If you can keep your hand off that mouse, guys,
the world will open up to you.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.
Psalm 51:12
I don't have any problem
with us doing all kinds of things
to surround men and women
with protections against sexual sin,
I think that's a very good idea.
It's just not the main point.
If that's where you fight the battle continually,
you will never get to the root of the issue.
The root of the issue here
is this renewed heart,
this joy and gladness;
the bones that God has broken
healed with the joy of our salvation.
The misuse of the beautiful gift of sex
is a symptom of a disease,
not the disease.
And that's why this psalm doesn't mention it.
And it's the main issue!
Or we thought it was the main issue.
It's not the main issue.
This is the main issue.
Restore to me the joy of Your salvation,
because when that joy fades,
I click on pornography.
When that joy fades,
I start cruising the neighborhood.
When that joy fades,
I get an itch for another woman.
When that joy fades,
on and on and on...
every sin on the outside is symptomatic
of the absence of this joy.
What does your heart say about Christ?
Late at night,
all alone,
in front of an Internet screen,
mouse ready to click,
what does your heart say
about Christ over pornography?
For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness.
Therefore he who rejects this, does not reject man, but God... 1 Thess 4:7-8
And I pray that You would come upon this gathering,
and do a work that will ripple
to the end of time,
and to the end of the world
in Jesus' name, Amen.
Thousands were walking away from the dream they once dreamed
for global impact,
because of sexual sin in their lives,
and sexual failure in their past.
Thousands who have dreamed a dream
of being radically significant in the world,
doing something,
laying down your life,
sacrificing anything to spread the renown of Jesus Christ
to the cities and the nations
and the campuses;
and then,
you lost it.
And one of the huge reasons
he said that it was being lost
was that there was so much
guilt,
and a sense of unworthiness
because of sexual failure
that the guilt and the unworthiness
finally bled down into a gnawing
sense of spiritual powerlessness,
yielding the dead end street,
the dead end dream
of middle class, American, comfortable, secure
security.
The great tragedy of Christian young people's lives
is not masturbation,
it's not fornication,
it's not being a peeping tom
or a curious cathy on the Internet.
The tragedy is that Satan uses
the guilt of all those failures
to strip you of your once radical dream
and to put in its place
a life that is happy and safe
and secure, American, middle class,
filled with superficial pleasures,
so that you someday die
on your lakeside rocking chair,
wrinkled and useless
and leaving a big, fat inheritance
to your middle-aged children
to confirm them in their worldliness.
That's what he wants to sell you
because you failed so badly.
And the only alternative is that.
Instead of what you once dreamed
for Christ and His Kingdom.
And I have not come here
to waste your time or my time.
I have come with a passion
that you not waste your life.
Our people are laid waste
with sexual temptation.
Why?
Because our souls have shriveled up
to the size of a t.v. sitcom.
I mean, can you imagine
soaking in front of soaps or sitcoms
for hours on end,
and then going to a church
where they don't give a rip about theology,
and then thinking you're going to have
any fiber in the tree of your faith.
You're just going to get blown flat.
That's what's going to happen.
And so find the right church,
and read your Bibles, and read the right books.
Theology
with passion for Jesus
can conquer biology.