This was placed on the Heartlight Forum. With a few changes, we feel it needs to be shared with you in a more public way.

    Several years ago, at a private meeting with a number of Austin area preachers, Lyle Schaller mentioned that pornography was the powder keg of the evangelical churches.

    I believe he is right and that the Internet has opened the door of this problem a little wider in our homes. This is the secret sin that robs many men of their attraction to their wives.

    The things shared here, from a woman who has seen it in her own home, need to be heard. We need our ladies to not be willfully naive about this problem among men. We need our men to be honest about their own struggle with sexual desire and lust and make themselves accountable to other men. Most of all, we need couples to strive for intimacy—animals can mate, but only people can share intimacy and move sex from basic instinctual desire to something precious and honoring to a life partner and to God. But intimacy must be far more than just sex—it must be the committed concern, respect and honesty of two people in covenant with each other and God.

Subject: Pornography
From: Desiring Purity
Email: determined@holiness.com
Date: Tue Jun 17 22:14:06 1997

I am separated from my husband now and am very lonely. He is addicted to pornography. I feel led by God to caution others about this very awful sin. You see, most people think porn just relates to Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler and the like. WRONG!!!

Turn on the tube. Most of the commercials feed and entice a man with a bombardment of sexual images. Open your newspaper to read the news and you see bra & panty ads on a full page advertisement for one of the finest department stores in your town. Go to the mailbox to collect your mail and there are catalogs from some of your favorite department stores, like Sears, JC Penney, Walmart, Roses, etc. and there are the ads for bras & panties. Where do you often find these catalogs, ads & mags? In the bathroom? Near the bed?

So you don't think you have a problem? Think again.

I am finding that more and more women are competing with these fantasy women for their husband's attention. I didn't realize just what was going on until I read a book called "An Affair of the Mind" by Laurie Hall. This woman has been on Focus on the Family and the tape of the 3 day broadcast is very enlightening. Promise Keeper groups in your church can provide accountability to other men for what your husband or teen son's watch.

Pornography has robbed me of 18 years of marriage. My husband would not stop the activity that often accompanies porn addiction. His choice is to continue in the sin because "I'm not really hurting anyone." This is a serious matter.

There are some great resources if you know someone who is discovering or already knows about the addiction. Laurie Hall's book is one of the best but beware: you may find out things you don't want to know. This truth will hurt but you, but there is no way to help each other as a couple, if you remain naive about this! It is important that women not enable this behavior by being willfully naive!

Email Heart2Heart@xc.org to subscribe to a listserve that will send you a newsletter with exercises to help the partner of a sexaddict cope.

Visit http://www.sexaddict.com to get even more helpful info and counseling.

Guys, please make a covenant with God, with your body, and your wife. Dedicate your eyes to Him. Let them not set sight on any unholy or unclean thing. Refuse to simply see women as a sexual object to have, possess, and then discard. Protect yourself from temptation. Don't flirt with it as so many do. Satan entices us and one of the easiest ways to do this is through our sexuality. In the scriptures you will notice that almost every time we are warned about immorality, sexual immorality is at the top of the list. FLEE FROM ALL SEXUAL IMMORALITY. Remember how Joseph ran from Potiphar's wife! Run from sexual temptation because it ultimately becomes a trap that steals away your freedom, your self-respect, and even more, your affection and attention to your wife.

God bless you and keep you only unto Him.

Desiring Purity

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