Support Group

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.

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jeff@porntopurity.com

@porntopurity on Twitter