Don't believe the good friend who says that talking about the subject causes it to be a greater struggle. It simply is not true. Talking about how to improve your marriage or how to be a better parent will not make you a worse parent. Those who believe ignorance is bliss in regards to this issue do not realize the cost of not dealing with the issue. The devil, the lion who prowls waiting for those he might desire, will however, strengthen his resolve to defeat you in this area, and if he knows you are finally taking an offensive stance, he will gladly try to discourage you with temptations. As well guilt will increase as the Holy Spirit convicts you of your sin. Do not take that as a negative sign, b ut instead a sign of health coming your way. The fever must pass, the drug withdrawel must occur -but honesty and transparency is the first step of healing. Confess your sins that you might be healed - bear with one another in your struggles.

The Sin of the Church:Ommission

The Church Must Take the Blame

Sometimes we are so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly use. We preach holiness and transformation with no real grasp about how we can do these things. Our society as a whole may value how to raise children, how to have healthy marriages, and how to help people with mental, emotional and spiritual sicknesses, but they have trouble accepting how many problems there really are, and are even more clueless about how to address such problems. We want everyone to be shiny, glossy and perfectly happy all the time. "Give it to the Lord," they say with smiles, and we say, "How? I want to. Pray for me please, show me some scripture, anything."

The church, as a whole (and there are exceptions) have swept the whole sexual issue under the proverbial rug, We do not teach on many key areas regarding to sexuality to our kids or adults in church. Here are some topics that should probably be discussed in church:

1. How should women deal with their men who are having issues with porn
2. How should men deal with women who don't enjoy or like having sex
3. How should parents monitor the use of internet and tv in their home
4. How should men and women go about learning to have really good sex, sex that honors God.

No, I am not condoning a church that only talks about sex, I am providing topics that could be given in special classes at churches: Such topics as "Sexuality in Marriage," and "Raising a healthy and pure sexual appetite in your children," etc. If men are so afraid of women's response to their issues of porn, then the church needs to be training men on how to deal with these issues, and women on how to deal with their men who have these issues. Divorce is not a beneficial choice, though some may argue it is permissible.

But, if the church - who is God's messenger to the people will not speak on the struggles of sin that folks are having, then there will never be an avenue - other than God's Holy Spirit for people to see transformation. And no doubt, the Holy Spirit is our primary source for conviction of sin...but the Holy Spirit often uses people to get his work done,

Even Paul suggests this model for the church:

1. If you see someone in sin confront them
2. If they don't change their ways bring another witness to confront them
3. If they still don't change announce it in front of the church and treat them as you would a non-believeer. In other words love them and talk to them, but don't give them any spiritual authority in your church.

We as a church should lead in helping people with the practical issues and struggles they are going through. We can talk about holiness until we are blue, but we must also have strageties for helping one another to overcome struggles and adversities. The Church, if it ignores such issues, especially at the leader level, when no doubt raise a generation of people who are also avoiding the issue.

On Lying to Your Spouse

I have had senior pastoral staff (not Jack by the way) tell me it is not ok to lie to your spouse but that it is ok to not tell your wife something if you know it would cause her to stumble: ie - divorce you. In the same breath, this staff started telling me about times in which people used lies to protect people for God - such as Rahab's lie that protected the spies. And although, we all recognize that we should choose our words wisely to conceal certain feelings, especially in response to certain questions raised by our spouses, in order to protect them (like your not fat...your well rounded), we have to understand that the sin of ommission in sometimes tantamount to lying.

In regards to the issues of sexual purity and issues related to fidelity, lust and porn - I do feel that the sin of ommission is equal to lying. You are living a life of a lie, if you are sinning against your wife regularly and not confessing your sin. No pastor I have talked to you will deny that if you sin against a person you should ask for forgiveness from that person. But, if I ask those same people if you should ask a wife to forgive them of a sin against them in regards to porn, they will most regularly say, "well it depends," on each case.

Why you should not lie to your wife (or hide secret sins)

1. It is sin
2. It is a sin that disqualifies you from churhc leadership
3. It is better to admit your problem than have your wife discover it herself - it will be worse if they find out on their own.
4. It can lead to deeper sins (softcore->leads to hardcore->leads to perversity in the bedroom->leads to person-to-person sins)

Accountability & Hedges

Healing of anything takes times. Wounds do not heal immediately and are susceptable to infection. Some people are not ever healed of their sin as in the cases of those who are Alcoholics. Their alcohol filters are broken and they can not have a sip or else they are immediately become trapped back in the sin.

For single people, with sexual addictions, the case may be the same as an alcoholics; they can not take a sip from the cable box or internet world in private or they are immediately captured in their addiction.

Im marriage, with sexual addictions, the solution is not so easy - because giving up sex all together is not a Biblical option. It is a commandment to not withold sex from each other. However, for people with addictions to porn, they may have to completely give up some of the pipelines of porn like television or the internet.

How to have a good accountability partner:

1. Choose your wife.

This is the most difficult thing to do for most women and men. Even many Christian web sites will insist that men protect their women from such sins by choosing another man (rather than their wife), so that their wives are not hurt continually by a man's struggles and failures. But it is wrong to believe that women are not hurt by secret sins, or that the children of men with secret sins will not be affected by the sins of their fathers. Women will be much healthier if they have husbands who are healed of this sin, than if they have men who are struggling with it secretly. A man's greatest ally when will be a woman (his wife) who loves him and recognizes his need for help. Additionally, a woman will be hurt even more if she stumbles upon the fact herself on accident rather than hearing an honest confession, combined with an expression of sorrow for the behavior and a genuine request for forgiveness from her spouse There are additional problems with choosing friends, or other men as your main accountability partner.

The problem with a man choosing a friend to be an accountability partner is that most other men are also struggling with porn and they will be reluctant to call others to account because of their own conviction of their sin. Also, unless the men are meeting regularly accountability becomes few and far between. Your wife is always there and can be regular about asking you. Insist your wife learns to put on the internet filter, teach her how. Show your wife how to program the secret code on the cable box so that only she knows how to let certain shows be seen on the tv. Teach her about the tell tale signs of porn:

a. cleaned history
b. cleaned cache
c. secret logins
d. filters being turned off
e. emails coming up with porn ads
f. porn pop-ups showing up during web searches

and teach her to ask following certain tell-tale signs:

a. closed doors to office
b. nights where men are left alone
c. after trips that men take

and ask her to use certain clear and specific verbage:

a. have you struggled with lust in the last month?
b. have you looked at porn in the last month?

Do not ask questions like, "Have you been good," or "are you having success in with your struggle?" If you ask questions like this you might get answers such as "Yes," which may mean in the last ten minutes I have been good, or today I had success in the struggle, but last night I totally got schniztled at the website, "Christian Girls Gone Wild."

2. Choose a good friend and meet regularly just for accountability of the following issues (This is not an alternative to choice 1, it is in addition to it. I absoultely believe your wife needs to be involved in this.)

a. finances & tithe
b. porn (Teach your accountability partner how to answer the questions in the right way: see section 1)
c. regular time in the word
d. regular time in prayer

These are basic spiritual disciplines that will help men who are dealing with sin to have geniune conviction of the Holy Spirit.

3. Do not accept a position of leadership in church unless:

a. Your wife and you can be honest about your struggles with porn
b. Your head pastor will not regularly hold you accountable for your struggle
c. Your pastor will not discipline you by removing you from leadership if true transformation in this area is not happening
d. Your pastor is having success in this area

Failing in this area does not disqualify anybody from leadership. Continually sinning, not repenting, and regular participation in the addiction of porn does.

The word says to whom much is given, much is expected and that those who want to teach or are elders should be people who have self control and are faithful to their spouses.

4. Make as many hedges as you can.

a. use filters on your internet and tv
b. tell as many people as you can about your struggle and ask them to hold you accountable: if people do not think you are worthy of being a leader with you being in the sin you are, then you probably aren't a good enough leader.
c. Avert your eyes from areas when you feel the beast rising up
d. Eliminate portals of porn if you have to.

Spurgeon on Secret Sins

But, pretender, we say unto thee, thou art a fool to think of harbouring a secret sin; and thou art a fool for this one reason, that thy sin is not a secret sin; it is known, and shall one day be revealed; perhaps very soon. Thy sin is not a secret; the eye of God hath seen it; thou hast sinned before his face. Thou hast shut-to the door, and drawn the curtains, and kept out the eye of the sun, but God's eye pierceth through the darkness; the brick walls which surrounded thee were as transparent as glass to the eye of the Almighty; the darkness which did gird thee was as bright as the summer's noon to the eye of him who beholdeth all things. Knowest thou not, O man, that "all things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do?" As the priest ran his knife into the entrails of his victim, discovered the heart and liver, and what else did lie within, so art thou, O man, seen by God, cut open by the Almighty; thou hast no secret chamber where thou canst hide thyself; thou hast no dark cellar where thou canst conceal thy soul. Dig deep, ay, deep as hell, but thou canst not find earth enough upon the globe to cover thy sin; if thou shouldst heap the mountains on its grave, those mountains would tell the tale of what was buried in their bowels. If thou couldst cast thy sin into the sea, a thousand babbling waves would tell the secret out. There is no hiding it from God. Thy sin is photographed in high heaven; the deed when it was done was photographed upon the sky, and there it shall remain, and thou shalt see thyself one day revealed to the gazing eyes of all men, a hypocrite, a pretender, who didst sin in fancied secret, observed in all thine acts by the all-seeing Jehovah. O what fools men are, to think they can do anything in secret. This world is like the glass hives wherein bees sometimes work: we look down upon them, and we see all the operations of the little creatures. So God looketh down and seeth all. Our eyes are weak; we cannot look through the darkness; but his eye, like an orb of fire, penetrateth the blackness; and readeth the thoughts of man, and seeth his acts when he thinks himself most concealed. Oh; it were a thought enough to curb us from all sin, if it were truly applied to us-"Thou, God, seest me!" Stop thief! Drop thou that which thou hast taken to thyself. God seeth thee! No eye of detection on earth hath discovered thee, but God's eyes are now looking through the clouds upon thee. Swearer! scarce any for whom thou carest heard thy oath; but God heard it; it entered into the ears of the Lord God of Sabbaoth. Ah! thou who leadest a filthy life, and yet art a respectable merchant bearing among men a fair and goodly character; thy vices are all known; written in God's book. He keepeth a diary of all thine acts; and what wilt thou think on that day when a crowd shall be assembled, compared with which this immense multitude is but a drop of a bucket, and God shall read out the story of thy secret life, and men and angels shall hear it. Certain I am there are none of us who would like to have all our secrets read, especially our secret thoughts. If I should select out of this congregation the most holy man, should bring him forward and say, "Now, sir, I know all your thoughts, and am about to tell them," I am sure he would offer me the largest bribe that he could gather if I would be pleased to conceal at least some of them. "Tell," He would say, "of my acts; of them I am not ashamed; but do not tell my thoughts and imaginations-of them I must ever stand ashamed before God." What, then, sinner, will be thy shame when thy privy lusts, thy closet transgressions, thy secret crimes shall be gazetted from God's throne, published by his own mouth, and with a voice louder than a thousand thunders preached in the ears of an assembled world? What will be thy terror and confusion then, when all the deeds thou hast done shall be published in the face of the sun, in the ears of all mankind. O renounce the foolish hope of secresy, for thy sin is this day recorded, and shall one day be advertised upon the walls of
heaven.

Link to Sermon

Authenticity & Transparency.

One of our biggest problems when dealing with Porn is being authentic. First, we need to be honest with ourselves about the problem and we need to be honest about the consequences of such sin. God's word says that we should honor our wives or He will not hear our prayers. As well there are many scriptures that show how our sins separate us from God.

7In the same way, you husbands must give honor to your wives...If you don't treat her as you should, your prayers will not be heard. (1 Peter 3:7)

"But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear." (Isaiah 59:2)

"One who turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be an abomination." (Proverbs 28:9)

Consider King David, who in his hidden sin sought to escape judgement by lies, dishonesty and treachury - each procceeding lie lead to the eventual murder of an innocent man. It would have been better for David to have been authentic about his sin, rather than making the situation even worse. When we seek to hide our sin from brothers and sisters, or even the wives we have sinned against, we only make things worse.

We must be authentic about our struggles and do as the Bible says, "which is confess your sins that you may be healed." If we sin against a brother or sister, or our own wife we must ask for their forgiveness. It is not only God whom we have sinned against but our spouse.

If we can not be authentic and honest with our wives, whom we have been made "one" with, then we can not be fully made whole. Until there is confession, the husband and wife are not in unity and not honest about their struggle. As long as we can keep our sins from our wife, or our own conscious - we will always be in denial to the extent of the sin as well as the consequences.

It is not necessary, and probably not wise, to give a play by play account of the sin to your spouse. It is sufficient to say that you have struggled with the sin of pornography, that you are seriously grieved, that you need forgiveness, and that you need help. It is important to express your love for your spouse, along with the fact that you have a problem.

As with alcohol abuse, it would be wrong to act in front of your spouse like you have no problem, when in reality you did. Denial only deprives you of your most important prayer support, helper and ally in becoming a whole person. Part of the deal of marriage is to love one another in "sickness and health," and the sin of pornography is a "sickness." We must be willing to confess our weaknesses and those areas where we need help.

It must also be realized that are possible consequences to your confession of sin. Your spouse will be hurt, may struggle with the sin, and might also use this as an excuse for divorce or separation. Though the Bible says that adultery is ground for divorce and that when a man lusts in their heart they have an equal sin as one who has committed adultery, I do not believe that divorce is the right answer.

Love is the highest law, and mercy triumphs over judgement. Forgiveness of sin is required for those who are truly repentant. If a spouse is not able to be truly authentic and transparent than true spiritual growth will be stunted by half-truths and out and out lies.

I know of many men who lie to their wives because they can not be honest and authentic, about their struggles. Women may not want to hear about the struggles of their husbands, but I am convinced that lies and hidden sins are not a good solution to women's desire to not know the nasty truths of their husbands. Truth hurts. But deception hurts more. And God's word says there is nothing hidden that will not be made known. And adding lies, to the sin of lust will only cause more distrust and feelings of being betrayed.

Steps for Healing

1. Authenticity
2. Transparency
3. Accountability
4. Hedges
5. Confession
6. Active Participation of Spouse

Links to Help

XXX Church

A Christian Counselor

A Woman'sRole

How to Confront Your Spouse