Habakkuk 2

Then the Lord replied: "Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay."

Friday, July 8, 2022

Sexual Immorality among Professing Christians

My husband Rick and I are in a place where many people are also situated, more people than most realize, and it isn’t a physical place, but it is in a marriage situation where one spouse is or was a sex addict and the other is not. Both are professing Christians, though, but one has been living a life of hypocrisy and the other is not. The other is following the Lord in truth.

 

Not every marriage situation like this looks exactly the same, though, for we are not all the same, and not every sex addict is just like another, although they do tend to share some common traits. For being a sex addict is not just about habitually committing some sort of sexually immoral act. It is also about habitually hating, lying, deceiving, manipulating, tricking, gaslighting, and abusing, and habitually committing adultery against one’s spouse, etc.

 

So, it is also about mind games. For the sex addict tries to throw his spouse off his scent by diverting attention elsewhere and/or by creating scenarios he knows are going to upset his spouse. Or he creates situations (sets her up) which he knows are going to make her look bad and him look good to others, because other people are not going to know what is behind it all.

 

Sometimes it will be to play the game where he claims he didn’t know what he was doing. He will feign ignorance, although he claims the same ignorance hundreds of times over while he continues in the same behaviors. Or he will pretend that he doesn’t know how to change, but he has known for a very long time. And there are continual and repetitive excuses for why he can’t be a faithful spouse and for why he can’t stop his sexual addiction.

 

He doesn’t usually take personal responsibility for his actions, and so he finds someone else to blame, which is usually his spouse. He tries to guilt-trip her into believing that his addiction is her fault, not his. And he will heap all sorts of abuse on her if she is wise to what he is doing and if she confronts him and if she tries to help him to freedom. For although he will claim that he wants to be free, his actions speak louder than his words.

 

His spouse, thus, never knows which person he is going to be each day for he shifts continuously throughout his sin cycle and goes from one person to the next to the next, sometimes admitting wrong and telling the truth only to turn right around and deny wrong and to tell lies, instead. For sex addicts have learned how to perform well for an audience and to know when to pull certain tricks and when not to. It is all like an evil game they play.

 

For many sex addicts sin against their spouses in many more ways other than just in committing habitual adultery, as has been stated. Many are spousal abusers, too. Some of them may abuse physically, but I think the majority of the abuse is mental and emotional. But the object is still the same, which is to wound the heart of the one he is supposed to love and sometimes in hopes to silence all opposition to his adulterous ways. And so some of the abuse is well thought out in advance in very underhanded ways.

 

Some of these sex addicts are pastors of churches. Statistics have it that as high as possibly 35% to 50% of pastors and 75% of men professing faith in Jesus Christ are regularly and or consistently engaged in some type of sexually deviant behavior, in particularly associated with the viewing of pornography. So, if these statistics hold to be true, which I believe they are, half to most marriages of professing Christians have at least one spouse sexually addicted. Half to most married couples have broken marriages.

 

And many of these sex addicts will play the victim when they are really the perpetrators for they try to get people to sympathize with them and to be on their side. And some of them will perform religiously for an audience and they may be greatly admired by people for character traits which they fake and which are not true to who they are in real life. And most people who know them will have no clue who they are with their spouses at home.

 

To the Scriptures

 

1 Corinthians 6:9-10,13-20 ESV

 

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

 

“The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, ‘The two will become one flesh.’

 

“But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

 

So, if you are living in sexual immorality, whether or not you own up to it, just know that even if you profess faith in Jesus Christ, and even if you profess to be free from your addiction or to be walking in fellowship with the Lord, you will not inherit eternal life with God and you do not know God and you are not in fellowship with God (with Jesus Christ). For lip service only will not get you into heaven. Only true repentance and genuine walks of obedience to the Lord will lead to eternal life with God.

 

And if you did become a true follower of Christ at some point in your life and then you got engaged in or you went back to a life of sexual immorality, the lesson here is that you can’t unite yourself to a “prostitute” and to Christ (and to spouse, too). And a “prostitute” is not necessarily a physical person selling sex for money, but he/she/it can be anything with which you engage in sexual immorality which can even include your own body or just your mind. For Jesus said that to look at one with lust is to commit adultery in your heart.

 

When you marry your spouse you are to forsake all others and cling only to her and the two of you are to become one flesh. But if you are already one flesh with yourself or with another via your sexual addiction then you can’t also become one with your spouse or with God. For when you marry your spouse, your body is no longer your own but your spouses. And when you believe in Jesus you now belong to God and he is to be master of your body, and now you are to honor God with your body. So please take this to heart.

 

[Lu 9:23-26; Jn 6:35-58; Jn 15:1-11; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-17; Eph 4:17-24; 1 Pet 2:24; 1 Co 6:9-10,19-20; 2 Co 5:10,15,21; Tit 2:11-14; Jas 1:21-25; Rom 12:1-2; Php 2:12-13; Col 1:21-23; Col 3:5-10; Gal 5:16-21; Eph 5:3-11; Gal 6:7-8; Rom 2:6-8; Heb 10:26-27; 1 Jn 1:5-9; 1 Jn 2:3-6; 1 Jn 3:4-10; Matt 7:21-23; Ac 26:18; Rev 21:8,27; Rev 22:14-15; Eph 2:8-10]

 

Broken Cord

 

An Original Work / August 29, 2018

 

Your bond is broken

With your Lord and Savior

And, your testimony is

Separate from Him.

 

Your words not matching

Your actions today.

Repent of your sin and

Bow down and pray.

 

Live what you testify

In truth always.

 

Purity’s lacking in

Your life and witness,

For you profess one thing,

But other you do.

 

Not moral, spiritual.

Still of the flesh.

Not living in truth to

What you confess.

 

Lying about it

Puts you in a mess.

 

Living a lie is your practice,

‘tis true of you.

Masquerade righteousness –

None of it true.

 

Your heart is not given

To your Lord God.

Because of how you live,

You are a fraud.

 

Turn from your sin and

Give your life to God.

 

https://vimeo.com/287303934

No comments: