Who Am I?

At first glance, I would not say that a sinner who is forgiven is exclusive of a saint who sins. I would conclude that being made clean by the blood of Jesus who redeems me, I would have to say that I am a saint who sins. I have spent most of my life believing that my behavior defines who I am and in my case I would be a sinner who occasionally was forgiven.

Saint – (Greek) Hagios – sacred, morally blameless or religious, ceremonially consecrated

I am consecrated by the sacrifice of Jesus (Heb. 10:20). I am no longer who I was, but am now defined by Christ’s sacrifice. Too much of my life have I let my identity be defined by the words of others. Growing up as an outsider in my community, I was really not a part of everyone else I lived around. This has been a curse in making me doubt my ability to stand up and be who I believe I am. It has, I now see, been a blessing too in that I was not so quickly drawn down paths that would later destroy me. I have certainly tried and succeeded in finding and following these paths on my own, but God has alway had a different plan for my life. I know now, that just as the carrot of temptation will always be held out in front of me by Satan, so will he hold out to me the words of self doubt whispered in my ear to keep me from my true identity in Christ.

The more I fight and resist Satan, the more I see the strength of the Holy Spirit guiding my life. I will have more victories as I let Jesus define me by living through me and it becomes easier to stand up and be who I really am which is not a part of this world.

It is the stumbling that reminds me to be humble and lean on Jesus. God fights for me as long as I seek Him and His righteousness.

I am a saint who is forgiven because of what Jesus did for me. The more I understand and remember that my identity has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with Jesus, the bolder I become in my faith and truly believe that I can be who God says that I am.

Relentless

Well I lead my first counseling session last evening and I think it went well. My mentor, Curt, was there with me and thankfully was willing to set in when deeper meaning of a topic was needed to be discussed. The topic was on being double-minded, that is wanting to obey God but still obeying our own flesh.

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Matthew 6:24 (KJV)

We all need to understand that we will serve a master. We were created to serve and to worship a master, which means we only need to decide which master we will serve. For us to overcome the evil, flesh driven, sinful lust (which is simply selfishness) that we have been a slave to for most of our lives (which begins in childhood with me, me, me…) we need to begin to walk in the light.

If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
1 John 1:6,7 (KJV)

So how do we come out of the darkness and walk in the light? How do we return to, or begin, that fellowship with God that will free use of our bondage? James tell us…

Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.
James 4:8 (KJV)

We need to draw close to God! That was easy, but what does that mean? It means that we spend time with Him, get to know Him by pursuing Him RELENTLESSLY. Every day one needs to be in God’s word. Every day one needs to talk with God. I have a friend who feels so close to Jesus that he shares every thing he does with Him. What better way to develop a close relationship with someone? We MUST be relentless in our pursuit because we are in a spiritual war with the one who rules this world – Satan. He has this world so tightly wrapped to his way of thinking that most of the time we can’t even see the evil that we need to be fighting.

And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.
Matthew 11:12 (KJV)

We can’t just lay around expecting that we will just walk with God because we have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior! This is war, it is a battle that can easily be won because we have God on our side, but it IS war and as Matthew points out we must be relentless in taking it by force. Walking the Christian walk is NOT a passive activity. Walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ our Lord, our God, is work and if we slack off Satan is ready to tear us to pieces and we’ll never see it coming.

Relentless pursuit of God our Father in Heaven, of Jesus Christ our brother, of the Word from which all truth is revealed is the ONLY way to become free for the bondage of our sin.

No Jesus, No Freedom

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
John 8:32 (KJV)

Without the truth, one can have no freedom. It is the lies of Satan that keep one in bondage to the sins that will drag him to death. All the truth one needs can be found in God’s Word. Read it and know that the One who created you is the one who wrote the book we call the Holy Bible. The truth is in there and there is no freedom without it.

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
James 1:22 (KJV)

Just hearing the truth does not alone make one free from such bondage, one must act on that truth. Also there is no power in oneself to act. I personally can tell you that after more than thirty years of relying on my own power, failure to break free never lasted long and so I was never truly free.

If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
John 8:36 (KJV)

God the Father sent His Son not only to die for our sinful lives that we might gain eternal life, but to live for us. Jesus is our strength and He lives in us and ONLY He can truly make one free!

I bring this all up not only because God said that’s the way it is, but because so many fail to see the truth or worse, refuse to look at the source of truth. Man’s pride and arrogance has sickened me this afternoon as I did a Google search for ’sexual addiction’. Website after website listed for helping the sexual addict. The overtly arrogant ones did not even claim to be religious at all.

The worst part was the ‘Christian’ sites that completely left God out of the picture. Doing a search for key words on one such site, there were no hits for Jesus or Holy, the five I got for Christ were only because the search found the word Christianity. God was found twice and nowhere did any mention of a Bible verse appear! The sites do sell books, tapes, CDs, seminars, etc. There is nothing wrong with those things, but if they can’t even point to God, His Word or His Son as resource, they are simply selling false hope.

If you need help, see the resource links over on the left. Pure Life Ministries and Freely Give Ministries have the Word of God front and center in their ministries. God loves you and is desperately wanting you to make the right choices.

Freely Give

Freely ye have received, freely give. Matthew 10:8

I went through 26 weeks of counseling and discipleship with Freely Give Ministries and finished up in October of 2007. As the name of Freely Give comes from God’s word, it seems obvious that it is of importance to the ministry. In Luke 17:11-19 there is told of Jesus coming into a city and there were ten lepers. Jesus had them go and show themselves to the priests and they were healed. Only one of the ten came back and glorified God and his faith made him whole.

That story along with Jesus’ command to give freely what we have been given freely led me to join the ministry of Freely Give. I have been along with my mentor Curt as he counsels another man so that I can learn to do the same. This week I will be doing the counseling with Curt by my side. When I say I, the truth is that Jesus in me will be reaching out to this man and His Word will be the words of counsel. I am nervous, but it is my own sinful pride that makes me nervous. This is the command of God, that we love one another as we love ourselves.

Testimony of a Sexual Addict

I was a child of twelve in 1975. I attended church with my two brothers and my mother and sometimes my dad. I began my dark secret in 1975 when I discovered girls. Being otherwise a fairly good kid in the world’s eyes, I started down a path that year that I would stray from only briefly over the next thirty-five years. Before I was old enough to drive a car I was becoming good at hiding my sexual addiction. By the time I graduated high school, I was ready to find more dark paths to follow.

Drugs, alcohol, and sex began to fill my life and I was no longer going to church. I would have two major falls in the coming years. The first was when a woman I was living with and engaged to asked me to leave her. In my devastated condition I turned back to the God of my mother and this time I was making the decision to follow Him my own decision and not my mother’s. I moved back in with my parents while I attended community college and faithfully attended church every week. It was 1988 and my life was turning drastically around from where it had been.

By the summer of 1991, I had graduated college and married a young woman I began dating shortly after returning to church. Life was getting better and I began to cruise along. I had told my wife about my sordid past, all except the pornography I had been so addicted to. The really horrible part was that for all my pleas for forgiveness to God for my past, I never repented of the pornography and I was still hooked.My wife found out, but I made it as small of an issue as I could. I claimed to be good yet I still followed my lust. We had left our previous church a few years before mostly because we had moved away, and in our small community we did finally begin attending a local church. I was wanting to get back to church, not really so much for me as for my three children. I wanted them to know God and I knew we had to get ourselves back to God too.In 2005, the church bulletin published my testimony and I really felt my life was now back on track with God.

My kids were learning about God and Jesus and my wife and I were finally attending church again and my addiction seemed to be under control. It was under control, the problem was it was my ever failing control again and again it failed. Again the lies about my problem to my wife began to hurt us all. In the fall of 2006, God gave me one more chance. One Sunday that I happened to be running the video for the church, I got to hear a guest speaker for three services that morning. Not having any video to run for the speaker, I got to sit in stunned amazement as the man speaking gave his testimony which sounded a lot like mine. What this man told me though was there was a way out of the years of bondage I had subjected myself to.

It was still three months later when I was found out again, that I had to make a choice, either keep hiding in the darkness or come clean in the light. I confessed to my wife the sin was bigger than I could handle myself and I sent an email to Curt asking for help. I spent twenty-six weeks going through Freely Give Ministries and though it was tough then and there are still days when it is tough now, I am being cleansed daily by the grace of God. Through true repentance and trusting Jesus to live in me, through honestly living in the light I finally know what freedom is.

Jeremiah 17:9 (KJV)
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?