things that Became True of You the Moment You Trusted Christ. The entire book is available as individual posts here, but if you prefer a good old-fashion paperback, you can purchase one on Amazon.

The post DONE: You Have Been Given the Incomparable Riches of God’s Grace appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.

You Have Been Given the Incomparable Riches of God’s Grace

God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:7).

Now that my daughter is getting a bit older, I decided it was finally time to introduce her to the world of Harry Potter. Ideally, this would have been done through the books, but since I only have her for short periods of time each week, we chose to watch the movies instead.

At the beginning of the first film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry still doesn’t know the truth about himself, and much of the movie is dedicated to him discovering that he’s actually a powerful wizard. This has been true about him all along, but it had been hidden from him. Without knowing his true identity, he believed the false description of himself he’d received from his abusive foster parents—that he was unwanted, unloved, and a worthless nuisance.

In one of the scenes where Harry begins to discover the truth, we see him shopping for all the supplies he will need as a student. He asks Hagrid, the giant-man who has come to take Harry to wizard school, how in the world he’s supposed to pay for all the required items. Hagrid responds by casually telling Harry not to worry about all that. In the next scene, we see Harry’s face begin to glow as the door to his family’s vault swings open. It’s full of gold coins—more than Harry will ever need—and it all belongs to him.

As I watched this scene, I was reminded of how we as believers have already received the incredible wealth of God’s grace and kindness. How many of us, though, have lived much of our lives unaware of the treasure we’ve been given? Much like Harry, we still believe we’re penniless beggars relying on the generosity of others to meet our daily needs. In reality, we have been given the key to heaven’s vault and received full access to God’s grace for our lives today.

But that’s not really the main idea of this verse. What Ephesians 2:7 is telling us, is that God’s main purpose for showering us with His grace and kindness wasn’t for our glory—it was for His. He did it, in today’s language, to show off.

I like to think this is already playing out in heaven today. I imagine the angels looking down as they watch mankind destroy our own lives and the lives of those around us, which would lead them to question how anyone could see anything worth saving in humanity. But then I imagine God responding, “Just wait. You’ll see. When the time comes and heaven is full of My redeemed saints, you will understand. My grace and kindness will never be more apparent to you—or to all of creation—than it will be in that day.”

Our salvation will be a shining example for all eternity of how vast and powerful God’s grace and kindness truly are.

The post You Have Been Given the Incomparable Riches of God’s Grace appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.

My One Thing: Forest Benedict

“What’s the one piece of advice you would give

to someone struggling with porn addiction?”

Forest Benedict, LMFT is a Sexual Addictions Treatment Provider and the Clinical Director of LifeSTAR.

Connect with Forest:

Spiritual Connection/Personal Blog: forestbenedict.com

Sexual Addiction Resource Blog: Lifestarcentralvalley.wordpress.com

Twitter: @ForestGB

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ForestGBenedict

Check out all the “One Thing” video interviews here.

Transcript

Steve: Hey guys, Stephen Kuhn with Belt of Truth Ministries. I’ve got Forest Benedict on the line. Forest is a sexual addiction treatment provider, MFT intern, and the program manager of LifeSTAR. Forest, thanks for joining us today. What’s the one piece of advice that you would give to someone struggling with porn addiction?

Forest: Yeah, the one piece of advice may sound like something that’s a little bit different, but really is that to have the kind of self-control that’s required in recovery, that basic self-care is really a necessity. When I think of recovery, I think of it as a lifestyle change, wherein we’re moving from a lifestyle of self neglect and self-destructive behavior to a lifestyle of self-care. One thing I think is really helpful for people in understanding why self-care is so important is really looking at how pornography addiction impacts the brain. And the way that it impacts the brain is it really causes harm to the pre-frontal cortex of the brain and we need that thing working well to have self-control, to be connected with our goals and values, and to have empathy for other people and emotional balance. That kind of harm that the pornography does to that part of the brain gives us less self-control. Having self-care in place that strengthens that part of the brain is actually really an essential part of recovery.

And so some of the basic self-care that I recommend for those seeking recovery, again it’s going to sound very basic, but all of these that I’m going to mention actually strengthen that part of the brain that gives us self-control. The first one is sleep, and just not being sleep deprived and getting adequate amount of sleep, I know people, it’s kind of well-known in the recovery field that if you’re tired then it’s a pretty common trigger, but I think a lot of it has to do with how sleep affects the brain, and so sleep is super important, getting adequate sleep, taking naps if you need to. Exercise is super important to strengthen that part of the brain. We teach a mindful breathing exercise, it’s really just focused on the breath and I’m happy to share that with you if I can, but it’s something that actually strengthens that self-control part of the brain. And even healthy diet is actually related to recovery too. I’ve written about this, how sugar can be really triggering for people trying to recover from sexual addiction. And also I think there’s a potential for becoming addicted to sugar. It’s like when we take away the porn, we still crave that dopamine and sugar is that easy outlet for dopamine, easy way to access dopamine. Limiting sugar and eating real food that’s healthy really does play a part in strengthening the part of the brain that helps us have self-control.

And then the other piece of that self-care puzzle would be abstaining from pornography, which might sound like a no-brainer. No pun intended. But then another part of it too is video games. I think that would be kind of surprising to people, but the research I’ve done is that video games kind of do similar things to the brain that pornography does. Some people are trying to heal their brain from the harm that’s been done with pornography, abstaining from pornography and video game and doing all these self-care strategies again be really helpful. To practice on a regular basis, it’s like strengthening a new muscle, you have to get into a routine and practice it and so another thing I tell people is this can get really messed up when we have things like vacation, when we go out-of-town, and we say to ourselves “I’m on vacation. I don’t have to sleep. I don’t have to eat good. I can do whatever I want.” That can really be kind of time in the brain for relapse, really. There’s no vacation from recovery. That’s why I recommend people maintain these types of things even when they’re on vacation, taking care of themselves.

And so maybe the last piece I’ll throw in there is that I find that people dealing with pornography addiction have a huge level of shame, and a lot of criticism. And so when you throw out a bunch of things like these are healthy routines to bring into your recovery journey, they could become very self-critical and kind of jump on themselves if they make a mistake or if they slip or relapse, be very self-critical. I’ve studied this idea of self-compassion because it’s another thing that I don’t think is very well…I haven’t heard a lot about it, especially in the church in particular, this idea of self compassion, self forgiveness, because what we find is that people actually are more likely to change if they are actually a little kinder to themselves. It’s the self-criticism that makes people more likely to relapse. And so that’s why I say as you think about these self-care strategies, if you can be a little gracious with yourself and patient with yourself that it’s going to take some time to learn a whole new way of relating to yourself more in this caring way.

Anyways, that’s kind of it in a nutshell. I’ve written a lot of stuff on this, self compassion. I wrote an article, people might be interested in, called The Science of Self Control, why Christians are called to self-care, so kind of tying that back-end. That’s basically it, that whole idea of self-care and how that leads to healing the addicted [06:51].

Steve: Great! Thanks for sharing that. You mentioned some of those articles. Why don’t you tell people where they could find out more about you online and where they can find some of your writing?

Forest: Okay. Yeah I do. I write in a couple different places. If you go to LifeSTARcentralvalley.WordPress.com, that’s where I write a lot of articles related to sexual addiction, recovery, provide lots of great tools for people, dealing with shame, self-compassion, all kinds of things. I try to bring in science and really relate it to what people are doing. And then if you go forestbenedict.com, that’s just forest with one R like Forest Gump, I have my personal blog and that one is actually very Christian-oriented, and it’s a lot about finding a deeper connection with God and so I will bring some stuff related to recovery in there but it’s really about feeling the relationship with God.

Steve: Great! I’ll be sure to add those in the show notes, so anybody watching this just look below this video and you should find all those links. Forest, thanks again for your time, I really appreciate it, and good luck with all that you do.

Forest: Thank you very much.

Steve: See you.

The post My One Thing: Forest Benedict appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.

Smart Quote: Dallas Willard

Thoughts on this quote? Feel free to discuss them in the comments below.

The post Smart Quote: Dallas Willard appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.

Reader Q/A: How Do I Find Freedom when I don’t even Know what’s Real Anymore?

Question: I feel like I was forced into church and into God. I believe in God but I feel like none of it was authentic. So now I’m asking what do I really believe and who am I really. I have found that I like myself deep down but I don’t really like my actions (usually). How do I find freedom in Christ when I don’t know what is real anymore? How do I get rid of habits that have been there all my life?

Thanks for reaching out. Your question is a valid question for sure.

I know a big part of my own journey was coming to realize that much of what I believed was real—especially about Christianity—was not actually based on the truth at all. It was based on a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding that I’d developed over the years. And, as you seem to have noticed, those realizations can cause anyone to question if anything they’ve previously believed (or been told to believe) is true or not.

Here’s the deal though…that’s okay.

It’s okay to ask questions.

It’s okay to have doubts.

It’s okay to be angry that some of the things you’ve been taught are wrong.

If you’re not sure something is real, or true…it’s okay to question it, but I’d encourage you not to stay there forever. Begin to pray about it, and seek the honest answer.

That, I believe, is the key to discovering the real truth: seeking the honest answer from God. If you’re willing to trust whatever God reveals to you as the truth, you will discover what is real and what isn’t. After all, He is the source of all truth, so asking Him would be going straight to the source. You can’t do much better than that.

Sometimes though, it’s tempting to hear His truth and reject it because it’s not what we want to hear, but that will only keep you spinning in your doubt. That’s where faith comes in though. Faith isn’t about fixing your behavior and trying to be a “good person.” No, faith, at it’s core, is simply trusting God.

Trusting that He will reveal to you what is true and what isn’t.

Trusting that He only wants what is best for you, and that He knows what you need better than you do.

Trusting that He will never leave you, abandon you, or give up on you—even if you stray far from Him on your search for truth.

When you begin to trust God for those things, the habits you’re asking about will begin to take care of themselves. Your heart will come alive to God and your desires will change. You will no longer be asking “How do I get rid of these habits?” You will simply realize one day that He has removed your temptation to engage in those habits by fulfilling the underlying desires in your heart with His unconditional love.

You’re already doing a lot of things right: joining a recovery group, being honest, desiring freedom, questioning your desires. Keep doing those things, but make sure first and foremost you’re trusting God to direct your steps.

I believe you will be pleasantly surprised where you end up.

Thanks for reaching out,

Stephen

The post Reader Q/A: How Do I Find Freedom when I don’t even Know what’s Real Anymore? appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.

Weekly Web (W)roundup

Each week, I round up the best resources, articles, and videos I find that are relevant to finding freedom from porn addiction. Please note that by posting a link here it does not mean I agree with everything in the linked article. It just means I found it interesting enough to share.

Seth Haines: Coming Clean

“I’ve wondered why Paul contrasts individual drunkenness with the Spirit-filled Christian community, and this is what I’ve come to believe: The addictions of our life are often born from our own isolation, from our pain and anxiety.”

Relevant: No, God Is Not Disappointed in You

“God does not identify us by our sins. It’s almost as if He sees things the other way around—while we might magnify our mistakes, God magnifies the beauty given to us. He is not intimidated by our weaknesses, like we so often are. He sees their power as already dissolved by the cross.”

Intentional Warriors: The Pursuit of Connection

“Sex is mysterious and wonderful, but it’s risky — even in a committed, loving relationship. Ask any husband about his hesitancy initiating sex with his wife. Or ask a wife about the uncertainty of initiating with her husband.”

Mary DeMuth: God Sends Us to Hard Places

“It’s not that God sends evil. Evil exists. It lives and moves and has its being on this earth. What Joseph is saying here is that people who do evil things are not God. They cannot orchestrate time and eternity. They may think they are destroying us, but the final outcome rests in God’s hands. People don’t have the ultimate power to change a life.”

Marnee Feree: Women struggling with porn?

The post Weekly Web (W)roundup appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.

You Have Been Seated in the Heavenly Realms

[God] raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6).

There seems to be a lot of talk in churches these days about believers being crucified with Christ. That’s a good thing of course, because it’s true. But what I don’t hear as much of, is how those who’ve trusted Christ have been raised up from death with Him as well.

It’s almost like we’re only hearing the first half of the gospel.

Paul reminds us of that sometimes forgotten second half of the gospel here in Ephesians 2:6: The reality that everything God did for Jesus (including raising Him from the dead and seating Him in heaven), He did for you as well because of your unification with Christ.

This means you were not only connected to Jesus in His death, you were connected to Him in His resurrection and ascension as well.

Your soul already has eternal life and already lives in heaven.

This concept can be hard for us to wrap our brains around. After all, if you’re reading this, odds are good that you’re still living with a physical body. Every day you will touch, feel, smell, and taste things from the world around you. Your physical reality is likely to feel much more real to you because you’re constantly experiencing it in tangible ways.

All of which can make it that much harder to grasp this idea that your soul—the truest, deepest part of who you are; the part of you that will live for eternity—is already seated in heaven (no longer here on earth).

Someday, your body will shut down for good. At that point, you’ll be given a new body and your physical and spiritual realities will merge together for the rest of eternity. But until then, I find it can be helpful to remember it this way: Everything that happened to Jesus physically, has already happened to you spiritually:

Jesus was crucified physically; you were crucified with Him spiritually.
Jesus was resurrected physically; you were resurrected with Him spiritually.
Jesus is currently present in heaven physically; you are currently present in heaven spiritually.

But what’s the point of all of this?

I find this truth to be most helpful on those days when it’s difficult to face the broken reality of this world. Whether it’s the constant evil I hear about in the news, or pain and heartache present in my own life—trusting that my soul is seated in heaven next to my Savior helps me to not lose hope.

I receive great peace through knowing that no matter what happens to me here on earth, my eternity in heaven with Jesus is eternally secure.

And how can I know that?

Because I’m already there.

The post You Have Been Seated in the Heavenly Realms appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.

My One Thing: James Tarring Cordrey

“What’s the one piece of advice you would give

to someone struggling with porn addiction?”

James Tarring Cordrey is the author and founder of Intentional Warriors.

Connect with James:

Ministry: www.intentionalwarriors.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Intentional-Warriors

Twitter: @intentwarriors

Books: Intentional Warriors: Fighting for Purity and Freedom in a Sexually Saturated Society

Check out all the “One Thing” video interviews here.

Transcript

Coming soon…

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Smart Quote: Albert Einstein

Thoughts on this quote? Feel free to discuss them in the comments below.

The post Smart Quote: Albert Einstein appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.