Stephen Kuhn's Blog, page 38

“Who Are You?” A sermon about Your Identity in Christ

Last Sunday I had the honor of speaking at Cornerstone Church in Eugene, Oregon. The topic was your Identity in Christ, or, more specifically, Who Does God Say You Are?

My talk closely followed the Identity Series we did here on Belt of Truth last year.

You can listen to the full message here.

If you would like to download the .mp3, right-click on the link and select “Download Linked File As.”

The post “Who Are You?” A sermon about Your Identity in Christ 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.

JD Greer: I’m Divorced. How Does God See Me Now?

“Sadly, many Christians talk about divorce as if it’s the unforgivable sin, the one line in life that once you cross it, you can never really recover from. Many divorced have been told—and believe—that their divorce means condemnation. They think that God has given up on them. It’s as if you are wearing a Scarlet D that demonstrates to God and the world that you are a divorcée, and a second class Christian.”

Donald Miller: The Devastating Power of Lies in a Relationship

“I’ve only had two friends (that I know about) who’ve looked me in the eye and told me lies. Both of them were trying to cover up mistakes. I certainly had grace for their mistakes, but I’ve wondered looking back if I didn’t have grace for their lies.”

xxxChurch: 3 Myths of the Good Church Kid

“You might be the ‘good church kid.’ You never miss church, Bible study, or youth group. Any and every opportunity there is to do something with the church family, you are there. No one is suspicious of you. In fact, lots of people come to you for advice and counsel.”

NACR: Recovery from Sexual Addiction

“Mark Laaser, author of Faithful & True: Sexual Integrity in a Fallen World, has been a friend of the NACR since it’s inception. He understands sexual addiction from both personal experience and from working with sex addicts in several treatment programs. In his books and seminars Mark has offered hope and healing to thousands of co-strugglers. We interviewed him recently by phone from his home near Minneapolis, Minnesota.”

Dr. Dan Allender: Hearts of Men

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

You have already been given every spiritual blessing

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ (Ephesians 1:3).

We have a general rule in our house that we’re quick to share things with one another, but it’s important to ask permission first.

For example, anytime my daughter wants to play a game on my phone, she just needs to ask me before taking it. As long as there isn’t a good reason for me to say no to her (such as unfinished chores or me expecting a call), I’ve promised to say yes whenever I can.

Now, imagine if my daughter kept asking permission to use my phone even after I handed it to her. She could be playing a game with the phone in her hands, but still pop her head up every few minute to ask if she can have the phone.

“Can I play a game on your phone?”

“You have my phone, Honey.”

“Can I play a game on your phone?”

“You still have my phone, Honey.”

“Can I play a game on your phone?”

“Really?”

Not only is that ridiculous, it would be somewhat annoying as well. Probably on par with the never-ending “Are we there yet?” or “I’m huuuuuuungry.”

Sometimes though, I wonder if God looks at us and says “Really?” when we keep asking Him for things that He’s already given to us. After all, according to this verse, He’s already blessed us with every spiritual blessing.

But what exactly are these blessings? The remainder of this passage tells us more about them:

you have been made holy ( v.4 )
you have been adopted as His child ( v.5 )
you have been offered His grace ( v.6 )
you have been redeemed and forgiven ( v.7 )
you have been given wisdom and insight ( v.8 )
you have been included in His inheritance ( v.11 )
you have been given the Holy Spirit ( v.13 )

God has already given you these things, yet if you’re anything like me, you keep coming back to Him asking for them again and again. That’s why I try to pay attention to the language I use whenever I talk to God:

Instead of asking to be forgiven when I mess up, I thank Him for how He has already forgiven me.
Instead of asking for His grace, I thank Him for the unending grace He’s already showered upon me.

This may seem like nothing more than a subtle shift in semantics, but I’ve found it helps me remember that I don’t need to strive to please God in order to receive His blessing. I’ve already received it (Tweet this!). All I need to do is trust and believe that if God says it’s true about all believers, it’s true about me as well.

This has been a repost from the archives.

The post You have already been given every spiritual blessing appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.

My One Thing: Luke Gilkerson

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

to someone struggling with porn addiction?”

Luke Gilkerson is the Educational Resource Manager for Covenant Eyes, and author of multiple e-books including Coming Clean, Your Brain on Porn, and When Your Child is Looking at Porn.

Connect with Luke:

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

Twitter: @CovenantEyes

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

Transcript

Steve: Hey guys! Steve with Belt of Truth Ministries. I’m on the line with Luke Gilkerson. Luke’s the education resource manager for Covenant Eyes, and author of multiple eBooks, including Coming Clean, Your Brain on Porn, and When Your Child Is Looking At Porn. So Luke, what’s the one piece of advice that you would give to someone struggling with porn addiction?

Luke: Well the one piece of advice I would give for someone who is really struggling with porn addiction would come out of a single verse in the Bible, 2 Timothy 2:22, which states “so flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.” I think this verse is probably the most succinct strategy that is stated in the scriptures about dealing with pornography, dealing with lust. And it kind of gives a three-pronged strategy. And that three-prong strategy can be simply stated as run from, run to, and run with. I’ll unpack all three of those. What I mean from run from is it says flee, free from the catalysts of the problem. So that might be ditching the sources of your porn habit, changing the environment to eliminate both the external and the internal triggers for porn. Training your mind and eyes to have an escape plan when temptations come along, so whether that’s visually fleeing, mentally fleeing, physically fleeing. We need to get in the habit of anytime danger comes and anytime we find ourselves in like situation where there’s going to be insurmountable temptations that we need to look for the escape route that God has planned for us and that we had marked out and planned long before the temptation ever came along. So we need to get in the habit of fleeing. The second thing is we need to run to. He says there “pursue something.” You’re not just running away from something, you’re pursuing something. You’re not just emptying your heart of desire and emptying your heart of passion and emptying your heart of any sort of pleasure in your life. You’re actually pursuing something. You’re pursuing holy and wholesome habits that replace the addiction, so that’s engaging in new passions that trump the allure of sin. We should be engaging our souls and minds and body in prayer, in gratitude, in selfless service, all the things that pertain to what he says there – faith, love, peace and righteousness. We need to be pursuing those things. So we need to be giving ourselves the wholesome habits. Some of those habits can be even secular, in terms of whether it’s just exercise or reading or whatever, but those habits can also be thoroughly engrained in the work of the kingdom, so that’s going out and helping, serving, praying for others, meeting the needs of others, getting away from that habit of objectification that turn people into objects for your pleasure and move towards a kind of lifestyle that is serving others and helping others and giving real service to their lives or giving real value to their lives. That will be the second thing. The third thing is he says run with, where he says along with those people, along with those who calls the Lord from a pure heart, this is where we have to have companions who are relying on God for freedom. These could be Christian accountability partners who can not only call us out on our sin but can call us up to the people God is making us to be, to the people God has already made us to be in Christ. This means Christian discipleship, walking with those who are older in the faith, who can mentor us and guide us. It also means running with even perhaps someone who’s specialized in some of this stuff. If you find that the nagging habit of porn just doesn’t seem to want to break, walking with those, running with those who are either counselors or people who are wise in this area, who can help to unpack the things in your heart that you are either unwilling to see or unable to see that are driving the addiction of pornography, all three things I think are essential. We need to have all three things in place. Running from, the kind of that fleeing mentality is a sort of a first line of defense, a nuts and bolts strategy that says we need to have an escape route in place. We need to create an environment where we’re not surrounded in the objects of our temptation all the time. We need to treat them seriously. We need to treat temptation seriously. That’s that fleeing mentality. The second is that pursuit. If we don’t have the pursuit along with the fleeing, if we don’t pursuit something wholesome and holy to replace the pornography, then we’re just going to either go back to the porn or we’ll go back to some other socially acceptable sin. And then we have to have the running with. We have to be going with others who can help us. One of the greatest means of grace we’ve ever been given by God is the gift of the church, the gift of Christian friendships, the gift of accountability, the gift of discipleship, other Christians who can walk alongside of us and help us in the battle against temptations that we face, and it is a means of grace in order to do that. All three are really important and they’re all contained in one verse in the bible. I would recommend any person to memorize this verse, and then unpack all three of those strategies, one by one, and decide how they’re going to attack each of those things as they’re pursuing purity in their life.

Steve: Great! So run from, run to, and run with. I like it. That’s one of the most succinct summing up of recovery that I’ve heard. I like that advice. Thanks Luke. Tell me people where they can find out more about your ministry and what you’re doing.

Luke: Covenant Eyes is a software company. It’s been around for about 15 years now. Our goal is to change people’s lives through internet accountability, to give them a sense of freedom from the nagging temptations and habits that they can run into online, and to do so through redemptive relationships, to do so through accountability relationships. We do that by providing an internet report for those who need, well we’ll monitor all the activity that’s on your computer or your Smartphone or your tablet. Any devices that you use. We monitor where you’re going online. We compile all that information into an easy to read report that’s emailed to accountability partners that you choose, people you trust to help you. For a lot of people, the report is a great catalyst for conversation, which means if for some reason they just keep going back to porn again and again, the report is a great place to start in a conversation with the counselor, a pastor, accountability partner, to help to get to the bottom of what’s going on. And for a lot of people, the report or just the knowledge the report’s going to be sent is enough to keep temptation at bay. They think twice about where they’re going online, and they can kick the habit even without having to go to somewhere objectionable online and their friends finding out about it, that kind of thing. They just think twice before they go anywhere. And that is enough to keep porn and the temptation of looking at porn at bay. They can learn all about our services and what we do, as well as the dozen or so free eBooks that we have available. All is available at covenanteyes.com.

Steve: Great. And I’ll just add, if you want some practical tools to really help you with the running from and the running with, Covenant Eyes is a great resource for that. It helps with both of those. So Luke, thanks again for your time. I really appreciate your ministry. Keep up the great work.

Luke: Great. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Steve: See ya.

The post My One Thing: Luke Gilkerson appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.

Smart Quote: Bob George

Belt of Truth Ministries.

Is the Fear of Being Found Out Contributing to Your Addiction?

What is your biggest fear?

Personally, I hate snakes. Even little, innocent, harmless, garter snakes. I know they can’t hurt me. I’ve been told they’re more afraid of me than I am of them. Whatever. I still hate them.

It still curls my nose hairs when I think of the woodpile in our backyard. My wife was an avid gardener and was constantly in need of more trellises and raised beds throughout the yard. I liked to swing a hammer, build stuff, and pretend to be manly, so it worked out great. My dad called me up one day and told me he had an old, weathered trellis that needed to be removed and hauled to the dump and figured he’d ask if we could use the wood. It wasn’t just any trellis though. It was over twenty feet long! Of course we jumped all over the prospect of free, pre-weathered wood and told him to go ahead and dump it in our yard instead. Over time, I built a few things out of it, but the majority of the pile sat untouched behind the shed.

There was one particular afternoon where I needed to use the tarp covering the woodpile to line the bed of my truck. I carefully removed it with one hand, casting it aside quickly so I could fight off any striking rattlers (garter snakes) with the pitchfork I was holding in my other hand like a spear. Seeing none, I relaxed, bunched up the tarp, and carried it over to my truck to spread it out.

As I unfolded the tarp I saw the most frightening thing I have ever seen in my entire life: Not just one, but TWO garter snakes had been curled up in the tarp. I had just carried these wretched creatures in my own arms! I instantly screamed like a little girl and did that freak-out dance where you jump and run in place at the same time while your whole body convulses in sheer terror. I’m sure I made my wife proud.

As ridiculous and exaggerated as this story sounds, I can assure you it is all true. Typing it out all these years later still brings a shiver to my spine. The crazy thing is, at one point in my life I had a fear that was significantly more crippling than my fear of snakes. If I were given the choice between facing this greater fear, and being a stand-in for Indiana Jones in the snake pit scene, I would have asked for the whip and fedora without hesitation.

The one thing that scared me even more than snakes was a fear that someday, someone might discover who I really was. I might let my guard down and allow my true self to be seen. Someone might discover that Steve, the upstanding, churchgoing, youth-group volunteering, hard-worker guy was actually Steve the porn addict. Steve the pathological liar. Steve the sinner.

You see, I believed I was the only man sitting in church fighting this battle—failing at this battle. If I allowed others to see that I wasn’t perfect, they might reject me. After all, I didn’t want anyone to think this whole Christianity thing wasn’t working for me. I lived my life in a state of constant fear—fear of getting caught, fear of being found out, fear of being rejected if people got to know the real me.

When you believe the real you is worse than everyone else, and you fear that God and others would be ashamed of you, the only option you will feel you have left is to clean yourself up and make yourself acceptable again. This plays right into the trap of the devil though, because your sin isn’t something you can actually clean up on your own. No matter how hard you try, you will continue to spin your wheels and get nowhere. Your sin and shortcomings, if anything, will become even more central in your day-to-day awareness because of how much time and effort you will be devoting to fixing them. They will become your focal point. And the more you focus on your sin, the more gasoline gets dumped on the fire of your shame.

But God’s desire is not for you to struggle in isolation. He wants you to reach out for help, both from Him and from others. We are told in James:

Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results (James 5:16).

Did you catch that? If we confess our sins to each other, we will be healed. For some reason, God has decided He wants the healing of our habitual sins to be a team sport. It makes perfect sense when you think about it. Jesus tells us the defining characteristic of a believer that sets us apart from the world is our love (John 13:35), and nothing shows Christ like love to others more than coming alongside a brother who is struggling, sharing your life with him, praying for him, and accepting him regardless of his issues. It’s through these types of relationships that we can begin to experience what the unconditional love of Christ looks like.

It’s ironic—and heartbreaking—that so many men are hiding their struggles with porn in an attempt to protect themselves, when in reality, the hiding is contributing to their bondage. If you are in Christ, He has already set you free. All you need to do to experience that freedom is bring your hidden sin into the light so the blood of Jesus can cleanse you and set you free from it.

What is the biggest fear you have had to overcome?

This post was an excerpt from my book, 10 Lies Men Believe About Porn, available wherever books are sold.

The post Is the Fear of Being Found Out Contributing to Your Addiction? 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.

Desiring God: How Much of My Sinful Past Should I Tell My Children?

“A podcast listener named James writes in: ‘Pastor John, a big question for parents is whether talking about past sins, sins like drug use, sexual immorality, drunkenness, etc., will make our children more or less likely to try out or do these when they’re older…’”

Become Good Soil: Quick

“That was years ago. But my heart remembers like it was yesterday. And there isn’t a sunrise that I don’t find myself stretching my memory back to that canyon to watch my dad run toward me again.”

Gospel Coalition: Rethinking Sex Ed in the Church

“But then two days after the retreat, it hit me. I am 15 years old. Statistics say that I am not going to get married for at least 10 more years. I am a raging ball of adolescent hormones. The next 10 years are going to be a miserable season of sexual restraint. Furthermore, if I’m lucky, I may succeed for one week in living up to these standards.”

Bold Grace: Religion Has Done Too Much Harm

“Religion swears by what man must do to have God’s approval. In this merit system, he will never do enough. Some preachers preach that one must do this or that for God to be pleased with him, or that he must give more to be blessed more, or that he must forsake sin for God to hear his prayers. But all this is religion, for God cannot love man more than what He has done through Jesus’ sacrifice.”

Rob Bell: Rediscovering Wonder

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

You Have Been Set Free from the Law

So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law (Galatians 5:1).

For years, I had accepted the fact that Jesus paid for my sin on the cross, but every time I messed up I felt the need to earn God’s favor back and ask forgiveness for what I had just done.

I believed that my initial salvation came from the work of Jesus alone (saved by grace), but I also believed my continued salvation—and my acceptance by God—was a reward I maintained only if I was somehow good enough (saved by keeping the law).

I kept going back to the slavery of the law even though Christ had set me free from it.

But remember: When did Jesus pay for your sins? It was on the Cross.

And how many of your sins were done after the Cross? All of them.

Every one of your sins—past, present, and even future sins—were paid for 2000 years ago when Jesus said, “It is finished.”

When you accepted Christ’s payment for your sins, it was for all of them. Not just the ones you had committed up to the point of your initial salvation.

This idea that we need to keep coming back for forgiveness and make things right every time we sin is the same as telling Jesus we need Him to go back to the Cross and do it again.

It’s telling Jesus that what He did wasn’t enough.

This is why it is so important to understand how your behavior—no matter how sinful it may be—can never separate you from God’s love or acceptance once you have put your hope in the work of Christ.

Remember, Jesus is your only hope of freedom.

The minute you put your faith in Him, your balance was paid in full.

You were set free from the treadmill of trying to do enough good to overcome the inevitable junk that remains.

Trust this truth, and you will remain free.

This has been a repost from the archives.

The post You Have Been Set Free from the Law appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.

My One Thing: David Kyle Foster

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

to someone struggling with porn addiction?”

David Kyle Foster is the director of Mastering Life Ministries and host of Pure Passion TV.

Connect with David:

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

Twitter: @PurePassionTV

David’s Books:

Love Hunger: A Harrowing Journey from Sexual Addiction to True Fulfillment

Sexual Healing: God’s Plan for the Sanctification of Broken Lives

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

Transcript

Coming soon…

The post My One Thing: David Kyle Foster appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.

Smart Quote: John Lynch

Belt of Truth Ministries.