Session 3: Week 8 Notes

During our lives we face many different transformations.  Through life we become certain type of men.  How culture, past, present, images and relationships affect us, will determine the type of man we become.  We are constantly growing and changing.

Temptation: To bait and entice to act against God’s best intention for us.  To act against the proper fulfillment of God’s nature.  Temptation is rooted more so in identity and not behavior.

Everyday there is a battle between spirit and flesh:

Galatians 5

2 Corinthians 10

We have a say in what type of person we are becoming. 

Lust – Misplaced or misdirected desires or appetites.  Overindulge in self-gratification.  Our consciences get tired and weakened.

James 1:2-18 – Lust’s laboratory.  We sometimes think that no one is going to find out, but the more we let it wear on us, the more it infiltrates and can birth into something else.

Pornography - Pornea – It creates an illusion of intimacy and connection where we treat ourselves as 1 dimensional (as well as others) instead of treating ourselves as human beings who are wonderfully made.  It sets off the sex trigger in our life.

In turn to deal with lust and temptation we need to become more proactive and less reactive.  The more we are reactive the more we allow sin to wear down on us.

Fleeing vs. Fighting

We want to go from being men who run from something, to men who run from something because we are running towards God and His vision for us.  We need to become men who are able to look at culture, life and are able to discern and reveal the truth. 

The 3^rd F is Forgiveness.  To be forgiven means to be released from.  1 John 2:2 - He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for[a] the sins of the whole world.

Genesis 3:21 – God clothes Adam and Eve…something had to die to cover their sin. 

God sent His son to die, so that our sins would be taken away.

Psalm 51 – Became David’s confession to the secrets and the sin that he kept.

We are only as healthy as the secrets we keep.  When we release those secrets to God we are freed. Jesus Christ came so we could release those secrets and be able to live a life on a whole new level.

Session 3: Week 7 Notes

What would your life look like if you lived well in the arena of sexuality?

Fleeing vs. Fighting

Video Review: The Gridiron Gang – Dwayne “Rock” Johnson encourages his players to fight and not flee when faced with an obstacle.

1 John 4:4 - You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller – Deep Idols vs. Surface Idols

Whatever comes out in the surface is birthed in the heart.  Our actions come from the heart.  These idols come from wounds and experiences in our lives.  An idol is anything we look to other than the Lord (i.e. porn).  We sin because we want to.  Ultimately we sin or do what we do on the surface because we have the wrong god.

1 Thessalonians 4:3It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4that each of you should learn to control his own body[a] in a way that is holy and honorable, 5not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; 6and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. 7For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 8Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.

Flee – to run, to escape, change direction, to turn from danger

Fleeing = reactive

It not just running away from it’s also running towards something.  We need to go from reactive to proactive.  Going from fear based to wisdom based life.  The longer we run from the truth, the closer we are to getting burned.

Proverbs 22:3 - A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.

Purity – Incredibly fulfilling sex in God’s way.  Sensuality in colors that noble and honorable.

Romans 13:11And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. 12The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. 14Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.[c]

The greatest war is not where your feet go, it’s where you mind goes.

Fight – Walking into the light, being ruthlessly honest (especially to ourselves).  Don’t go at life alone, men who connect with other men (accountability group).  We need to be in God’s truth, in His word.  Humility every day and knowing that we can lose. 

Session 3: Week 6 Notes

If you could ask someone who deals with people who struggle in the arena of lust and sexual addiction what would it be?

Expectations & Reality

There’s tension when our expectations don’t meet reality.  Where in the gap between our expectations and reality do we feel most vulnerable?  The increased availability of material has made the tension greater.

• If our conscience isn’t strong, things that are immediately available on the service are harder to deal with.
• If our internal deficits (i.e. wounds and isolation) aren’t faced our sinful temptations can get into our heart.
• If our heart is not guarded then it can be easily attacked and blindsided.

Temptation isn’t just about behavior it’s also about identity.

What makes us most liable is whether or not we have faith and trust in God.  Trust that He isn’t holding out on us and that He’ll provide for us.

James 5:16 - Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

Our behavior is attached to our feelings.  And our feelings are attached to the thoughts that we think.  And our thoughts are attached to our beliefs.  We focus too much on our behavior when in reality we have to focus on our beliefs, we have to focus on our relationship with Christ.

When you feel temptation or you fall to lust, ask yourself the question, “What were you feeling?”  Once you identify the feeling, ask yourself, “What do you think was driving that?” “What was going on in your mind?” or “What do you think were some of the thoughts behind that?” and then ask “What do you believe about that?” or “What does your faith say you should do with that situation?”

The longer we follow Christ we sometimes believe it comes down to what we do and don’t do but in reality it’s also about who we are.  So where is your identity?  As a Christian it’s with God and Christ.  When we focus on just the behavior we judge the behavior and forget that there are issues going on deeper than what we see.

If we don’t talk to our sons and daughters about sex we are being neglectful of their well being with something that could be so good.  If you aren’t talking to them about it, then someone else is.

Genesis 2:7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

We sometimes disconnect the body from the spirit.  Our sins of the flesh are because of disconnect to the spirit.  In the movies a bad guy is a body without a spirit or a spirit without a body.

1 Corinthians 6:13 -  "Food for the stomach and the stomach for food"—but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 

A resource for us to read that will help in the ever day battle - Strength in Weakness by Andy Comiskey

Session 3:Week 5 Notes

Looking back at our life how have our experiences and relationship shaped the way we look at sex and beauty?
Video Clip – Fireproof (Caleb was caught looking at pornography on the Internet by his wife)
Colossians 3:1-6
Sexually passion and desire rightly practiced and understood is a great gift from God to us. It is possible to be the type of people who protects and respects the dignity of others. It starts with the heart.

Admitting to the problem is the first step.
Once it’s acknowledged looking for professional help
Reflecting back (not blaming) on events that could shape why you see sex the way you do.

We don’t want to loose what’s good for something that’s so less. For those of us struggling should check out Regeneration.

Proverbs 7
Warning Against the Adulteress
1 My son, keep my words
and store up my commands within you.
2 Keep my commands and you will live;
guard my teachings as the apple of your eye.
3 Bind them on your fingers;
write them on the tablet of your heart.
4 Say to wisdom, "You are my sister,"
and call understanding your kinsman;
5 they will keep you from the adulteress,
from the wayward wife with her seductive words.
6 At the window of my house
I looked out through the lattice.
7 I saw among the simple,
I noticed among the young men,
a youth who lacked judgment.
8 He was going down the street near her corner,
walking along in the direction of her house
9 at twilight, as the day was fading,
as the dark of night set in.
10 Then out came a woman to meet him,
dressed like a prostitute and with crafty intent.
11 (She is loud and defiant,
her feet never stay at home;
12 now in the street, now in the squares,
at every corner she lurks.)
13 She took hold of him and kissed him
and with a brazen face she said:
14 "I have fellowship offerings [a] at home;
today I fulfilled my vows.
15 So I came out to meet you;
I looked for you and have found you!
16 I have covered my bed
with colored linens from Egypt.
17 I have perfumed my bed
with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon.
18 Come, let's drink deep of love till morning;
let's enjoy ourselves with love!
19 My husband is not at home;
he has gone on a long journey.
20 He took his purse filled with money
and will not be home till full moon."
21 With persuasive words she led him astray;
she seduced him with her smooth talk.
22 All at once he followed her
like an ox going to the slaughter,
like a deer [b] stepping into a noose [c]
23 till an arrow pierces his liver,
like a bird darting into a snare,
little knowing it will cost him his life.
24 Now then, my sons, listen to me;
pay attention to what I say.
25 Do not let your heart turn to her ways
or stray into her paths.
26 Many are the victims she has brought down;
her slain are a mighty throng.
27 Her house is a highway to the grave, [d]
leading down to the chambers of death.

God isn’t against sex, He just doesn’t want us to ruin it with sin.
Lust – Selfish Desire, Extreme Desire, Unhealthy Obsession, Perverted Love, Strong Sexual Desire, Obsessive Craving, to fixate, to mentally objectify, misplaced or misdirected desires or appetites. It’s not an honest appreciation, awareness or appropriate reaction to another person.

1 Corinthians 10:13 - 13No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

Three Levels of Lust and Temptation:

• Level 1 – Temptation comes and is immediately available and we live off these short lived expectations. Overexposure in Level 1 makes handling lust more difficult.
• Level 2 – Internal Deficits Live. Unprocessed questions, false messages and images. We begin to idolize sex, believe the lies, buy into the ideas that the world is telling us.
• Level 3 – Unbelief. It’s us taking things into our own hands.

We change to the degree to level we know we are loved. We need to be men that trust God to change our hearts and lives.

Assignment This Week: Be brutally honest and ask yourself am I living in the light in this arena of my life?

Session 3: Week 4 Notes

Video Clip: SNL Clip Night at the Roxbury w/ Jim Carrey “We live in a world that takes humor with something that can also be seen as uncomfortable.”

Why do we tend to be so vulnerable when it comes to lust that centers on our bodies?

Control – we want to have control over emotions

Built In

Immediate Gratification

Easily Accessible

Feels Good

Lack of Accountability

Addictive

Have you ever thought about having a theology of sex?    Why are we afraid to talk about certain subjects? Because we don’t always have the wisdom.

Wisdom – Skilled at Living

Review:

Redefine Lust – Extreme desire that causes us to overindulge, sin, fixate upon, objectify for the purpose of self gratification.

Beauty is given of God; lust is the fixating of a person, subject that leads to the altering of God’s gift.  The fixation can then lead to a habit.  Lust is a manifestation of something wrong…it does not lie below the surface because it doesn’t answer the question of what’s causing us to fixate.

James 1-  13When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. 15Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

 16Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. 17Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. 18He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

What we learn from this passage:

1.     God is not tempting us

2.     We hold responsibility

3.     It’s saying evil is wrong and not desire

God doesn’t ask us to kill our desires, He wants us to redirect it.  Lust lures us to leave the safety of healthy desires.  Sex is not tied to our bodies, it’s a full on engagement.  In marriage it’s fulfilled, outside it is left empty. 

When we confess, talk openly and confront the lust we stay in the safe zone, the more we ignore it the more we go into a danger zone.  The further we go into the danger zone the closer we get to the conception of sin, which leads to death. (James 1:15)

Pornography - Pornea – It creates an illusion of intimacy and connection where we treat ourselves as 1 dimensional (as well as others) instead of treating ourselves as human beings who are wonderfully made.  It sets off the sex trigger in our life.

Matthew 5:27"You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.'[a] 28But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

All sin is not the same.  It’s not a problem to look or see, but it is a problem look lustfully, because it’s not an honest appreciation.

2 Samuel 11…How did David get himself into trouble?

He was alone.

He was not where he was supposed to be.

He was not accepting of God’s wisdom

Proverbs 5 and 7 show us what happens when we get deeper and deeper into Lust.

Psalm 51 speaks of David’s sorrow for turning away from God.  God doesn’t want us to stop desiring, He just wants us to redirect it towards Him.

Session 3: Week 3 Notes

Wisdom – To be skilled at living

TODAY'S TOPIC = LUST

While our desires and appetites can be the source of great pleasure they can often captivate and enslave us. 

By the time you are 18 researches tell us we’ll see over 70K images…this was from 8 years ago.

Temptation vs Spirit = a War we face daily

God gave us desire, our desires aren’t good or bad, it’s the direction we take with those desires.

When it comes to sex it’s not that we think about it too much it’s because we don’t think about it in the proper manner.

Pornography is a trillion dollar business.  Lust lies in our longings, and our wants.  We somehow live in the extreme where we make all things good or make all things bad.

God can take what’s broken and weak and make it strong.

1 John 2:15-17: Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.  The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

Lust – Selfish Desire, Extreme Desire, Unhealthy Obsession, Perverted Love, Strong Sexual Desire, Obsessive Craving, to fixate, to mentally objectify, misplaced or misdirected desires or appetites.  It’s not an honest appreciation, awareness or appropriate reaction to another person.

Cognitive Dissonance – Self-awareness of incorrect action or feeling.

We change our belief or we change our behavior, we struggle with recognizing the price tag of our actions.

The Price tag with lust can be: Divorce, Depression, Devalues human life. 

James 1:13-15 When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

Beauty isn’t an illusion but the world makes illusions, having us believe something that isn’t there. 

Proverbs 25:28 - Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.

We shouldn’t strive to destroy desire, we should try to redirect it.

Video Clip: Gone in 60 Seconds “Nicholas Cage talks with Giovanni Ribisi about being drawn to the wrong desires, and how they can lead to a world of where you don’t like who you are.”

Session 3: Week 2 Notes

There are certain realities to life and our neglect to those realities can have consequences.

Review from Last Week:

We talked about the reality of how we are being formed as people, there is a necessity for us to respond to the avalanche of images that awaken us to certain desires or appetites within us.

Our life journey is constantly changing; the reality is wherever we are in life we are changing, whether this change is accepted or not.

Defining Temptation:

Desire, tension, honest need, to entice or to bait that causes us to act against the Lord.

We do what we do because we want to. You not only have to want what you want, you are also going to have to want what your wants leads to.

Colossians 3: 1Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4When Christ, who is your[a] life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

 5Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.

Do you feel like there is a battle taking place within your being?  You want to be close to God, but you feel as if His voice is challenged by a thousand others, pulling you the wrong way.

Old habits are hard to break, the more we break away from a bad habit, the more it tries to pull us back in.  What Paul is talking about in Colossians 3 isn’t about changing behavior, it’s about changing perspective, transformation.

This is about becoming a certain type of person by the grace of God.  What we need to do is be aware of old habits, old patterns, and old ways of thinking.  When we start living the new it’s about being aware of the new habits, new patterns and new ways of thinking.  You have to decide who’s going to define you…Christ.

Romans 6: 5If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with,[a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

If Christ frees us from sin…then why do we still sin?  It’s almost like we face an identity crisis.  It’s because we have a hard time letting go of the old.

Galatians 5:16So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. 17For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. 18But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

 19The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

 22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 25Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

All the desires and appetites of our body are not evil.  The Spirit is our greatest weapon…not will power, it’s through the Spirit that sin is conquered.  The Spirit and flesh are in conflict, and the battle fought is not to go back to the old.  It’s like being stuck in a prison cell with the door open, but you don’t want to leave.

By surrounding ourselves with the Stories of Jesus…Community…Practices…Life Trials around the Spirit we can move from the old to the new.

Even though the tension will never go away, it can lessen the more we move towards the Spirit.  The more we work towards the Spirit the more we learn how to fight the tension.