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leading to lasting victory over sexual addiction through a growing, vibrant, powerful relationship with Christ.
Episode #20 - Only God Can Fully Satisfy All my Needs
Transcript
All too often we approach the Bible as we would a buffet table. We pick and choose which passages of Scripture we want to read. We sample it. We “taste” it. If we like it, we’ll linger. If we don’t, we move on.
We need to cry out, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.” We need to get to the point where you shout out “the law of (God’s) mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.” In other words, God’s Word is better to me than all the lustful thoughts and fantasies I could ever think or dream! God’s Word is better to me than any pop or rush that porn or masturbation could ever provide!
I’m your host Steve Etner and welcome to Episode 20 of The Point of Purity Podcast!
(01:00) Introduction
Listen to the promise that God gives in Isaiah 55:1-3. He says, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; … Why spend … on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you.” (Isaiah 55:1-3)
My friend, if you are thirsty for genuine and lasting victory over sexual impurity in your life, if you are thirsty for freedom over porn, lust, and masturbation, if you are thirsty for a deep connection and growing relationship with your Creator and Savior of your soul – then come to the water. Come to Christ who is THE living water. Open your Bible daily and let it cleanse your mind, wash your heart, and refresh your soul!
Deuteronomy 17:19 instructs us to daily open God’s Word and “Read in it all the days of (your) life ... (and as you do, you will) learn to fear the Lord (your) God by keeping all the words of (God’s) law and these statutes, and (do) them.” As Joshua 1:8 warns, do not let “this Book of the Law ... depart from your mouth, but ... meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous.” Then you will know victory over lust, porn, and masturbation
If you’ve been listening to our weekly episodes, then you are aware of the fact that we just completed a powerful and impactful 10-week study of Psalm 25 – and from that study we have learned how to lift our soul to God, trust in God, rest confidently upon God, and surrender everything to God (including our sexuality). We also talked about the power of the Word of God, as well as how the God of the Word helps us guard our mind from the deceitful lies of the enemy.
If you’re just joining us in this podcast, and this is the first episode for you – welcome and let me encourage you to invest the time to go back and listen to the previous episodes. You won’t regret that choice! Now, before we dive into our next study, which is going to be an in-depth look at Psalm 27, I’d like to share with you a few choice thoughts from Jeremiah 2:13 where God says, “my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” (Jeremiah 2:13)
Consider this: when you choose to turn to anything other than God for your satisfaction, you are literally wasting your life on that which will not (because it cannot) satisfy. It’s like pouring fresh, life-saving water into a dirty, scummy, slime-lined broken pitcher. Whatever is put into that pitcher is just going to come leaking out because the pitcher is incapable of containing what’s inside, let alone keeping it clean and pure. The bottom line is this: you need to
(05:00) Change Drinking Fountains
Let me explain. I want you to notice in Jeremiah 2:13 that God declares He is “the fountain of living water.” In other words, God is the only source of nourishment and refreshment you will ever need for any and every part of life. Lust, porn, masturbation, adultery, sexual impurity are all “broken cisterns” that will not (because they cannot) quench your thirst. They are empty pitchers full of empty promises and empty dreams.
Do you recall the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:7-30? In that text – specifically verses 13 and 14 – we see that “Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life’.” (John 4:13-14)
Every time you turn to the lure of Lust; every time you give in to the pull of Porn and the magnet of Masturbation; every time you choose to “drink” from that well – convinced that only those things can provide you with fulfillment and satisfaction, my friend, you will always end up thirsty again. Every time, guaranteed. Oh, sure, your flesh will be momentarily “satisfied” – momentarily – but the real you (your soul) is left wanting. All too quickly you are thirsty again, thirstier than you were before.
Why? Because those broken cisterns of lust, porn, and masturbation are incapable of truly satisfying you. It is impossible for the 3-headed beast to meet your real need. It’s like drinking sea water. You could be dying of thirst – surrounded by an ocean of water, and even though the wetness of the sea water might temporarily “satisfy” your desire, the salt in that water will dry you up and make you even thirstier than you were.
That is precisely what lust, porn, and masturbation will do to you - guaranteed. It will give you that temporary, momentary “feel good” – that pop, that rush, that “ahhhh” feeling. That’s a big reason why you keep going back to it. You have become addicted to the hormones that are giving you that rush.
But as quickly as it came, it vanishes; it leaves you feeling totally empty yet again. It leaves you emptier than before. Thirstier than before. Longing for more. Needing to have more.
The only way (the only way) you will ever be able to truly experience a genuine, lasting freedom from the beast is to come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters (come to God, the fountain of living water). Why choose to spend your money, your time and your energy for that which is not bread? Why choose to waste your life on sinful, sexual satisfaction instead of enjoying a blessed life found only in a growing relationship with God? Why waste your labor on that which does not satisfy? Instead, choose to incline your ear, and come to God; let God speak into your chest so that your soul may live. (see Isaiah 55:1-3)
Only Jesus, the “Living Water” can truly quench your thirst. I understand that right now – for many of you - it sure doesn’t seem like it. It doesn’t seem like your sexual thirst could possibly ever be truly quenched. You probably have a hard time believing that God can (or even will) do that for you. Your flesh is arguing with you right now saying, “Maybe it’s true for others, maybe others can have their sinful sexual thirst genuinely quenched by God, but not for me because my personal experiences to date have called God’s promise into serious question.” I assure you my friend, the sinful sexual thirst that you’ve been craving can and will be quenched as you draw deeper from the “fountain of living water!” As you grow closer and closer to God.
And yet, nagging in the back of your head goes the argument “But what if? What if God takes it away from me and leaves me hanging high and dry? What if He removes the lust, porn, and masturbation from me – and that which He gives me in return is not as pleasurable, not as enjoyable, not as fun? What if God lets me down?” Can you relate? If you listened to my personal testimony back in Episode #1, then you know I wrestled long and hard with those questions.
Let me quickly challenge you here to not walk the “what if’s cliffs.” That’s a dangerous place to be. The reason you are struggling with those fears, the reason you are afraid to let your sinful habit go, the reason you doubt God’s ability – God’s readiness – God’s willingness to meet your every need is simply because you don’t yet truly know God. You have not yet gone deep into a powerful, precious relationship with your Creator and Savior of your soul.
That is the purpose and goal of this podcast – to teach you, guide you, help you not only discover but learn how to change fountains and daily drink from the Living Water that Christ gives. When you begin to (Psalm 34:8) “taste and see that the Lord is good” you will discover the bitterness and saltiness of what you have been drinking.
We read in Job 20:12-15 “Though evil tastes sweet in (your) mouth and (you hide) it under (your) tongue, though (you desire) it and will not let it go, but (instead you hold) it in (your) mouth, yet (the) food in (your) stomach (the pleasure of your sin if you will) is changed to the venom of cobras within (you – in other words, it’s poison to you). (You) swallow riches, but will vomit them up; God will expel them from (your) belly.” (Job 20:12-15 NASB)
What an apropos description of what sexual impurity does to you. Sure, it is “sweet in your mouth” as you devour it. Yes, you don’t want to let it go, even though you know it’s bad for you. Yet when you consume it, it turns sour on you. It is no longer sweet but poisonous. It makes you spiritually sick with shame and guilt.
My friend, it’s time to change fountains!
The fresh water (if you will) that God wants to give you is found in His Word, the Bible. Drinking from that fountain comes as you daily read, study, meditate upon, and walk in obedience to what God reveals to you from Scripture.
(14:00) Lights On!
Listen to what David says in Psalm 119:105. “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” And in verse 130 he writes: “The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.”
Up to this point, you have held on to a hidden, secret life. You have done everything in your power to keep it concealed, to keep it in the dark. Let’s face it: this sin thrives in the dark. It exists in the quiet, secret recesses of your heart and mind. That’s where it feeds and that’s where it grows.
Jesus said, “This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” (John 3:19-20)
Can you see yourself pictured in this text? You have loved the darkness because it kept your secrets. You hated reading your Bible, having devotions, praying, worshiping in church because each and every time you did you felt like a hypocrite, a fake and a fool.
It’s time to turn the lights on! It’s time to come out of the shadows and face the beast head-on. As you listen to these episodes, you will begin to understand that exposing your sin to God’s light is the very thing necessary to kill the 3-headed dragon of Lust Porn and Masturbation.
Maybe, as you listen to this, you feel both excited and terrified. Excited because you sense a glimmer of hope shining somewhere out there on the horizon ahead. And yet you also feel terrified because you fear the unknown. This sinful habit has been a “friend” to you. Yes, it has been slowly eating you alive, destroying you and everything you hold dear; but it has felt so, so good. That is why the prospect of killing it off is a bit scary. What will happen to me once it’s dead and gone? How will I cope? How will I handle the stress, the frustration, the boredom, the loneliness? All of those trigger-points that my habit “helped” me deal with.
In John 8:12 we read, “Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
The purpose of the light of God’s Word is not simply to reveal your sin, not just to expose it so it will die; yes, that will happen - but it’s also able to embrace you in its warmth and power. Not just any power, God’s power. It’s the power to leave the slain beast on the battlefield and move on, living a life that is full of freedom and joy. A life that truly honors and glorifies your Creator, Savior, and Friend.
This is exactly why the Apostle John wrote, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:5-7)
(18:19) No Playing Allowed
When you play around with the 3-headed dragon, when you allow yourself to give in to the lure of lust, the pull of porn, and the magnet of masturbation - you are both being deceived and being a deceiver. You claim to be a Christian, you claim to have fellowship with God, yet when you lust, when you look at porn, when you masturbate you are walking in darkness. Your life is a lie, and you are not living by the truth.
John clearly states that when you “walk in the light as he is in the light” two things happen. First, you are in true fellowship with other Christians. In that fellowship we (Psalm 55:14) “take sweet counsel together; within God’s house we walk.” However, God is clear in 2 Corinthians 6:14 that light and darkness cannot coexist. When you choose to walk in the darkness of your sin, you break your fellowship with God and with other Christians.
Second, when you “walk in the light as he is in the light,” you are cleansed from all your sin. You see, walking in the light must of necessity include exposing your sin. Now, before you hit major panic buttons thinking I’m about to instruct you to get up on the platform at church this Sunday or log on to your Social Media page and tell the world about your battle with the 3-headed dragon, calm down. That’s not what I mean by exposing your sin to the light.
Exposing your sin to the light begins by confessing your sin to the One who is the Light of the World. Talk with God about it. You see, “If we confess our sins, (God) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9) Proverbs 28:13 warns, “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.” And in Psalm 32:5 David writes, “I acknowledged my sin to you (God), and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and (God) forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah.”
In this “Point of Purity Podcast” we are seeking to shine the light of God’s Word into the deep recesses of your heart. You are hopefully discovering what’s at the heart of your struggle. And you are learning the importance of keeping that light on at all times.
(21:13) Authentic Accountability
Before I wrap up today’s episode, I am going to ask you some tough questions. Questions that intentionally dig into the heart of your struggle.
It’s critical to your victory and growth that you are honest, transparent, and speak the truth. This sin loves darkness. It loves to hide. It thrives on deception. So, are you ready?
Here’s my first question for you:
- Over the last seven days, have you looked at ANY form of pornography? Now let me take a moment to clarify here. Just to be clear – when I say “any form of pornography” I am not just referring just to nudes or X-rated material. I’m including anything that you are intentionally looking at for the purpose of getting that pop or rush that lusting provides. That is “pornographic.”
So, I’m including such things as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube, TUMBLr, TikTok, Periscope, Sports Illustrated, (on the list goes). Hopefully you get the picture.
So, let me ask again. Over the last 7 days, have you looked at ANY form of pornography? - If you answered “yes” please take a moment right now and unpack this. Why did you choose to sin? What was going on in your head that made you believe it was “OK” to give in this time?
Romans 6:21 asks, “what benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of?” Was it worth it? What was the end result of giving in? Sure, you got a brief reprieve from your stress, boredom, or loneliness. Yep, you got a momentary “feel good” – but what did it do for you (not your flesh – YOU)? How did it help you become more like Christ? How did it protect you, your spouse, your family, from the attack of the enemy upon their hearts and souls?
Here’s my 2nd question for you:
- Over the last seven days, have you masturbated?
- If you answered “yes” again I ask you to take a moment right now and think about this. Why did you choose to sin – why did you choose to worship King Me? What was going on in your head that made you believe this time it was “OK” to turn your back on God?
Romans 6:21 asks, “what benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of?” Was it worth it? What was the end result of giving in? Sure, you got a brief reprieve from your stress, boredom, or loneliness. Yep, you got a momentary “feel good” – but what did it do for you (not your flesh – YOU)? How did it help you become more like Christ? How did it protect you, your spouse, your family, from the attack of the enemy upon their hearts and souls?
Here’s my 3rd question for you:
- Over the last seven days, have you engaged in any unbiblical sexual activity (including but certainly not limited to massage parlors, chat rooms, strip clubs, prostitution, homosexuality, inappropriate sexually-charged conversations, even inappropriate physical touching of anyone – including your spouse or children)?
- If you answered “yes” again I ask you to take a moment right now and think about this. Why did you choose to sin – why did you choose to worship King Me? What was going on in your head that made you believe this time it was “OK” to turn your back on God?
Romans 6:21 asks, “what benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of?” Was it worth it? What was the end result of giving in? Sure, you got a brief reprieve from your stress, boredom, or loneliness. Yep, you got a momentary “feel good” – but what did it do for you (not your flesh – YOU)? How did it help you become more like Christ? How did it protect you, your spouse, your family, from the attack of the enemy upon their hearts and souls?
My friend, these are not questions of judgment or condemnation. Romans 8:1 assures us that “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” No, I’m asking you these tough questions to get you to think about your choices. To encourage you and urge you, to challenge you to evaluate what’s going on inside your head and your heart. You do what you do because in your heart you want what you want.
I’m challenging you to begin to take a close, hard look at your reasonings and your justifications for your sinful behavior. Not to judge you, but to release you. To show you a better way, a godly way of living. A way of true joy, peace, satisfaction, fulfillment – and yes, even pleasure.
Be sure to join us next week for Episode #21 as we dive into Matthew 6:24 and discover the freedom of choosing freedom!