One of my goals in writing Beyond the Battle: A man’s guide to his identity in Christ in an oversexualized world is to help men lose their desire for porn. To be able to go from, “I really want porn, though I know it’s bad, so will train myself not to look at it… though […]
Psalm 32 Devotional – Walking in the Freedom of the Light
For the most part, I grew up in church being taught that people in the Old Testament (old covenant) were saved by works and people in the New Testament (once Jesus died and rose–the new covenant) were saved by grace. Psalm 32 shows us that that just isn’t true. People in the Old Testament were also very much saved by grace. The psalmist describes a very Jesus-like salvation here where he talks about his sins being covered and forgiven, the Lord not counting his sins against him, and the act of confessing sin and being forgiven, with guilt being taken away. I could include numerous New Testament verses to each of those phrases. My point here isn’t to get us going down a theological wormhole, which we certainly could do, with some legitimate questions around the old covenant and around Jesus. My point is to stay with the point of the psalm, and that is to bask in the freedom of being forgiven!
Ep. 47: Interview with Kevin Butcher on Finding Freedom from “Try Harder” Christianity
Noah interviews his friend and mentor Kevin Butcher about his new book Free (available April 6th).
Good Kids Get Hooked on Porn Too: Pastor Noah’s Story (Part 1)
I’m 37. This is relevant because you can tell a lot about someone’s sexual purity story by how old they were in the mid-’90s, also known as when the internet became as common in households as the telephone or television.
For me, this was 7th grade.
I’m a bit biased because of my own story and experience, but I can’t think of a worse combination than the onset of puberty and first-time access to the vast unknown of the World Wide Web.
Yes, You Can Relearn how to View Women as People Rather than Objects to be Consumed
It sounds kind of bad when you put it that way, doesn’t it?
Our culture has adopted lust, casual sex, and pornography as normal and expected behavior, as if there are no consequences attached. Meanwhile, each of us deals with the litany of consequences that these behaviors bring with them, both internally and affecting our society at large.
The Lies of Lust: Fantasies That Won’t Satisfy
When you think about all traps, the foundational lie that they sell is getting you to believe something is real that really isn’t. You’ve probably bought products you later regretted because the reality didn’t match what was promised by the advertisement. The classic is the beautiful real estate in Florida being sold for a great deal, only for the buyer to find out later it’s swampland that can’t be built on. The Proverbs 7 examples of animal traps would also match this, but in a deadly way. You put some bait in the trap, the animal walks in thinking it’s going to get a delicious meal. The delicious meal is the animal’s perceived reality. The cheese or peanut butter or chunk of meat looks and feels so real. In some ways it is real. But it’s a good thing placed in a destructive context. The true, ultimate reality, the only reality that actually matters, is death and destruction for this animal.
“…like a bird darting into a snare, little knowing it will cost him his life.” Proverbs 7:23
The bird would have never entered the snare if it knew it would die!
A lot of us who struggle with lust know this truth, yet continue to fall into its trap.
Read the rest of this article on the Covenant Eyes blog.