Dealing With the Stuff Underneath

God Loves Me, Junk and All

by Jeff Fisher on May 15, 2012

There’s a key lesson I’ve missed about God for a while: God loves me, junk and all.

I don’t have to clean myself up. I don’t have to have my life together to come to Him. I just need to show up, junk and all.

Listen to what it says in:

Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Romans 8:1-2 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,[a] 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”

Romans 8:35-39 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[m] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

There are some key truths here:

1. God loved us as sinners

2. In Jesus, we are not condemned

3. Nothing separates us from God’s love

I’ve known these truths for a long time, most of my Christian life. I didn’t think much of them until I my sexual sin blew up my life. I became very aware of my sins. I lost my job and church family. I hurt my family and many loved ones. My sin, the pain, and the consequences weighed heavy on me. It changed the way I thought about God. For the first time I saw myself as a sinner, and my immediate reaction to that was to run and hide.

Back to the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, I try to run and hide from God.

A self-hatred began to emerge. I had messed up big time. I fell into despair and patches of hopelessness, and began to hate myself.

Intellectually, my mind spiraled down too. I started to believe the lie that God must hate me too. If I hate me, and I’m no good, God must feel the same way.

This is where Truth comes in. These verses in Romans fly in the face of my self-hatred and false image of God. God has never changed in his live for me and acceptance through Jesus.

I spent a year doing a podcast called Top Verses For Sexual Purity podcast. You can find these shows on I-Tunes. Just go to our Top Tips For Sexual Purity feed and go to any of the Season 2 shows. In this podcast series I looked at bible verses that related to sexual purity and shared my thoughts on them.

There are two lights that go on when I read God’s Word:

1. I understand what it’s saying (hits my head)

2. I believe what it’s telling me to do (hits my heart)

God’s Spirit helps us with both.

Sometimes, there is a tension when I read God’s Word. I hit a point of belief / unbelief. I hear these verses in Romans that God loves me junk and all. I know that they say that God does not change and nothing I do can separate me from His love. But it may take a while for me to believe that. I feel the tension. God’s Word is trying to bust up my false belief that God hates me because of all the bad things I have done.

Where are you with believing that God loves you junk and all?

I didn’t start believing this until I entered a Christian men’s sexual addiction support group. I was sharing my junk with these men and they were not condemning me. They listened. They were respectful. They did not shame me. They accepted and even loved me.

I started to get this feeling that this was how God operated with me. He used other men who understood junk to teach me that He loved me junk and all.

Of course I’m not saying that God approves of my sexual behaviors. Neither did the men in my support group. But they were able to see below the behaviors and value me as a person.

That’s part of the message of the Gospel. God loving ME junk and all.

–

jeff@porntopurity.com

@porntopurity on Twitter

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Top Tips 027 – The Dangers of “Checking Out” Emotionally

by Jeff Fisher on May 6, 2012

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THE DANGERS OF CHECKING OUT EMOTIONALLY

In a couple of days my wife will get over it.
Let me take my medicine now.
I just want to get it over with.
This will be over eventually.
It will all be forgotten about.
I’m going to take the beating.
I won’t feel it tomorrow.

This is how I talk to myself whenever I’m in trouble. I push past the painful moment and look toward a place where my trouble will be gone.

Coping mechanism – I can’t deal with the moment, with being in trouble, with the full effects of a person’s anger. I use self-talk to help me get through. It is a type of medicating.

Shield me from the pain – To protect myself from pain, I go into a numb, lifeless state. I am here physically, but put up barriers to protect my emotions.

Compartmentalize – Another variation of protecting myself. I flip the switch emotionally, block the other compartments of my life, and push this episode into a box in the corner. As a guy I have an incredible ability to compartmentalize and live multiple lives.

WHERE ARE THE LIES?
It’s one thing to protect myself emotionally from major trauma. That’s how God made our brains. But if I’m in the habit of checking out every time consequences come, I’m not healthy emotionally.

I think emotionally checking out is a form of denial and rationalization. When I disconnect, I run the risk of detaching myself from vital lessons that need to be learned. I lose sight of the weight of my sin and the consequences it causes. I disconnect myself from relationships. Disconnecting hurts the intimacy I have with God and with others.

SOMETIMES THE PAIN DOESN’T GO AWAY
On the day I was confronted with my porn use at work, I had a sense that the “jig” was up. I was summoned to a “special meeting” and was not given any details. On my way to the meeting I said to myself, “This is probably a confrontation. I’m not going to deny it. It will all be over in a couple of hours.” I was already bracing emotionally for the meeting and disconnecting. The roller coaster was rolling up the hill and I was going to ride it out. Eventually, the ride would stop and I could get off.

It was far from over. I don’t think it’s ever been completely gotten over, and I’m 5 years into my recovery. Even after asking forgiveness and making attempts to fix the relationship there were lasting consequences to those relationships.

LIES I BELIEVE

Things are not really that bad. I don’t believe they will affect things in the long run. In the big scheme of things, this is not a big deal. There are some things that are not a big deal. Being late for an appointment, anger, gossip. Some things will pass over and pass through. But looking at porn, adulterating my marriage, lying, covering up and deceiving… these have wider repercussions. I don’t realize how bad my sin is. I don’t realize what’s at stake in a relationship when I begin lying, and practicing falsehood .

I can cover this up and be OK. The cover-up of the lie is often worse than the lie itself.

I’ll can deal with this later, and be OK. It never works. Denying and cover-up always put a wedge in a relationship. The longer we wait to confess, the larger the wedge.

He’ll get over it. She’ll get over it. Sometimes, if the sin is small, there’s enough grace for the other person to let go of it. But my sins are causing hurt to my relationships. I have hurt others by my actions. I have damaged a relationship. They are not obligated to forgive. They have every right to be hurt over our actions. “He’ll get over it” is not a loving attitude. It’s very selfish.

I won’t feel it tomorrow – Maybe you won’t but the people you hurt might feel it for a long time. This is a very selfish thought when it comes to ruptured relationships.

OUR NEED FOR CONFESSION
Let’s go back to God’s relationship with us. God knows the power of sin and the consequence of sin. He wants a love relationship with us. He grieves when that love relationship is perverted with sin. But He commands us to confess our sin. When we confess He will forgive. What a huge promise in I John 1:9. The love of God through Christ is huge. I can’t hide from God and deceive God. I can ignore God it doesn’t do many any good to hold back and confess later to God.

DANGERS OF CHECKING OUT EMOTIONALLY

1. I shut off a vital part of who I am as a person – my emotions

2. I don’t feel the weight of my sin

3. I don’t realize the consequences of my wrong actions

4. I lose a chance to be made right in my relationships

5. I lose a chance to learn a valuable lesson

6. I plunge into a form of denial and rationalization

7. I don’t walk in truthfulness

—

jeff@porntopurity.com

@porntopurity on Twitter

Call-in voicemail line line: (321) 5-PURITY

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Top Tips 026 – Figure Out Your Emotional Age

by Jeff Fisher on May 3, 2012

Press HERE to Play Podcast or Download

This may be the newest Top Tip I’m learning. Each of us has an emotional age. We do well to figure it out.

Recovery is not just about stopping our sexual behaviors. It’s about being transformed emotionally, relationally, intellectually & spiritually. All of the other areas work with the whole picture of sexual purity. Purity is a combination of a lot of things, not just behavioral.

So here’s something that will help us with our emotional growth. What is our emotional age? What age emotionally am I?

This is the year of my 40^th birthday. Forty years physically, but that doesn’t mean I’m 40 years emotionally mature. Inside my heart and experiences and woundings I’m a different age emotionally. And we’re working on maturing. Working on growing up. A lot of sexual sin begins in adolescence.

Disclaimer:

I’m not an expert on this. I’ve heard a lot of counselors talk about it. So consult your counselor on this one for specific advice.

Sometimes our emotional age has to do with our time of exploration. My sexual sin began in Jr. High. Twenty-five years ago. That’s a long time. That’s when I began to explore my sexuality. For me it was masturbation, looking at soft and hard core magazines, and surfing the late night cable channels.

Sometimes emotional age is tied to a time we consider “ideal”. It might be our high school, college, or young professional years. But it’s a phase in life we’ve never grown up from. We constantly try to live in this part of our past. It’s more than a fond memory, it grows into a fantasy. It’s like the person who idolizes his college age & continues to party on the weekends with his frat buddies. An idealistic time you look back on. A key milestone. A key time. But unfortunately, it becomes a key barrier for growing up.

What’s the emotional age of the people you hang out with? This may be an indicator of how old you are emotionally. Maybe you still hang out with the frat buddies or sorority sisters to live the glory days.

Childhood woundings may figure into our emotional age. A friend of mine had a distant father and an emotionally abusive mom. It was hard for him to visit his parents and not feel like a 6-year old again. I can get stuck emotionally in my woundings. Woundings we need to heal from. Let God father us and mentor us back. Help us heal past that. This is a barrier to us growing up emotionally.

FATHERED BY GOD
John Eldridge’s book Fathered By God talks about different phases in life where we need to be fathered and mentored through. The book talks to men, but the phases and the principles apply to women. A lot of people never get past childhood.

One message Eldridge says we need to hear is “you are loved.” This needs to come from our parents, but often doesn’t. God can help with the deficiency through His Spirit and with other men and women.

Another childhood message is “you’re good”. You have value and worth. Some of us have never heard this growing up. It can cause a wounding and cripple us emotionally.

Figuring out our emotional age is a process of getting greater insight into ourselves.

USING SEX TO FILL THE GAP
This hits us sexually because we try to make up for the deficit through sexual acting out. We consider our times of sexual promiscuity, had a rockin’ hot girlfriend, having sex in college… we’ve idealized those times. We were really looking for deep fulfillment which come from healthy relationships and God. We thought we found it in sex and illicit relationships.

During my sexual addiction recovery I think my emotional age has gone from 7 years old to 13 to high school age. My idealized time was 11^th grade for me. Everything seemed to be going my way. Sexual exploration. Achievements. Girlfriends that I think are making my life complete. Had a girlfriend in early college that I thought I was going to marry and didn’t.

There are a lot of times when I emotionally act like a 40-year old, but when the right buttons are pushed, I drift backwards to a younger age. When my stress gets high, I go back to early parts of life that I consider “golden”.

I think that having kids has helped me grow up. I think getting married, getting out on my own, having to earn a living… those have been steps to manhood.

John Eldredge says we need other men in our lives to father us. Other women for women. God has brought me other men disciple me and help me grow up emotionally.

It’s amazing to meet someone who’s emotionally their age. These people have had healthy environments or worked on it with healthy people. They are comfortable in their skin, and are living for God in the moment. .

It’s uncomfortable for me to be 40 physically, but emotionally younger. It makes me feel like I’m not a grown-up. There are a lot of times when I feel I’m a young man wearing older man’s shoes. Some of it has to do with that I don’t love me the way God loves me. I don’t like me, the way that I am & I refuse to accept it. I’m always trying to live back in those skinnier jeans.

–

I hope my thoughts about emotional age will get your thoughts churning. Spend some time trying to figure where you are emotionally.

—

jeff@porntopurity.com

@porntopurity on Twitter

Call-in voicemail line line: (321) 5-PURITY

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What Are You Afraid Of? Make a List.

by Jeff Fisher on April 13, 2012

I wanted to list out some fears that I and others have about why we are afraid to share the truth about ourselves. I’m not going to address these fears in this blog, I just wanted to write down genuine fears you and I might have in not sharing.

My encouragement to you today is to make a list of your own fears. Write them down in a notebook. Get them out. Be honest with yourself about what fears you have.

Here are mine:

1. My wife / family would be devestated
2. I’m worried what people will think of me
3. I might have to change
4. I might lose my job
5. I might lose my ministry
6. I might get put in jail
7. I don’t want the pain
8. I’m not hurting anybody with my behavior
9. I don’t want to lose my freedoms
10. No one can tell me what to do
11. I don’t have any friends to share with
12. I’m all alone
13. It’s just better to lie
14. What will people think?
15. I won’t be accepted for who I am
16. My church will find out and shun me
17. People will know I’m a liar
18. People will think I’m a pervert

Let’s work on it guys and gals! Make that list of what your’e afraid of. Today’s not about answering these fears. It’s about getting your fears out on the table. Start by being truthful with yourself. Start searching for the real reasons you continue your behaviors. God wants to help us with these fears, but first we must get them out on the table.

jeff@porntopurity.com
@porntopurity on Twitter

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Only The Weak Get Caught

by Jeff Fisher on December 2, 2011

wimpy Only the weak get caught.

That’s the lie that I used to believe.

I believed I was too smart to get caught.
I believed I knew how to protect myself.
I believe I knew how to hide.
I believed I could outsmart anyone searching my computer.
I believed I was OK because God wasn’t doing anything.

There is a slow deception that happens when someone is sexually addicted. He starts to believe he’s invincible. He starts to believe that he will never get caught. He believes that only the weak, careless people get caught.

A LITTLE QUIZ

Have you every looked at porn on the computer and not had God’s lightening strike you?
Have you ever almost got caught, but closed it up in time to not get caught?
Have you snuck around to go somewhere to have sex, or to be with someone and pulled it off?
Have you been able to maintain a lie for a long time?
You probably believe you’re invincible?

HOW I GOT CAUGHT
I really don’t know. I was extremely secretive on my work computer. I covered my tracks. I erased my history bar and search terms. All I know is that the work computer had some problems, they brought in an expert, and found all of my hidden tracks. I did everything I knew to do. I thought I had gotten away with it and had no intention of ever confessing my sins.

I believe that God knew that the best thing that could happen to me was to be found out.

SOME TRUTHS TO THINK ABOUT

We can’t hide from God
We are not good enough to keep the lie up forever
We can’t control other people talking
An addicted person takes more and more risks
God loves us too much to keep letting us live in darkness. He will bring things to the Light.
It is impossible for us to have true intimacy with our spouse, God and others, and lie.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?
I know you have some great thoughts that can help others! Maybe you are invincible. It would be nice to hear from you.

Leave a comment or email me privately at porntopurity@gmail.com or @porntopurity on Twitter

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Numb to the Voice of God

December 1, 2011

Sexual sin erodes our spiritual life and makes us numb to God’s voice.

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How I Am Finding Healing From My Anger – Pt.2

November 30, 2011

Today I share 3 more things that have been instrumental in helping me heal from anger.

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How I Am Finding Healing From My Anger – Pt.1

November 29, 2011

I want to share some of the things that are helping me find healing from my anger. Maybe they will be an encouragement to you.

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The Truth About Lying to Others

November 25, 2011

Yesterday’s blog was on “Why We Lie”. Today’s blog brings light and truth to those lies.

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Why We Lie to Others

November 24, 2011

Get to the core of why we lie.

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Emotions I Have to Deal With in Sexual Recovery

November 23, 2011

Today I share some of the emotional struggles that I have had to deal with during my sexual recovery.

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