92.5 million. That’s how many times just one porn site was visited each day last year in 2018. EACH DAY! It’s devastating and straight-up frightening. Pornography and explicit imagery have become a custom of modern culture and, tragically, our kids are being targeted. What is now being called a public health crisis, the porn industry is fighting for the minds and hearts of the next generation.
Sexual sin can creep in as a result of trying to meet our healthy need for connection in an unhealthy way. How does this happen? I’ve found that many people don’t have the skills that they need to build proper friendships in the first place, which can lead them to feeling rejected, isolated, and unworthy of healthy relationships--and they can turn to porn, masturbation, or sex outside of marriage in an attempt to get those relational needs met. But don’t worry, these skills can be learned!
The loss of self has nothing to do with losing our identity or our personality. It doesn’t mean we ignore our needs, wants, and desires or let go of our goals and dreams. It doesn’t mean we forget our opinions, our beliefs, and our ideas. No, letting go of self means one thing and one thing alone: we choose to lose all that is wrong in exchange for all that is right. Losing our “selves” means we let go of all that God has called us not to be in exchange for all he has called us to be.
Christmas is a beautiful season of giving and spending time with the people we care about, but sometimes it comes with the realization that life did not turn out the way we expected it to. We look around at family or friends or people we’ve known forever, and it’s hard not to compare our life to theirs. It’s hard not to remember where we thought we would end up or how we thought things would be at this point in our life.
Dann Farrelly and Cole Zick dive into the importance of open and healthy communication in families, marriages, and relationships. Dann gives useful tips for conflict resolution, navigating emotions, and practical insight on how to create a new normal from unhealthy communication habits in the past.
Shame seduces us into secrecy, insists on silence, and results in judgment. When we begin hiding, and are afraid to be vulnerable, we begin blaming others and ourselves for the disconnection that we feel. Instead of pulling people towards us, we push them away, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that we are not worthy of love and acceptance. So then, disconnection is the result. What can we do to help people who are stuck in this cycle?
We can often feel the most intimidated by things we don’t understand. The fear of the unknown can lead us down paths of thinking that cause us to over-emphasize the worst-case scenarios while losing hope that good is possible. Pornography and sexual addiction, in general, actually falls into this category for most. It is hard to understand something that is so damaging and yet those who find themselves in the cycle of it see no way out.
“Do not identify your self with your desires. Letting desires define us is the most abject form of slavery. Self-mastery is true freedom.” He also said, “We can have reasons for wanting to do this or that; but wanting to do something is not a reason for doing it. Desires are not reasons.” My point is that “gay” and “straight,” along with “heterosexual” and “homosexual,” are ideological terms, and false ones. They don’t exist. There is no straight or gay.
It can be hard if you’ve been single for a long time to, as you say, keep hope alive. The two keys we’ll focus on in this Q&A are to have faith and live a full life. In this section we’ll start with the topic of faith, as our belief systems are what shape our experiences of life.
Eric and Candace Johnson discuss influence and culture this week, and address the importance of meeting people where they’re at with love while staying committed to truth. How can we follow the model of Jesus’ ministry in leadership and discipleship in today’s generation? What does this mean for our lives?
