Greetings
Beloved Brothers! It’s been about a week since I have been able to return to
The RoundTable. I can only imagine the
many things that have kept you occupied as well, so I hope that your week has
been victorious in Christ from the challenging and sanctifying times of your
life.
Is your
Purity relevant or irrelevant?
The
church has lost its grips on holiness slow to discipline and its members have dismissed
godliness and by the world purity is irrelevant.
In
leadership magazine there was a survey of 1,000 men in leadership concerning
their purity 120/1000, 12% of the pastors has openly confessed they have
committed adultery in the ministry.
In
Christianity today there was a survey of 1,000 men concerning their purity and 230/1000—almost
doubled. Overall ¼, 25% of men are unfaithful. Why is this true? NO DISICPLINE,
the lack of self-sensual control, PURITY.
I share these shocking stats to open our notes and
review after reading chapter 2-- The Discipline of “PURITY.” why? We are men
after God’s own heart and it’s the legal sensualities, the culturally
acceptable indulgences, which will take us down.
The heat of American culture has made a high expense
to heighten areas of sexual senses causing many to go off course; consequently,
driving into a masturbation wreck. These carnal cravings have allured men with
its sensual attractions and obsessions (entertainment, images, language, ideas,
and many other influences); it will not stop no matter the cost. Have you made the highest expense to guard
your heart with your life?
Kent Hughes
presents various heart hitting facts that burns our fleshly appetites and shred
our weak excuses.
If
you have yet to establish disciplines for yourselves we will journey through biblical
principles to be equip and combat failing into sensual acts of lust, sexual
immorality, pornography, adultery, and etc.
Sadly to say sensuality is
easily the biggest obstacle standing in the way of godliness among men today,
and is a wreaking havoc in the church.
.
Do you have boundaries and restrictions for
your flesh, where are they? Remember brothers, men are not control base
upon what they possess, but by what men are possessed by. So what may that be for you?
If it is not your Purity, you will lose the reality of who God is and who God
has called you to be. This will be the result of one who does not pursue
Godliness with vigor, toil, extreme obsession, and INTENSIFIED SPIRITUAL
DISCIPLINE toward God!!
Pure Men Learning Life-Saving Lessons
Turn away my eyes from looking at
worthless things;
And give me life; revive me in your
ways. -Ps. 119:37-
1.
Desensitization---
Progressive state of exposing oneself to
sin and removing oneself from Holiness
-- What do I mean by this, one who is hardened becomes callous and
insensitive to the very person, matter, or belief he knows.
a.
Sensual
indulgence leads to us desensitized yourself to God’s holy call, as well as to
the danger and consequence of falling/ disqualified.
b.
Embracing of
socially permitted sensuality desensitizes you to God’s call and makes you easy
prey for the fatal sin of his life.
2.
Relaxation
---- When we are in causal control, we
think we are the safest, when we feel no need to keep our guard up, to work on
our inner integrity, to discipline ourselves for Godliness. So when
temptation comes he does not think of what he can fall.
a.
The greatest flaw
in conduct which opens to disaster was relaxation forms the rigors and
discipline.
b.
Conforming to the
comforts of the flesh extends to moral life; it’s harder to maintain inner
discipline. One becomes imminently vulnerable
c.
Most of us do not
suspect anything usual--
3.
Fixation—A fatal Attraction --- The eyes that invites
more lust and desire the man of God becomes blind to Purity and focus on
Immorality.
a.
Sensuality is
substituted for reality---
b.
The Less real God
becomes --- It is an overwhelming complete forgetfulness ----Prov 6--- He
becomes to a piece of bread. Godly men reduce themselves for fleshly acts
eventually becoming easily consumed and devour.
c.
The longer we
look or be active in sin, temptation, lust, the more we forget of what God
looks like to us.
4.
Rationalization ---
a.
from deadly
fixation to mind controlled by the passions and desires of lust—One become so assertive
to fulfill their sexual appetite that intentions become apparent ---
b.
Those in the GRIP
of LUST are men ignore the warnings, run from purity, and silent their godly conscience.
5.
Degeneration –
the pathology of that leads to a moral fall-
a.
The progressive
states of regarding the previous warnings then becomes a great fall .
Godliness and sensuality are mutually
exclusive and those in the grasp of sensuality can never rise to godliness
while in its sweaty grip.
So what does this draw you to?
Key Steps as to living in the Discipline of Purity
·
Accountability
---Exercising yourself----selecting men who will be assertive and attentive to
your spiritual well being
·
Prayer ---
Actively committing to confessing and interceding for self and others
·
Memorization---
Loading your arsenal with Biblical Grenades that will help guard your heart and
mind. Sharpening your sword ----
·
Mind --- Discipline
of the eyes---- here is where the most radical action is necessary---- (
Job31:1; Mark 9:47) Making a convent with your eyes ---
·
Hedges ---Boundaries
around your life---- Working with Women
( verbally intimate, flattering—flirtation) this is how many affairs begins—
o
—Be causation of
being CHARMING “likable, easy-going”—( arouses
unrequited desires in another)
o
- Don’t treat
women with the causal affection you extend with females in your family.
·
Reality &
Divine Awareness --- Don’t be succumb to “ I would never do such a thing”
·
Repentance---
----HALLELUJHA!!
In conclusion men we must share the same mindset as
our dear brother and leader in the faith Paul had. We must not be like the man
who beats the air and pursues the perishable crown, but we must be the one who
is daily in the spiritual arena fighting and competing for the imperishable
prize. The race is not given to the mightiest, smartest, and talented; but it
is given for those who are spiritually long-winded, and those who can endure
the flesh and its environment until the end. We must train and exercise
ourselves like going into the natural gym with much consistency in God’s word,
heart-felt and gut wrenching prayer, fasting, and a mind steadily focused on
the things above. God has called us to be clean not to be defiled and tainted
in sexual-sensual immorality. For it was said in the holy command, “be ye
holy, for I AM holy!” Brothers it is better to dwell with the lowly and
righteous then to commune and prosper in the tent of the wicked.
“Charm
is a thief and yes beauty makes you weak. The world and the devil call them
beauty and the beast!” ~Cliff Holt aka Phillytf~
Job
31:1New King James Version (NKJV)
“I
have made a covenant with my eyes;
Why
then should I look upon a young woman?
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