Speaker 1: Hey, what up?
Speaker 1: It's Mark Carter.
Speaker 1: I'm the pastor of Fierce Church.
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today.
Speaker 1: I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the message.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about lust and porn today.
Speaker 1: We're going to mention it.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about lust and porn today.
Speaker 1: We're going to mention it If you've got somebody that you don't want to hear that now we're not going to go into any detail.
Speaker 1: We're not going to talk about anything specific, but it's a thing in this like it's part of the subject matter.
Speaker 1: So if you don't want somebody to hear about that or folks you're watching online, you need someone to leave the room.
Speaker 1: That's totally cool.
Speaker 1: When I was about probably four or five, it was the first time that I got poison ivy, and I know it's not a difference, man.
Speaker 1: It feels just like a mosquito bite, but as you would scratch it, it just would get worse.
Speaker 1: There was no getting rid of the itch.
Speaker 1: The more you tried to get rid of it, the more that it would come back with a bite.
Speaker 1: And you know, the first time I saw porn, it was like that too.
Speaker 1: I was probably about eight years old, walking down the street with a buddy of mine, just a porno mag that had been through the rain, sitting there on the side of the road and we didn't know what we were looking at.
Speaker 1: We picked that thing up and all these chemicals are being released in my little eight year old body.
Speaker 1: I'm like what is this?
Speaker 1: There's a level of excitement and there's also like I feel like I'm doing something wrong right now.
Speaker 1: And what was happening even though it was, you could say it was innocent or you could say it was evil.
Speaker 1: Whichever one you would say there was more than just me looking at that magazine.
Speaker 1: What was happening, I believe, in a deeper way, in a spiritual way, is there was a venomous snake that was latched onto my forearm right there, and it was injecting poison.
Speaker 1: It's not that it was putting evil desires in me as much as it was stirring up and strengthening evil desires, as it let its venom loose into my life.
Speaker 1: I got to tell you I'm really confident this is going to be an upbuilding message.
Speaker 1: Nothing but love here, okay, so we're not going to beat you down.
Speaker 1: That's not the agenda here.
Speaker 1: What I want to do is I want to talk to the warriors.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to the people that you just never give up, man.
Speaker 1: You're just ready for a fight.
Speaker 1: You're ready to keep on keeping on.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to the Rockies and if you don't know who Rocky is, I want to talk to the John Wicks.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to the people that they just keep going.
Speaker 1: Even when you kill his dog, he's just going to keep right on going.
Speaker 1: I want to mention to some of you you might not totally get it Like you might not get why is this a big deal?
Speaker 1: Why are we spending so much time on this?
Speaker 1: And if you don't, can I just give you a high five.
Speaker 1: I love it that you don't know.
Speaker 1: I hope you never know, because it sucks Like this is a horrible demon to carry around with you when there's this thirst in you that you hate and it can be aggravated just by a Super Bowl commercial Like it just come full force.
Speaker 1: I hope that you never know, but also maybe I want to create some sympathy, some compassion for some folks that you know that this is one of the most challenging things in their life.
Speaker 1: I know folks, including myself, who I would say I would give almost anything If Jesus would just take this out of me now, take all desire that could ever be unholy out of me right now.
Speaker 1: I would do almost anything.
Speaker 1: That would be such an awesome deal for me.
Speaker 1: But he's not going to until I die.
Speaker 1: So we'll press on a little bit longer, like Rocky, like John Wick.
Speaker 1: But let me give you five reasons to hate lust.
Speaker 1: Here's the first one because lust hurts marriages.
Speaker 1: Lust hurts marriages when people give themselves to an imaginary thought life that is not faithful to their spouse, or they are watching porn or doing something like that.
Speaker 1: What it's doing is it's removing the value of sex with their spouse.
Speaker 1: That's what it's doing.
Speaker 1: It's devaluing the currency.
Speaker 1: You could say almost.
Speaker 1: I read this quote 56% of divorcing couples cite pornography as a major factor.
Speaker 1: You believe that, but what it does to individuals is it makes you okay, instead of have to woo somebody, instead of have to work at loving somebody and being selfless and meeting their needs, and say I'm just going to go off in the corner, I'm going to meet my own needs or I'm going to disappear into the harem of my head and I'm just going to meet my own needs.
Speaker 1: It sidesteps any responsibility toward that other person and just focuses on self.
Speaker 1: Here's the next thing.
Speaker 1: It hurts marriages.
Speaker 1: It devalues the object of lust.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is that we're lusting over, that we're devouring in our hearts, we're just saying the thing this is for is just for me to consume, this is for me to just eat until I get my fill.
Speaker 1: That's what that thing is for, and that's any time that we are lusting against someone, lusting which would be someone who is not our spouse, someone who we have not yet married, someone who we don't have a marital covenant with.
Speaker 1: It divides the object of lust.
Speaker 1: It destroys the lives of others.
Speaker 1: Oh, guys, I mean, you know this, you've seen this.
Speaker 1: It destroys the lives of others.
Speaker 1: And let's start with an easy biblical example.
Speaker 1: It's totally hijacked the life of King David.
Speaker 1: I mean, look at this guy.
Speaker 1: He's a man after God's own heart.
Speaker 1: Everything is going great, right up until sexual sin, right up until he covets another man's wife, which leads to adultery, which leads to deception, which leads to murder, which leads to a coverup, which leads to, ultimately, nathan the prophet outing him.
Speaker 1: Because it always catches up and, guys.
Speaker 1: It even shifts how the generations after David are going to go.
Speaker 1: It creates division in his house as part of the curse that follows and it really never comes back together.
Speaker 1: Well, so you got David, but you've also got just contemporary people like Tiger Woods.
Speaker 1: I remember when Tiger Woods was kind of like a he's just kind of like a squeaky clean kind of a guy when he first started out, but then through his infidelities he lost sponsorships, he lost trust and slowly over the past few years he's tried to bring it back.
Speaker 1: But there's no question it did a lot of damage to an otherwise awesome career before that.
Speaker 1: It quiets the voice of the Holy Spirit because it hurts our walk with God.
Speaker 1: It doesn't cause him to leave us, but it causes him to quiet down because there's another God we've put in between he and us so we enjoy him a little bit less.
Speaker 1: Here's the last one.
Speaker 1: It reinforces a personal prison of shame and I think lots of folks know what this is like.
Speaker 1: It reinforces a personal prison of shame and maybe no one else knows, but you know.
Speaker 1: You know what it's like to feel that shame.
Speaker 1: You know what it's like to feel isolated.
Speaker 1: You know what it's like when you have depression because you feel like you fall down and every time you get the strength to get up, you get pushed down again and again and again, and then you recommit and you're like this will never happen again.
Speaker 1: But then it happens again and you're in this doom loop.
Speaker 1: You're in this downward spiral.
Speaker 1: You're in this place of I feel disconnected from people.
Speaker 1: It begins to affect how you see people, as people become more and more objects.
Speaker 1: It's just you can't help it.
Speaker 1: It just changes how you're viewing other human beings.
Speaker 1: Well, jesus is going to talk to us about purity today, but it's not just outer purity.
Speaker 1: That was.
Speaker 1: That was what the people of his time were maybe a little bit more concerned about.
Speaker 1: They're like well, did you actually commit adultery?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 1: Well, if not, then don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: And we might say today well, did you actually go to a strip club?
Speaker 1: Did you actually commit adultery?
Speaker 1: Well then, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: But no, jesus is going to go a little bit further.
Speaker 1: He wants to deal with the inner person that are darkness infused and filled with snake venom, to pull us deeper and deeper and get us thirstier and thirstier.
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you a secret about preachers.
Speaker 1: It's not that I need you to say amen.
Speaker 1: It helps you.
Speaker 1: If you say amen, okay, the sermon gets better.
Speaker 1: All right, I don't know why.
Speaker 1: I don't know why it works that way.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's because in heaven everybody's shouting the name of God, like everyone's, like hallelujah, hallelujah.
Speaker 1: So there's something about just praise that stirs up the anointing.
Speaker 1: Now I know you're afraid if I say amen, everyone's going to think I struggle with porn, carter.
Speaker 1: No, they won't.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're just going to make an agreement.
Speaker 1: Right now.
Speaker 1: No one's going to think that.
Speaker 1: So just say amen as loud as you can.
Speaker 1: If you think maybe you need to hear it, or maybe someone one of you suckers probably needs to hear this, I'll say amen for you.
Speaker 1: You just go ahead and chime in because it'll make the sermon better.
Speaker 1: Man, even I believe, I probably believe, even through the internet screen.
Speaker 1: You know the Lord just honors the fact that you're saying amen and it's going to stir it up.
Speaker 1: So that's how you can help your pastor.
Speaker 1: It's not that I need it, but I think it makes it better.
Speaker 1: So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: But you know, we just live in a we really live in a pornified culture.
Speaker 1: Now, if you think about.
Speaker 1: Like the spectrum right Zero is like there's no sensuality in the culture.
Speaker 1: 10 is like it is the most dramatic, most out there, most perverted display.
Speaker 1: I feel like everyday culture is at like a four, like there's just so much sensuality on your phone for sure on the billboards.
Speaker 1: Like there's just stuff right in front of your face that I'm not trying to say like, oh, you know, when I was young it was so much better.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 1: But what I'm trying to say is, if it's already gotten that dark, how much darker is it going to get?
Speaker 1: And that's why, if you're a Christ follower, and that's why if you're a Christ follower, we need to guard our hearts.
Speaker 1: We need to build in these armors right now, because it's not necessarily going to get any better.
Speaker 1: But we get the opportunity.
Speaker 1: If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, we get the opportunity to internalize it and then pass it on to the next generation, so we can be faithful in our generation, to pass on what we have learned.
Speaker 1: Come on somebody.
Speaker 1: Last weekend we talked about self-avenging anger and how that poisons us and devalues us.
Speaker 1: Lust is the same way.
Speaker 1: It keeps that snake in our arm, it poisons us, it devalues others.
Speaker 1: Let's listen to Jesus.
Speaker 1: We're not going to talk a bunch about the backdrop of the Sermon on the Mount We've talked about.
Speaker 1: This is the seventh message, man.
Speaker 1: Go ahead and go to the YouTube channel and watch all the rest.
Speaker 1: You'll get the context of where we are.
Speaker 1: But here we go.
Speaker 1: Verse 27, you've heard the commandment that says you must not commit adultery.
Speaker 1: But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Speaker 1: This includes this lust.
Speaker 1: It's mental infidelity.
Speaker 1: It's mental infidelity with someone that is not your spouse or that you don't know for sure is going to be your spouse, and it's infidelity to God himself Verse 29.
Speaker 1: So if your eye, even your good eye, causes you to lust, gouge it out and throw it away.
Speaker 1: That sounds fierce.
Speaker 1: Am I at the fierce church today?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds fierce.
Speaker 1: I like this passage Gouge it out and throw it away.
Speaker 1: He's speaking hyperbole.
Speaker 1: Of course, he's not really condoning violence, but there is an attitude of gouge it out and throw it away.
Speaker 1: It's better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
Speaker 1: And if your hand, even your stronger hand, causes you to sin.
Speaker 1: Cut it off and throw it away.
Speaker 1: It is better for you to lose one part of your body than your whole body to be thrown into hell.
Speaker 1: We talked a little bit about hell last weekend.
Speaker 1: What jesus is saying is hey, if you're allowing mental infidelity to so grip your heart that it turns you away and keeps you away from the living god, there's really nowhere else to go.
Speaker 1: Man, if you spend your life rejecting, if you say I love the poison more jesus, go away, then what is left other than eternity, apart from him?
Speaker 1: So, because mental infidelity can lead to hell, or even just the kinds of hell we've been talking about, the stuff that happens right here on planet earth.
Speaker 1: Guys, we gotta take a stand, we gotta do whatever.
Speaker 1: Even if it requires getting up and falling down seven times a day, we still need to do it.
Speaker 1: We need to feed new desires and starve the old ones.
Speaker 1: That's our bottom line today.
Speaker 1: We need to feed new desires and starve old ones.
Speaker 1: We're going to tear out lust.
Speaker 1: Here we go.
Speaker 1: Tear out lust.
Speaker 1: We're going to gouge it out.
Speaker 1: Number one, by the Spirit and faith.
Speaker 1: We're going to feed new desires by the Spirit and by faith.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this even as recently as last week, it's got to be by the Spirit.
Speaker 1: The whole Sermon on the Mount is done by the Spirit.
Speaker 1: The Spirit of God wants us to know you can't really do this without me, and so I need you to rely on me, depend on me.
Speaker 1: And what that means is it involves being born again.
Speaker 1: It involves being hey, I need a spiritual rebirth in order to have the Holy Spirit inhabiting me, to give me and what does he do?
Speaker 1: He gives us.
Speaker 1: He gives us new wants.
Speaker 1: He gives us even like oh, suddenly I realize that's not good.
Speaker 1: I remember when I first became a Christian, suddenly there was all kinds of things that I was like, oh, I used to, I thought this was awesome.
Speaker 1: And now I'm like, oh, I'm conflicted.
Speaker 1: Now it's not that, it's even that.
Speaker 1: I just like, oh, I'll never have anything to do with that again.
Speaker 1: It's more like wait a minute, you don't like this?
Speaker 1: Okay, well, that's creating conflict and tension, because God gives new desires.
Speaker 1: He gives desires to spend time in God's word.
Speaker 1: He gives desires to surround yourself with Christian people and he gives desires to I don't want to do something if it makes your heart hurt, jesus.
Speaker 1: I want to stop, even if I don't know what to do, I do what I don't want to do and what I do want to do I can't, and I don't know why.
Speaker 1: It's because I live in this body of death for now, but not for very long.
Speaker 1: By the Spirit and by faith we're going to feed new desires.
Speaker 1: Now let me back up for a second.
Speaker 1: The first place to start, my friends, is if you have not trusted Jesus Christ to be your Savior and your forgiver, it really don't matter what you do with porn, like it doesn't matter what you do in terms of your own personal purity.
Speaker 1: Obviously it's going to affect your life.
Speaker 1: But what we're saying is you got to start with Jesus because he's where the power is, he's where the joy is.
Speaker 1: Somebody knows about that.
Speaker 1: He's where the power is, he's where the joy is, he's where the help is and he's where the reward is.
Speaker 1: Come also body.
Speaker 1: So what do we need to do first?
Speaker 1: Well, if we're going to reinforce these new good desires first, we just got to hear it Like.
Speaker 1: We got to hear him say this.
Speaker 1: We got to hear him say, yeah, it's really this bad.
Speaker 1: This is what I really, because the rest of the world should be like what are you guys crazy?
Speaker 1: What's wrong?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 1: You can look all day, just don't touch.
Speaker 1: And there's got to be something in us that resists the culture, because it's all around us.
Speaker 1: It's in the TV you watch, it's at the checkout stand, yo.
Speaker 1: It's everywhere you go.
Speaker 1: It's right there on the side of your Facebook page, if you're still on Facebook, it's in your Instagram feed.
Speaker 1: It's everywhere.
Speaker 1: And so there's got to be something that says no, this isn't what God wants for me.
Speaker 1: But in order to fight it, we've got to remember that there's two different ways we can think about the Christian world.
Speaker 1: One I call law mode.
Speaker 1: There's law mode and grace mode.
Speaker 1: Law mode says I'm just going to try harder, I'm going to feel bad, I'm going to beat myself up, and then I'm going to try hard, I'm going to recommit and then I'll do better next time.
Speaker 1: No, you will not.
Speaker 1: No, and even if you do, all that is is reinforcing self-righteousness, which Jesus says is wrong anyway.
Speaker 1: The other version is grace-focused.
Speaker 1: And see, this is where I believe the church doesn't mean to do this, but it gets it wrong.
Speaker 1: I think in every generation, every generation, the church comes along and says bad, bad, bad.
Speaker 1: And that's the message the world hears Bad, bad, bad.
Speaker 1: This thing is bad, bad, bad.
Speaker 1: But you know that's not really the message of the New Testament.
Speaker 1: The message of the New Testament is you are broken, broken, broken and loved, loved, loved.
Speaker 1: That's the message of the New Testament Broken, broken, broken, loved, loved, loved.
Speaker 1: Now we start with I'm loved and Jesus, I bring you my brokenness.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to try to just law my way in it.
Speaker 1: The law will not help me.
Speaker 1: It never could help me.
Speaker 1: It's not going to start now.
Speaker 1: All along, the law did not give me any power to obey the law.
Speaker 1: It just could condemn me.
Speaker 1: What do we do instead?
Speaker 1: James 4, 8, draw near to God and he will draw near to you.
Speaker 1: Guys, this is beautiful If you can hear this.
Speaker 1: Let's listen all the way.
Speaker 1: Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts.
Speaker 1: You double-minded.
Speaker 1: But did you notice what came first?
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't say okay, you feel bad, maybe for your lusting.
Speaker 1: You feel mad for that porn binge.
Speaker 1: You went on for an hour.
Speaker 1: You feel bad about that.
Speaker 1: Don't start with beating yourself up and trying to get your hands super clean.
Speaker 1: Instead, draw near to God.
Speaker 1: That's where you start.
Speaker 1: That's the first step, that's the very first thing you do Draw near to God and he'll draw near to you.
Speaker 1: And then we're going to talk about our sin, then we're going to deal with that, then he's going to help us repent for it.
Speaker 1: He's going to help us wash our hands.
Speaker 1: He's going to say God, will you pray for my heart?
Speaker 1: Yes, he will.
Speaker 1: God himself is going to.
Speaker 1: We're just like God.
Speaker 1: Will you pre-refer my heart?
Speaker 1: Yes, you will.
Speaker 1: God himself is going to do it.
Speaker 1: Let's just own guys.
Speaker 1: Jesus doesn't condemn anybody.
Speaker 1: He's not like hey, get away from me, never come back.
Speaker 1: He's saying dude, if you're truly repentant, I'm with you, I got you.
Speaker 1: I'm never going to leave or forsake you, even if you make mistake after mistake, after mistake after mistake.
Speaker 1: But we do.
Speaker 1: We have to come to him and draw near, and one of the ways we draw near is through confession.
Speaker 1: We come and we confess it.
Speaker 1: We don't try to like, minimize it.
Speaker 1: We just say this is what it was, jesus, you saw it, you saw in my brain what I was thinking.
Speaker 1: You just bring it to him and we confess.
Speaker 1: This is the depth of it, this is what it was, lord, and if we start with confession, he'll meet us there.
Speaker 1: Think about this illustration a little bit different.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you go home today, or you're at home right now, and somehow, I don't know how, a sewage pipe breaks into your home and slowly begins to fill up a foot deep of the home.
Speaker 1: That's what's happening when you walk in the door.
Speaker 1: Now, when you walk in the door, is your first thought going to be well, that's not good, but we got to go shopping today, so let's go.
Speaker 1: Are you going to be like dang, I could use a pizza.
Speaker 1: Let me just call and I'll wait on that, and then I'll deal with this later.
Speaker 1: No, the first thing you're going to do is oh my gosh, I need to call somebody about this sewage.
Speaker 1: In my life, that's where it is when we confess.
Speaker 1: In my life, that's where it is when we confess we don't have anything better to do.
Speaker 1: No, don't try to feel better later and then come back to God.
Speaker 1: Come to God now.
Speaker 1: Go right now.
Speaker 1: Dude, the house is flooded.
Speaker 1: Okay, he's the only one who can clean this sewage up.
Speaker 1: Bring Jesus sewage.
Speaker 1: What do we do?
Speaker 1: You go to him right away.
Speaker 1: First thing, lord, I repent.
Speaker 1: I was just in that zone and I hate it.
Speaker 1: Forgive me.
Speaker 1: Let's get rid of this sewage in my life.
Speaker 1: Guys, if we run to Jesus, oh baby, he'll be there.
Speaker 1: Now I want to give you some of the most encouraging scripture, I think, in the entire Bible.
Speaker 1: Here we go Now.
Speaker 1: The context of this is Jesus is talking about blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1: That's a whole other issue that we're not going to talk about today.
Speaker 1: I just want you to see this first sentence in a different translation.
Speaker 1: Truly, I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter.
Speaker 1: Some who have struggled with lust deeply, porn deeply, affairs deeply, it's hard to believe that.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, because we can feel so dirty, it's hard to believe that sometimes, because we can feel so dirty, we can feel like we've let the entire world down, those we love down and, most of all, the God we love down.
Speaker 1: And there's something intuitive to us.
Speaker 1: It's like well, you have to work this off.
Speaker 1: No, truly, I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins, all of them, all of them, all of them.
Speaker 1: Listen to the CEV.
Speaker 1: I like this translation too.
Speaker 1: I promise you that any of the sinful things you say or do can be forgiven, no matter how terrible those things are.
Speaker 1: See Jesus, he heals forgiven people.
Speaker 1: He heals forgiven people.
Speaker 1: So let's start at forgiven.
Speaker 1: We'll start at forgiven.
Speaker 1: You don't need to get re-saved.
Speaker 1: This is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: If you've trusted Jesus Christ, every time that you fall, you stumble, you don't need to be like, well, I better go get saved again.
Speaker 1: You don't need to get saved again, you just need to return to your master.
Speaker 1: You need to call in the big guns.
Speaker 1: You say Jesus, I need your help and I want to prove it to you.
Speaker 1: It's right here in John, chapter 13.
Speaker 1: This is when Jesus is washing all the disciples' feet.
Speaker 1: And Jesus speaks in riddles, so you don't always understand exactly what he's saying, but it's clear what he's saying to Peter.
Speaker 1: Peter's like oh Lord, you're washing my feet.
Speaker 1: I want to belong all to you, so just wash all me.
Speaker 1: And he says Peter, you don't get it.
Speaker 1: Jesus said to him the one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean.
Speaker 1: And you are clean, but not every one of you.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Judas, he's saying Peter, you've already trusted me, I got you, man, I've cleaned you.
Speaker 1: Yes, as you walk through planet earth, as you trudge through some of the sewage that is here, you're going to get dirty and I'm going to have to clean off your feet.
Speaker 1: But you don't need to like entirely get resaved.
Speaker 1: You can recommit your heart to Christ, absolutely.
Speaker 1: You do that every day, every moment, but you don't need to worry about fell out of God's grace now.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because it wasn't dependent on you.
Speaker 1: Were you doing something right when it started?
Speaker 1: No, you weren't.
Speaker 1: So you doing something right or now is not going to help.
Speaker 1: It's all grace by faith.
Speaker 1: Somebody say all grace by faith.
Speaker 1: So what do we do?
Speaker 1: Well, we just, we just skipped the law.
Speaker 1: We're going to bypass that.
Speaker 1: We're going to go straight to Jesus.
Speaker 1: We're going to ask him to forgive us.
Speaker 1: We're going to ask him to make us whole, to clear out the sewage, because we're going to feed our new desires and starve the old ones Every time.
Speaker 1: Every time, every time you mess up, you run to Jesus immediately, even if it's just dude, it's just a movie you saw, it's just something that snuck in on the Netflix that you're watching Immediately.
Speaker 1: Lord, I felt myself meditating on that, recording that in some way, desiring to have sexual, some kind of imaginary interaction with that, and I repent and I come to you and ask for your forgiveness.
Speaker 1: And you got it, baby.
Speaker 1: That's what the blood is for.
Speaker 1: Here's a secret.
Speaker 1: This is a secret to progress in the Christian life.
Speaker 1: Are you ready?
Speaker 1: Colossians 3.1.
Speaker 1: Since you've been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God's right hand.
Speaker 1: Set your sights on the realities of heaven.
Speaker 1: If you're lusting, if you're looking at porn, if you're doing something like that, you're setting your sights on the realities of earth.
Speaker 1: You're kind of like digging yourself into the mud.
Speaker 1: God says no, I want you to change what you're thinking about.
Speaker 1: Think of glorious things, think of excellent things.
Speaker 1: So on my 10-year anniversary, kenzie and I went to Jamaica.
Speaker 1: On our 20-year anniversary, we went to Jamaica and there's a difference between the night sky in Jamaica and the night sky in Grayslake.
Speaker 1: If you look up at the night sky in Grayslake, it's like, well, yeah, that's the sky, and there you may see a twinkle or two.
Speaker 1: That's what you see up there.
Speaker 1: It's just, it's the canopy of your life.
Speaker 1: Your life is the thing that's going on and that's just the ceiling up there.
Speaker 1: If you look up at the sky in Jamaica, you realize, oh, this isn't even the story, I'm not even what's going on.
Speaker 1: God's beauty, god's power, god's bigness, and my smallness breaks me into worship.
Speaker 1: If we elevate our thinking, what were we saying?
Speaker 1: Elevate our thinking and purposely think awesome things, instead of the things we're getting sucked into as we purposely think awesome things, we're going to see a change.
Speaker 1: Let me show you an illustration and then I'll tell you more about what I mean.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is delicious, beautiful Coke, zero, zero calories, zero carbs.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to pretend that it represents sin.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it doesn't really.
Speaker 1: It's actually probably pleasing to the Holy Spirit, but for the illustration actually probably pleasing to the Holy Spirit, but for the illustration, we're going to say that it represents sin.
Speaker 1: Okay, so if someone is, they're feeding their negative thought life, their lustful thought life.
Speaker 1: They're sitting down, they're watching something they know they probably shouldn't.
Speaker 1: They're watching three, four hours of porn and they're just drinking this down.
Speaker 1: This is what they're doing.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 1: They're ingesting it, they're pulling it into themselves.
Speaker 1: Now, what some do is they come and they say I'm going to have a little bit of Bible, I'm going to have a little bit of worship.
Speaker 1: It's not even near as much as the Coca-Cola that I just had, but I'm going to have a little bit of worship.
Speaker 1: It's not even near as much as the Coca-Cola that I just had, but I'm going to have a little bit.
Speaker 1: Take some sips, oh, but I got a lot to do today.
Speaker 1: I better get on with it.
Speaker 1: Take another sip, yeah, that's really nice.
Speaker 1: But then they go back to chugging this thing.
Speaker 1: How many think this is going to have way much more sway over their life than whatever God was trying to do here?
Speaker 1: Because you just spent a whole lot more time slugging this down.
Speaker 1: But now, my friends, if we say I need to fill my thoughts with heavenly things, I need to spend much more time of my day meditating on the realities of heaven, meditating on Jesus' love, on his bigness, on his power, then they're like Rocky, they're like John Wick.
Speaker 1: They say we're going to need a little bit more and they just start chugging this thing.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be able to do it, but hopefully you get the picture right If we spend more time thinking about elevated things.
Speaker 1: Now, just to clarify I'm not talking about literal time in the Bible.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about where our mind is resting and settling.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I want to give you here's another way to say it, the enemy of your soul is coming after your mind all day long.
Speaker 1: What you need is a bigger gun.
Speaker 1: What you need is thicker armor.
Speaker 1: That's what you need.
Speaker 1: He's beating you down.
Speaker 1: You just need to get stronger.
Speaker 1: So we spend more time elevating our thinking.
Speaker 1: One way you can do that many of you have done this is the Bible recap.
Speaker 1: You're spending a little bit more time in God's word.
Speaker 1: You're having some elevated thinking.
Speaker 1: I want to give you a little bit more than that.
Speaker 1: Some of us should start picking up a book like AW Tozer's the Pursuit of God.
Speaker 1: This is a beautiful book that gets you to just think and meditate and stew on this kind of thing, and it's going to be great for your soul.
Speaker 1: You might want to go even a little bit further and talk about reading Wayne Grudem's systematic theology.
Speaker 1: Now, that's going to be scary to you, but it shouldn't be scary because it's really.
Speaker 1: It's not written for, like seminary professors.
Speaker 1: It's written for just folks that want to understand, normal folks that want to understand the nuances of theology and how Jesus talks about himself and his people throughout scripture.
Speaker 1: You might even want to be so bold after that that you go on to something like Calvin's Institutes in a good modern translation, or multiple other books that you might check out.
Speaker 1: You say, carter, I don't like to read books.
Speaker 1: I hear you, but can I mess with you for a second?
Speaker 1: When I was real young, I didn't like coffee.
Speaker 1: Like I'd take it and I was like, oh my gosh, this is horrible.
Speaker 1: And then I just poured in the sugar and the cream and I'm like, oh, that's a little better.
Speaker 1: And over time the cream and the sugar became less and less necessary.
Speaker 1: I needed less and less of it and the coffee was fantastic.
Speaker 1: Some of us.
Speaker 1: Can I just challenge you?
Speaker 1: Well, maybe just try to drink it a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Okay, just spend a little bit more time reading this kind of material and see if you don't like it a little bit better.
Speaker 1: We're going to tear out a lust.
Speaker 1: You guys still with me.
Speaker 1: Can you still take it All right?
Speaker 1: Number two by the spirit and faith, we're going to starve our old desires.
Speaker 1: This is where we're going to gouge it out.
Speaker 1: This is where we're going to repent and remove that which is in the way we're gonna start with.
Speaker 1: We're gonna gouge it out, we're gonna go find it, we're gonna say you don't belong here and we're gonna rip it out.
Speaker 1: That starts with sure, we had confession to God, but you know, it's even sometimes more helpful than just confession to God is confession to somebody else, because the body of Christ, they're all believers, they're all priests, they're all ones who can.
Speaker 1: It's powerful.
Speaker 1: You know you're forgiven.
Speaker 1: But when someone else tells you hey, I represent Jesus in this moment, I'm just telling you you are forgiven.
Speaker 1: There's something that cleanses your soul in a different way.
Speaker 1: Plus, there's power in knowing that somebody else knows what you're dealing with.
Speaker 1: So there's just confession to others.
Speaker 1: When we confess.
Speaker 1: Here's what I think we're doing.
Speaker 1: We're grabbing that snake that is still stuck in our arm and we're saying you don't belong here, get out of here Now.
Speaker 1: He might come tomorrow, but you know what I'm gonna do Because I'm fierce, because I don't take crap like that, I'm going to grab him again and throw him away.
Speaker 1: And the next day I'm going to throw him away.
Speaker 1: And the next day I'm going to grab them again and throw them away.
Speaker 1: And the next day I'm going to throw them away.
Speaker 1: And the next day I'm going to keep throwing them away.
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep confessing.
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep gouging them out.
Speaker 1: He doesn't get to stay.
Speaker 1: He's not the boss.
Speaker 1: My Jesus is the boss and he decides what happens with my body and what happens with my mind.
Speaker 1: So I'll just cast you out again tomorrow, devil, go ahead.
Speaker 1: I'll cast you out again tomorrow when we starve our old desires.
Speaker 1: One of the things that can be helpful to do after you've confessed is I think for each person there might be a different plan.
Speaker 1: You might need to go to the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1: This is where he can be very helpful and say Spirit of God, what are the things?
Speaker 1: What are the lust triggers?
Speaker 1: What are the thirst traps that are in my life that I'm barely even noticing are a trap, but that are in my life that I'm barely even noticing are a trap, but they're stirring stuff up.
Speaker 1: What are they?
Speaker 1: And see what he brings to mind over time.
Speaker 1: And when he brings it to mind, some of it you're going to say, oh, but I love that, I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, this is where it gets gougy.
Speaker 1: Probably in Jesus's illustration, people loved their eye, they loved their hand and Jesus says no, you got to get rid of that thing is destroying.
Speaker 1: You.
Speaker 1: Get rid of that, no matter how painful it is.
Speaker 1: Get rid of that thing.
Speaker 1: And Jesus is determined, guys, he's going to keep trying to teach us.
Speaker 1: Apart from me, you can do nothing.
Speaker 1: Just like John 15, 5 says apart from me, you can do nothing.
Speaker 1: You've got to come to me even to get the plan, even to know what's next.
Speaker 1: God, what do you want to rip out next?
Speaker 1: Okay, let's do it Gouge it out and remove it.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to meddle here for a second.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're almost done, but we're going to meddle.
Speaker 1: Here's some things that I have to do personally to gouge it and keep it out and then re-gouge it out should it ever return.
Speaker 1: Here's what I've got to do.
Speaker 1: Number one, and you might want to just, I'm not saying I'm the model.
Speaker 1: There's other ways that are probably brilliance.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to tell you mine no phone in bed.
Speaker 1: What I do instead is I've got this little kitchen safe box that we put down on the kitchen counter and all my devices that could possibly ever get me in trouble.
Speaker 1: We put it in here overnight.
Speaker 1: I want to tell you why we do that.
Speaker 1: Now I put it in, I'm going to press this button, and when I press this, I'm going to have six and a half hours where I can't get it open unless I break it.
Speaker 1: There's no key.
Speaker 1: So you're either going to have to take a hatchet to it, and then everyone's going to know, or you have to wait the six and a half hours.
Speaker 1: What's powerful about that is psychologists have demonstrated this your self-control diminishes over the day, the amount of resistance you have to doing stuff you know you shouldn't do.
Speaker 1: Resistance is time to go by.
Speaker 1: Have you noticed like you're not tempted to eat a gallon of ice cream?
Speaker 1: In the morning, you're like oh, that's stupid, I'm not going to do that.
Speaker 1: But you know, at about 6.30 pm you're like well, doggone, I was good all day, though Maybe I should eat this gallon of ice cream.
Speaker 1: That's because your resistance has been worn down all day.
Speaker 1: So a lot of stupid stuff.
Speaker 1: The most stupid stuff most of us do is going to be at night, because our resistance is low.
Speaker 1: So, as for me and some of the kids in my house, we just put it in here, lock it up until the next morning.
Speaker 1: That's one thing to do.
Speaker 1: Here's another.
Speaker 1: I've recommended it before.
Speaker 1: I can't recommend it enough VidAngel as a service to glove over your Netflix and your Amazon Prime and your Apple TV and all that stuff to take out.
Speaker 1: Dude, it's just like a coffee filter over it.
Speaker 1: It's going to take out whatever you tell it to take out.
Speaker 1: It's going to take out swearing.
Speaker 1: It's going to take out the sex.
Speaker 1: It's going to take out the violence.
Speaker 1: I know for a while they took out Jar Jar out of Star Wars.
Speaker 1: For a little while It'll do whatever you need it to do, but it keeps little lust triggers from seeping into your spirit.
Speaker 1: Here's another one.
Speaker 1: I've had to encourage somebody about this recently.
Speaker 1: Sometimes applications like Facebook just put a bunch of porn-ish stuff on your feed or off to the side via ad.
Speaker 1: There is this thing called Facebook purity.
Speaker 1: It used to be called that.
Speaker 1: Then they couldn't say Facebook.
Speaker 1: Now it's just called FB purity.
Speaker 1: But it will just take that crap out.
Speaker 1: It doesn't cost anything.
Speaker 1: But if that's something that is a trigger for you, dude, go get it FBpuritycom.
Speaker 1: Here's another one Covenant Eyes.
Speaker 1: This is a little bit harder and a little bit more ferocious.
Speaker 1: So this takes screenshots of your mirror Mac, your PC, your desktop.
Speaker 1: It's going to keep taking screenshots every few seconds.
Speaker 1: It's going to evaluate them and then it's going to send them to somebody that you've chosen For me.
Speaker 1: They go to my elders.
Speaker 1: They go to our church elders.
Speaker 1: That means everything I'm going to look at on my computer.
Speaker 1: My elders can see what it is.
Speaker 1: You know what a great deterrent that is.
Speaker 1: That makes it almost super easy.
Speaker 1: It's like dude, they're going to see it.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's not even a temptation at this point because of that.
Speaker 1: In addition, I give my elders, I share my location with them so they always know where I'm at at a moment's notice, and it's not because I'm afraid I'm gonna go somewhere wrong.
Speaker 1: But if I ever do grow into a stage where that's a temptation, in that life stage of my life, I just wanna be ahead of the game.
Speaker 1: No, they're gonna see everywhere I go.
Speaker 1: So that accountability.
Speaker 1: You see this theme accountability.
Speaker 1: Here's another one your restrictions on your phone.
Speaker 1: Okay, if you know the code to your restrictions, it didn't really matter because you can just tear that thing down.
Speaker 1: I give my restrictions code to my wife, so she's the only one that can change whatever it is.
Speaker 1: If I need to take off Safari for a while, if I need to take off this app or that app, she gets to say whether or not that happens.
Speaker 1: Is that extreme?
Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, it's extreme, it's gougy, it's inconvenient Sometimes.
Speaker 1: You gotta wait till they get home or you gotta go find them.
Speaker 1: It's super frustrating sometimes, but you know what it's better than?
Speaker 1: It's better than being like here I am an idiot again.
Speaker 1: It's way better than that.
Speaker 1: It's way better than the shame.
Speaker 1: It's way better than where that goes ultimately over time as you slip further and slip further, and slip further and slip further.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, it ain't easy, but whoever said it was going to be easy?
Speaker 1: So I want us to come to a decision today, guys.
Speaker 1: If Jesus is possibly I mean, is he possibly leading us into revival?
Speaker 1: If he is, it's not even just a battle for our mind, it's a battle for our soul, and he wants us to cleanse some stuff out.
Speaker 1: That's what revival really is.
Speaker 1: It's us getting righter with God and with people.
Speaker 1: And so it might be that we need to take a challenge and just pour out what we've been hiding, what we've been keeping from public view, not so anyone else can see, unless you're ready for that, unless you want to do that.
Speaker 1: So over the next minute or so, we're gonna listen to Martin play the piano and you can write something down in your phone.
Speaker 1: This is the challenge I'm taking today, or there's these little things on one of the chairs in your row.
Speaker 1: If you're online, you can just pick out your favorite note app and write it down.
Speaker 1: How is the Lord challenging me this morning to respond to this message?
Speaker 1: It may be to offer somebody accountability.
Speaker 1: Hey man, if you need accountability partner, I'll be it.
Speaker 1: But, my friends, this is not about shame, it's about freedom.
Speaker 1: It's not about shame.
Speaker 1: It's about being able to say people know my stuff and it's no big deal.
Speaker 1: I'm still loved, I'm still protected, but I'm bringing my stuff to people.
Speaker 1: But I'm no longer satisfied with half measures.
Speaker 1: I'm no longer satisfied with I'll do it a little bit.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get serious about losing this idol.
Speaker 1: No, get serious.
Speaker 1: Let's get serious today.
Speaker 1: Let's get gougy serious.
Speaker 1: Here's what I'll do.
Speaker 1: We're going to bow our heads.
Speaker 1: I'm going to pray for us and then you're going to have some time on your own, just a minute or two.
Speaker 1: Think with God, reflect with God.
Speaker 1: If you want to write something down, do that.
Speaker 1: If you just want to talk to him, if you just want to pray, if you just want to cry, if you just want to come down to the altar, you do whatever is meaningful to you.
Speaker 1: But?
Speaker 1: But let's respond to God in this moment.
Speaker 1: Let's bow our heads.
Speaker 1: Jesus, we run to you, we run to the cross.
Speaker 1: We think that you are here.
Speaker 1: We have no power to clean this up apart from you.
Speaker 1: So we come to you with all this food and you say here it is.
Speaker 1: I can't fix this, but I really want to.
Speaker 1: Would you come and help me put in the steps, provide the power, provide the desire.
Speaker 1: Help me get ahead of this thing rather than feeling like I'm always falling behind it.
Speaker 1: Show me different accountabilities that maybe I need, whether it's people or things.
Speaker 1: I thank you that I'm assured of your glad love and welcome all the time.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for the ways this has hurt others and myself, and I'm asking you to grow something new.
Speaker 1: Help me gouge this thing out, even if I've got to do it every day.
Speaker 1: I thank you that you never give up on us.
Speaker 1: I thank you that you're not going anywhere.
Speaker 1: I thank you that you look us in the eye and you say I love you.
Speaker 1: I will help you pull these burrs off that you got caught in, but never think for a second that I don't love you.
Speaker 1: In Jesus' name, I love you.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be a Christian, or in person.
Speaker 1: Also, if you're looking for leadership development related content, don't forget to check out the Fierce Leadership Podcast, available wherever you get your podcast from.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to those of you who give generously to support this ministry.
Speaker 1: It's because of you that this is possible.
Speaker 1: You can click on the link in the description to give now or visit fiercechurch for more information.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this podcast, why not subscribe?
Speaker 1: Share it with your friends, click on the share button, take a screenshot and share it on social media or wherever you would share such things.
Speaker 1: Whatever challenges you're facing, I know you can make it.
Speaker 1: Don't give up.
Speaker 1: Hang on to Jesus.
Speaker 1: He won't let go of you.
Speaker 1: Jesus loves you so much and we love you.
Speaker 1: I hope someday we get to meet in person.
Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening.