Leaving The Pit

Introduction

Good morning. Welcome. I want to welcome all the visitors. I want to invite you to come back at five o’clock this afternoon when you will hear our resident pro preach. I’m an amateur. the reason I’m up here is because I’m delivering a message the elders felt was important to come from us. And so it’s based on this passage, leaving the pit from Psalms 41 through 3. I’m gonna read that briefly. And then we’ll start. I waited patiently. This is the Psalm of David. I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined to me and heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock and established my steps.

He has put a new song in my mouth, praise to our God. Many will see it and fear and will trust in the Lord. David was in such a state of shame and humiliation before the Lord, he felt like he was in a s a miry pit with slippery walls, and there was no way out without sliding back down. There was no way out except with God’s help. And he got God’s God’s help to get out of that pit. This is an introduction to a group of Christians that I want you to know about that is nothing to do with the church. It’s not a work of the church, but it is members of the Lord’s church in Indiana who have formed a group called Leaving the Pit to help people that are struggling with issues like the one I’m going to talk about this morning.

It’s also an introduction to a lesson that I’m sure you’re going to be uncomfortable hearing about, not nearly as uncomfortable as I’m going to be preaching about it. I think you’ll see and I hope that you that you won’t be upset that this is being preached about. I think you’ll see I’m aware of the young ears that are in the audience, and but I think you’ll see by the end of this the importance of everyone knowing about this topic. This is a problem that exists in the church. It exists in all over the country, it exists in the church in Houston and exists in the church in Decker Prairie, and we all have to be aware of it and know how to deal with it.

So my challenge this morning is to try to get what I learned in eight hours in a seminar down to roughly 30 minutes. So I’ll see we’ll see how close we come. So buckle up, we’re gonna go fast. So there are three options that we can consider when we deal with an issue like this. and I would submit to you that historically generally the church hasn’t used the first two options. They’ve either ignored it or they’d have they have abhorred it because of the nature of the topic. I’m gonna tell you that the stance the elders at Decker Prairie are going to take is we’re gonna use the restoration approach to helping people deal with this problem.

1. Pornography Is a Lie

So what is this what is this issue? What is this that I’m so hesitant to talk about? And you’re gonna be you know maybe hesitant to hear about it’s actually the issue of pornography, and with it the related issues of sexual addictions and betrayal, because typically when we when we deal about cases of marital infidelity and affairs, it usually starts with, doesn’t always, but a lot of times it starts with pornography. And this is a problem that’s rife in our society today, and it’s rife in among the church, among the brethren in the Lord’s church. So let’s let’s talk about a definition. This isn’t a definition you’ll find in Webster’s dictionary. I think it’s a definition that would be something that God may use to define this pornography, a perversion that attacks everything that God cherishes most.

And I hit blank, so let’s go back. Okay. We are made, as you know, in the image of God, and so therefore, the foundation, the theological foundation against pornography begins with the premise that every human being has dignity. And this starts with the mind, and Job even recognized this. Job said he made a covenant with his eyes not to think upon a woman, not to think upon a maiden. And that’s where it starts, is in the mind. So I would submit to you that pornography is a lie. It’s all a lie propagated by Satan. It’s we’re dealing with Satan’s domain here, and he is using this to impact the world, to follow his teachings, his way of what he thinks life ought to be like, and he’s it’s affecting the church.

It’s a lie because it says that the best sex is outside of marriage, and that is absolutely not the case. That’s not how God designed it. And as you as you will hear from people that have been s been victims of this, they don’t feel that way either once they’ve been caught in this trap. So pornography d promises what it cannot deliver. Proverbs nine chapter nine talks about the foolish woman who sits at the door of her house and is simple and knows nothing, and makes statements like in verse 17 stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. Those are not true statements, those are lies. And pornography is a lie. It cannot deliver what it does not promise.

2. This Is a Pandemic

It cannot deliver what it promises. You probably know Proverbs 14, verse 12. There is a way that seems right unto man, but its way leads to death. That’s what that’s what will happen if you’re caught up in this situation. So I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term pandemic. A pandemic is the definition is a disease that’s prevalent over a whole country or the world. Synonyms would be widespread, prevalent, pervasive, rampant. This is a pandemic, and I think this statistic alone will show you how widespread this is. It’s unbelievable that there are over 40,000 websites that are that are related to pornography. And the majority of those are free websites, and they’re designed to get people that get caught in this addiction, and it is an addiction, that to pay for it and to get into more graphic, explicit websites that they end up paying for.

So let’s talk about some statistics. And I’m going to go through these pretty quickly, but just to get kind of give you, I think you’ll be stunned unless you know about this topic, you’ll be stunned by some of these numbers. So here’s the percentages of men who say they view pornography at least once a month. Almost 80% of men between the ages of eight, eighteen and thirty. That’s a huge number.

But it’s still, those are very big numbers. And you’re probably thinking this is just a s a situation that’s relevant only to men. Look at these numbers. These are women, same who also viewed the same amount at least once a month. But numbers go down a little bit, but not much, right? So it’s still very big numbers. This is a problem that’s that is an issue with men and women alike in very large numbers. A few more statistics. I’m gonna let you read a lot of these, but this was a survey done of lawyers in divorce cases, and as I said, oftentimes pornography leads to divorce and is tied to that. And so as you can see, in those every single one of those numbers has one thing in common with it involves the computer.

And that’s where a lot of times this starts, and we’re gonna talk about that as we go through this. But you just have to be aware of the fact that the feds are looking to catch people and they have quotas that they are trying to reach to put people in jail for sexual offenses. And this hit very home to me, very close to home to me within the past year. I have a friend who I have known for twenty years, I worked with for ten years. He’s in jail for twenty years based on a porno pornographic related offense. Seven years ago he was in a as he tells it to me, seven years ago, he was in a chat room, was chatting with somebody and he quickly realized that this was not a room he should be in.

He and I talk about the Bible a lot. He’s he’s not a Christian as we would define a Christian, but he feels he is. we’ve talked about that a lot. He was in this chat room, realized he shouldn’t be in there, he got out of it. but one of the guys in that chat room who was one of the p primary contributors to the confirm conversation was thrown in jail for molesting minors. And the f when they when they found out when they got his computer, they were able to track back to seven years ago other people that had been in that chat room and they went after every single one of them. So one day Todd, this friend of mine got his front door broken in, with his computer confiscated and handcuffed and was taken away to jail based upon his participation in the chat room.

Now, coincidentally, they did happen to find on his computer pictures of naked high school girls, which you shouldn’t have had. He was a high school photographer, took yearbook pictures, and some of these girls felt that they needed to send him these pictures, and he, you know, stupidly kept them and kept put them on his computer. So he’s in jail for 20 years. I visited him a couple of times at the penitentiary up near Austin, and his life is basically over. And severely regrets the participation that he had in that and the in the practices that led him to that situation. So one of the th what this doctor Patricia Greenfield has said, you know, one of the keys to keeping your children away from this is to have a warm communicative relationship with your children.

They your children have to know that they can come to you with anything, and you’ll answer questions openly and honestly about anything, including sex. They need to learn it from you. They want you to learn it from the world. And she said this was one of the greatest deterrents to children being involved in this. and you will see as we go through this the young ages that this affects. so this was a study done in 2012 where over 71% of teens admitted that they hid some sort of inappropriate activity that they took part in on the internet from their parents, either deleting you know, inappropriate videos, lying about what they had done, or you know, setting up unknown accounts, any number of things.

And I’ve got some an app that you can download, I’ll tell you about at the end that will help you track what your kids do on the internet. here’s a term that we didn’t hear before the 21st century and the advent of cell phones. Sexting. I don’t know if you know that, I’m sure most of you do. That’s when people send pictures of themselves in various states of nudity or receive those pictures. And as you can see, it starts as early as twelve years old. and these are people that have reporting sent one. The numbers go up for the kids that have reported receiving one. Those are big numbers of people of young people that are sending inappropriate pictures of themselves to others.

It’s a problem that also exists in the workplace. So in 2003 there was a study done of 474 human resources professionals, and again, related to the use of the computer, two thirds of the pornographic cases were discovered from an employee’s computer at work. So people are doing this at work, they’re accessing these at work. and almost half of them said it wasn’t the first time when they were caught, it was not the first time that they had done that. And so and as you can see, a large number of view that view it at least while at work in the last three months three months, both men and women. But this is just general society, right? This really hasn’t reflective of the church, not a problem in the church.

So this is this survey was done in 2000. I’m almost done with statistics. we would probably put ourselves in this group of fundamentalists. Um91 percent more likely to look at porn. 34 percent of female readers in this Christian’s online newsletter admitted they intentionally went out to look at porn. And in this survey, again, very large numbers of people that consider themselves Christians that are participating in this type of activity. So, what has pornography taught its viewers? I decided I cut a lot out of this slide because I just thought it was it was too graphic to share. But one thing I would like you to take from this is that this is a physical addiction. One of the things I learned about in this seminar, which I’ll tell you a little bit about brief shortly, was that and these were licensed counselors that deal with sexual addictions and other addictions that took part in this seminar that are also members of the Lord’s church.

3. Where Children Learn the Facts of Life

They said when you when a person views pornography, a chemical called dopamine is released into their system, and every time they view it, more dopamine is released into their system, cr what wanting making them want to you know to crave it’s just like an alcohol or drug addiction. The more you do it, the more your body craves it. It’s a physical addiction. So we just have to realize the severity of this and realize that people you can’t just tell people, well, could just quit doing that. You know, it’s not that easy, it’s not that simple. It’s an addiction like any other addiction. So, how does this get started? How do people get where does it get started and what are the factors that influence participation in this kind of thing?

It really starts with where children learn the facts of life. Where did you learn the facts of life? Did you learn them from God? The Bible says a lot about sex and what God intends for the sexual relationship to be. And it’s really the parents’ job to teach your children. And what they what we found in the church is that and any parent who’s heard the two words the talk pretty much knows what that means, right? So are you having the talk with your children? Because you if you’re not, you need to be. If you haven’t, you have to be. Because most of the people in the church that have been told about this, have been questioned about this, said because of the nature of the topic, most people in the church think it’s a taboo subject with their kids and they’re uncomfortable talking about it with their kids.

4. Your Body Is the Temple of God

And they’ll hand them at the best case, they’ll hand them a book to read and hope that’s gonna satisfy their curiosity. Because if they don’t learn it from their parents from you, they’re going to learn it from the world. And they’re going to get a distorted, perverted view of what how what God intended for the sexual relationship to be between man and women. So I would encourage you to think about that. And if you haven’t done that, to consider that as your kids get to that at the appropriate age. Let’s take a look, let’s consider for a minute the body and what God how God designed the body and what he designed it for. God’s the body’s designer. So does he did he created male and female when he was done with creation, he said everything was good.

And he made a female partner for man. And so what was his purpose with his design? Was his design finished when he made male and female and he stepped away and he took no more involvement? Some say, This is my body, I’ll do with it what I want to. That’s not what the Bible says. In 1 Corinthians chapter 6, 19 and 20, he says, Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own. You were bought at a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s. When God cleanses our souls, he lays claim to our body as well. We are his 100%, soul and body and spirit.

We all know this passage. Most of us that have been Christians for a while know this passage referring to the body as the temple of God. We know the temple in the old law and the old covenant was the holy place of the Lord, and God said, if any man defiles the sanctuary of God, him God will destroy. And defile means to corrupt it or damage it by neglect, to bring to ruin. So the question is, do you care for your body like the temple of God? Do you treat it like you would a temple? We would treat a holy temple of God. And that takes into account a lot of things. So we know from Ephesians the fifth chapter, one of the things we’re supposed to do, two of the things we’re supposed to do to our body is nourish and cherish it.

So we have to give it proper nourishment.

It was made for eating to provide nourishment for the body. Gluttony is a sin. Gluttony is actually an addiction, and you can eat you can eat too much. And that’s sinful. And so we have to be careful with giving ourselves proper nutrition, eating the proper foods, and we also have to cherish our body. That means to keep it warm, to foster it with tender care. So, in essence, we need to take good care of ourselves. We need to view our bodies as the temple of God, something that we’re supposed to take good care of. We also need to exercise, and we’ve heard this passage quite a bit, first Timothy four verse eight, usually translated bodily exercise profits little. I would say you could also translate that prophets for a little while.

And God makes there are these references in First Corinthians nine, twenty-four and Hebrews twelve talk about running with endurance the race that is set before you and running in such a way as to race as to win the prize. So if God didn’t think exercise was important, why would he make spiritual applications to physical exercise exercises? So in so we need to you know give some attention to how we take care of our bodies. Paul said one of the things he did was he buffeted his body. Now I know this is a metaphorically speaking of him keeping his body spiritually fit but he was really talking about self-control. We’re talking about an issue here that self-control is at the very center of and we know what self-control is one of the tri attributes we’re supposed to add to our to ourselves and to continually increase in so it’s but the fact that Paul uses the term to buffet his body means this is difficult.

This is a fight this is a war between the body and the spirit and we need to let the spirit win and let the flesh lose we can’t we cannot give in to this kind of this kind of sin also looking at the body as a sexual object as I mentioned earlier you know when God was done with creation he said it is good everything he made was good God created men and women to procreate and to fill the earth and to and to make daughters and sons and he was very specific about the role of the sexual relationship being only fulfilled within the marriage relationship so 1 Corinthians 6 verse 15 through 20 mentions that we are to flee fornication what is what is the what does that mean?

Does that mean that we dress in a way that invites lust. Does that mean that we go to places where we might be sexually tempted, including internet websites? Does that mean we send inappropriate text messages to co-workers or friends? I know if people here who have experienced that and have had to deal with that. Does that mean you place your body up against somebody else’s in a sexually suggestive way? What does it mean?

This is what it means. This passage is talking about the sexual relationship and in 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 3. He says, For this is the will of God, your sanctification. We have to be holy, we have to be set apart, we have to be sanctified, that we abstain from sexual immorality. That means that we there’s a total absence of sexual immorality in our life. We’re getting as far away from that as we possibly can. That each of you should know how to possess his own bot vessel in sanctification and honor. Not in passion of lust like the Gentiles do. And I can you can read the rest of that passage. Let’s look at what God’s views are of sex outside of the marriage relationship. Look at all these verses in the Old Testament that have to do with inappropriate or perverted acts relating to sex, and the death penalty was the result of every one of them.

That’s how serious God is about this. Be thankful we don’t live under the Old Testament law because there would be a death penalty for people that are associated with this. The same types of terminology is used that God prohibits and is against in the New Testament. I didn’t put verses here. I’ve got verses coming up to some of these in another in another slide, but you can see the same terminology. God is consistent and he’s consistent in his dislike, his de detestation of anything that relates to this. So consider for a minute that the fantasy is not the reality. So sometimes people get involved with pornography and infidelity because they think the sex is going to be better. They think it’s going to be better than what they have at home.

Consider the bad advice of Jonadab. So if you remember the story of Jonadab, this is about Amnon, Absalon, and Tamar. Jonadab was described as a crafty man, and he and A he and Amnon conspired together to lure Tamar into Amnon’s room. Tamar was essentially his stepsister, where he raped her. And it said it is said afterwards that Amnon hated her. So he was desired her enough to put together this scheme to lure her into his room, and then after the fact hated her. And of course, she was devastated by what this happens. No one is ever the same after a sexual sin. You cannot go back, you cannot undo it. It does significant damage to the family. So there is good news.

You can rewire your brain to learn a healthy response, healthy sexual response. So I’m gonna tell you a little bit about that this morning. You can recover from this addiction, it is possible. marriages don’t die because people stop having sex, marriage be cut die because people stop keeping their promises. When you married your spouse, you made a promise to her and or him, and you made a promise to God that you were gonna be with them for the rest of your life till death do you part. God cares about covenants, he takes covenants very seriously, and including the one between a husband and a wife. And what he tells us is that your spouse is the only avenue and release for sex. So consider for a minute that it’s not a sin to be tempted.

James 1, verse 14 and 15. Most of us know that passage. Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And when it is full grown, it brings forth death. Sin it’s not the temptation that is the sin, it’s the giving in to the temptation. We can’t allow that to happen. Our sins should not define us. Remember the covenant that Job made with his eyes. He made a covenant with his eyes not to think upon a maid. He knew that it started with what he thought and where he looked. And so here’s some of the passages that I talked about earlier that are mentioned in the New Testament that relate to this.

So maybe we need to make, maybe if this is an issue or a struggle for anyone here, maybe you need to make a covenant with your eyes, like Job did. Start there. And to help deal with this. Also talked talks about enticing unsteadfast souls. Again, Job’s covenant.

5. The Spiritual Impact, Betrayal and Healing

So let’s talk a little bit about the spiritual impact of this. we’ve read that passage already. the next one is talking about First Corinthians six again, verse 18. Flee sexual immorality. So what is to flee sexual immorality? What does that mean? Does that mean we amble away from it? Does that mean we walk briskly away from it? When you hear about somebody fleeing the scene of a crime, what does that mean? They are running as fast away from that crime scene as they possibly can. They’re getting as far away from it as fast as they can. That’s how we need to treat this. If we’re tempted by this, we need to f we need to run as fast as we as we can away from it.

And the passage in Matthew, the fifth chapter that we most of us know is talking about, you know, when you look upon a woman to lust after her, you’ve already committed adultery in your heart, and then it talks about if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. And it leads down to verses 29 and 30, the progression of this that leads to divorce and how God wants you to deal with divorce. So again, this is a progressive thing. It doesn’t always lead to that situation, but a lot of times as we as we saw earlier, the divorce statistics feed back into starting here. So let’s talk a little bit about betrayal. I know I’m going really fast through this.

I’m trying to give you as much information as I can in a short period of time. So here are some concepts that are associated with a husband and wife being unfaithful to one another. Of course, there’s a feeling of abandonment by the other spouse. There’s the feeling of a lack of disclosure and honesty. We hear often about families being broken, and that’s an image that we all have in our minds that comes from this topic. There’s other feelings of anger and indignation and denial, you know, fears of being alone, fears of is this gonna happen again, obsession with you know the behavior of the other person. all these things play into, but this is not what God intended for a marriage.

Back to the computer again. there’s really three types of online relationships. One of them are the online relations that stay, start online and stay online. And some of the thinking that people have about betraying their spouse purely electronically is that’s not really an affair. That’s not really inappropriate. well, it’s entirely inappropriate, and as we know, it leads, as we saw, to other to other more severe behavior. And then there’s other relationships that start online and move offline, the people connect online and then they decide they want to meet in person, and then and that’s and then it evolves into a personal relationship, no longer online, and there’s relationships that maintain a mix of them both. So, as you can see, a lot of what we talked about is related to computers and what people do when they’re on their computers.

So let’s just say that a betrayal has occurred, infidelity has occurred, and now we need to talk about healing. It is possible to recover from that, it is possible for marriages to recover from that. Of course, the initial reaction is shock. and then first response often by the innocent party is I’m getting a divorce. And the counselors that we met with a couple of weeks ago said to be careful if you’re in that situation that you don’t jump to that conclusion because that’s not necessarily the best response to the fact that your spouse has cheated on you. In fact, they talked about divorce being the gift that never stops giving. And so they caution people to jump into that because marriages can be repaired and that healing can happen.

So after shock, there’s usually grief by the party that’s been offended, grief by the families that are involved. If the church is made aware of it, of course there’s grief, and we’ve we’ve experienced that here in the past. And we’ve also experienced the fact that when this happens, oftentimes people take sides, and that’s something we have to be careful about. And when we were going through the situation we went through here, as elders, we had to tell people be careful, you don’t have all the information. You may think you’re getting the truth because you know this person really well, or they’re a personal friend of yours, and they may be thinking they’re telling you the truth, but it’s the truth through their eyes, through their lens, and it’s not always the full story.

We found that every time. And so just be careful if that happens. And then repair can take place. So marriages can heal from this. And I’ll tell you about a couple of instances that I learned that day that examples of marriages that of our brothers and sisters who have gone through repair, but it’s a long process. The average time to get a marriage back to a feeling of stability and trust is typically five years. But then they can grow from that. So it’s very hard to establish trust once it’s been broken, but it can be done. So I’m gonna kind of skip through this. there’s a lot more information on this six stages of an affair. Magical thinking are things that people fool themselves with, like, if I have an affair, I’m gonna be emotionally fulfilled.

6. Is Our Congregation a Safe Place?

A cyber affair is not a real affair. you know, if you had paid more attention to me, I wouldn’t have cheated. Things like that. That’s magical thinking. Skills of monogamy, that’s a lesson unto itself, which maybe we’ll bring in the future. So let’s talk a little bit about the church. So on January 16th, I sat in an audience at in Indianapolis of other Christians, of other members of the Lord’s Church that have been invited to participate in this seminar on sexual addiction, which was led by one of our brothers in Indianapolis who’s also a licensed counselor, and they told of a story of a man named Michael, a real person, a real name, who suffered from this sexual addiction of to pornography.

He said he came to services every time, he never missed a service. And he felt every time that he came in, he felt dirty. And he and he thought to himself, if the members only knew what I was dealing with, how would they treat me? Well, how would they think of me? And he said he came empty and he left empty. And he just felt that he would never be accepted if he came clean and let it be known that he was suffering from this. There was a panel of three men and one of the men’s wives that sat in front of the room in front of us and were brave enough to talk about what they had experienced. All of them still married, still struggling to stay married and dealing with the this pornography and betrayal and infidelity, and they shared with us you know why what got them to that situation, what drove them into it.

One of them said he had been a victim of bullying from the fifth grade through high school, and he saw pornography as a place of comfort from that from that bullying. a lot of them said that, you know, it sometimes among brethren, the atmosphere is one of the fact that counseling is taboo. And they were all given the initial advice of just read your Bible more and pray more. That’s excellent advice, but it’s not going to fix an addiction. And so they all at one point came forward and made their addiction public and are working on you know trying to trying to fix it. So one thing you have to realize about addicts, and this is the sexual addiction is no different from alcohol, all addictions are the same in as far as what they do to people and the treatments, they all have 12-step programs.

We’ve heard of that, I’m sure, for Alcoholics Anonymous, sexual anonymous, sexual addiction anonymous is has the same kind of program. So what I’d like to talk about is our church and how if this becomes an issue in our church, how we’re gonna deal with it. You know what addicts see when they walk into a church building, whether it’s sexual addicts or alcoholics, they see a brand new parking lot full of shiny new luxury automobiles, and they see themselves as a broken down piece of junk car. What they need to see is that this is a used car repair shop. We’re all under various states of repair. We’re all dealing with sin, and we’re trying to help have God and one another help us get repaired from that, but that’s not how they see it when they walk in.

So they do so they feel out of place. So I would like to ask you, is our congregation a safe place where people can admit to the beginning stages of this, and then as they’re going through this, a place that they can find support. I believe it is. I believe it, and if it’s not, the elders want to want to foster that atmosphere here. So that if anybody makes this problem known or other problems known, that they can know they’re going to get support and love and comfort from the church and from the elders. So we have to ask ourselves, is it okay to not be okay? And the priceless just priceless gift of going second relates to the fact that it’s it’s hard to be the first person.

And all these people on this panel said they were the first person that went forward and made this public to their congregations. Every single one of them was deathly afraid of what that was going to do to their relationship with the church. And in every single case, they were welcomed, they were comforted, and they were given support. And then that made it because they were brave enough to go forward, that made it easier for the second and third persons. as I said, this is this is a rampant problem. It’s not just an occasional person here and there among the Lord’s people. So again, a couple more slides and we’ll be done. again, relating to whether this is a safe place to lay down our burdens and receive help, it’s not just the sense of shame itself.

For many people, being open and honest in a quote unquote righteous community is the last thing they want to do. And that’s what each one of these people said. they struggled for years and years with it. But if they don’t, then they’re gonna come, if they don’t make it known, if they don’t let people know that they need help, they’re gonna come to services broken and they’re gonna leave still with the burden of their sin upon them. They can become immune to the truth. So the question is earlier intervention possible and how is it possible? So we kind of like the analogy to a car repair shop, we need to look at the church as a hospital full of sick souls, right?

Romans 3 23, we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We’re all sick with sin to one degree or another. you’ve probably heard they use the analogy in the seminar of hospital gowns. You know, hospital gowns are not designed for concealment, they’re designed they’re designed for easy access. So is it possible for our church to be composed of people who are entirely transparent? And you know, battling the shame orientation is crucial for what men and women to come out of hiding. So imagine a congregation where men and women can be honest publicly about what their struggles are and not fear any reprisal or you know ost be ostracized. Imagine a place where they can come clean. Because if they can’t do it at the church, where can they do it?

If they can’t come here and make known this problem, and we and we all help people and give them the love and support they need because this is an addiction, this is a sickness that they but they can overcome it. Where else are they gonna go? So here’s where to go for help. So let me back up. so this group called Leaving the Pit, Art Adams is a gospel preacher in Indiana, and he’s a certified counselor of addictions and marriage counselor. He’s got all sorts of letters after his name. He’s a in private practice in addition to being a gospel preacher. And they’ve been dealing with this in the Indianapolis area for years, and there are lots of they actually have support groups for people in various congregations there that have been affected by the sexual addictions.

And so they got a hold of a list of five thousand email addresses, one of which was mine, and they sent out an email address to inviting people to the seminar on January 16th, dealing with sexual addictions, and they were you didn’t know what kind of response they would get. They got inundated. They got all 50 seats in the room were filled. There was a waiting list, and they’ve got invitations from at least five states to go to a place in their state to hold the same seminar. That’s what a big, and this is all members of the Lord’s Church. That’s what a big issue it is. That’s why we felt it was important that you need to know about this. And so for every for the next 11 months, they’re going to have a total of 12 sessions of the third Saturday of every month.

Robert and Tim and I have committed that. I’m going to go to each one of those. I travel all the time anyway. I might as well be the one that goes. And so for the next 11 months, they’re going to have different topics. Next February 20th, it’s on alcohol and drug addiction. In March, it’s on depression. All issues that typically are handled by professional counselors. Now, for me sitting in a one-day class for eight hours on one topic isn’t isn’t going to make me a professional counselor. But I’ll tell you, the elders are dealing with all of these issues that we feel woefully inadequate. All we can tell people is, let’s help you find a counselor to go to. And I’m not saying that we’re going to eliminate that step, but we’re going to have to be much better prepared to help.

We have way more resources now to help people, and that’s our goal in doing this. So you can go, you can, there’s other places you can go. As there is a website for alcoholics anonymous. There’s also a website for sexual addicts. Each one of these panel participants was brave enough to give out their cell phone number and said that if we had members that wanted to talk to them about how they dealt with this and are dealing with it, that they’d be happy to talk to people. We’ve got I’ve got a list of dozens and dozens of books that can help with this. You can go to their website, leaving the pit.com, find out more about this group and what they’re doing to help people. And the app that you can download on your mobile phone to watch what your kids are doing on the internet is called Covenant Eyes.com.

So I would encourage you to do that. So what can you expect from the elders? If you were to come to us and admit this or actually any other problem. Support and confidentiality. So we will as these people experienced and recommended, at some point we will counsel people to make this public because when you do so, and I realize the trepidation to doing that, you know, and the fear of doing that, but back to the priceless gift of going second. If you make this known that you’re struggling with this, other people are more likely to do the same thing. But we will keep it confidential. we will certainly pray for you, and we will now be much better prepared to help guide you to places where you can get professional help that we can’t provide.

Conclusion

So lastly, let me just close with this verse. I think this is what this is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. And I think if we all lived by this verse, really presented our bodies a living sacrifice. We’re holy and set apart, and we’re not conformed to this world but continually transformed our mind through the word of God, I think we would have a much better chance of dealing with these kind of problems and not succumbing to these kind of sins. Thank you for your attention. I’d like to offer the invitation to anybody that we can help this morning. It may not be related to this, but maybe you’re maybe you’ve been studying the Bible and you know what it’s gonna be, what it takes to be saved, you know what the Bible says that we need to do to be saved.

We can help you with that this morning. You have to be ready to make a commitment. This is a lifelong commitment to God. You’re telling God, I’m committing my life to you. I’m giving my life to Jesus. I’m not going to live for myself. I’m going to live for him. And if we can help you with that or anything else, please come forward as we encourage you by singing.