Hey...It's been a spell...And I don't know what to write about...I just feel like I should write something..........
Throughout the last week or two I have been pretty overwhelmed...School and everything that goes with it takes my life up and leaves me no time for anything...Including, it seems, God...Not that I haven't had time for God, but I have just filled my day with all kinds of "good" stuff...It's not that anything is that bad, it's just that I need to keep it centered around God instead of steering my own path through the day...
My biggest revelation has come this week though...I was stressing about prayer and about how I have a HUGE list of people to pray for and I feel like if I don't pray nothing will get done and nothing will go right...And then the light bulb went on in my head and I realized that God is not going to alter his cosmic plan just because I forgot to pray for it...Now the danger with what I just said is that people will never pray because they think it doesn't matter and God will do His thing anyways...I have no real answer for that other than to say that we shouldn't be looking for how much we can get away with, rather we should ask how much can we do to get closer to God...
I used to think that if I couldn't pray for everything that I wouldn't pray for anything...Stupid...I would need an hour or more to get through everything and I can't find that kind of time in the day sometimes...My revelation is that even though I can't spend an hour or two silent with God (it would be nice if I could though) I can be in constant prayer throughout the day...My day doesn't hinge upon a quantity of spiritual time...I should be in constant prayer and awareness of God throughout the day, praying as things come to mind and worshiping as I walk...
There is nothing wrong with a devotional time...They are still important...I just need this too...
If anything I have said is off, theologically or spiritually, etc... let me know...I am still trying to figure this out as I go...
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
Fleeing From Sexual Immorality...
Here you go Jerm.... :)
So throughout this school year I have steered clear of something that has brought me down in the past...This thing has been the root of my downfall into a spiral of sin-repent-sin-repent...For some reason I just decided, before I went into training to be a resident assistant at school at the end of the summer, that I just didn't want to deal with pornography anymore, and everything that goes with it. I am a junior in college now, and have a real possibility of a serious relationship sometime in the next few years...I want to honor whoever that women is with every aspect of myself...After all, I want to date a girl so centered around Christ I fall in love with the Jesus inside her...Well, if I want that in her, I need to be the same...I want her to fall in love with the Jesus inside of me...
If you don't know me, I have had a perpetual struggle with porn since I was about 10-12...It is just my main struggle in life...I know it seems super bad or way worse than some things to a lot of people, but all sin is the same in God's eyes...My sin just happens to affect someone else, someone I may not even know yet...It kills me to know I will look whoever my girlfriend is someday in the eyes and tell her how I have sold myself for something short of her in the past...I could possibly have all that crap affecting how I look at her, not because I want to or because it is supposed to be like that, but because I made stupid choices in the past...
Now I know God is bigger than anything, ever...I know he can and is helping me overcome this...Maybe he can even take away how I have this past affecting me now with girls...I know I just need to keep my eyes on God and let the rest fall into place under His plan...
Since I haven't fallen into any physical sexual temptation in so long, I find that I can look at women in a cleaner way now...I can stare at them in the face without thinking twice and let them know I am interested in who they are, not what they are...My thought life is more pure...
In church today, Pastor Mark talked about how Joseph straight up fled from Potiphar's wife...He saw temptation and just fled, before he gave himself a chance to think twice...He has every reason to give in to her, but he didn't because he was conditioned to flee temptation...He didn't make excuses or try to justify all of her advances...All he knew was God as truth and answered her with, "How could I sin against God?"
Genesis 39
The way out is the presence of God...The way out is prayer...The opposite of addiction and sin is fullness...Fullness from God is the only thing that will make it full enough to leave no room for sin...
God has entrusted me with him, which means I have been entrusted with EVERYTHING...
If you know me, keep me accountable to this...I have come to far to fail and don't want to fall back to where I was for the last 10 years...It was hell at times...This one sin, with everything that goes with it, has single-handedly kept me farther from God than any other sin in my life...
Thanks for listening to all my random thoughts...Sorry if I am too open...
"Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body."
1 Cor 6:18
"But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people."
Ephesians 5:3
"Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry."
Col 3:5
"It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality"
1 Thes 4:3
So throughout this school year I have steered clear of something that has brought me down in the past...This thing has been the root of my downfall into a spiral of sin-repent-sin-repent...For some reason I just decided, before I went into training to be a resident assistant at school at the end of the summer, that I just didn't want to deal with pornography anymore, and everything that goes with it. I am a junior in college now, and have a real possibility of a serious relationship sometime in the next few years...I want to honor whoever that women is with every aspect of myself...After all, I want to date a girl so centered around Christ I fall in love with the Jesus inside her...Well, if I want that in her, I need to be the same...I want her to fall in love with the Jesus inside of me...
If you don't know me, I have had a perpetual struggle with porn since I was about 10-12...It is just my main struggle in life...I know it seems super bad or way worse than some things to a lot of people, but all sin is the same in God's eyes...My sin just happens to affect someone else, someone I may not even know yet...It kills me to know I will look whoever my girlfriend is someday in the eyes and tell her how I have sold myself for something short of her in the past...I could possibly have all that crap affecting how I look at her, not because I want to or because it is supposed to be like that, but because I made stupid choices in the past...
Now I know God is bigger than anything, ever...I know he can and is helping me overcome this...Maybe he can even take away how I have this past affecting me now with girls...I know I just need to keep my eyes on God and let the rest fall into place under His plan...
Since I haven't fallen into any physical sexual temptation in so long, I find that I can look at women in a cleaner way now...I can stare at them in the face without thinking twice and let them know I am interested in who they are, not what they are...My thought life is more pure...
In church today, Pastor Mark talked about how Joseph straight up fled from Potiphar's wife...He saw temptation and just fled, before he gave himself a chance to think twice...He has every reason to give in to her, but he didn't because he was conditioned to flee temptation...He didn't make excuses or try to justify all of her advances...All he knew was God as truth and answered her with, "How could I sin against God?"
Genesis 39
The way out is the presence of God...The way out is prayer...The opposite of addiction and sin is fullness...Fullness from God is the only thing that will make it full enough to leave no room for sin...
God has entrusted me with him, which means I have been entrusted with EVERYTHING...
If you know me, keep me accountable to this...I have come to far to fail and don't want to fall back to where I was for the last 10 years...It was hell at times...This one sin, with everything that goes with it, has single-handedly kept me farther from God than any other sin in my life...
Thanks for listening to all my random thoughts...Sorry if I am too open...
"Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body."
1 Cor 6:18
"But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people."
Ephesians 5:3
"Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry."
Col 3:5
"It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality"
1 Thes 4:3
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