Session Notes

TBO.com: AP Entertainment

A student at Pillsbury Baptist Bible College was charged in the theft of his roommate’s debit card, which was used to pay for more than $2,300 worth of calls to phone sex lines, prosecutors allege in court papers.

So, why is it that the most fundamentalist of establishments with the highest codes of morals and the most determined adherents to said code of law don’t even seem to be able to corral the behaviors on their naughty list — to say nothing about the rest of the behaviors they believe God winks at?

If we could manage to stop the behaviors we considered really bad, there maybe would be a case for legalism — we could worry about the rest later. But, we can’t — in fact, we usually manage a few of those behaviors at once. Holiness is a myth supported only by dividing our crimes and misdemeanors up into, “Really bad,” and, “Not so bad,” categories and then deluding ourselves into believing that we don’t actually commit the bad ones.

If we are going to have any holiness, it’s gonna have to be a gift straight from God. Of course, that gift was already given — freely, without strings attached and without threat of having it rescinded for our bad behaviors because the law that defined bad behaviors — well, it doesn’t apply to dead people: people who have already died with Christ.

That would be you — if you are His…

But then, if you are His, that means you can never again estimate yourself in degrees of righteousness or perversion. You can never again stand in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and erect fences of law to keep you from facing your fears. You will have to go out there, stand so naked, unrestrictedly free and exposed in such a dangerously wide open world that you would die without a hand so much greater then your own to hold.

Of course, while holding that hand, you are a lot less likely to walk into those places where you hung out before — those places where your anthropology was so brutally eroded while you thought you were having fun — but the improvement in your ethics really isn’t especially relevant. It isn’t about that anymore. It’s about being His.

Family.org — Focus Over Fifty — Obesity: Battling the Middle-age Spread

First is the emotional and spiritual component. Researchers have found that the root cause of overeating is an the attempt to meet emotional needs such as unconditional love, significance and security.

Cognitively, food feels like it nurtures us, giving us a sense of control, and a false belief that we are not being deprived. This pseudo-comfort dissipates as soon as we consume our fill of food, often leaving us feeling unloved, out of control and empty. Obviously eating is not the solution for emotional starvation; Christ is our answer.

Begin all lifestyle changes with prayer. Whenever you feel the urge to eat and you know you’re not hungry, seek God’s comfort. Pray and ask Him to show you clearly the difference between emotional and physical hunger, and act accordingly. Keeping a prayer journal. Expressing your emotions freely may help you let them go and turn them over to God.

JC’s Girls Girls Girls

This is a must see. This group of women is attacking the erotic/porn industry from the inside. They go into the clubs — to where the broken men and women of the industry work and play — and simply love them while presenting them with the love of Jesus.

They have even adopted the glamor and style that grabs people in that world such that they blend in to it in every way — except they are destroying it from the inside.

No judgment, no condemnation — just the love of Christ and the promise of a better tomorrow. It’s about time!!!

(I do wonder though, how can people so dead-on add such dead-wrong off-site links???)

XXXchurch.com X3 Operation Save The Kittens

In all of the years I have worked to assist people addicted to erotic and/or pornographic materials to walk free, this has to be one of the most blatantly unhelpful sites I have ever been presented with.

Think about it for a moment: We do things we shouldn’t for two reasons — we have not had our needs met in legitimate and effective ways and we always do whatever it is we are told not to do.

The fact that we are doing things we are told not to do — things which we know are less then beneficial for us — causes us to feel shame. Shame causes us to avoid community with other people and with God (The two places God created for us to have our needs met) and, so, our needs then can not be met in a legitimate manner.

The above reality has been known since the early days of Freud and most legitimate Christian counselors (Those who are not simply secular therapists who happen to be Christians) are trained in such from the first weeks of their training.

Why then does the Christian church insist on continuing to use/play off of unmentionably stupid tactics of blatant shame (Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten) as a means of arresting undesirable behavior when they know full well that it is this shame that caused the problem to begin with?

A pastor I know mentioned a few weeks ago that he had confronted one of his colleagues — a man who had been in his graduating class — with this reality. He had asked him why, if he had been trained in the same seminary and had the same knowledge of grace, did he continue to preach shame and condemnation from the pulpit?

The second pastor’s response, though it put him in a significant amount of distress, was strikingly honest. He said, “Yes, I know all that but, if I ever started to preach that grace, how would I control my flock?”

I have to honor that second pastor — that sort of honesty can be worked with. So few Christian leaders are that self aware.They wouldn’t be able to stay that way if their congregations woke up though.

Healing of any brokenness starts when we admit that we can’t get free, that we don’t even want to be free, that we kinda like our addictions and then we ask one more critical question: “I wonder if there is someone out there who can love me — not as I should be — but just as I am.” (Yes, Billy Graham had it right all along…)

When we finally begin to seek love instead of hide in the shadows and seek performance (Which we will never attain no matter how hard we white-knuckle it…) we have begun to take the first steps out of our brokenness and the first steps towards a ABBA who has the power to so deeply meet our needs that we will never want what we were settling for — never again.

The opposite of white-knuckling is grace — and grace is freedom.

I feel too busy for God

Busyness is a definite spiritual killer.

This article discusses ways to reconnect with God.

Craving Crisis “Meaning in life is not found in fulfilling divine purposes, but in a relationship with God.

This article stresses the primary aim in life is to know Christ fully.

Drug addiction and alcohol rehabilitation treatment alternative

A very interesting (and covertly Christian) treatment center for chemical dependency which does not use the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)/12 step model (mainly because of AA’s well documented 95% failure rate). Presents an incredibly rational alternative starting with the entire problem of a performance/legalism vs. a grace based model of healing.