My Brush with Internet Pornography.

This is part of my personal narrative, shared for your admonition. You can’t help it because it comes into your junk mail file, and there’s lots of it. Then, one day you say “well if I have a look who is going know? My wife can’t see, my kids will never know, and my church members will never guess” – (yes, I know what you are thinking). And so, I did it – I opened one of those junk mail files (apply named). My carnal nature began to feed on the pictorial trophies, my spiritual nature began to make trouble for me.

It is then that I “felt” the hand of God on my shoulder and “heard” Him say, “This is one of those dark alleys of addiction that the devil would love to drag you down with a view to mugging your faith. Not only will this become an addiction, but it will also become a secret part of your life that neither of us could be proud of and the result would either be a shipwrecked faith or one that is not authentic.”

An addiction – yes! One of those closet skeletons, accusing you every time you open the door!

If you have ever sensed the hand of God on your shoulder, then you will know it is the hand of a friend. It is the hand of a friend because more than anything else God is concerned about your eternal destiny. God is not only your friend, but also your guide, because, when you accepted Christ, you set out on a voyage to distant shores that are merely a whisper in the chatter of others. He also knows that during the voyage the buccaneer of the universe will constantly try to board your vessel and rob you of the prize pearl of eternal life. He will try to rob you of your hope and joy and your assurance and all the other treasures of your eternal security.

In this voyage we need to learn not to battle where the battle isn’t but where the battle is. This battle is the battle for the mind. The battle is not in the sea of our behavior but in the open ocean of maintaining our relationship with the almighty. The battle with sin has been fought and won and we don’t need to fight it. The devil has lost, and we do not need to repel his assaults. We need to fight the fight of faith, to maintain the connection with heaven that comes from a relationship with the author of life. He then will battle the buccaneer of the universe through the unlimited resources of the Holy Spirit living in us.

When the devil kicks your butt, it doesn’t matter so much if you are facing the right way because in the end it will only speed you along in the direction you are going. As they say, “we fall the way we are leaning.” If we stumble in the direction of our journey then as C.S. Lewis noted in The Screw tape Letters, ‘God is happy even with the stumbling as long as we are stumbling in a heavenward direction.’

Life, you see, is not a matter of where we started, or even where we are right now, but where we finish and how we enjoy the journey. The past is history, the future is mystery, and the present is a gift.(Kung Fu Panda) Each new day life becomes the place and time where we make our decisions for eternity, eternity has no clock, decisions belong to time and scripture says the time is now. These are the decisions that come to us every day, like the choice to open junk mail files that we know are not going to do us any good and inevitably much harm.

For the now time there is one main thing to remember and that is to make the main thing the main thing, and the main thing is our relationship with God and not our performance. Spiritual warfare is inevitable in the Christian’s walk but let us also remember that the fight of faith is not with our behavior but with our spiritual relationship with the source of our faith. If you are not having a struggle, then you are probably not having a Christian experience, but a Christian experience is not based on behavior it is based on relationship and therein lies the struggle. If your relationship with God is based on performance, then you have locked yourself into the doctrine of salvation by works. This is another one of those alleys that offers no hope and no comfort, only darkness and despair.

God wants to be your friend and if His Holy Spirit is aboard your vessel as you journey to distant shores, He will repel every assault of the buccaneer of the universe and eventually He will bring the pirate to justice!