Category: - IRONSTRIKES

Conquering sexual sin

10/4/2014

Sexual sin once robbed your heart of something very precious. Every little boy sees the fight for right and desires to be an agent of good, to be the good guy who saves the day.

Every little boy has dreams and visions of one day being someone great and doing something great, but sexual sin often steals these dreams away. God wants to recapture those dreams and restore them for God's man on the battlefield. Victory restores these hopes and renews the dreams that were once vaporized in the midst of sexual sin.

The dream lives! Now, with a sanctified heart, you know what you can do in Him. You feel it. You're a fighting machine, confident as you approach any battle. You've proven that your Command Officer can trust you with much as long as you abide in Him. And He's proven that you can trust Him to supply all you need in battle.

Battles test and transform soldiers, and this test revealed the depth of your love for Him. You're stronger, and you're changed. God is a strong God, and He wants strong, confident soldiers in His kingdom who are good in a fight, even when facing daunting odds that seem overwhelming.

Taken from Every Man's Challenge, pp 33-34.

Watching porn makes you want more porn

10/2/2014

As Solomon said, sex is intoxicating (Song of Songs 1:4). To his students he wrote, “Rejoice in the wife of your youth...be intoxicated always in her love,” but do not get drunk on the embrace of a forbidden woman (Prov. 5:18-20)."

Solomon had no knowledge of the human brain the way we do today, but his words on the intoxicating nature of sexuality take on a new richness as we study the effects of pornography on the mind and body.

Two weeks after the Zillmann-Bryant experiment, all participants were given an assortment of pornographic and non-pornographic films to watch in private. Those who were exposed to more pornography were significantly more likely to want to watch hardcore porn.

Continually watching pornography has been shown to produce an escalation effect. Fifteen years after this experiment, Dr. Zillmann continued research in this area, finding that the habitual use of pornography led to greater tolerance of sexually explicit material over time, requiring the viewer to consume more novel and bizarre material to achieve the same level of arousal or interest.18

The hot-button issue today is the question of “porn addiction”—can someone become literally addicted to pornography? In a 2008 survey, over 90% of therapists believed a person could become addicted to cybersex. Some have proposed calling this “hypersexual disorder,” and recent studies in neurochemistry confirm these findings. In his book Wired for Intimacy, Dr. William Struthers discusses at length the various hormones and neurotransmitters triggered by watching pornography. He writes:

"As men fall deeper into the mental habit of fixating on these images, the exposure to them creates neural pathways. Like a path is created in the woods with each successive hiker, so do the neural paths set the course for the next time an erotic image is viewed. Over time these neural paths become wider as they are repeatedly traveled with each exposure to pornography. They become the automatic pathway through which interactions with women are routed. The neural circuitry anchors this process solidly in the brain. With each lingering stare, pornography deepens the Grand Canyon-like gorge in the brain through with images of women are destined to flow. This extends to women that they have not seen naked or engaging in sexual acts as well. All women become potential porn stars in the minds of these men."

Ultimately, the “addiction” label may or may not be helpful. There is no medically diagnosable line one crosses from being a non-addict to being an addict—it is a gradual move. Author Michael Leahy, a self-proclaimed recovering sex addict, has been to more than 200 college campuses with his Porn Nation: The Naked Truth presentation, and he says the No. 1 question he hears from college students is, “Can I look at porn recreationally without becoming addicted to it, and is there anything wrong with that?” Even in light of his past, Leahy chooses not to focus on the addictive character of pornography, but rather on its sexually exploitative message. “So,” Leahy responds, “do you think it’s okay if I beat and berate my wife just once a month? I mean, I’m not addicted to it.” Usually reframing the question this way helps young men and women to see the problem of pornography differently.

Regardless of the specific labels we use, the intoxicating nature of pornography cannot be denied. The more we watch pornography, the more pornography we want to watch: it is like a toxin that gets into our blood. This is one great example of what Paul calls “the law of sin,” sin’s persuasive pull, which he says resides in the physical members of our bodies (Rom. 7:22-24). We can become captive to the impulses of our brains and bodies when they are trained by sinful indulgence.

This post is taken from the booklet, YOUR BRAIN ON PORN by Luke Gilkerson. The booklet can be found at: http://www.covenanteyes.com/brain-ebook/

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

It's not "cheating"

10/1/2014

He sat across the table from me, trying to convince me that his behavior wasn't hurting anybody. "I'm not having sex, I'm just having some fun!" He proceeded to tell me his story. It's one that I have heard many times. Unfortunately.

His behavior started fairly innocently. He was happily married but there were occasions that his wife would work late. During these times, on occasion, he would call a "chat line." The conversations started out innocent enough but he didn't realize that he was being fleeced. God speaks about this. He says,"with persuasive words she led him astray; she seduced him with her smooth talk." The young lady on the other end of the phone started flirting with him and tapped into his ego. The next time he called her, she talked about how wonderful he was and how he helped her not to feel so lonely. A few calls later, the trap was sprung. He gave her his credit card number so that she would "tell him things that she knew he wanted to hear." His calls continued with greater frequency. He would get out of bed where his wife was sleeping to call this young lady. She was always available to him and would say things that his wife would never say.

He started to feel guilty and talked to the young lady about not calling her anymore. That is when she set the hook. She told him that she was a college student and that she needed the money to pay for school. She admitted that she did this with just a few men and that they "weren't doing anything wrong."

He looked at me and said, "but, I'm not cheating!!! I'm not having sex with her. We're just having a little fun . No one's getting hurt and I'm helping her pay for her education."

I cautioned him about his behavior. I explained to him what such behavior leads to. That's when he said, "funny you should say that...." He then proceeded with this all too familiar story:

This young lady suggested that they meet. It was a town that he visited on business often. She explained that she offered private services to help men feel more masculine and perform better in bed. She explained that he would enjoy it as "most men do."

He went to the house that she and several other young women (who were working their way thru college too) used to "help men." There was never any intercourse. He was "learning how to let a woman be in charge." He found these lessons exhilarating. He paused in his story, "but, I'm not cheating!!! We aren't having sex and I really like how she makes me feel." It's as if he was trying to convince himself more than he was trying to convince me.

I would love to be able to tell you that this man conquered this illicit behavior but I cannot. His life became a disaster.

One night when he was talking to this young woman on the phone, his wife happened to be listening on the extension. The next day, when he got home from work, he found his belongings on the yard, the locks changed and a court injunction prohibiting him from ever seeing his wife again. The divorce proceedings were quick and he soon found himself on the street with no home.

I haven't had any contact with him since. I don't know where he is and I don't know if he got help. I do pray for him, hoping that he has turned to God and is living a life that represents Christ well.

Why do I tell you this story? I guess you need to know that it is easy for men to rationalize their sinful behavior. Men have a tendency to compartmentalize their behavior and think that their lives cannot be affected.

God has something to say about this. ‎"The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can figure out. But I, God, search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human. I get to the root of things. I treat them as they really are, not as they pretend to be."

So, what is in your heart?
Are you pretending?
Ask God to give you a new heart.

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

Marriage Hacks: Free e-book

8/11/2014

Marriage is an increasingly unnatural and confusing thing for many couples today. In light of this, Tyler Ward—author of Marriage Rebranded—recently asked 25 leaders for their single best marriage advice. The level of insight and wisdom he received is guaranteed to help many navigate this uniquely beautiful relationship called marriage.

Marriage Hacks is a compilation of the best marriage advice from 25 leaders including:

• Gary Chapman, The 5 Love Languages
• William Paul Young, The Shack
• Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage
• Danny Silk, Keep Your Love On
• Jeremy Cowart, Celebrity Photographer
• Jonathan Jackson, Emmy-Award-Winning Actor
• And many more...

The book speaks to some of the most common questions in marriage including...

• how to keep things from never going stale
• how to handle personality difference
• show to cultivate emotional intimacy
• how to spice things up in the bedroom
• what to do when your spouse isn’t as intentional in your relationship as you are
• and more...

If marriage is hard for you at the moment, this read will simply comfort you to know you're not alone.

If marriage is amazing and fruitful, it will help you sustain.

If marriage is confusing, it will offer some insight on this unique union.

If marriage feels pointless, it will add purpose and depth.

To download this free e-book, go to: http://books.noisetrade.com/tylerward/marriage-hacks

Your porn habit is adultery

7/21/2014

I know a guy who cheats on his wife. He cheats on her every day. He cheats on her multiple times a day. He’s a husband and a father and a serial adulterer.

I shouldn’t know this fact about him, but it came up in conversation a few days ago. We were talking about the divorce rate; both of us gave our theories as to why the statistics are so high. I mentioned in my diagnosis a few studies that show pornography to be a root cause in over 50 percent of divorces annually.

He laughed. “People don’t get divorced over porn.” He went on to explain that porn isn’t a “big deal” to most people. It’s not “like it’s cheating or something.” He told me that he looks at it multiple times daily. His wife, he insisted, might be a little peeved if she knew the extent of it, but only because women overreact about “that kind of thing.”

What kind of thing? Their husbands spending all day obsessively plunging through the darkest regions of the internet for graphic sexual images of rape, abuse, perversion, exploitation and other forms of filthy depravity previously unknown to mankind?

Yeah. That kind of thing. No reason why any wife should be too upset about that, apparently.

Listen guys, I know this is an uncomfortable conversation. But it’s time we man up and get real about pornography. First things first: if you’re married and you look at porn, you are cheating. Period. From a Christian perspective, this can’t be debated. Christ laid it out very clearly: if you lust after another woman, you have committed adultery. When we look at porn we are choosing to succumb to that lust; we are indulging it, fertilizing it, giving it respite in our minds. We are diving into it headfirst and soaking in it like a sponge. We are lessening ourselves, betraying our wives and participating in the violent exploitation of women (and girls). Our minds and our bodies belong to the Lord and to our wives; pornography, therefore, intrudes on their domain. If we look at porn, we are adulterers. We are adulterers in all the worst ways.

We don’t even need to refer to Scripture to figure out the simple equation that porn equals adultery.

Why wouldn’t it?

Because you aren’t physically in contact with another woman?

So what? That’s merely a matter of semantics and circumstance. The absence of physical touch doesn’t automatically free you of the scarlet letter — if it did, ‘sexting’ with other women would be fair game, I suppose. How would you feel if you looked through your wife’s phone and found racy, sexually graphic text messages she’d sent to a man at her office? Would you be alright with it as long as she could prove she never had any physical contact with him? Or is that totally different because she knows the guy, whereas porn is anonymous and impersonal? See, we find ourselves constructing many arbitrary lines of distinction when we are determined to rationalize behavior we instinctively know to be immoral and wrong.

But, OK, what if she didn’t know the guy? What if she was engaging in “fantasies” with men she never met? Imagine that, in your cyber travels, you stumbled upon a porn site featuring pictures and videos of a particularly alluring young female: your wife. How would that sit with you? Your wife selling digital sex all over the internet — how would you like that? It might cause a bit of a marital dispute, wouldn’t you say?

If you wouldn’t want your wife being a porn provider, you ought to understand why she wouldn’t want you to be a porn consumer. If you wouldn’t want her to invite and encourage other men to violate her in their minds, you ought to understand why she wouldn’t want you to accept the invitation to violate other women in yours.

I don’t mean to concentrate only on married men. Porn is poison for everyone, married or not. And I’m not here to castigate you if you’ve stumbled. We live in a society that preys upon a man’s weaknesses, shoving sex into his face at hyper speed every day, all day, all of the time. This isn’t an excuse; just an attempt to put things into context. I won’t yell at a guy who fights a porn addiction anymore than I’d yell at a guy who fights a crack addiction. But at least the crack addict likely won’t encounter very many people (besides his dealer) who will tell him that it’s actually healthy to smoke crack. If he ventures outside of the abandoned shack where he scores his dope, he probably won’t find any respectable people who will say, “hey, crack isn’t a big deal — it’s totally natural to smoke crack, man!” In that way, the crack smoker has a leg up on the porn addict. The porn addict, by contrast, has to fight both the compulsion itself and the myriad of creeps who will try to convince him that it’s all just a bit of innocent fun.

That’s a lie, of course. It’s not innocent. It’s not fun.

I could cite for you the mounds of psychiatric research proving the detrimental effects of pornography on the brain. But you can do that research yourself.

I could tell you about sex slavery, human trafficking, drug abuse, and child molestation, and I could explain how the porn industry wouldn’t exist without these necessary ingredients. But these are conclusions you can draw on your own, if ever you take even a moment to think about it.

I could remind you that these women you find on your porn sites might not be women at all — they could be children — and there’s no way for you to know for sure. I could then point out that any avid porn customer has most likely at some point been a child porn customer, whether he knew it or not. But this is, indeed, an obvious and inescapable reality.

I could tell you that many children view graphic porn for the first time before the age of 12. I could tell you that we haven’t even begun to reap the atrocious fruits that will come from an entire generation raised on the heinous perversions of internet pornography. But it’s probably too late for these warnings.

So what is left? Perhaps nothing, really. Pornography is evil, empty, deadening, dirty — this is something we all know. That’s why, unless you are either psychotic or utterly despicable, you wouldn’t want your daughter to get into the porn business. That’s why most people hide their porn habits. That’s why it still isn’t considered acceptable to browse “adult” websites at your desk at work or at a table in Starbucks (although people still do, in both scenarios). That’s why you only find porn shops and strip clubs in the slummy, rundown parts of town. No matter how hedonistic and “open minded” we become, we still recognize porn as something that ought to be stowed away in the dank, dark corners of our lives. This is Natural Law, and we can’t escape it. We have an innate understanding of right and wrong, whether we want it or not.

Married men: I think we should be spending our free time with our families, or reading interesting books so that we can sharpen our minds, or building things, or exercising, or doing anything else that will make us better men. Porn will not make you a better man. It will make you smaller. It will make you a liar. It will kill that instinct inside you that calls you to protect and honor women. It will turn you into something you never wanted to be. It will turn you into a sneaky, shameful pervert.

It will turn you into an adulterer.

This post was written by Matt Walsh. For the original post, go to: http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/11/25/married-men-your-porn-habit-is-an-adultery-habit/

Male sexuality quiz: Answers

3/21/2014

Yesterday, we had a quick quiz on nine commons areas of male sexuality. Today, we are giving the answers.

1. FALSE. Some start as early as eleven. Generally, though it
is between fourteen and seventeen.

2. FALSE. Many physical reasons can cause impotence, including hardening of the penile arteries, disease, medication and hormonal fluctuations.

3. TRUE. Many elderly people report strong sexual interests into old age.

4. FALSE. Often psychological reasons (guilt) may inhibit orgasm but so can temporary stress in most men.

5. FALSE. Reflex circuits, such as when the bladder is full, can cause nocturnal erections.

6. TRUE. Forget about trying an aphrodisiac. The best love-producer is old-fashioned caring and tenderness.

7. FALSE. No evidence supports this belief. Sex serves many functions but normal sex does not drain energy.

8. TRUE. In older men, men with certain physical conditions or with certain medications, the ejaculant goes into the bladder (retrograde ejaculation) due to the valves not working properly. The ejaculant is expelled with urine. There is nothing wrong with this unless the man and his wife are trying to conceive.

9. TRUE and FALSE. Men have been known to have heart attacks during sex but also during sleep. Sex is no more risky than mild exercise but men should get treatment anyway for any heart problem.

Taken from The Sexual Man: Masculinity without guilt

Male sexuality quiz

3/20/2014

Here is a quiz to test your knowledge about male sexuality. Don't be surprised if you get many of the answers wrong. You're in good company, because many studies have shown that the average person knows little about sexuality and even less about male sexuality.

Answer True or False to the following questions:

1. The earliest age at which the average male adolescent has sexual intercourse is fourteen.

2. Impotence, or difficulty sustaining an erection, is always psychological in origin.

3. Sexual desire and sexual activity in the male often extend well into old age.

4. A man's failure to achieve orgasm is a sign of dysfunction.

5. When a man experiences an erection while sleeping it is because he is having a sexual dream.

6. There is no food or drink that is especially effective as an aphrodisiac.

7. Sex the night before a sports event will drain an athlete's energy.

8. A man can reach orgasm without ejaculating.

9. Sexual intercourse is dangerous for a man who has had a heart attack.

Tomorrow we will discuss the answers.

Taken from The Sexual Man: Masculinity without guilt

What is normal? - Answers

3/19/2014

Yesterday, we took a quiz on sex for men. Today, we will explore the answers:

1. Somewhat true. Regardless of what some say, many men say they felt forced into unwanted sex to either prove themselves or comply with peer pressure.

2. True. Data suggests that "very religious" men are more vulnerable to sexual sin than "religious men."

3. True. High cholesterol can inhibit full erections.

4. False. Men do not experience menopause. Hormones decline gradually but the majority of men remain sexually interested until they die. However, frequency of sexual behavior does decline.

5. False. At first, when married, men decrease the frequency of their masturbation. However, the behavior of masturbating to pornography that was learned in adolescence is often difficult to break.

6. True. Men in American culture are obsessed with giving and receiving oral sex. However, many women find this type of sexual activity quite repugnant.

7. False. When men get married, lust does not subside. Men must learn to redirect their arousal back to their spouse.

8. True. A sexually repressed upbringing creates excessive guilt around sexual feelings and may set up an obsessive need for masturbation.

9. D. Most men think about sex several times a day, often several times within the same hour. This does not change as a man grows older.

10. D. 70% of men complain that they don't get enough sex compared with 58 % of women.

11. B. The average American male has his first sexual encounter at age 16. However, as the age of puberty continues to drop, there are reports that many males have their first experience at age 11 or younger.

12. D. Most males have their sexual beliefs shaped by pornography. Pornography distorts a man's view of how women feel about sex and what can be reasonably expected from sex and sets them up for disappointment. Real women cannot possibly measure up to the air-brushed, color-enhanced, glossy photography that pornography teaches men is the standard.

Adapted from The Sexual Man: Masculinity without guilt

What is normal? - A quiz

3/18/2014

Men have many concerns. One of every man's concerns is wondering if he is normal, especially in regard to his sex life.

Ponder your answer to these questions, and tomorrow, we will discuss the answers:

The first eight questions are answered "TRUE" or "FALSE"

1. More men that women have experienced unwanted sexual intercourse.

2. More "very religious" men cheat on their wives than religious men.

3. Just as fat in the bloodstream can block arteries in the heart, so it starts to block blood flow in the penis preventing adequate erection.

4. Men also experience a male menopause.

5. After marriage, most men stop masturbating.

6. According to most sex counselors, what most men complain about is not getting enough oral sex.

7. Getting married remedies all the problems men have with lust.

8. Boys who were sexually repressed while growing up are more likely to become obsessed with masturbation and pornography when they are grown up.

Choose which answer you believe is most correct for the remaining four:
9. How often does the healthy, average male think about sex?
a) once a month, b) once a week, c) once a day, d) once an hour

10. How many men complain that they don't get enough sex?
a) 20%, b) 35%, c) 50%, d) 70%

11. The average age at which the American male first has sex is:
a) 14, b) 16, c) 18, d) 20

12. From where does the average young male learn about sex:
a) parents & siblings, b) friends, c) books, d) pornography

Adapted from The Sexual Man: Masculinity without guilt

Is fantasy healthy?

3/17/2014

Choose yes or no in response to the following questions:

Can you only become sexually aroused if you imagine having sex with someone other than your partner?

Do you use fantasy to make up for what you believe is missing from your love life?
When you are troubled or anxious do you tend to turn to sexual fantasies to forget about your problems?
Do your sexual fantasies involve activities that you wouldn't dare do in real life?
Are your fantasies such that you would never share them with your spouse?
Do your sexual fantasies occupy a lot of your working hours, taking you away from other activities?
Do you believe deep down that your fantasies hurt your relationship with your spouse, causing you to be unhappy or dissatisfied with your marriage?

If you answered "yes" to any of the previous questions, your fantasy life is not healthy and is undesirable. The more questions you answered yes, the greater a problem your fantasy life is to your sexuality.

Taken from The Sexual Man: Masculinity without guilt