Listen to the Podcast:
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Mike discusses how to live as an overcomer and resist temptation. Topics covered include:
Be a part of a tribe
Cut off the stumbling blocks of temptation under your control.
How to win the war in the mind.
When to flee.
Spiritual warfare.
The need for a fervent prayer life.
Episode Transcript
SPONSOR:
This program is sponsored by Blazing Grace Ministries.
ANNOUNCER:
This radio program is PG-13. Parents strongly cautioned – some material may be inappropriate for children under the age of 13.
Jesus’s mission was to comfort those who mourn, bind up the broken-hearted, proclaim liberty to captives, and open prison doors for those who are bound. For those who want more than status quo Christianity has to offer, Blazing Grace Radio begins now. And here is your host, Mike Genung:
MIKE GENUNG, HOST, BLAZING GRACE RADIO:
Hey. Mike Genung here, and welcome back to Blazing Grace Radio. Glad to have you along.
And at a show, in a ministry like this, which talks about… areas where a lot of people are in bondage, particularly with the things we talk about, with pornography, and the sexual arena, and we bring up the occult, and we bring up the things that people are struggling with, spiritual warfare is a part of this. Not just me, but also our team. And the last couple days have been rather intense, and got even more intense this morning and… [chuckles] some strife. [sighs] Sometimes that strife can be with loved ones, and… it can be a wild ride sometimes. And, so this is not something that we’re getting into lightly, and we know that, you know… when you engage in the battle for people’s hearts, people who are hurting, people who are in bondage, you’re gonna take some hits and some shots. So… working with the ministry like this isn’t gonna work if you’re not really ready to go into spiritual battle. [chuckles] Sometimes quite often. And, sometimes the Enemy can make us… when He really… with some intense attacks, sometimes He can make us feel like we’re losing our mind. And I had some of that this morning, like, “Am I going crazy? What, what’s… what is this? Oh, yeah. Okay.”
And I’m recording today, and here we are. And so… the next several shows over the next weeks, I think will peg the intense-o-mometer a little higher. But for today, for today’s show, it’s gonna be about how to overcome temptation and lustful thoughts. And the things that I’m gonna give you aren’t just for overcoming lust–sexual lust–but across the board.
So, fear. The Enemy gets, grabs a hold of us by fear. And He tempts us to fear, and to doubt, so He can back us into a corner and then we become… basically worthless, because once you’ve allowed fear to grab hold, He’ll… He uses that to make us paralyzed in terror if it goes on long enough. And then some people can go into hyper-vigilance and get so bad. So, it’s very important to deal with fear right up front. And we see a lot of wives, in particular, dealing with fear, when they go through… what happens with their husband, who is involved with sexual sin, it’s very traumatic for the wife and they end up, a lot of them end up struggling with fear. And so it’s very important to know how, what do we do when we get attacked with this stuff? How do we differentiate between our own flesh, and our body chemistry, our brain chemistry, and the attacks of the Enemy? What what do we do with all that?
So that’s… that’s where I’m going today. And so, the first step with any Christian, with any situation, is: you cannot be isolated. And most Christians in America and in other countries are isolated. How do I define that? When I get up and speak, I’ll ask audiences to raise their hand if they meet with another brother or sister for the purpose of accountability and support and prayer once a week. Usually 15% of those hands go up. So there are a lot of people, and this is a big reason why the American Church is so weak and fragmented right now, because we’re all isolated and fighting this game alone. That’s not the way it was meant to be. There are no isolated believers in God’s economy.
So those of you who are listening, I would ask you the same question: Are you meeting with another believer once a week for the purpose of support, prayer, and encouragement? And Proverbs 18:1 says,
“A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire; he rages against all wise judgment.”
Rages against all wise judgment. So you’re actually, going hard against what God said is the wise way to live life. And, unfortunately, our churches have us conditioned and trained us with their performance-driven services to be isolated. To be isolated believers. So what do they do? Many services once, you know, about when they’re switching off between the worship band and the pastor, they’ll say, “Hey, greet the person standing next to you.” And then we put on that fake Sunday smile and, “Hi. How are you?” And the other person looks, “Oh, I’m doing fine. How are you?” And then we nod and then we go on and… and it’s just faking it. So that’s not a church devoted to fellowship.
So it’s critical that each and every one of us is a part of a tribe of believers. Or like Jesus did, he had a… he had his inner circle of James, John, and Peter, who he took with him on some of his most intense battles. And that’s what we need. Every one of you has to be a part of a tribe and you have to have your inner circle. Even if that’s only an inner circle of one, that is enough. You cannot fight this battle in isolation. You will get slapped, and smacked, and beat up, and… and we need another brother or sister who will tell us, “Hey, this is not the good way to go,” or “Hey, man, you’re having a really rough day. I’m gonna pray for you,” or “Hey, no, this is… your perception of this is not right.” This is critical. And James 5:16 says,
“Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.”
Sins. Plural. Meaning this is an ongoing deal. This isn’t just a once a… one, you know… once a [bleh] once a week thing, or I should say a once a year thing, where we barely do it, and a lot of believers don’t do it at all.
And I can tell you that a lot of people who have come to us for help, they’re sharing their story with us for the very first time. And I almost feel like I’ve just become their best friend [chuckles] somebody they can trust. Not, you know, not that that’s, you know, what I’m trying to do, but… a lot of people are just starved and thirsty for somebody safe to talk to. And there’s a lot of people in our churches today that are starved and thirsty for somebody safe to talk to. And we’re so… there’s one article I saw not long ago, “The Epidemic of Loneliness”. And that epidemic is alive and well in the church today. So you gotta be, you can’t be wound up in isolation. You have to be meeting with other believers.
So now I’m gonna get into: what do we do with the war in the mind? So let’s say you’re, you’re in the grocery store and you noticed–and you’re a guy–and you noticed… a young woman approaching you, and she’s wearing… there’s a lot of skin showing there, or it could be vice versa. I mean, women struggle with lust, too. This is not a man’s issue by any means. And to start off with that, I love going to Italy. We usually go about once a year, once every two years, for ministry purposes, and their coffee there is amazing. It is, I would say, the best in the world that I’ve tasted. Vienna, Austria is maybe the second best. And it’s smooth. And when I first went to… about 2016, I went and they served lunch and then they served an espresso shot to me straight. You know, no milk, no nothing. And I looked at it and I’m thinking, you know, American coffee or Starbucks. I’m like, “Oh, man. This is gonna be bitter.” And I drink it. I was like, “Wow! [chuckles] This is good! This is smooth. There’s no bitterness to it.” There’s there’s… I don’t know the acidity level or… whatever they do, it’s just amazing. And then, they’re… they don’t have sugary drinks. They don’t have the big whopping venti or grandes like we do in the States or even talls, you know, like Starbucks have. They just have small coffee drinks. But, oh, man, it is so good. And a lot of the stuff we have for coffee here in the US is basically milk drinks that are flavored with coffee, with tons of sugar, depending who’s ordering. And so… and then some of their coffee drinks are just amazing, and they have drinks over there that we… don’t have here. And they call American coffee “dirty water”, which I agree with. It’s… it’s just [chuckles] bitter in comparison.
And so now that I’ve talked about coffee for the last minute or two, I want you to stop thinking about coffee. And what some of you just did is as soon as I said, “Stop thinking about coffee,” the thoughts of coffee sprang forth like weeds in your mind. And you weren’t even… and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s the way our brain works when we try and tamp down the thoughts on our own. I call that “fighting our flesh with our flesh”. It never works. So if you try and suppress the thoughts, it’s gonna spring them forth tenfold. So fighting the thoughts, or suppressing the thoughts, or attempting to do that… and that’s how OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, can develop over time, because that’s basically fear run amok. OCD is fear run amok. And we keep trying to stop a thought or shut it down or suppress it, and it keeps coming and then we keep recycle, recycle, stop it, think it, stop it, think it, then we, you know, it can drive us nuts.
So the way to approach this is what I call “turn and connect”. So if I’m in the grocery store, say, and a beautiful woman’s coming up to me, I’ll just… in my heart, I’ll look to God and say, “Lord, I… she’s coming,” and I might even say something honest like, “You know, my flesh would really like to look at her right now. But, Lord, you are my source of life. Fill me with your Holy Spirit right now. Fill me with you.” I haven’t tried to suppress the thoughts. I haven’t tried to fight them. I’ve just gone to God and just in doing that, it cuts the temptation down to size.
Or I can just be at home, and not doing anything, and then some thoughts maybe of some old girlfriends from years ago could flutter through my mind. And I don’t… again, I don’t try to shut them down. I don’t try to depress them, suppress them. I turn and connect. I turn to the Lord and say, “Lord, here I am. I want you. Fill me with your Holy Spirit of power, love, and sound mind.” And in doing that, the battle gets cut down to size quickly. Because now I’m focusing on Jesus, and sometimes I’ll focus on him in Heaven in the throne room of grace. And in doing that, it… there’s power in your mind and your imagination. When you light your mind up with an image of Heaven or the Lord, that… that just dissolves the whole fight right then and there, and it brings the Holy Spirit in, and that’s what you want. You don’t wanna be trying to fight this on your own.
And so that that works many times with the flesh and… but there’s times when lust thoughts might keep piling on, and coming, and coming, and coming. And sometimes it’s not the flesh… sometimes it’s our spiritual Enemy. And He… it’s a full-blown attack. And in that case, you have to discern on what’s going on, and you can ask the Lord, “Lord, what is this?” And usually with an attack it has a dark edge to it. You can, in your spirit, you can sense that this is, there’s some evil and wickedness here that’s at a different level than if it’s just one of my flesh thoughts. And then you have to shut it down and take up your authority in Christ.
So go read Ephesians 2. You have been seated with Christ in the heavenly places. You have the authority to tell Him, “No. Leave. Stop.” So for me, I might sometimes say something like, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command any evil spirits coming against me to stop your works right now and leave.” Or I, you know, I could just make it simple. “In the name of Jesus, leave.” Or sometimes I might pray something like, “In the name of Jesus, I cancel all assignments of the Enemy against me.” It depends on what’s going on.
So you have the power and you have the authority to shut down the work of the Enemy when He comes against you. And some battles, I’d say a lot of them, with “turn and connect” or taking up our authority in Christ, usually between those two, they can reduce them or limit… shut it down pretty quickly. But you need to know that there are gonna be some battles that go a lot longer than a few minutes. And I’ve experienced plenty of those where [chuckles] I get woken up at the three in the morning, and three in the morning is the “witching hour”, and then you’re wrestling and you’re praying and, and you’re wrestling and you’re praying, or sometimes it can be on again, off again, over a couple days, which I’ve just experienced recently. Or sometimes when it’s time to come to the radio station here, I can be going through it for several hours leading up to the moment I walk in the door. [chuckles] Because, you know, the Enemy doesn’t want us talking about this stuff and equipping people on how to overcome lust. He’s quite happy if we just keep our church services nice, and comfortable, and easy, and, you know, our little verse-by-verse teaching, and… not that there’s anything wrong with that, but if you’re gonna equip people to be warriors, you have to you have to give them the whole counsel of God. A verse-by-verse sermon is not enough. You have to be able to walk them through and understand the spiritual battle, and where all that comes in in scripture, and give them the whole picture.
So the next part of overcoming temptation is you got… there’s times when you gotta cut it off. In Matthew 5, I’ll read:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into Hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into Hell.”
And this verse is written for, to everyone. This is a severe warning to everyone not to play games with sin. And as you might remember, some of you, we’ve been looking for a church the last couple years here locally and the phrases “sin” and “hell”, we don’t hear much in church. And this is not just here in Arizona, I’m talking about where I came from, too. You know, why is it we breeze past the warnings in scripture, especially about those that have to do with Hell? That’s… as soon as we die, there’s only one of two places we’re gonna end up in. And the scary–and sometimes terrifying–thing for me is we’re not warning our people.
I remember that.. I forget his name now, my mind just blanked. He’s the pastor on the East Coast, he said, “we’re loving people into Hell.” And, yeah, the love of God radically changed my life, but I need both. I need grace and I need truth. I need to know also that I cannot mess around with sin. That’s called the fear of the Lord.
And so there was a guy I met with for several years for lunch, about every week, and he kept coming to me week after week saying, “Well, I looked at porn on my phone,”” and “Hey, Bill, you need to put an app on your phone,” or “Hey, Bill, you need to get a dumb phone,” or “Hey, Bill, you need to do something.” And then he gave me the classic Christian cop-out, “Well, I’ll pray about it.” You know, that [chuckles] we Christians have our cop-outs, and the “I’ll pray about it,” is one of them. And there’s nothing to pray about with some issues. There’s some issues when God says, “Cut it off.” Man, we gotta cut it off. And we can’t screw around. So we need these warnings. We need to hear this stuff from the pulpit. We need to hear about Hell. And we need to be reminded of that at some point. And so… and today, in our comfy Christian churches that many are performance-driven, we need to hear it a lot more. And when you see the fruit of this, from people who are walking away from church because they’re just not being challenged or equipped.
And so, if porn on your phone is a problem, you’re gonna have to do something. And it, some people, it’s like they’re waiting for God to drop a thunderbolt on them. [chuckles] “Oh, God, take this away from me!” When he’s, he looks us in the face and says, “I want you to take responsibility and ownership of the things that are under your control.” So if you’ve got a phone and you’re constantly looking at porn app porn on it, then get an app. And I’m in favor of one of those apps that sends out an accountability report. To me, that’s far more effective than a porn blocker. Because a porn blocker, for most men, if we’re honest, is like a challenge. “I wanna see if I can get around it.” And I have never heard of a guy once that couldn’t get around the porn blocking feature when he wanted to.
And, all you got to, I mean… you go to the news websites and there’s sexually-charged images on there. It’s really not hard. And I’m not trying to give you tips, but… sexually-charged content is everywhere. But when I have on my phone a feature where it records every single website I visit and those reports go to my wife and my buddy, which does… that’s my way. I have that on my phone and every week my wife, and my accountability partner, he gets the reports. So, this is for me, and for everyone. And so I’d have to do a walk of shame if [chuckles] I did something stupid like that. And so you gotta take action. You can’t just… play games with this and keep falling, and falling, and falling, and playing games with it, and justifying it.
And then, sometimes, we’ve got to run. So second Timothy, 2:22 says: “Flee youthful lusts.” Around the corner from the radio station is a Dunkin Donuts and not far away from that, I think in the same shopping center is a gym. And there were… I used to come, go to Dunkin’ and grab me a coffee on the way, but, what was happening was there were women walking in with very thin, sheer… garments–for exercise–and so I get that. But, you know, yoga pant, exercise dresses, you know, dress, and tops that didn’t leave much to the imagination. And so I, I don’t need that. [chuckles] So I haven’t been to Dunkin’ Donuts around the corner in a long time. And I don’t mean I might not go someday and grab a coffee, but… you know, when I’m coming in here to talk about these things, I just don’t need that hassle. And so, sometimes you just gotta stay away from people or situations that are gonna take you down. And again: We. Are. Responsible.
Talk a few minutes about social media. So when social media… when you’re constantly flipping down your news feed, that mimics the effects of when we’re looking for pornography. So when a guy is looking for porn, he’s usually going from picture, to site, to picture, to whatever, to try and find the ultimate hit. So what he does is, he… this is a part of the brain chemistry and what it does. So guys who are masturbating and looking at porn, it depletes their dopamine–that’s the neurotransmitter in the pleasure center in the brain. And so that gets depleted, and then depression and anxiety can be a problem, and then we can obsessively start looking for porn. And it’s the same thing with social media, where you don’t even realize it when you’re hooked on it. And you’re clicking, and you’re clicking, and you’re looking, and you’re looking. So you want to minimize your time on social media and on the Internet. Me, personally, I’ve been turning my phone off for most of the weekends. I don’t check email during the weekends, for the most part. I stay away from the computer. I stay off social media. I don’t do posts, if I can avoid it, during the weekend, to give my mind a rest from all that stuff. And I also stay away from the news, too, because too much of that stuff is just toxic, especially today.
And then, prayer. Prayer is big. You wanna have a powerful prayer life. By that, I don’t mean two minutes and, “Hup! I’m off to work.” I mean spending a good forty-five minutes to an hour a day with the Lord. And you don’t gotta you don’t have to do it all in one shot. You can do it in in multiple sittings. But you wanna have an effective, powerful prayer life where you’re constantly going hard after God. We’re supposed to be committed to prayer. That’s not just something we study, that’s supposed to be our way of life, is to be a prayer warrior. The early church, they were constantly meeting for prayer meetings, and you wanna be a part of prayer meetings with other believers. And your church does have prayer meetings, right? At least I hope so. Although I can tell you from looking for a church that many of them don’t.
So, people, fire up your prayer life, fire up the prayer meetings, and let’s go to war and make our lives count for eternity.
ANNOUNCER:
Blazing Grace is a nonprofit international ministry for the sexually broken and the spouse. Please visit us at blazinggrace.org for information on Mike Genung’s books, groups, counseling, or to have Mike speak at your organization. You can e-mail us at email@blazinggrace.org or call our office in Chandler, AZ at 719-888-5144. Again, visit us at blazinggrace.org, e-mail us at email@blazinggrace.org, or call the office at 719-888-5144.