Pornography is not some titillating feast for the eyes that gives a momentary rush of excitement.
Rather it has the effect of damaging hearts and souls to their very depths, strangling the life out of relationships that should be sacred and hurting to the very core those you should love the most.
Matthew 22:36-38 – Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus said to him,”You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment”
God is a good Father, He loves to give good things to His children. When we pray we ask Him to provide for us, not just our “daily bread” but also for things like wisdom, knowledge, understanding, strength, etc. But do we ever give a thought to what He would want from us? We long for our own children to love us back, maybe God would like that too!
Do you show Him how much you love Him? Do you love Him with ALL our heart, soul and mind.
When I really thought about these verses I asked myself “Is that possible? Can I really love God with ALL my heart, soul and mind? What does that really mean?” So I decided to research the definition of each:
The Heart
The heart is full of powerful affections and desires which long to be fulfilled. Our hearts long to cling to something or someone, so wherever your affections lie, then your heart will be there also. Jesus says: “Wherever your treasure is, there your heart will be also” Matthew 6:21. He is saying here that the heart loves what it treasures, so if we want to fulfil the first part of the Greatest Commandment, then we need to treasure God above all else.
When I looked at my own life, past and present, I realised that I was dwelling on past hurts, and sometimes when we do this, it’s hard to allow Jesus into that area of pain because we fear that if we surrender these to Him, we will become vulnerable and have our hearts broken again. However, 1 John 4:18 says “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out all fear”
Real love is hard work, but when we choose to love God with ALL our heart, then we will find it easier to forgive, to support one another, to see past the faults and still choose love no matter what. This is especially important in our marriages.
Love carries us through the storms of life even when all hell seems to be against us!
The Soul
The soul defines our personality and identity, it’s at our core. It’s what we choose to put our “core” values into.
Things like how we choose to spend our time, our money. What we read, or watch on TV. It is said that the eyes are the windows to the soul. How do we choose to relax. What brings us comfort in difficult times? All these choices reveal how much we love God from our soul.
When we marry, we make a covenant with God and to our spouse to love for better or for worse, richer or poorer, sickness and in health til death us do part. To show God we love Him with ALL our soul, we have to choose to obey Him and keep our covenants to Him.
However, God does allow a way out if your spouse commits adultery or if lives are in danger, so you don’t have to live in situations such as domestic violence or adulterous affairs.
So to love Him from the soul is to honour and obey Him in the way we live every day.
“If you love me, you will do as I command” John 14:15
The Mind
Our minds are filled with pictures, images, words and thoughts which are continually ongoing and probably endless until the day we die. So much of our lives are lived through our minds. We even have conversations with ourselves through our minds. When we pray, either silently, or aloud, we do so through our minds. Isaiah 1:18 “Come now let us reason together” saith the Lord. God will also give us pictures and visions in our minds.
Sometimes, when it comes to loving God, our hearts love first and our minds take a while longer to reason or understand, then will catch up with what the heart has received.
Hebrews 10:16 “I will put my laws in their heart and I will write them in their minds”
To come close to loving God with all our minds, we need to meditate on His word so it becomes engrafted in our hearts and written in our minds. His truth will cause us to love Him more and more.
The devil will try to mess with our minds. He will try to fill us with negative thoughts and sow seeds of doubt and offence. There is a constant battle going on for our minds!
Romans 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
To triumph over these kinds of thoughts, we should instead choose to remember God’s loving kindness, patience, peace, faithfulness and mercy. This is how we “renew” our minds daily. He has given us wonderful dreams, desires and imaginations.
Philippians 4:8 “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honourable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise”
The mind is our logic, our thought life, where we can allow seeds to be sown for good or for evil. So to love God with all your mind means to meditate on God’s word and choose to renew our minds constantly with pure and loving and honourable thoughts.
As we choose to think like this, we are well on our way to loving God with ALL our mind.
“Choice” the power, right or liberty to choose. Did you notice that it is our “choice” to love?
Every morning when we wake up, we need to discipline ourselves to go to our spiritual wardrobe and “put on” love from our hearts, our souls and our minds. To choose to treasure God above all else, we need to clothe ourselves with an attitude and lifestyle which honours God, to be obedient and keep our covenants with Him and read His word and renew our minds with loving and honourable thoughts.
Beauty for Ashes – Gen3x
The Ashley Madison hack has spurred a lot of talk about adultery. An untold number of its clients have already resigned jobs or been served divorce papers. A few have even committed suicide.
We can justify anything if we try hard enough, right? But the only way to justify adultery is closing our eyes to the terrible costs it exacts in our lives and the lives of those closest to us.
We can all do the math for ourselves, but by my counting there are at least eight major reasons to run, not walk, from infidelity.
Adultery is not normal and it certainly isn’t inevitable. God made us for fidelity. But we live in a fallen world, and we can’t afford to be niaive. Nothing will destroy our life and legacy faster than an affair. We must count the cost.
Before you decide to do pornography again, just think about the effects it will have on your wife. She will suffer the consequences by feeling:
P – Psychologically abused D – Dirty and defiled M – Manipulated
O – Ostracized E – Embarrassed A – Angry
R – Reduced to fragments S – Seedy R – Really heartbroken
N – No self worth T – Trust gone R – Ruined
O – Obsolete R – Repulsed I – Intimacy destroyed
G – Grieved O – Offended A– A heavy spirit
R – Rejected Y – You don’t love her G – Gutted
A – At the end of her tether S – Sexually abused E – Exhausted emotionally
P – Polluted
H – Hurt
Y – You have betrayed her
Fifty Shades of Reality, through the eyes of someone who has lived it.
By Dvine Roman
Fifty Shades of Grey is not reality.
I spent 22 years working in the sex industry, 14 of which were spent solely as a Dominatrix. So, I feel like I am an expert on a subject most people only narrowly understand, if at all.
While Fifty Shades is “entertainment”, the danger is that it is enticing people to join a dark world in which they know nothing about. And it is inviting women to do it as a sexual slave under the guise of finding Mr. Wrong and turning him into Mr. Right.
The reality of the S&M (Sadism and Masochism) world is this, when you are someone’s slave, you give them COMPLETE power over you. The nature of the relationship is that the dominant person controls you and punishes you whenever they wish. They find your limits and push you past them.
You are not whisked off in jets and helicopters like some sort of celebrity who has won a prize. You are beaten and stuck in cages and dungeons. You are handcuffed and whipped until your skin bleeds and then when your master makes you beg for more, you are pushed beyond your limits of pain and left in a little ball on the floor. BROKEN! There is no mercy, there is no makeup artist, YOU have no control.
The truth is, some people like to feel pain.
I did a documentary a few years ago and one of the questions I was asked was why do people seek out pain? In my experience there are six main reasons why.
LOSS: Some people have experienced so much loss and betrayal in life that they no longer feel anything. They are literally numb. Like all of us they are looking to belong and be loved. The only thing they can feel is PAIN. So the person who offers them pain is the one they love.
ABUSE: Some people are taught from a very early age that pain IS love. Abuse from a parent or sibling that has never been addressed confuses the person. They have been taught that love equals pain. So if someone causes you pain, they must love you. This person will literally look for reasons to be punished so that they feel more loved.
CONTROL A: Someone who was sexually abused may look to being a dominant so that they can work through their control issues. Being raped or sexually abused causes constant feelings of loss of control. In order to gain some sort of control over their life they choose to be the one (The Dominatrix) who gives the pain. The one who does the raping. Although it is technically not raping someone if they pay you to do it.
CONTROL B: People who have a lot of power often end up abusing it. Money usually comes with power and the person gets a sense of not being able to hear the word no. They treat everyone around them poorly. Deep inside they know what they are doing is wrong and they seek out a dominant. Someone they can pay to punish them for how hateful they are to everyone else. Someone who will make them hear the word NO! and enforce it.
MONEY: Some people do it just for the money. In the S&M world these people don’t last long because they run into people who will happily break them and realize that no amount of money is worth the abuse they have just received. Still I will never forget the words of one of my slaves when I asked her why she liked to be abused. She said, “Sometimes it’s just easier to lie there and take a beating.”
BOREDOM: Lets face it, people get bored easily. Everyone wants to try the new and improved trendy way of, well everything. You want to add a little spice to your sex life so you go out and buy some handcuffs. Next thing you know you are at swinger’s party with your husband and then divorced.
I think it is very dangerous to glamorize this lifestyle. Women and more importantly, young girls may entire this dark world thinking they will find their Mr. Grey and nothing could be further from the truth.
What they may find is that they are whisked away to a house and stuck in a room, never to see the light of day again. They will be forced to have sex with upwards of 20 men a day and when they are all used up, they will either be tossed to the side of the road, or get a bullet in their brain.
I know these words are hard to swallow, but this is the reality of the S&M world. Not the whole reality, because quite frankly, you couldn’t handle the whole truth; the truth that some people enjoy being hung by hooks that have pierced their skin and oh so much more. However, I hope it is enough to open your eyes to the fact that this is NOT a glamorous world where the girl gets whisked away by the rich and powerful man for a happily ever after. That she somehow changes him. That he falls in love with her and changes his wicked ways. The world of S&M is very black and white, there is not room for 50 shades of gray.
Bio: Dee Roman is an author, coach and motivational speaker. She is an avid story teller and uses her natural gift of encouragement to help people overcome insurmountable obstacles. She believes in miracles because she is one! Nearly five years ago, Dee walked into Oasis Church deeply scarred from her life in the sex industry and a 30-year drug addiction. It was there she came face to face with the truth: she was valued by God and had a purpose. Dee dove head first into her recovery process and started attending a variety of recovery programs, The Bondage Breakers, Celebrate Recovery, Greif Recovery and a pirate support group for ex sex industry workers, run by the Treasures Ministry in Los Angeles. She was surrounded by love and found the courage to work through her healing so that she could use her story to help others heal. Dee has coached survivors of sex trafficking at the Los Angeles Dream Center’s Project Hope. She is currently mentoring several women from Treasures who are transitioning out of the sex industry. Dee also teaches The Grief Recovery Method at Oasis Church. Read Dee’s Story. – See more at: http://iamatreasure.com/ourevents/speakers-bios/#sthash.iZKiOL8M.1tYPBFA1.dpuf
See more at: http://iamatreasure.com/2015/02/fifty-shades-of-reality-through-the-eyes-of-someone-who-has-lived-it/#sthash.kNHmFTsM.OuYkkuTK.dpuf