@darrinpatrick was the guest preacher at the Austin Stone this last Sunday during our summer preaching series. He is the lead pastor at the Journey in St. Louis. His message was an excellent one from Philippians 4 on the need for and the secret of contentment. It was a good one and you should download and listen to it.
Yesterday on twitter, Darrin linked to this article by Josh Dix on the importance of increasing oneness with our wives and the fact that staying faithful means no porn. Well put and necessary medicine in this modern world we live in. Here is some introduction, but go read it all.
While I had originally pointed to sexual and emotional affairs as a destructive behavior, many men came forward and confessed to me they had a different kind of unfaithfulness. They were addicted to pornography.
Many of them shared common traits that further enabled their poor choices:
- Lack of true biblical community
- Lack of Biblical truth in their lives
- Anger towards their spouse, fiance or girlfriend for any number of reasons, most notably a lack of sex in the relationship.
I did not once get emails from men who were cheating on their wives in response to my call to be faithful. Every email said the same thing, which tells me what I already know–there is a porn epidemic. And it tells me if we think about pornography a little differently, we could make a case that it is the number one way men are unfaithful to their spouses. There is a lot to cover here, so I’m not even going to try, but I’m going to speak to a couple things that came out of my interaction with some of these guys. I pray it is helpful.