Covenant eyes

Some time ago I taught on the “sex sequence”. What I was trying to address was the way people some end up getting into trouble. It is a though we make one small step and find ourselves on an escalator and when we get off the top of the escalator we are in deep trouble. The wise follower of Jesus takes care not to get onto the bottom step.

Tonight I would like to reflect on a particular escalator. This is one that men in particular struggle with – pornography. If you have never been tempted by pornography that is great and you can sit back and ignore the rest of this discussion.

However, apparently half of the people who go to church admit to personal struggles with this. My assumption is that this is mainly the majority of the men in church therefore. Although some women struggle with pornography, it is a smaller number. Four in ten pastors admit to visiting porn websites.

So we have the problem of many guys coming to church struggling with a problem and looking for help from leaders and pastors who struggle with exactly the same thing. We are all in this together.

David Partington, addictions expert says, “Pornography is the greatest threat that Christian manhood will face in the next 5 years.”

There is an inbuilt drive in man, to one degree or another, to procreate and that means to have sex. As a society we tend to put limits on behaviour related to sex. More particularly as people who seek to follow God’s plan for our lives we contain that drive within certain boundaries. Some of us, like Jesus and Paul, stay celibate throughout life, some of us don’t. Some of us have strong sexual drives some of us don’t. Although I am forced to speak in generalities I am aware that everyone is different.

Today, sexual imagery is widespread and takes many many forms. It is almost impossible to miss it. It is just too easy to have our minds and imaginations fed with stuff that leads inexorably toward pornography.

• TV, films videos
• Magazines and books
• Music business
• Internet
• People around us

Job 31:1 - I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl.

Matthew 5:28 - But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Proverbs 15:14 -The discerning heart seeks knowledge, but the mouth of a fool feeds on folly.

Philippians 4:8 - Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

I think that most of us would see the extremes of pornography as being wrong. Moving back down the scale of things we may debate the morality of watching, say, a cert 15 film that does not leave much to the imagination. My contention is that we have to sort this issue out well before we get even that far.

I want to share some of my own experiences and struggles to illustrate this.

As a young lad I strayed into men’s mags occasionally. Not enough to be a problem but enough to be unhelpful and embarrassing if discovered. I went to the occasional 18 film more by way of inquisitiveness than anything else. At university my friend and I once went to a pub where there were strippers. I played a lot of rugby and had exposure to some unnecessary experiences there too. Married life took away most of that temptation and opportunity. Certainly when the kids came along I was too tired to think much about sex outside my relationship with Alison. However, I surprised myself once. It would have been late 1995 when I first got hooked up to the internet. I remember the very first time I dialled onto the WWW (my email address was david.flowers@demon.co.uk), the first word I put into the search engine was “sex”. Being an internet novice I did not get very far and a combination of ineptitude and a guilty conscience stopped me (33% of UK users access porn).

In the last couple of years I have had quite a problem with spam. In particular the stuff that comes with an image in the email message – sometimes I am slow to delete it. My other area of weakness is late at night when I am tired but needing some down time after a series of meetings or a late evening telephone call or sermon preparation. The temptation is to turn on the TV and watch anything. Some of the stuff that comes on around midnight is definitely not helpful.

I have not strayed too often onto sex web sites or watched 18 movies. I have found though that the times when it gets most difficult is in the 48 hours before I have to lead something – a leaders’ meeting, The Vine, the Gathering, a Big Boys’ evening etc. Then all the spam in the world hits my inbox at a point in the evening when I am weakest and most easily sucked in.

• We live an open (transparent) lifestyle – it would be difficult for me to hide books, videos, magazines and so on from my family or from other people who come and go in my house.
• I try and read chunks of the bible and listen to some worship music every day – cf Proverbs 15:14. I.e. I try and brainwash myself with good stuff rather than bad stuff.
• I work in an open plan office where my PC screen is easily visible by my colleagues.
• I continually take advice from my internet savvy friends and colleagues about how to protect things – partly so that they know I am weak in this area.
• I have people who ask me the accountability questions and to whom I confess my sin – probably not as often as I should.
• I don’t travel on my own with women or meet with them on their own if I can possibly help it – if I do then I make sure people know where I am and what I am doing.
• There are plenty of prophetic people in the church who would expose me if I was straying too far.
• I work hard at tending my relationship with Alison.

It is hard work but under control. At least I am not addicted – which some easily become. 

• www.covenanteyes.com.
• Jesus and addiction, Don Williams.
• Sex slaves – recent article in Idea magazine

That is all well and good but does not deal with it completely as a follower of Jesus should. These things just police it and embarrass us into behaving. What really matters for the follower of Jesus is transparency, confession and the Spirit of God.

The key to dealing with this area of temptation is to become sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s promptings and confrontation and then to confess our sin to someone else. What will save you is to live a life of transparency.

You could leave this evening, as you leave every other encounter with God’s people, in a less than transparent state. You may know how well or badly you are doing in this area but you are keeping it to yourself. You may not know how well or badly you are doing – you may just be denying the issue.

I want to read you a story about one of the heroes of our faith. My name-sake, David.

Read 2 Samuel 11 & 12 – David & Bathsheba.  It goes badly wrong, it starts small and ends up huge – adultery, murder, lies and cover up, death, battles badly fought…

But eventually he confesses and repents. We can read what this meant in Psalm 51.

This is an area in which we need to be ruthless. Ruthlessly transparent, ruthlessly confessional, ruthlessly repentant, ruthlessly dependant upon the Spirit of God.

All the clever avoidance measures are good but they don’t rip the weed out by the root. Confession does. Saying to someone out loud, “I have sinned” dispels the darkness, digs out the deep, secret hold it can get on our life.

Which means of course that we need to be in mutually transparent relationships with each other, trusting each other not to judge, mock and humiliate but to accept, love, extend the forgiveness of the Father.

When the enemy seeks to draw us into the sewer and when the Holy Spirit comes with His searchlight, our response needs to be to become transparent with another man (or your wife if you are married), maybe our housegroup leader, and confess and ask forgiveness.

Share how you are doing and confess your sin (unless you have kept an entirely pure heart in your life).

Speak the Father’s forgiveness to each other and pray for each other.

When the music comes back on, that is your cue to get the scalextrix running again. Until then please have the courtesy, even if you have finished, just to wait quietly for the others.