Latest / The Living Waters Podcast / Ep. 20 - How to Walk in Sexual Purity

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Ep. 20 - How to Walk in Sexual Purity · The Living Waters Podcast

• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: We have to have a game plan.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: We have to have, like I said with my book, a battle plan for sexual purity.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of times I think what we forget is that we are in a war constantly, like you said, Ray.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's constant, it's ongoing.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: But sometimes we act like someone that is on a luxury yacht, on a cruise, on our way to the Bahamas, when in reality we're on a Higgins boat on our way to the shores of Normandy.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: And someone with who's disillusioned or deceived in that way, they're gonna get off that Higgins boat with a bathrobe, slippers, and a remote in their hand, and they're gonna be decimated.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: So, as men, we can never let our guard down.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: We know we have to know that the world, the flesh, and the devil are all aiming their barrels at us and want to destroy us.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_03: So we have to have a game plan.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: What did the horse say to the baby goat that asked him, why do animals not wear any clothes?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: What did he say, Izzy?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: Nay, kid.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: This doesn't selling off well.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: I made that, I made that up.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_03: That was clearly.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_03: I walk in the room this morning and I share it with my wife with such excitement and joy and glee.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, here's another one.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: No, please, is it we're good.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I really need to be very well I have to do one more.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: No, please.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, give one more moment.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, Oscar, you I know you're gonna get this one.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: Am I?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: What did one hired mourner say to the other hired mourner after the funeral the next day?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_03: What?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: Good morning.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: That was okay.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: You've just become you've just become a dead joke.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know what this reminds me of?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: But I made these up.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we didn't tell you.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us that.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is what it reminds me of.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds me of where I have ideas for evangelism in my sleep.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I wake up, I write them down, I go, this is such a great idea, and I present it to my wife, and she looks at the idea and she's all put the gospel on the back of an elephant.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_03: That is not a good idea.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_03: That is something Ray Comfort would do, though.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: See, look, he's a I could see the the sparks on his own.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: Where did my wife go wrong this morning to stop you before you started?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: Your daughter, you mean?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, we're talking today about sexual purity, but before we do, I want to share something that I experienced this morning.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say it's not a joke by easy.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, this is we're going we're going serious now.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: I was um editing Genius, which is about John Lennon, because coming up in November, there was a trilogy coming out by Peter Jackson and Disney, a combined trilogy, on Beatles, on the Beatles.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be huge, so we're re- putting genius out as the Beatles and John Lennon, because I think it'll have a lot of mileage.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I re-watched the footage about how many people would murder for$10 million, and it just horrified me that people would have to be like.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, the the when you went out and asked the right question.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: One after the other, would you kill somebody for$10 million?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: And some people say, oh no, not for$10 million.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: What about 20?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I do it.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: And you think how deceitful and wicked the human heart is.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: And at the same time, which I often do when I'm editing, I had big screen TV on, I was watching soccer.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: It was uh Mexico versus another country for the World Cup coming up, and I watched how many times they throw themselves on the ground, injured horribly, until a penalty is given, suddenly they get resurrected and everything's fine.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: I was thinking how deceitful a human heart is to do that, and how difficult it is for a referee to discern whether this is a lie or it's genuine.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I was thinking how the conscience is like a referee and it discerns what we're doing.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: And the word of God is quick and powerful, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, and how we've got to have that before our eyes as Christians, because uh the day of judgment should forever be uh before the eyes of all of us because it's coming.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_03: Ooh, that's good, right?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah, I think they call it the flop.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, in the NBA, they fine you now if you do that.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_03: Really?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_03: Guys remember Vladdy?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: Vladdy D Vladdy.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_03: I used to call them Vladdy deflops.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_03: Floppy D Block.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's weird.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: And nowadays we just called it a Hollywood.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's it's just an act, you know.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: Give him an Oscar roll.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: But uh seriously, a guy trips another guy and he rolls like 15 times and just lies there like I'm a dead man until the penalty's given suddenly up he gets.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and that's the thing, like the the stuff these guys do.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_03: I often wonder when I see athletes.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna get into this main subject at hand, friends, by the way.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but no, with with athletes, that they don't like remember their every movements being recorded.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: I remember seeing one of these swap things, and a guy does it, no one was even near him.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: No one touched him.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, I saw that in a football game one.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I say, hey, they've got replay, slow motion.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's crazy.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: Doesn't stop them.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: All right, sexual immorality, gentlemen.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I got a joke about sexuality.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: I just made it up.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: You see?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: In the last days shall come macas.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: But this is not a subject that many men especially want to discuss.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's not a fun subject, but it is probably something that has reached unprecedented heights.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: Oscar just yawned.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: It only yawns with a lot of things.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: It was one of those really bad ones, like, oh, I think you have to calm yawn.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: You can you add that to the yawnies?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yes.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: Help people sleep at night.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: 60 minutes of pure non-stop yawn.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: 60 minutes.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: But did you notice he only yawns when easy is speaking?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's because you know why that is?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know why we yawn, by the way, Mark Spence?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: We're not getting enough oxygen?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: Is that what?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: So Oscar is so enthralled by what I'm saying, he can't even breathe.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's breathtaking, really.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: It was a wonder I noticed him yawning because I usually snooze off when you're talking.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: All right, boys.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Five minutes and twenty five seconds into this, we have no idea what it is.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's your guys' fault.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't know.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: There's no such word as geysers.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, your geysers.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, Siri, define the word geises.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so it comes out of the out of the earth, a geyser.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, carry on.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: Sexual purity, no one wants to talk about it.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: Geyses.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: An extreme form, appearance, or manner of presentation.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_03: Ha, it is a word.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_03: Out of context.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: Nope, nope.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's out of context.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: So how to walk in sexual purity?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_03: I don't get it.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: This is a this is a really important subject.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a big problem, you guys.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like a really big problem.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: Ray, would you say that it's the internet that has caused us a problem?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: Mark, what do you think?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oscar?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: It goes far before the internet started.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've had this issue since the beginning of time.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: All throughout the Old Testament, we see issues of sexual impurity.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it's David the King in Bathsheba, uh, we see it throughout the Old Testament, and then we see it in the New Testament.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Paul addresses it with the Corinthian church.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so to say that sexual impurity started during the sexual revolution or somehow is enhanced isn't an isn't a real way of looking at the condition of the human heart.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because since the beginning of time, man has taken good gifts from God, like sex, and we've defiled them.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: We've destroyed and destructed them for our own purposes.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the end result is something far more or less beautiful than what that gift intended to give us, which is uh joy and gladness.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: So are you saying that yes, we see it maybe more prominently now in terms of people getting addicted, let's say, because of the internet, there's more accessibility to it, but you're saying that the root, it's not the cause.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's always there.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: The root is a human heart, and now it's manifesting itself because it's given more opportunity.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the internet, if you think about it, we've had throughout human history, we've had these governors, right?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Before the pill, there is a fear of getting somebody pregnant.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Before the pill in abortion, there was a fear of getting somebody pregnant, and that stopped people from having premarital sex.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: But then you took those things away and you removed the governors from the human heart, essentially.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't change the human heart, it just made the human heart more free to express the sin that was already there.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you look at pornography as well, it's interesting because millennials and Gen Z actually have a lower rate of sexual partners before marriage.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's moved down from like eight to like an average of two or something like that.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Which you would think on the front, wow, praise God, it seems like we're moving in the right direction.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: The issue though is that's also happened with the rise of pornography and porn addiction.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: More people are staying at home and lusting on the internet than they are going out and committing adultery.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: That's so true.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, Mark, you and I have been to Japan together, and I was shocked when I learned that they are doing everything they can to try to actually have people have kids because people are so addicted to pornography that they they don't even find satisfaction anymore in being with someone else.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so it so their their culture is regressing.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: I mean their population is declining because people aren't getting married and having kids.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: And even when two they do get married, if you keep looking at Lamborghinis, you're not gonna be happy with your Toyota.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: Explain that.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if you keep looking at pornography, how can I put it, beautiful woman, you're not you're gonna lose interest in your own wife.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: And which takes excitement out of marriage.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what the whole sexual thing is about excitement.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: Sexual promiscuity takes the sweetness out of the honeymoon.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's so so true.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you think about it, it's one of the I I mean, I can't think of another one, uh, where it's sin one moment, fornication, and then it's blessed by God the next.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: The moment you get married, it's no longer fornication, it's blessed, it's pure, it's undefiled uh by God.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: But what satisfied you before you became a Christian was fantasy, it was sin.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore, when you get married and you engage in the same act, it won't satisfy because it's no longer sin.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sin is what satisfies the heart, but then you're never truly satisfied, you'll always go deeper and you'll always long for something better.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_03: I I think that the stuff that's happening in America today as well, in terms of what they're teaching kids at what age.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: Ray, you and I just got a text from Ken Ham.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: We can't even talk about it.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: We can't talk about it.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_03: But we just got that text from Ken Ham talking about what they're teaching kids at like unbelievably young ages.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's this kind of trivializing, trivializing of something that's so sacred and so beautiful, and has God's fingerprints all over it.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_03: You know, when you think about the things that are involved in procreation, I mean, that is designed.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: That that is made by God, and it should cause us to be in bonds.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: There's an explosion in space, and these monkeys started doing it.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, just this randomness that produces, you know, a duplicate of you in a sense.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's unbelievable.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_03: But I think it's that trivializing, and we've talked about this before, Ray.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_03: How much does evolution play a role in this?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they can't tell you how sex happened with evolution, and they can't tell you where male and female this is came from.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: There's this great big gap of uh we don't know what happened.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: It just happens that everything has male and female except for a couple of amoebas.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: Why is that?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: And if if everything was going good with just males or whatever it was, unisex or whatever it was, why did a female evolve?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's just uh it's crazy.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: It makes no sense.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_03: Mark, what do you say to young people that you talk to, or young people that may be listening to us right now, and they say to you, this is extremely difficult.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: I can't keep myself until marriage.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna be impossible.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: What do you say to them?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for the believer, there there's hope and there's help because we flee youthful lusts.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we're we're encouraged.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, give me a moment, guys.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to kind of go through this.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: In 2 Timothy 2.22, it says, flee also youthful lusts for pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: If I were to tell you, do not think of a pink elephant with purple spots, you're gonna do it.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the more I tell you, don't think about a pink elephant, the more you will think about a pink elephant.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: You'll think about everything about a pink elephant as I describe all the features of a pink elephant, you will think about a pink elephant.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Ray, what are you thinking about right now?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm hypnotized.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: So right now we go through life and we're told to not lust after women.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: But every erected billboard, every commercial, every time we go down to Huntington Beach to share the gospel, we are inundated with the women that we're told not to think about.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the text here.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Flee these things, but then it says, pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: So in order to no longer think about the pink elephant, we need to replace that with something else.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: So if I were to say instead, think about a black cat.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then you start describing all the the details of a cat.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was looking in this yesterday.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know cats are the only mammals who don't taste sweetness?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: Now, how do they know that?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: They interviewed me.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: I thought you were gonna talk about eating cats then when you said the only cat's the only one that doesn't taste good.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: Can't eat a whole one.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Can't eat a whole one.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Cats are nearsighted.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Cats can jump up to six times their length, and they don't always land on their feet.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: We found that out when I was in high school.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Terrible.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_03: I repent.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: 70% of their lives are left sleeping.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: A cat went to space in 1963.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: A house cat can run up to 30 miles per hour, which is faster than Usain Bolt, who can run 28 miles per hour.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's pretty fast.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: The oldest cat lived to be 38 years old.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Isaac Newton invented the cat door.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And here's one.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: A cat was the mayor of a town in Alaska for 20 years.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: And you heard it here first on the Living Waters Podcast.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: The only thing I would have done differently in that whole list is taken every cat on the planet out to space.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's exactly what I'm saying.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot to mention that cats have a direct line of communication with the devil because they're evil.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: But notice what happens.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: We do like cats.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: Don't speak for me, Ray.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: You're worried about the emails you're gonna get from cat lovers.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, I'll I'll strike a cat.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: They're quite nice in your left.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: No, sorry.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: Go ahead, Marcus.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: They bring a bird to the front door, they're tuning pieces.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Cats are so this illustration is really great because the more we talk about cats and the more we know about cats, the more interested we are with them.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: But we are no longer thinking about a pink elephant with purple spots.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks a lot.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what happens.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: The more we pursue righteousness, right standing before the Father, the more we talk about peace and faith and hope, the more we are no longer meditating upon things we shouldn't be meditating upon.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: But notice how this ends.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we think about these things, but we also think about these things with others who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: So it's quininee, it's fellowship, it's accountability.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you get accountability just by hanging out with people that love the Lord.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we flee, yes, but it's not just enough.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: I need to flee from that commercial, flee from that girl.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: We don't just flee, but we pursue.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And when we pursue the Lord, these other things they grow strangely dim, but we're doing it continually.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: That reminds me of this story that I once heard about this Amazonian tribe.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know if it's true, but I love this story, so I repeat it all the time.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and they that one of their delicacies was to eat monkeys.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so what they would do is they would carve these holes into a tree and lay beans in them.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: But the hole was small enough so that the monkey could fit his hand in pointing.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: But once it grabbed the beans and made a fist, it was stuck.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: But the monkey was so determined to hold on to these beans that it would not let go of them, it would keep its fist there, and so the monkey would freak out and be pulling its hand out, which would give the Amazonian tribe, whoever they were, enough time to kill the monkey.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And if you think about that moment, like that monkey has the entire forest at its disposal.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: If it just lets go of this silly two or three beans, it's got all of the trees and all of the Amazon and all of the beans that have been promised to this monkey if it just lived freely, but it is so determined to hold on to these two or three little beans that are ultimately gonna end up in its death.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's like us with sin.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: We get so focused, so determined to stare at it, to think about it, to meditate on the sin that we don't f we don't see the freedom that Christ is offering us through the cross.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: So good.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: Mark, what you said reminds me of what Paul said in Galatians 5 when he's talking about the flesh and the spirit.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: He says, I say then, walk in the spirit, and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: He's not focused on don't walk in the flesh.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: He's just saying, walk in the spirit.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: Like you're saying, replace those thoughts.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: Not that, again, we don't put to death the deeds of the flesh, but but there's that really foundational approach of I'm going to walk in the spirit.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: Did you say sorry, Oscar?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: My watch said sorry.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: Talking watches.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: Talking watches.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I used to see on Night Rider.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: I can't believe it's happening.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: Was it apologizing for me?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was, yeah.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: For the joke.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: My watch was yawning.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: And thank you, Mark.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: Now I can't get an elephant out of my mind with a verse on it.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: Bible verse, yeah.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_03: But walking in the spirit, being controlled, being governed by the Spirit of God, involving ourselves in the things that God's Spirit is involved in, like we've talked about before on the podcast.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I wish that somebody would sit down and write a book, like a 24-chapter book on a period.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I just wish somebody out there who would do that.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: An Arab cherub.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: So when's this coming out?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: I'm so excited.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: For those who don't know, Easy is working on a book.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_03: Have you got a title?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I do.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's called Yawn.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yawning with my homies.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's called Fight Like a Man.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: A bold biblical battle plan for sexual purity.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's for men, if you didn't get that.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm so so excited about it because this is a really big problem.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm passionate about helping men and especially young men these days find victory.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_03: And scripture gives us so many different indicators on what we can do.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of times there isn't a battle plan.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's just we go in and we just try to wing it.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so yeah, I'm really, really, really excited about that.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: So why should we battle lust when it is so evidently pleasurable?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to go to heaven and have a relationship with God?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: There needs to be a fear of the Lord, and that's what's missing.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's a fear, there's no fear of God.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there's no fear of God, and there's no, like I said, recognition of what's involved in sexual immorality.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: Because, like I talked about, God's fingerprints is all over it.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: When we're lusting, this is something I write about in my book, when we're lusting, we're taking these amazing features and faculties that God has given us that should cause us to be in awe of him, and we use them to sin against him with.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: So I put it this way in the book: what should be wonders for worship, we use as weapons for wounding.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_03: We wound the Lord with them, we wound our ourselves with them, we wound other people with them.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_03: And so when someone's lessing, you gotta pause and think, what am I using right now?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_03: First of all, I'm using my eyes.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: 137 million light sensitive cells.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: Your focusing muscle moves about a hundred thousand times a day.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: Your eyes have built-in super-sensitive light meters, immediate automatic focusing, wide angle lens, and full color instantaneous reproduction.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks to you, Ray.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: I heard that from you years ago.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: But it sounds like you're talking about a camera.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: What?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: What do you that's the human eye?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like to stop and think, I'm using these eyes to lust with.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_03: These are marvelous creations of God.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: I should worship him.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: And then your eyes are connected to your brain.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_03: You think about your brainery, right?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: 100 billion neurons or microscopic nerve cells, many times on nerve lines and all the telephone lines in the world put together.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: Electrical signals from 200,000 living thermometer cells, a half million pressure sensing cells, three to four million pain sensing cells, plus all the signals from your eyes, ears, nose, and taste buds are all routed, this thing called your brain, and it's keeping everything working in perfect order and harmony without you doing a single thing.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: So obviously, the the brain is a place of imagery.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: This is where you're imagining, where you're remembering.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's insane.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: And yet, instead of thinking, wow, God gave me this brain, it's so evidently designed by him.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: I worship you, Lord.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_03: You're a marvelous God.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: We again use it to sin against him.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when I first read the night of my conversion Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, You've heard it said by them of old, you shall not commit adultery.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: And had the thought, I've never committed adultery, I'm fine if there's going to be a judgment day, and then saw those words, but I say to you, whoever looks upon a woman to lust for her has committed adultery already with her in his heart.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: My heart broke.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: Not because I'd sinned, but because God was saying the thing that I'd live for.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: Was morally wrong.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: And let me just try and bring that into proportion a little.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: To get pleasure as a surfer, I would have to go and daggle my legs as a shark bee.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: And it's cold water, you travel hundreds of miles, you get the best surf, you paddle out, you get wet, you get cold, you risk getting eaten by a shark, and for like half a minute you get a thrill of a lifetime.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: Whoa, but this is so cool.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: But lust did that for me instantaneously.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: No cold, no sharks, no not wise.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: Anywhere I looked, look at that woman, and I could have an instant pleasure.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: And God was saying it was wrong, it was my joy.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's the joy of every man.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: Moses chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: And what made me let it go with joy was seeing the cross and realizing that Jesus had to suffer so I could be forgiven for my unclean sexual desires.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then the knowledge that lust brings forth sin, sin when it's finished, brings forth death.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's another reason.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to hold this stick of dynamite in my hand saying it gives me fascination, I just love it, because it has an end result that's horrific.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why we tell sinners you've got to repent, let God give you new hearts, so you thirst after righteousness.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: The other analogy I like to use before you jump in is that a little kid was going to be given$20, a brand new$20 bill by his father in the morning, but instead of waiting for it, he sneaks in, grabs it out of his father's wallet, and steals it.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: So he's taken something that was good and wonderful and perverted it, made it wrong, morally wrong.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what sex is, it's a gift of God.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: We're made for each other, male and female.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: A man gets absolute pleasure out of a woman's body, and all the senses we get and the pleasure we get from love making is just so wonderful.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: And when we take it and use it out of God's order, we pervert his design and we sin against him.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the key that's that's the thing that's key, is because you ask why do why would we stop something that's so pleasurable?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's important to realize that the Bible is not against sex.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: It is for sex, it is for sex in the most beautiful, true, and good way.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you look at Song of Solomon, it intentionally uses imagery of the garden to define sex.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: It does it on purpose because it wants to remind its readers of the Garden of Eden, which is telling us that that marital, consensual, and mutual pleasing sex between a husband and wife is meant to be some sort of reflection of heaven.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's meant to be something beautiful and good.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: And exactly to your point, we have perverted it.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it reminds me of uh C.S.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Lewis's quote.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: I know I've quoted it before on Way of the Master.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna say it here.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because he talks about this exact thing.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: He says that basically we're far too easily pleased.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: We fet settle for something far less than what God intended for us to have.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: So here's what he says we are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what it is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: We are far too easily pleased.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, I love it.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'm so glad, Oscar, you highlighted the fact that sex is beautiful.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: God made it.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: What when we taught our kids uh about sex when they were, you know, young, we read a couple of books with them that kind of introduced.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: Easy did you find that difficult to do?
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_03: So that's what I was about to say.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: Because here's the thing, right?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it when you think about it, when you hear parents talking about having the talk, I had I still have no idea why they call it the birds and the bees, but whatever.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_03: The talk with their kids.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: I've had parents come up to me and that, so we're gonna you know have the talk with our kids.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: And and you could see, you could almost see them perspiring.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so when Rachel and I said it's time to talk to the kids, I made a decision that I was going to present it to them as the most beautiful, wonderful thing.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: Because at that stage they hadn't heard anything.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: They knew nothing, zero zelts about it.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: Is this in your book?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: You know what?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna put it in the butterbean.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: Chapter 25.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: I gotta remember that.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: Please do.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: I gotta write it down and remember.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: While you're writing it down, let me tell you when when Jacob was six years old, I shouldn't have mentioned his name, my oldest boy, six years old, his next name.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: Jacob.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: He was six years old, he was six years old, and it's Jacob.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: I went into I went to the bathroom, it's in the bathroom, I just said off cuff.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: A kid's at school talking about sex, he says yes.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: He was sex.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: What?
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I turned around and walked out of the bathroom and I said to Sue, what am I gonna say?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: I hadn't prepared.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: So something like what you're saying is fabulous for parents.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: So he was homeschooled, so that's weird.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_03: No, this is when he was a secular school at a secular school.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I so yeah, like I said, I said to Rachel, I want this to be the most beautiful thing.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you think about it, a child's mind is kind of like a warehouse with a bunch of empty shelves.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: And whoever gets there first, whether it's the world or it's you, and stocks those shelves with information, if you would, they're gonna make it all the harder for someone else to come along, unstock, and restock those shelves.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: So here were my kids' beautiful minds with these empty shelves on the aisle that said sex, and I wanted to make sure to stock it right from the beginning.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_03: So when we sat down with the kids, this is how I presented it.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: I said, kids, we want to talk to you about one of the most amazing, wonderful, beautiful things that God made.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_03: And then we just went on and we had a positive attitude, we were smiling with joy because we want that that imprint in their minds of sex being originally what God made it, beautiful, but it's been tainted and twisted, you know, by the world.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: Mark, wouldn't you say that Just before you say to Mark, I got to say something, and you'll be pleased I say it.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: People are gonna wonder how they can get your book, just sign up for our newsletter.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: And because that that's when we'll announce when it comes out, and blah, blah, blah.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's right.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: Livingwaters on black.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: Livingwaters.com.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: LivingWaters.com.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: Mark, wouldn't you say that when men indulge in lust or in sexual immorality, that there's a temporary blindness and insanity that's happening in a sense, because like I mentioned earlier, they're not connecting with God's design in these things to make them stop and say, I'm doing something completely against God's design.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: I heard somebody explain it this way.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine it's uh Christmas time a couple days before the actual holiday, and you're at the mall trying to get some last-minute gifts, and there's no place to park.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you begin to go crazy.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: You just need to park your car.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally you see a car beginning to back up, and then now there's multiple cars aiming for the same parking spot, wanting that parking spot, ready to pull their hair out because they just need to park their car.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way guys get.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: When there is no fulfillment in God's order when it comes to sexuality, then people begin to think any parking spot will do.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: I just need to park my car.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then it becomes illicit and perhaps even some situations illegal.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the original is any port in a storm.
• 30:12
  unknown: Yep.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's the original.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: Any port in a storm, which would prostitutes, whatever, who pays.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's valuable to point out, too, is that many men, even Christian men, have adopted a very Freudian way of looking at people.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by that is that Sigmund Freud overemphasized the identity of a person uh linked to their sexuality.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: And since then we've we've pursued that.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: So if you think about, if you think about like our modern age, your primary identity is gay, straight, bisexual, right?
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like the secular left would say that your identity is directly linked to your sexuality, uh, which is totally wrong.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: Our identity certainly is a part of our sexuality, but God says that we are far more than just our sexuality.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: However, many men look at women in that Freudian way.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: They look at women as just these sexual beings, either opportunity for temptation or pleasure, and they don't see them for what God created them to be.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say that men in the church should be looking at, well, they shouldn't see a potential sexual being when they look at a woman.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: First, what they should see is a sister in Christ, someone made in God's image and there to be honored, respected, and protected as fellow image bearers.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why you need the help of the Holy Spirit within you to help you look on other women as sisters.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: Right, amen.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I just gotta say here, I'm coming up to 72, and I gotta tell you guys that Goliath gets bigger.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_02: The lust does not go away.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's just as powerful, it's got nothing to do with your age.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's so important to cultivate the fear of the Lord, and one thing that helps us do it, the words of Jesus, if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's an oyster.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: Take it out, cast it from me.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: Don't leave it there, we can pick it and put it back in.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: Cast it from me, for it's better to enter heaven without an eye than go to hell with both your eyes.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: That should put the fear of God in us, to say, Lord, help me to be careful, help me to be a Joseph and not a David, because David lacked the fear of the Lord.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: He looked at Bathsheba and didn't look away.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: Joseph's he fled fornication, he fled adultery.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know, so many guys say, oh, when Jesus talked about uh looking at woman with lust and committing adultery in your heart, he was talking about married women.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: So, okay, let's follow the logic.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: How do you know if a woman's married, excuse me, ma'am, are you married?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh no.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: I'll carry on now.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, crazy.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and to me, when I see men who are walking in self-control and sexual purity, it's such a hallmark of regeneration.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_03: Because who would do that and why if if you know you don't truly fear and love God?
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_03: Because, like you're saying, Ray, that that pull is always there for most men.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_03: And as Christians, one of the foremost things that we often say is, I want to know what the will of God is for my life.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_03: Well, scripture tells us clearly what it is, 1 Corinthians 6 18.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_03: Flee sexual immorality.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: And then he says this, or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who's in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own, for you were bought at a price.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_03: And so we need to remember we are not our own.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the context.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: We hear that verse, hey, you're not your own, you've been bought with a price.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: That's in the context of sexual immorality.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_03: Glorify God in the body that he gave you.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: Use it, you know, for his purposes.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: So it's important for us to remember that.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: In James 1.15, it says, then when when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin when it has run its course, brings forth death.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Often I'll talk to guys and I'll ask them, Hey, how are you doing?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they'll say, Well, good, I haven't been looking at porn, I haven't been doing this or that.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I went, wait, what?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't ask you what you're not doing, I asked you how are you doing.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to work, I'm doing all of these things.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not asking you what you're doing, and I'm not asking you what you're not doing.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm asking you how you're doing.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we have within our society have defined how we're doing by the things we're either doing or not doing.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: But in reality, our identity is found in Christ.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what we must remember.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I love the idea with it.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let me let me finish a quick commentary on this, and I want to talk about something R.C.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sproul said.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: You may be finished with that sin, that lustful thought, but that doesn't mean it's done with you.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to fully purpose in your heart and your mind to pursue Christ.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't do that, when that lust is conceived, it brings forth sin, and sin when it is fully full grown, it'll bring forth death.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: You will know that lust is done with you when you're dead, because that's what its ultimate aim is inside your life.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: It is to kill you, which is with the enemy, to steal, kill, and destroy.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Often, R.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: C.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sproul, he was asked the question what do you do with the people that come to you and they're haunted by their past?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: And condemnation is so overwhelming where they can't uh move forward, they can't operate throughout the day, they can't sleep at night.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, This is what I tell them to do, because that condemnation is so strong.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: He said, If you still feel condemned, then pray to God again.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: But this time don't ask him to forgive you for the sin that is haunting you.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Rather, ask him to forgive you for insulting his integrity by refusing to accept his forgiveness that is found in Christ.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: You see, when God promises to forgive his people when they repent, he is not playing games.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to get past your past, you need to release your past to him who dwells outside of time, who is able to grab a hold of that ugly thing that you did, nail it to the cross, and make you a new creation in Christ.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: Easy, I love that you brought up the verse that you've you are not your own, but you've been bought with a price.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because that verse is in reference to the story of Hosea and Gomer, which is a very important story for us to understand.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I'm thinking specifically about the individual who might be listening who just feels um downcast upon himself.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: They think that, like, I've I've sinned in this area, I am worthless, I am not worthy.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: They're feeling the condemnation from the fact that that maybe they've they've they've sinned and they have sexual impurity in their lives.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: And there's that that story where it's so important because as a reminder, Hosea is God's uh prophet, and God tells him to go marry a prostitute, Gomer.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: So he marries this woman faithfully, but Gomer leaves him and she ends up sleeping with a bunch of other people.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: She ends up being sold into sexual slavery, she is now battered and betrayed, and God takes Hosea to the marketplace and he shows him Gomer.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: Gomer is sitting there about to be sold into sexual slavery, beaten, battered, and betrayed.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: And God says to Hosea, go show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: Love her as the Lord loves his people, though they turn to other gods.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so Hosea buys her back.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the Bible says that he buys her for nothing, pennies on the dollar, because culture recognized her as worthless because of her impurity.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: And Hosea says to her, You will live with me for many days, and I will live with you.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so here's the point once we understand the love of God, once we understand that we are all Gomer and that we have been bought for a price, but it didn't cost God pennies to the dollar, it costed him everything, his son on a cross.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: Once we realize that we are loved in that way, that we are forgiven in that way, then it can finally free us from the thing that drives us to sexual impurity.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: It frees us, it moves us from shame and guilt into everlasting joy for the way in which God has showed us grace through buying us at a costly price.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: Let me just give a quote from Thomas Watson for me, Puritan.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: He said, Oh, what folly it is for a cup of s of pleasure, drink a sea of wrath.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: Sin will be bitter in the end.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: The pleasure of sin is soon gone, but the sting remains.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that is so powerful, Ray.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and you know, earlier I mentioned the the will of God for our lives.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_03: 1 Corinthians 4, 3 through 5.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_03: For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: And he ties that in with not knowing God, but this is God's will, your spiritual, your sanctification, that you would abstain from sexual immorality.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's destructive.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: But we live in a day and age where it's just made acceptable.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I remember when I was pastoring and counseling people, I remember one time getting a call to the church, and a couple was talking, and you know, I'm I'm kind of conversing with them, and then they're like, Yeah, you know, and we live and our house, and I'm like, Oh, are you guys living together?
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, oh, yeah.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like, why are you asking that question?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_03: There was another couple that I did start counseling, and it turned out they were living together, and they were newer believers.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_03: I exhorted them in that.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_03: She was having a real hard time with the concept of moving out until they got married.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, of course I'm sharing the gospel because I'm like, is this girl saved or whatever?
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_03: But I told them, I said, you move out, and she's gonna respect you so much more down the line because she's gonna see that you feared God enough to obey him.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_03: Because I tell couples this, it's like, if if you, you know, if you are sexually immoral before you're married, how's that gonna affect the confidence of your partner and the thought of, well, you disobeyed God and being impure with me?
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: What gives me confidence you won't disobey God in cheating on me and committing adultery?
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: You know, again, we just need to remember that there is there's hope, there's grace, there's forgiveness in the Lord.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_03: But we need to, we need to think about what steps we take.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_03: And that couple that I'm talking about, they ended up, you know, he ended up moving out, they got married a little while after that, and she fully respected him.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, wow, you were willing to do that, you know, for the Lord.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I want to address for just a moment the person who just is overwhelmed by condemnation and is plagued by all their memories of the past or even the memories of their spouse's past.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote something a a while ago, and it goes like this you know, God doesn't want to remove our memories, he wants to redeem them.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: God doesn't desire to give us amnesia so we forget our past, but rather a renewed mind with the faith to hear him triumphantly proclaim, neither do I condemn you, my friend, right?
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: We all have a past, I get it, but this is what Christianity is all about, right?
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: God wants to blot out our sins, not our memories.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want to erase our memory, he wants to erase our record, and he wants to tell us that our redeemer is bigger than our past.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: So God may forgive our past, but he doesn't want to waste it.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: He isn't done with people.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I know that God isn't done with whoever's even listening to this and feels that condemnation is because they're still alive.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: And by virtue of the fact that they're still alive, it means that God's not done with them, that they can still walk in the work which God has prepared beforehand, but they must come clean.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: Start with confession.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: They they may not feel like they're into it when worship begins to happen and their tongue is far from it.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and before you can have a tongue of praise, let's have a tongue of confession.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let's confess what God has already seen.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins when we confess them.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: Start with that confession, have that accountability, go before God, weep and wail.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, ask God to have mercy on you, cry out to God uh in the midst of your burden, and he will meet you where you're at.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: You draw near to God, he'll draw near to you.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, and I didn't write this, but this is really neat.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: He hides our unrighteousness with his righteousness, he covers our disobedience with his obedience, he shadows our death with his death, so that the wrath of God cannot find us.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: He finds no spot on us, there's no decay in you, and therefore no punishment awaits you.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Jesus, and it's the name that is above every knee.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh name above every name.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the promise remains you draw near to God, he will draw near to you.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the beautiful thing about God's forgiveness is that he doesn't remind you of where you've been.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: He separates your sin as far as the east is from the west.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't shove it inside your face, reminding you of what a blow it you are, because he is a God who really wants to move forward and he's inviting you along with that journey.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_03: Amen.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_03: So, so glad you mentioned that, Mark, because that's the one thing that oftentimes gets men into this spiral, downward spiral of they sin, Satan lures them with his lies, so does the world, so does their flesh, then they sin, and then it's now, oh, there's no way God will forgive me.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so what do you do when you're down and you're depressed and you're disheartened and discouraged?
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you you're you're tempted to sin some more.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_03: Your weak defenses are down, you're weakened.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_03: But remembering God's grace, you know, any pathway to overcoming sin has to be gospel-centric.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's through the power of the gospel that we're able to be free.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_03: And you can implement all kinds of different things and boundaries and accountability systems.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_03: Ray, you say this all the time.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_03: You say, you know, with accountability, which again is important and should be in place.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_03: But if the person's heart isn't right, if they're gonna commit sexual sin, what's gonna keep them from lying to their accountability partner?
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: So you can implement all kinds of things, but if your heart is not turned.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: Great books.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_03: One is called What Does the Bible Say About Lust by Owen Strand and Gavin Peacock.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_03: Great book.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_03: Another one, uh, it's called Finally Free by Heath Lambert.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: I recommend this to every man.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's one of the most powerful books on the subject.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_03: But in the book, Heath Lambert talks about when he was a young man and he had you know struggles.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_03: He was on his way to school, which was like a thousand miles away, he's driving.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_03: He says he gets to this area that was just in the middle of nowhere, and he sees this big billboard for an adult store where you know he could go and indulge himself without anyone knowing, without anyone seeing him.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_03: But he said, for the first time, he looked at that billboard and he thought to himself, I don't want to do that.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, Finally, I felt finally free.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_03: And that That's the beauty.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's when the heart changes.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_03: You know, but at the same time, kind of parallel with that, we have to have a game plan.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_03: We have to have, like I said with my book, a battle plan for sexual purity.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of times I think what we forget is that we are in a war constantly, like you said, Ray.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's constant, it's ongoing.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_03: But sometimes we act like someone that is on a luxury yacht, on a cruise, on our way to the Bahamas, when in reality we're on a Higgins boat on our way to the shores of Normandy.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_03: And someone with who's disillusioned or deceived in that way, they're gonna get off that Higgins boat with a bathrobe, slippers, and a remote in their hand, and they're gonna be decimated.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_03: So as men, we can never let our guard down.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_03: We know we have to know that the world, the flesh, and the devil are all aiming their barrels at us and want to destroy us.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_03: So we have to have a game plan.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: And we're not alone.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_02: 1 Corinthians 10 13, the scripture that all of us think of.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: Every man is drawn away by his own lusts.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_02: So we're not alone, so it's good to talk about this.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: But God's faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond that which you're able, but with the temptation also make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_02: So there's always a doorway out of uh Potiphar's house.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_03: Amen.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_03: There is.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, we did a video on this.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_03: I want to encourage you all to check it out on our YouTube channel.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's called Six Ways to Overcome Sexual Lust or Pornography or something like that.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_03: But you just put that in, you'll find it.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's had almost 350,000 views.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: And in fact, Mark, when you and I were at G3, uh a man came up and mentioned something to me from it that he said has really helped him.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_03: And and along with this what I call the six C's, which are in that video, there is one principle that I call nope.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember one day I was counseling a young man and he had been struggling with lust.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, you know, sometimes you just have to say it out loud.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_03: You just have to have this attitude where you just even say it out loud and commit yourself.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_03: Nope.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_03: And nope, it's it goes beyond no, right?
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_03: Nope has an attitude with it.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like if you say, hey, can you get me that?
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_03: Nope.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, whoa, that guy really means it, you know.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_03: So I said, you just have to say it out loud.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_03: And so I was got to thinking the next day, and I thought, man, I wish there was an acronym.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_03: Not one peak even would be a good one.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, suspense.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: What did you come up with?
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_03: Thunder stealer is what you are.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, nope, not one peak even.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I tell young men to say it out loud, and I've shared it with so many men, and they said, man, this really helps me because you're making a commitment.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, sometimes you're around people who can't say it out loud, say it in your mind.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_03: But if you can't, say it under your breath.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_03: But when you say it out loud when you're alone, especially, it commits you.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_03: Nope, not one peak even.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_02: And it doesn't just work for young men either.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_02: Coming to work, often I'm tempted to look at something, and I jell out, nope, nope.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I even say a lot.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_02: Nope, nope, nope, nope.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it makes me laugh.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_02: And by that time, I'm past the woman that's there.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: Nope, not one peep even.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, I just want to hit the last C of those six C's, and that last C is Christ.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what's key.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_03: Oscar, you touched on it a little bit.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_03: To have Christ as our focus.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_03: You remember what Scripture says, we don't have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but he was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_03: Therefore come boldly to the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_03: Christ is the one who, as he said of himself and as it says in Isaiah, he doesn't break a bruised reed.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_03: He doesn't quench a smoldering wake.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_03: There's hope for you.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_03: No matter how much you've struggled, no matter how much you've stumbled in this area, Christ calls you to himself.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_03: And what does it tell us in 1 John?
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_03: It says that we, that he is our advocate.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_03: These things were written that you may not sin, but if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_03: And that word advocate is one who comes alongside to help.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_03: So we need to run him.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_03: He's our advocate.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_03: We shouldn't sin, but if we do, remember that's why he died on the cross to wash your sins away and to give you everlasting life.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's hope in the gospel, and you're gonna find a lot of that hope inside the evidence Bible.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_03: Friends, as Ray Comfort pointed to it on the table to remind me, to remind you.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_03: The evidence Bible, it's got so much in there that's gonna help you to get a grasp and an understanding of how to deal with things like temptation and also how to be a bold witness for the Lord.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's not just not doing, it's doing.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: When you engage yourself in sharing the gospel, you're mindful of its truths, like I said, and that's gonna help you to choose to walk away from sin.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_02: See, it got better.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_02: It started off pathetic with jokes, made-up jokes.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_02: I still stand by those.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_02: Please don't remind me.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't understand them.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I know more.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: But it got better.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it did.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_03: Well, friends, thank you for joining us again.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_03: Remember, please, to tell others about the podcast.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_03: We've been excited and blessed to get thousands of downloads, but we want that to keep going so we can impact people.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_03: So make sure, please, to also rate it, to give us a comment, and then to tell other people about it by sharing it.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_03: And we can't wait to join you again next time here on the Living Waters podcast.