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We created a quick screen-cast to give an overview of The Purity Report and the 40 Day Challenge. Take a look!
Note: It’s best to watch the video in full-screen HD mode to see all of the details.
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The guys over at XXXChurch have posted a short video of a guy, Brandt Russo, who has a unique ministry to the homeless. Brandt openly shares about how his struggle with porn addiction affected his ministry. View the video here…
From Operation Integrity
Everything that we do in a worthwhile recovery effort begins with “we.” We cannot allow ourselves to be alone if we hope to have a worthwhile recovery experience, because no one recovers from their addictions alone. We have to have help. While each of us will have a different story to tell, all of our stories end up pretty much the same way; addicted.
In our addictions, we become isolated by our secrets and by our shame. We feel guilty about the things we’ve done and we feel shameful about the secrets we’ve kept. We often feel like we are little more than a huge mistake that must be kept hidden from others at all costs.
In our efforts to combat our sense of aloneness, many of us have participated in various groups that were based on commitments of religion, social service, virtue, promise keeping, and faithfulness. We participated in these groups with full sincerity, always working with great diligence so we would not fail. We thought that if we could make ourselves to be of great importance we could solve our own internal pain. But we could not. Our best efforts were never good enough for us. No matter how much we excelled in our good works, our own sense of failure continued to grow. Whatever we did, no matter how good or worthwhile it was, it was never good enough. We thought we had to be perfect. It seemed to us that if we could get it right, whatever it was, then we could get ourselves right too. We always worked harder. To us, things were never good enough. We became perfectionists. Then, we would even find failure in our greatest achievements. Strange as it sounds, no matter what the successes we achieved, or the failures we experienced our addictions seemed to become ever more attractive. And, paradoxically, the harder we worked to overcome our addictions on our own the more our addictions ruled our lives.
Left with few, if any, viable opportunities for change we admitted we needed help. And, we took the first step in getting help by seeking out a recovery fellowship, a place where it was safe to admit that we were not in complete control of lives. Desperate, we admitted that we had been unable to overcome some very serious problems with our behavior and that our life was beyond our ability to manage. In making our admission we began to set aside our own ego-centered independence in order to seek out a connectedness and fellowship that could do for us what we had not been able to do for ourselves.
Alone we are dying, but together we can recover and live.
I read an amazing quote this morning…
“The genesis of an obedient life is our confession, most notably the confession of our disobedience is what prompts us to live an obedient life with God.” – Ann Lamott, page 99, Bird by Bird
This validates my own experience and deep held belief that confession is at the core of recovery from our addiction to sin. That is what The Purity Report is all about – creating a safe environment for confession to begin and be maintained.
This short devotional from Lazaroo describes very well how we feel about confession and accountability. We shrink back in so many areas in our lives and put on masks. We hide from others and from God. We even hide from ourselves. The irony is that God sees us exactly as we are. Even when we are hiding from ourselves, we cannot hide from him.
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Part of me misses porn and masturbating sometimes. I have to remind myself that my heart is good (because that’s where Jesus lives) and I don’t have to do those things. The true me, the new me, doesn’t really want them. The thing is, I’m not perfect, so I waver and struggle with temptation at times.
I know my heart and I know that Jesus lives there…and it is good because Jesus says so. When the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and the pride of life scream to me that I am a dirty rotten sinner, I have to remind myself firmly that Jesus lives in my heart and it is good. He has taken my heart of stone and given me a heart of flesh. I just haven’t been completely transformed by the renewing of my mind yet.
This is no excuse to indulge the flesh. But it is the only effective inoculation I have found against the shame and despair that the flesh can throw my way. I have to get honest with myself and others about my temptations. Admitting a part of me misses it…that’s the truth sometimes. Getting it out in the open seems so risky, but is so necessary.
I don’t want to click post on this blog, but here goes…
While reading the verse of the day as delivered to my Google Reader account, a familiar verse showed up.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)
This verse is often quoted by folks struggling with sin, as it well should be. If we could not find any forgiveness, then we are in big, big trouble! Those of us who are or have been trapped by an addiction to porn know all-to-well the deep hole we have lived in and how much we need God’s help to climb out of it.
What struck me as I read the verse this time is the latter part, “…and purify us from all unrighteousness.” The focus when this verse is quoted is almost universally about forgiveness. But what about being purified from unrighteousness? Isn’t that what we really want? Forgiveness is an amazing thing, but being cleansed of the unrighteousness that brought about the state from which I need to be forgiven is more amazing still! So with this being one of the more familiar verses thrown around in church circles, why aren’t more people experiencing the purification that it promises?
I have worked in sexual integrity ministry for several years now. In both face-to-face and online venues I have been the recipient of many confessions of giving in to the lust of the flesh.
- “I slipped.”
- “I got online.”
- “I masturbated.”
- “I fill-in-the-blank.”
I’ve given confessions of this sort many times myself. I have usually let them leak out reluctantly from a place of shame. My preference would be to keep it silent, let it slide, sweep it under the rug or at the very least minimize it. And as such, these weak little confessions are what I divulge. This, I believe, is the crux of why the purification promised in this scripture is missing.
It seems to me that if anything meaningful is to happen in response to my confession that the confession itself must be meaningful. The easy way out for some is to be overly explicit in describing how they acted out. While this may sound deep to the listener, it can often be an avenue of exhibitionism. Worse still, it may assuage the conscience of the confessor, but not result in any lasting change either. I can describe the mechanics of porn, actions and behaviors without ever really opening my heart up for inspection. And that is what confession is all about.
A quick word-study of the word “confession”, homologeo in Greek, shows it is defined as, “to say the same thing as another.” None of the tiny utterances mentioned above come close to saying the same thing about sexual sin as God does in his word. Taking this view is painful, and extremely necessary if we are to experience the purification from the unrighteousness that got us in this mess in the first place. It is another case of short-term pain for long-term gain!
There is obviously much more to say on this topic, but I will stop here for now.
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