So the question I asked myself once I brought my sin to light with my wife the other night was "Where do you go from here?". Ultimately how do I protect myself from allowing myself to once again be yoked by the sin that had for so many years had control over me? How do we all protect ourselves from falling back into the sin that once controlled our lives and live with ultimate defeat over it?
Ephesians 6:10-18 gives us an excellent guide to what we should be doing, and for me with my new found freedom it holds much more dear to my heart than it had before. It has truly taken on new meaning as I sit here and read through it again tonight while I type this new post up. The fact that Paul takes the opportunity to point out that it is not flesh and blood enemies that we are up against, but evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, along with evil spirits in the heavenly places, guys this isn't something we come face to face with in the physical sense; instead it is something much darker that wants to destroy every good part of us that there is. The devil wants to destroy the thing that God loves, and in that destruction cause as much collateral damage as possible. That is why the devil goes after marriages, after our thoughts, after our passiveness (and uses that to further destroy), when we as men do not stand and fight we allow for darkness to seep in and destroy.
I can't remember which podcast it was that I was listening to recently (maybe the Pursuit of Manliness) but he mentioned that when we allow ourselves to remain in generational sin and we do not break it, then it will be handed down like a family recipe to our children. Talk about a smack across the face! Talk about bringing shame to the forefront of your mind. The choices that we make to allow ourselves continued living in the same habitual sins, allows that sin to seep into our children's lives, and their children's lives and beyond. I know for me I want to break this downline, it ends now, I will not allow it to seep into the lives of my children. Instead my wife and I will make every effort to raise our children to put on the armor of God, and to guard their hearts against the attacks of the enemy. We will make it known to them the damage that sexual immorality can cause, and we will arm them to do battle against it so that they can walk in purity. Truthfully this is something I wish I had been taught, and warned about. Sure I got the "sex before marriage is bad" talk but there wasn't much substance to it, and I allowed myself to fall in to the trap when I was old enough to make my own decisions. I had not received the tools (armor) necessary to truly understand the importance of purity, but instead sought out the things of impurity, and the damage that I suffered has followed me since.
We have to switch our thought process from one that is passive (the thinking that we can just float through life and not put much into the fight because we feel so defeated), to one of a warrior (keeping our head on a swivel, always remaining alert to the temptations that so often before we let lead us to sin). Donning the armor of God is something that we have to intentionally do, spending time in the Word and listening to God's voice through His Word is something that we must do daily and with intentionality. We must create a solid foundation to stand on, one that will withstand the test of time and the continual attacks from the enemy.
"Stay Alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are." 1 Peter 5:8-9. Here we receive instruction that we NEED to stay alert, because the devil is continually looking for us to drop our guard, for a moment of weakness that can drag us back down into the shame and sin that we are fighting against. So what steps do you need to take to constantly be alert? Do you know your triggers? Are there certain times where you more easily fell to the temptation?
Here are a few of the guard rails my wife and I have put into place, hopefully these will be a starting place for those of you reading this that do not have something in place yet.
1: READ THE BIBLE! Seriously one of the biggest things that I should have been doing for the past few decades was something that I wasn't doing. I wasn't spending time reading God's Word, I wasn't arming myself with His truths. Instead I would waste hours and hours watching TV shows (not that watching TV is bad) and allowing what I was watching to mould me.
2: Read books by other Christian men who have gone through the same struggles, learn from them. God has a way of speaking to your heart through these men. At some point I will compile a list of some of the books that I have been reading.
3: Get yourself involved with a community of men, real men who won't have an issue with calling you on the carpet when you need to be, men who are Godly. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 encourages us to have brothers around us that can lift us up when we are down, and battle side by side with us.
4: I have a web filter on my phone, and the only person with the password to disable it is my wife. This gives me the constant reminder that I am in a fight, and it is a fight that I do not want to lose. Matter of fact I don't want to have to come to my wife again with a confession that I went and screwed up, I can't take seeing the hurt in her eyes again.
5: I am making a conscious effort to not have my phone on me all the time, it had become it's own addiction and a constant distraction from the more important things in life.
6: For me a big trigger was staying up way past the time that my wife and kids went to sleep, it was a sin of opportunity at that point because there was nobody around and I was bored. Top that off with mindlessly watching TV and scrolling the internet and you have a recipe for failure. So now I make the effort to finish up what needs to be finished so that I can go to bed the same time that my wife does.
There are several other guard rails that are being put into place but I wanted to give you just a few to start with. Remember that this is not a battle that can be handled alone, life cannot be done alone, God recognized this at creation when He made Eve to be the helper of Adam. The writer of Ecclesiastes knew this also, Proverbs 27:17 "Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.", Luke 10:1 "After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go." and there are many other verses that let us know just how important battle buddies are. So with that said, find those brothers that will stand beside you, who are willing to get bloody with you, and are going to be there for you when you need them most!
No comments:
Post a Comment