How Can I Compare to Women in Porn?

Distraught wife – I don’t watch porn, but I know my husband has viewed it from time to time. The little bit I have seen of these women makes me realize there is no way I can compare to or compete with them. What am I to do with these thoughts?

Even the television bombards my mind with their version of the perfect woman. I struggle with being insecure already, but it becomes worse when I think about how I’m in competition with women who are tens in every way.

Whenever my husband becomes angry with me, the thought goes through my mind that he will bolt for another woman if I don’t meet his needs. Even if he does not bolt, I know he satisfies himself with women who are in a league of their own. What am I to do?

• Backward Porn Addiction: When women draw attention to themselves
• When looking for porn, begin in the heart

In my view many Christian women are in a seemingly impossible situation. The external pressure from movies and television pumps their minds 24/7 about what is perfect. The dream weavers in the entertainment industry have all the tools to deliver titillating and tantalizing candy to the male ego.

Then there is the internal pressure: porn is a major and satisfying player in the male’s fantasy world. This is why the pursuer of porn women does not have to catch a real one. It’s all in his mind.

Fantasy is what makes porn so perfect for the depraved mind. All he has to do is look at the perfect woman through the Internet, while enjoying her with his mind. It’s not about being with her. It’s about thinking he is with her.   Continue at Rick Thomas

Modesty Wars – the Conservatives vs. Those Who are Not

The main takeaway in my Too much skin, girl. Too much skin article was the following:

I exhort you to dress in such a way which does not capture the gaze of any person. It matters not if you’re male or female. Our Christian duty is to point people to Christ.

Paul said it this way: So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. – 1 Corinthians 10:31 (ESV)

To glorify God is to spread His fame to all the world by making His name great in your sphere of influence. He is the One we are to magnify because He is the only hope for this life and the life to come.

Oh, magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together! – Psalm 34:3 (ESV)

Paul taught us how everything we did should have a magnification of the LORD focus. This is an all-encompassing command from the apostle. Most certainly this means our thoughts on clothing falls under the rubric of spreading God’s fame.

What is your motive?

 

The starting place for all of our decisions begin with the motives of the heart. When you buy a clothing item, what is your motive? How do your motives influence what you wear?

Maybe you can ask the question in reverse: how do your clothing choices reflect your motives? What do your clothes say about you as a person? What do your clothes say about your relationship with God? These should be soul-stirring and heart-penetrating questions.

I think sometimes we forget we are missionaries. Where we live and how we present ourselves matter. Missionaries who live in foreign places are cognizant about how their life and message works in tandem to communicate the Gospel of Christ to their world.

Though we are not missionaries in the sense in which most of us understand the term, we are missionaries nonetheless. We are aliens who have been placed within the human community to share the Gospel to the perishing.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.
Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. – 1 Peter 2:11-12 (ESV)

We are either influencing or we’re being influenced. If you do not spend time thinking about your clothing choices with a motive to spread God’s fame by those choices, then you’re more than likely not influencing your culture for Christ, but are being influence by your culture.   Continue at Rick Thomas

God Appoints Trouble for you Because He Loves You

And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. – Jonah 1:17 (ESV)^[1]

Let’s pretend you’re in Sunday school and your 3rd grade teacher tells you the story of Jonah and the whale. It sounds pretty cool doesn’t it? You go home and tell your mommy about the story of the man swallowed by a giant fish.

Your mom begins to tell you how great God is and what He can do. She also tells you Jonah was a Christian. You kinda dismiss the fact he was a Christian since you already assumed it anyway.

As a third grader it doesn’t connect with you how God would prepare trouble for one of His children. And it doesn’t matter anyway. You believe God and there is nothing He can’t do.

Besides, you’re tucked away in your bunk bed, with your favorite stuffed animal, and mommy and daddy are in the next room. It’s a wonderful life.

The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever. – Jonah 2:5-6 (ESV)

When the storm chases you

Now, let’s step into your future. You’re no longer eight years old or in a third grade Sunday school class. You’re unhappily married and have been for what seems like an eternity.

Your marriage has the feel of a prison sentence. You’re daily drowning in the belly of hopelessness as the weeds of discouragement are wrapping around your head and the bars of bitterness are closing upon you.

Nope, you’re not in the third grade any more. Your safe little world where God was big and trouble was small has turned into a war between two worlds and God now seems distant. The question we’re asking is, “What has changed?”

• Has God changed?
• Have you changed?
• Is God still big, good, kind, and loving?
• How have your beliefs about God changed?
• How has your world changed you?

Perhaps you’re not in a stormy marriage. Maybe your storm is some other kind of relational tension. The storm is not the main thing anyway. It’s merely the context for God to show Himself strong; we to show ourselves weak, and God to be magnified through our inability.   Continue at Rick Thomas

You Shouldn’t try to Forgive Yourself

One of the more interesting teachings that has crept into the Christian community is this idea of self-forgiveness.

Forgiving myself is the standard way it is talked about.

I’m not exactly sure how it became such an effective teaching in mainstream Christian consciousness, though I do have a pretty good idea where it came from.

Its roots are in the self-esteem movement as taught by our secular culture.

Only a person who is pursuing a high self-esteem would be tempted to think along the lines of self-forgiveness.

What I mean is this:

Typically a person who believes he needs to forgive himself has sinned in some way–hence the need for forgiveness.

All sin requires forgiveness in order to be free from it. We’re good so far.

However, rather than the self-forgiver seeking forgiveness from God alone, he believes that he needs something more–something in addition to God’s forgiveness. While he may think about and even know that God will forgive him of his sins, he also believes his personal forgiveness of himself is required too.

“Yes, God has forgiven me, but I can’t forgive myself for what I did,” is a typical response.

This is a major heresy because it adds to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Because of this it must be repudiated. Whenever we add anything to the Gospel, it mocks and marginalizes the work of Christ and it must be rebuked.

• Christ’s forgiveness of myself + my forgiveness of myself = heresy
• Christ’s forgiveness of myself + my acceptance of His forgiveness = forgiveness

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. – Galatians 1:8-9 (ESV)  Continue at Rick Thomas

The Day I Stopped Hating my Dad – The Story of a Lost Teen

My dad took his first drink when he was 21-years old.

He took his last drink 21-years later.

In-between his first and last drink he never stopped drinking.

This may be weird to you, but I’m gonna say it: I do not know what a normal dad smells like.

My dad was not a normal dad: he smelled odd.

His breath was an amalgamated concoction of air, nicotine, and alcohol.

His skin had a gummy bear feel to it. When you rubbed his skin, it felt kinda gooey.

He was also a mean drunk. When he got drunk, he got angry and if he was not sulking in a chair, he was yelling at his children. I do not recall ever hearing the word “love” in our home.

Perhaps someone said, “I love you,” but I do not remember it. Love was not something I knew about. I had heard about it through television and rock songs, but I did not know what it really meant or how it was supposed to be lived out.

You wouldn’t know this either, but I’m gonna say this too: I never called my dad, “dad” or “father.” Even as I type the letters d-a-d, I’m reminded that those letters still seem a bit odd when I relate them to my father.

We had a nickname that we called him, but I’ll spare you that information. It took me about 10 years after he died to refer to him as “dad.” The D-word was not an appellation we used for him.

These circumstances were not unusual for me because my life was wall-to-wall dysfunction from birth until I was born the second time at twenty-five years old. To refrain from calling my dad “dad” was just part of the deal. If you don’t know any better, then it becomes the unchangeable and assumed norm.

Then he died Continue at Rick Thomas

I Want to be a Half Christian so I can Enjoy the World Too

When my daughter rides with me she is the passenger.

I’m the driver.

Kinda logical isn’t it?

She goes where I go.

I lead. She follows.

She is at the mercy of me because I’m the one who is in control of the car.

I have total influence over her.

This is an analogy for what Paul was talking about when he said,

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? – 2 Corinthians 6:14 (ESV)

You know the analogy don’t you? Seemingly every preacher who has ever preached this text mentions something about two animals in a yoke. The reason they say this is because that was exactly what Paul was referring to.

Think of two oxen pulling a wagon while both of them are in a harness or yoke. When in the yoke, they are one. Paul was bringing to his audience what Moses brought to his back in the day when he said,

You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. – Deuteronomy 22:10 (ESV)

Do not put up with it readily enough

The unequal yoke in this passage is a picture of someone who has influence over another person. Paul is warning the Corinthian Christians that if they do not stop and turn around from their evil unchristian relationships that they are involved in, then the influence of those ungodly relationships will take them where they do not want to go.

The entire letter to the Corinthians is Paul’s attempt to persuade the Christians to make a break from evil influences. He knows they are susceptible to the power that these influences can have over them. This is where the yoke analogy is very helpful.  Continue at Rick Thomas

Men are Tempted to Lust – Women are Tempted to be Lusted After

"Men are tempted to give themselves to pornography, while women are tempted to pornography." – Al Mohler

Porn is a two-way street.

Pornography is not just about a man who is seeking a sexual object to devour with his eyes and heart.

It is also about a woman who wants to be “devoured” by the eyes of another man.

She may think it is more innocent than it really is, which is why one lady wrote to me, making an appeal to the Christian community.

She wants us to do more about revealing the whole truth about porn. 

Let’s free associate: when I say the word “porn” or “pornography” what do you think about? I asked my wife this question and she said, “naked women.” I think most people would answer similarly.

One of the most misunderstood and unspoken perceptions about pornography is that it is mainly a problem isolated to the Internet, adult movies, and magazines. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it narrows the interpretation of porn to something that can marginalize the Bible.

While the Bible does not talk about porn the way we think about it and experience it today, it does talk about lust. And lust is the real issue. Once you re-categorize the problem from porn to lust, then the blinders come off and the breadth and severity of the problem is revealed. The Bible then becomes more helpful regarding this pandemic issue.

I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. – Matthew 5:28 (ESV)

What many women do not realize is that millions of husbands, fathers, brothers, and leaders are tempted to lust. We are either tempted by or we are yielding to lust throughout our day–willfully looking or tempted to look at scantily and tightly clothed women.  Keep Reading>>>

When Looking for Pornography…Begin in the Heart

Where would you look to locate the primary problem with pornography? In our culture?

Are you tempted to initially react to the sensual realities of our culture?

You should react!

You should be concerned!

But when you address the porn problem, are you more inclined to begin the discussion with the prevalent, pervasive, cultural, immodesty issues?

Granted it should be part of the discussion.

Certainly it is right to walk our wives and daughters through how to dress modestly.

It is wise to teach them how to help guard the hearts of their male friends, by dressing in an appropriate manner.

However, the way they dress should not be the starting point in the pornography discussion.

Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. – Luke 6:45

Jesus began the discussion regarding behavioral sins like porn not with the behavior, but with the heart. In the quote above Jesus tied the behavior (tongue speech) to the heart. He placed the source or the genesis of our sin problems in the heart rather than on the lip.   Keep Reading  >>>

What Drives Porn Addiction: A Conversation in Biblical Counseling

Porn for a man is not primarily about the physical attributes of a woman. Pornography is primarily about the “theater of the mind,” when a guy creates a storyline where adoring, fawning women pursue him. It is a way in which an insecure person can create a private, self-centered drama that focuses exclusively on his desire to be stimulated physically, mentally, and emotionally.

There has never been a time in our culture where men can so easily escape the disappointments and frustrations of life. Covenant Eyes is doing a remarkable job caring for members of the Christian community, who are tempted by Internet porn. You can have your computer monitored and a report sent to a trusted friend. This is a safe and intelligent way to provide accountability for those who enjoy watching pornography. Read and Listen HERE

How to Build Relationally in the Local Church

HT: Competent Counseling