Pornography-free (a testimony)

Transcription

As Mefiboset said to David, “Why do you care about me, a dead dog?”(2 Samuel 9:8) And that happened after David said, “Do you want to eat at my table every day of your life?”I say the same thing, why did the Lord care about me, a dead dog, a flea, a worm?I begin by saying that I do not know why He cared for me, but I know it, because Isaiah 43:7 says that He saved me, He made me, He trained me for His glory, and that God was glorified; that is why I testify here today, because I believe that the Lord will be glorified by my testimony of the great salvation, that it was all God’s grace, and you know, I pray that the Lord will help me exalt Christ by mentioning things from my past and where I am now.

• And then.
• You know.
• I grew up in the church.
• And around the age of 5 or 6.
• I said the sinner’s prayer.
• Following in my grandmother’s footsteps.
• Inside her house.
• I remember where she went and I remember the following years.
• My hope of salvation was in this prayer.
• Me accepting Jesus.
• I’ve always come back.
• I remembered this place.
• I thought about it.
• I put on a bit of security and I waited for it.
• My hope was not in Christ.
• My rock was not Him.
• I had a structure that seemed firm to me but that would eventually disappoint me.

So, around 12, did I start going to the market with my mom?I had been there before, but that’s when I started noticing the magazines in the box and, when I was 12, I became very addicted to pornography and for the next nine years of my life I was his slave, either over the internet or magazines, wherever I was, I lived for lust. It is what controlled me, what satisfied me, the amazing thing is that no matter how much you use it, it always ends up leaving you empty, one of the most deceptive things of sin is its quest, while you pursue sin, there is satisfaction and enthusiasm, but once you reach it and you are satisfied with it, it leaves you dry and empty. As I once heard, “sin will take you further than you would like to go, stop you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you would ever want to pay. “

So, around 18?you know, in elementary school, my parents took me out of school and taught me at home, but I lied, I did almost nothing at school, played video games 15 to 16 hours a day, for five, six years of my life. . That’s all I did. I was playing. I was happier to be a character in the game, I was more concerned about the level and what my character had than my character in real life. When I was 18, my parents made me take out my driver’s license because I didn’t even want to. I wanted to sit at home, on this computer, play all day. Was he my god, my idol and walked next to pornography on the Internet because of this computer?I was there, literally in my heart, prostrate and worshipping him as my god. And you know what? I look back now and see, man, I was a fool, I’d win that and lose my soul forever.

Well, around the age of 18, did he really hate the sin of pornography?I mean, the shame, the guilt this has caused in my life, made me miserable. I cried prostrate, shouting at God, saying, “God, I’ll never do this again. “But he’s back soon. I was consumed, controlled by him, the impulses that led me to pursue sin, well, they controlled me absolutely and I was really trying to free myself, I remember taking classes, buying filters from the Internet and at 18 I had the burden of posting a testimony, because I was free of pornography for maybe 30 days and put an audio testimony in a YouTube video?It was about 3 years before God saved me, three years before I threw illbehonest. com, I remember wearing it there and starting to fall into this sin again. I removed it from the Internet, and I kept trying to free myself from pornography.

Here’s something I want to emphasize: my god was freedom, my god wasn’t Christ, I was looking for freedom instead of looking for Christ, the reason I would go to hell was obviously sin, but my greatest idol was freedom. much to be free of pornography, free of masturbation. I wanted to get them out of my life. I remember being in a relationship and thinking, “Well, if I marry her, how could I live with myself, get married and keep watching porn?”I thought, “I don’t want to be in a situation like this. “I had so much worldly sadness, as 2 Corinthians 7:10 says, that it motivated my quest for deliverance. It was not Cristo. No had seen the cross as something precious at all. I was completely wrong.

Another place where I found false assurance was in Romans 7. Paul says he did things he didn’t want to do. And do I remember other people in my life, including young pastors and other people? They gave me the assurance that I was saved by what Paul said in Romans 7. And now I can look back and understand that Paul was speaking when he was a Pharisee. Of course, Paul wanted to be free from these sins, because his perfection was to seek to keep the law. it was a salvation by works, and in the end he said, “Who will save me from this body of death?” And that’s Christ. And when you get to Romans 8:13, you will see that it is by the Spirit that we put to death the works of the flesh, and if we don’t, we will die. I remember over the years reading Matthew 5:30 about how if your right eye made you sin, you would have to rip it off or cut off your arm, or you would go to hell. Do you know what crazy is? All my friends and I read this passage and thought, “Can’t that mean what it means, because if it does, it means we’re going to hell?” But were we? Christians? ? we did the prayer. We believe in Jesus, we go to church. So, we would take this text and say, right? You know, if you look at 1 Corinthians 6: 9, it says, “Make no mistake, the sexually immoral will NOT inherit the kingdom of God?” And I remember thinking, that can’t mean what it means, because then that means I’m going to hell, I’m not going to inherit the kingdom of God. And the problem is, I was looking at my friends and most of them seemed to be just like me. So I thought, “Well, they’re all Christians, I’m a Christian,” and I wasn’t looking at this model, this book, this Bible.

So my call to you today is? Look at this book, look at the Bible? Is your life aligned with that? Are you really born again and are you saved? Have you been regenerated? You know, the regeneration in Ezekiel 36 says that the wasteland, once devastated and deserted, will now be like the Garden of Eden. Does God come and then say, “I will take the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, and I will give you a new spirit and make you obey and walk in my statutes?” (36:27). Here it is: it wasn’t the reality of my life. At 21, did I think I was saved? I was lost. I started studying the Bible one night. And I started to get interested in the Word of God. I started talking to the church guys about how we should free ourselves from pornography and masturbation. What will it take? You know, we all had Safe Eyes, we had internet filters, we took the 60-day courses. Nothing was working. Now, we have not been saved. So it wasn’t working. I got home and I remember going to the living room and my family was sadly watching a TV show. Deal or no Deal, which has some models, and I looked for a second and I saw a model and all these thoughts of lust hit my mind and I went to my room. Sitting in my room, I felt lust wash over me, thoughts? He could not take them captive. Now I look back and realize that I did not have the Spirit of God in me. I was going to open my browser to view porn, did I check my facebook? And someone who had gone to a Bible study that night, whom I had never spoken to, texted me saying? James ,? He just listed positive things like “Is it amazing what God has done in your life?” etc? I sat there and realized that God had done nothing in my life. It had all been the effort of James Jennings. He had worked hard to clean the outside of the glass, and yet he had no new heart for God. I was not born again.

I remember that night that I cried out to God and saved me, finally gave up my salvation for the works. I remember it was so easy to say that I was saved only by faith in Christ and yet I try to be saved by works, trying to gain acceptance before God for my deliverance. I was talking about my release from pornography all the time. When I was lost, because he was my god. And now, you know, do you have the courage of Christ, knowing that He became a sinner for me and suffered under the wrath of God. God sacrificed His only Son on the Cross for my sins personally. It’s just amazing, it’s wonderful. I didn’t realize I’d been saved that night, I was free of pornography and masturbation. He wasn’t a slave to that anymore. However, months later, I understood the doctrine of regeneration, which meant being born again, I realized, “Wow?”Wasn’t I saved when I was 6?

You know I see so many people on illbehonest. com, maybe someone who is 50 years old, and they say, well, have I been saved since I was 6? and I’ve been a slave to porn for 40 years of my life, and I’m a Christian ?, and I said the same thing. My friend, are you not a Christian? I was not a Christian. Romans 6:18 says, “We have been freed from sin and we are slaves of righteousness. ” II Corinthians 5:17 says, “If you are in Christ, you are a new creation. Have old things happened? Here everything has become new. And do you know why? It is written in verse 18: “All this is from God. ” And that’s what happened that night? the living God? use this analogy? The living God has invaded my life. I had the battleships of the Spirit of God, they tied up next to my little fortress of sin and they unloaded with force on my little fortress and brought it down. This happened 3 years ago and God did this radical work. And since then, you know what? There are mines around me and every step counts. I take a wrong step, and you know, just like David, when he tripped and fell into adultery and fell into murder, Christians fall, we’re not perfect. But I tell you that I am not what I was before. I am a slave of Christ. It is my greatest joy to serve you. He is my master.

I find it hard to believe that for 21 years my teacher was the computer, it’s stupid. It’s amazing. But God took pity on me, does He care about me?And the Lord disciplines those He loves, as the Hebrews say. He comes with a stick and will separate us from ourselves, show us that we can’t trust ourselves. The root of all this is a matter of heart. Pornography was that I was selfish and the reason I used it, that there was a point, that Illbehonest was a ministry from which I extracted my joy from my performance. You see, you can turn anything into god. You can make the freedom of sexual sin a god. Can you make something a god? And that’s what I’d done.

So I challenge you to examine your hearts, because it’s all about the heart, everything always goes back to your heart and it’s very important to understand that. Because we must seek the Lord, as I heard Brother Bob say, without any other connection to the world. All out of the way. I hope that cheered you up. I am astonished that God saved me and allowed me to Illbehonest. com and allowed him not to be a disaster. I remember when I was rescued, I was getting into this nascent church. I thank God that he was faithful to me and brought me back to this book, guided me away from men and to God. Praise God for that. The Lord saved me from the search for deliverance instead of Christ.

For 18 years of my life, I have been totally hardened to all truth and asleep in church. Once I was enlightened and knew I needed deliverance, I sought deliverance and not Christ. If the Son sets you free, you will be truly free. But it is the Son who sets them free. It is not yours. We have to give up our own power. Jeremiah 17: 5 says, “Cursed is the man who makes flesh his strength, but (7) blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord. ” I trust that the Lord will continue to sanctify me, to break me. I can hardly believe the work God has done over the past 2 years to separate me from myself. When I was saved, I felt like I wasn’t fighting. And the Lord showed me, James, that you have heart problems here, heart problems there, and things that I never thought were sins, the Lord was showing me and, you know, those who endure to the end will be saved. (Matthew 24:13), those who endure a loving relationship with Jesus Christ? and He is so worthy of it, so seek Him with all your heart, soul and mind. Do not waste your life? If the Lord could save me someone who played video games for hours a day, a slave to pornography, was he so shy that he wouldn’t talk to anyone? I even spoke on the internet, I spoke on audio, but personally I put on a mask and lived a totally fake life. If God could save me and then use me to start a website like illbehonest. com and use me to do anything, it’s just God’s grace. I have no credit for anything that happened. Everything comes back to him.

I just want to cheer you up. It is the only life you have. We will never live again. This life will end in a moment. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. We do not know the hour of the Lord’s return. Is it a steamer, does it go so fast? Will the waterfall at the end of your life come so fast and will you be ready to fall? the fall into eternity. I do not fear of death. I mean, “Death, where’s your shot?” I have the blood of Christ in my life! I don’t fear death, I fear God. I really need more fear of the Lord. And I pray that by God’s grace none of this was done in the flesh. And that cheers and cheers, and you know, I’m just a worm and a dead dog. I’m nothing. And I don’t say this because I know I have to, I say it because it’s true. So please listen, if you are playing pornography, if you are still sexually sinful, if you fall in love with masturbation, mortify these things in the Spirit! And if you are not mortifying, ask yourself: do you have the Spirit? Don’t despise Matthew 5:30. Does it make you sin? will take you to hell. And some of you may be free from these things and have some freedom, but your god is freedom and not Christ, and that will lead you to hell. What do you brag about? What do I brag about? On one thing? that he who knew no sin has become sin for me. ? That in Him I can reconcile myself to God. (2 Corinthians 5:21) Am I presentable before God for any reason? blood of Christ. His blood completely covered my debt, and he died in my place, to cleanse me from every act of injustice, to cleanse for themselves a people jealous of doing good works (Titus 2:14). I try to do that. I need the Lord’s help. I have let you down in many ways, but am I telling you this? I always return to Him and that is where the hope is. Are my eyes continually on the Lord (Psalm 25:15)? It will free my feet from the net. Therefore, praise God.

So cheer up again. And Lord, help us run. Like C. T. Studd said?” Everything will happen soon, and only what Christ has done will remain. “And some want to be a mile from a chapel bell, but I want to order a rescue boat in a courtyard of hell. What about Grace House and me?I think they’re my lifeboat right now. The main thing I need to be saved is from me. Every day. O Lord, kill me, crucipher me, take all that comes from me, that everything is for Christ and his glory. So, shall we? As in Osseas 6:3, it is said, “Let us know and continue to know the Lord. “So, Amen.