Cries for Help

The other day I was reading a blog about porn addiction and the brain, and I will address that issue in the next blog I send out. The thing that really hit me was, at the end of the blog, so many people was commenting and just crying out for help. Men, Women, Teenagers, wives just screaming for help. Help because they are enslaved to sex, and porn. Wives crying out for help because their husbands are enslaved and the family is destroyed. I’ve been in that place where they are crying from, and it is pure hell, its death, sin is death. There is only one man who can help us with our addictions, Jesus. Jesus died on the cross so that we can be FREE, and I believe we can have freedom on this side of Heaven. Below is a prayer we use with Refuge. It is taking from the book Surfing for God by Michael Cusick. If you are struggling, take some time to go through it. Ask me how Refuge can help you. You do not have to be enslaved, Jesus has died so we can be FREE. Are you free today? By HIS Grace and only by HIS Grace.

Lord Jesus Christ, I confess here and now that You are my Creator and therefore the Creator of my sexuality. I confess that You are also my Savior, that You have ransomed me with Your blood. I have been bought with the blood of Jesus Christ; my life and my body belong to God. Jesus, I present myself to You now to be made whole and holy in every way, including in my sexuality. You ask us to present our bodies to You as living sacrifices and the parts of our bodies as instruments of righteousness. I do this now. I present my body, my sexuality, and my sexual nature to You.
Jesus, I ask Your Holy Spirit to help me now remember, confess and renounce my sexual sins. [Pause. Listen. Remember. Confess and renounce.] Lord Jesus, I ask Your forgiveness for every act of sexual sin. You promised that if we confess our sins, You are faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I ask You to cleanse me of my sexual sins now; cleanse my body, soul, and spirit; cleanse my heart and mind and will; cleanse my sexuality. Thank You for forgiving me and cleansing me. I receive Your forgiveness and cleansing. I renounce every claim I have given satan to my life or sexuality through my sexual sins. Those claims are now broken by the cross and blood of Jesus Christ.
Lord Jesus, I thank You for offering me total and complete forgiveness. I receive that forgiveness now. I choose to forgive myself for all of my sexual wrongdoing. I also choose to forgive those who have harmed me sexually. [Be specific here; name those people, and forgive them.] I release them to You. I release all my anger and judgment toward them. Come, Lord Jesus, into the pain they caused me, and heal me with Your Love.
I now bring the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ between me and every person with whom I have been sexually intimate. [Name them specifically.] I break all sexual, emotional, and spiritual bonds with [name, if possible]. I keep the cross of Christ between us.
I renounce [name the struggle – “The lingering shame” or “the hatred of my body”] I bring the cross and blood of Jesus Christ against this [guilt or shame, every negative consequence]. Lord Jesus, I also ask You to reveal to me any agreements I have made about my sexuality or this specific struggle. [An example would be “I will always struggle with this” or “I don’t deserve to enjoy sex” or “My sexuality is dirty.” Pause and let Jesus reveal those agreements to you. Then break them.] I break this agreement [name it] in the name of my Lord Jesus Christ, and I renounce every claim I have given it in my life.
Lord Jesus, I now consecrate my sexuality to You in every way. I consecrate my sexual intimacy with my spouse to You. I ask You to cleanse and heal my sexuality and our sexual intimacy in every way. I ask Your healing grace to come and free me from all consequences of sexual sin. I ask You to fill my sexuality with Your healing love and goodness. Restore my sexuality in wholeness. Let my spouse and me both experience all of the intimacy and pleasure You intended a man and women to enjoy in marriage. I pray all of this in the name of Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.

We Do Not Lose Heart – By Jen Smidt

I came across this the yesterday from Jen Smidt on The Resurgence. This is her work, evening the title, thought I would share.

People everywhere are feeling it. It is often called being bummed out or even depressed. Many scenarios call for it – losing a job, a home, or one’s health. Walking through difficult trials seemingly demands it – strained relationships, decimated finances.

At one time or another, it will happen to each one of us. We will lose heart. Circumstances reveal what is truly a much deeper condition.

9 Forms of a Lost Heart

In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul urges us to “not lose heart.” When we lose heart, we find ourselves adrift again in the sea of lie, fear, and unbelief. It can take many forms:

1.We lose heart when we make the weight of our sin greater than the glory of Christ’s righteousness.
2.We lose heart when we turn away from the Lord in fear, shame, selfishness, or laziness.
3.We lose heart when we stop beholding his glory.
4.We lose heart when we harden our hearts to the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
5.We lose heart when we forget whom power comes from.
6.We lose heart when we are afflicted and believe our affliction will crush us.
7.We lose heart when we are unwilling to carry in our bodies the sufferings of Jesus, only desiring ease and comfort.
8.We lose heart when we stop believing and speaking in faith.
9.We lose heart when we resist grace and start grumbling.

Not Bootstraps, but Glory

Paul’s exhortation is not simply a pull-yourself-up-from-your-bootstraps battle cry, disconnected from God and devoid of supernatural power. It is connected to “this ministry by the mercy of God.” We learn about this ministry and mercy from the previous verses in 2 Corinthians 3:16–18:

But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Turning to the Lord in times of trial is evidence that you have not lost heart completely. Turning to Jesus and beholding his glory removes the veil of darkness. We are being transformed over the course of our lifetimes through the trials, toils and snares. The glory of God has shone in our hearts through Christ so we do not lose heart.

Wisdom from a Sister

Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with a lady from our church who has been praying for me for years. She is one of our prayer warriors, and God has been leading her to share part of her story with me. She has been after me for well over a year to just sit down with me and share some things God has laid on her heart. It would be a sin for me to share her story, but God clearly had things He need to say to me from my sister in Christ. I think if I heard her story a year or more ago it wouldn’t have done much for me, because of the state my heart was in. Two things that really grabbed me was reminders. The first was how much satan hates me and hates believers. As believers we are a foul smell in his nostrils. satan hates us with a driving passion and wants to see all of God’s children destroyed. satan cannot kill God’s children directly but he can attack them in ways and over time a believer will just self-destruct and end up taking their own life. satan wants to see believers marriages destroyed, families torn apart, children in pain, and he will use anything to do that. For men, its sex, pride, power, money, and the list can go on and on. At the same is for women, they have their own struggles. satan wants to destroy believers and God makes it very clear to us that we will endure many hardships before we enter the kingdom. (Acts 14:22) During those hardships we have to keep going back to the cross, second reminder. We cannot lose focus of the cross, and I will be the first to rise my hand, oh how often I lose focus of the cross. I will never go through anything in life close to what Christ went through on the cross. The amount of pain and torture He suffered, I will never know, however Jesus went willing through the pain and torture for me, for you. Everything in the Bible points to one thing, the cross. Without the cross we don’t have life, we don’t have freedom, we don’t have victory. Whatever you are struggling with today, just stop and be still, and look towards the cross, look towards Jesus. He is standing there with arms wide open, and will take you just as you are.