I just posted the following on my blog and wanted to share this with you. If you’re struggling with shame from sexual immorality, lust, pornography addictions, etc., welcome to the human race. I want to encourage you to read this article and process thru this stuff while not letting the guilt overwhelm and debilitate you.
The more I hear stories from twenty- and thirty-somethings, I more I am convinced that this is a major tool the Enemy has used to get our generation to doubt its destiny and compromise its calling. May you be different. Let’s
pray for our generation to believe the truth about our identity in
Christ and to walk boldly in it. And let’s tell the Devil to go to hell
with his lies.
The following is from an article John Piper submitted to Christianity Today:
The closest I have ever come in 26 years to
being fired from my position as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church
was in the mid-1980s, when I wrote an article for our church newsletter
titled “Missions and Masturbation.” I wrote the article after returning
from a missions conference in Washington, D.C., with George Verwer, the
head of Operation Mobilization.
Verwer’s
burden at that conference was the tragic number of young people who at
one point in their lives dreamed of radical obedience to Jesus, but
then faded away into useless American prosperity. A gnawing sense of
guilt and unworthiness over sexual failure gradually gave way to
spiritual powerlessness and the dead-end dream of middle-class security
and comfort.
In other words, what seemed so tragic
to George Verwer—as it does to me—is that so many young people are
being lost to the cause of Christ’s mission because they are not taught
how to deal with the guilt of sexual failure. The problem is not just
how not to fail. The problem is how to deal with failure so
that it doesn’t sweep away your whole life into wasted mediocrity with
no impact for Christ.
The great tragedy is not
masturbation or fornication or pornography. The tragedy is that Satan
uses guilt from these failures to strip you of every radical dream you
ever had or might have. In their place, he gives you a happy, safe,
secure, American life of superficial pleasures, until you die in your
lakeside rocking chair.
I have a passion that you do
not waste your life. My aim is not mainly to cure you of sexual
misconduct. I would like that to happen. But mostly I want to take out
of the Devil’s hand the weapon that exploits your sin and makes your
life a wasted, worldly success. Satan wants that for you. But you don’t!
What
broke George Verwer’s heart back in the 1980s, and breaks mine today,
is not that you have sinned sexually. It’s that this morning Satan took
your 2 A.M. encounter—whether on TV or in bed—and told you: “See,
you’re a loser. You may as well not even worship. No way are you going
to make any serious commitment of your life to Jesus Christ! You may as
well get a good job so you can buy yourself a big widescreen and watch
sex till you drop.”
I want to take that weapon out
of his hand. Yes, I want you to have the joyful courage not to do the
channel surfing. But sooner or later, whether it’s that sin or another,
you are going to fall. I want to help you deal with the guilt of
failure so that Satan does not use it to produce another wasted life…
(Read the rest of the article called “Gusty Guilt” by clicking here.)
