Dealing with Pornography

Here's some extremely helpful material in the struggle to avoid and be freed from the tyranny and sin of using pornography. Simply titled Breaking Pornography Addiction Part 1 and Breaking Pornography Addiction Part 2, David Powlison offers plenty of Gospel help and hope. This is the sort of thing worth reading over and then meeting up with a friend to talk over.

Three books to change your world

With the year quickly coming to a close I’d like to recommend three books which tie in with what we’ve been looking at recently in church.

You Can Change – by Tim Chester Don’t be fooled by the title, this is not a book that gives you a quick 5 step program to becoming the world’s happiest and most successful person. It’s much better than that. This book is about transformation of sinful behaviour and negative emotion through the wonder of the Gospel. Chester is so helpful in this book because he gets you to think about what’s underneath and driving sinful behaviour, and then showing how powerful and fulfilling Christ is to win us over to change. He even suggests as you read through the book you pick out an area of your life that you know is a problem and then he workshops that area right through the book…..it’s extremely helpful. He gets far beyond the guilt and shame that are so ineffective in seeing us live differently and at the same time he so helpfully shows how good Jesus really is so you wan to change.

So forget your new years resolutions….this book, if read and understood will bring great blessing for you and others.

Breaking the Idols of your Heart – by Dan B. Allender & Tremper Longman III

This book is different because each chapter starts with a well written fictional scenario and story which the second half of the chapter then analyses. The story continues to build as the authors look at issues of power, relationships, pleasure etc. Allender is the story teller, and Tremper is the theologian and it works really well. It deals with very believable situations for both men and women in their work, marriage and social settings and faithfully exposes what is going on largely through teaching from the book of Ecclesiastes. It’s very gospel focussed and will get you thinking more deeply about the why of your worries and stresses and distraction in life.

Counterfeit Gods – By Timothy Keller

It’s hard to be disappointed by anything Keller has written. He’s so good at nailing our problem and revealing the wonder of the solution in Jesus. If you love quotes, there are scores of them here that bolster his thesis that our great problems and our sinful behaviours are driven by the conveyor belt of idolatry which resides in our hearts which only Jesus can replace. Keller is anti-moralistic and anti-religious because he is so gospel focussed. He really does believe that Jesus is better than anything this world can ever offer and your heart rejoices as to why as you read through these chapters.

Hear about it from the author here.

Hosea and the shocking love of God

Hosea…a desperately loving man during desperately evil times.

A few things stand out for me from our recent series.

1. Hosea’s amazing willingness to obey God.

Chapters 1-3 are a devastating and astonishing read. Would you do what this man was prepared to do? Could you find it in your heart to love like this and go through this?

2. How easily we forget God.

In chapter 4:1-3 Hosea writes,

‘Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel, for the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land.’ (See also 4:6,14)

How on earth could a nation steeped in the most amazing history plummet to the point of forgetting their God? It’s not that they couldn’t recite their salvation story, it’s not that they believed those things didn’t happen. It’s that their heart moved from trusting and loving their God, to presuming and using him. And then things got very ugly.

3. How idols deceive and fill our hearts. The Puritans of old would speak of the human heart as a factory of idolatry. I think they read and knew Hosea. Israel should have been a great crucible for godliness and transformation, instead the very opposite was the reality. Quite simply my heart on it’s own will inevitably tend to gravitate in trust and hope to all the wrong things. I’ll yearn for all God’s good gifts, but seek it not from God, nor via his ways….but others. Without God doing something to change this, to awaken me, I will not be able to change.

4. How committed God is to us. The faithlessness of Gomer and Israel is contrasted so blatantly with the utter faithfulness of God. He is willing to take his wayward people back (who will not come) because he is committed to fulfilling his promises. Even though Hosea’s generation won’t return, there will be those who will in the future. God looks forward in love and commitment…and we are the ones who benefit.

5. How God’s justice and mercy meet. This is a huge question left unanswered in Hosea (and indeed in the whole Old Testament). How can mercy and judgement both be done? The price of forgiveness always means the one forgiving has to absorb hurt and pain. Hosea learnt this, but was moved to do it because he knew God in his tenderness and compassion was to be the very model of this. Jesus of course resolves the great question for his Cross is the astonishing collision of both justice and mercy where both are upheld perfectly.

6. How shocking God’s love is. The depth of emotion is so striking in Hosea. Yes God is angry and outraged at sin, it will be punished, and yet at the same time he is moved with warmth and tenderness, compassion and love. The depth of feeling highlight the significance of the action that will follow. If Hosea will take back and win back his adulterous wife, what will that look like as God takes back and wins back his wayward people. The turmoil of emotion that comes out especially in chapter 11 is understood once we see how the cross would be the way and means of drawing his people back.

7. How we need to celebrate our God. Hosea, the prophets are not all doom and gloom. A rich picture of future blessing and hope drives them on. Hosea celebrates even while for so long he languishes as God’s goodness and glory is so misconstrued and forgotten. But the day will come when it will be experienced and known again, God himself will see to it. Hope like this is so important because it helps us not hope in hopeless things….like idols. Surely we who are the beneficiaries of his amazing grace and love in Jesus have everything to celebrate in. A people who celebrate and live out the goodness of God are far less likely to wander to other things. How Hosea longed for that day. His generation did not share his longing nor did they see it. How kind God has been to us, to draw us to Jesus, the one Hosea longed for.

Friends don’t easily or quickly forget this book of Hosea. It shows us things about our God in ways that are unlike the rest of the Scriptures while being consistent with the rest of the Scriptures. Hosea draws us to our knees to Christ in humbleness and joy. Please keep reading it in the future, perhaps at times on your knees, because humbleness and joy is surely the response to God’s shocking love for us.