Why I 'need' a woman.

I was walking on Cal State's campus today feeling like a curious love child of a bobble head and a whip lash victim. My neck is frustratingly set on a swivel that is connected to some sort of woman-sensing radar. My eyes scan and my neck jerks to a target. It's a habit years in the making that has proven incredibly difficult to deal with. I find that I do this even when I really don't want to. It is ingrained in me. My behavior is second nature, as if programmed. Pertaining to this habit, a particularly distressing aspect of my character was revealed to me today.

I will often look at a woman's eyes as she walks towards me. I often have sunglasses on so she can't tell. I realize this makes me sound like a creeper but bear with me (we are all of us creepers). This touches on a deep seated need of acceptance for me. It hit me that if I catch a woman glancing my way then she is approving of me. In other words, there is something about me that is worthy of her attention. Yet if everything happens as I desire it to, I find that it never leaves me feeling accepted for more than a few moments and simply gives me a short lived burst of pride and egotism. My pride proclaims me King of the Hill when reality has set my foot on a grain of sand.

What a valuable lesson this was for me though! I do have a need for acceptance. We all do. Everyone proclaims the virtue of selfless love and acceptance of others' faults. But this only reveals how terrible we are at filling that need for one another. I'm looking to steal a passing glance when Jesus gave me His everlasting attention on the cross! He limped to His death for me so I could stride into His glorious life! God was saying to me in three different ways that He has set the fullness of His gaze upon me with mercy and acceptance:

First truth: God has said to me, "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you." (Psalm 32:8)

Second truth: Wisdom cries out that, "The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their cry." (Psalm 34:15)

Third truth: The Spirit speaks to our hearts and says, "The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace."(Numbers 6:24-26)

I need to hear those truths that God will teach me, bear with me and bless me because I am a weak willed, fragile and small creature. You need to know that God will be with you too. In the hands of our Redeemer, nothing is wasted.

Kama Sutra...for children!

I remember when I was a young kid and I saw my first Playboy magazine. I was at the airport with my family. I had heard of the magazine and, of course, the pictures on the monthly covers were always provocative. I stole guilty glances whenever they came into view. This was before stores thought to put the black covers in front of the magazines and before they put all the magazines in sealed plastic sleeves. I waited for my parents and twin sister to leave the store and said I would be right with them. When they were just out of sight, I grabbed the Playboy and flipped through the pages as fast as possible. My only thought was, "How are her nipples so pink?!?" I am not happy to have that memory etched in my brain, though it is not nearly so bad as much of the sludge I desensitized it with later in life when I became addicted to pornography.

All of this flashed through my mind today while I was at Barnes & Noble. I've spent the better part of 17 years battling the images I have sealed in my mind. I was looking at board games when I took a casual glance to my side and saw the "adult" section. There were incredibly lustful pictures of outwardly gorgeous women on the covers that staggered me in my steps. One of the books in particular was about 4 feet off the ground and stuck out into the aisle. On its cover were a completely nude woman and man engaged in a sexual acts (Kama Sutra) and my only thought was of myself when I was a kid and how such images hijacked my brain for the better part of half my life.

I approached one of the store clerks and asked if he could find a more "proper" place to position the book. All he said to me was, "Yeah, we tried to move those books as far away from the kid's section as possible but YOU can put it on its side since it's bothering you." Goodness, in my flesh I would have rather bought the book instead of bringing it up to him! Still, I found it annoying that he turned the situation around on me as if I was the problem. His eyes seemed to scream out accusingly, "Of course it's completely natural to put sexual books at eyesight near the board games where kids, before their time, will seek to know just what the hell they're looking at!"

Many people like this man have decided that it is perfectly acceptable for kids to get an "education" in sexuality. I am here to emphatically say that it wrecked my sexuality and view of women and I have only just begun to recover. I wish I had never been given the opportunity as a child to sexualize women and see them as objects of my pleasure. I'm still not even sure I know what it means to be attracted to a woman apart from her looks. I've never been in love and I'm afraid of intimacy. I've cheapened sex as if it's only something that I can get as opposed to what I can give and I'm so sad and weary in my heart because of it. It's sickening.

But God, who is rich in mercy, has renewed me by the washing of His Holy Spirit. He has given me new eyes to look on women as creatures who are deeply loved in spite of their flaws. He has greatly healed my heart after I went hiding from love through deeply perverted actions and thoughts related to voyeurism, exhibitionism, homosexuality and pornography. I can't wait to get married someday and experience sex as God planned for me to: In a safe, caring and committed relationship with the love of my life. I deeply desire the opportunity to raise our kids and provide for them a spiritual shelter where they can take refuge in Jesus from the evils of this world. One of my most joyful thoughts is of my children loving Christ as their Savior.

So I am pleased to say that God has brought my experience full circle, from a lonely and wounded child furtively looking at a Playboy, to a sex addict, to a recovered addict and excited potential father. By God's grace, my struggle will not be that of my children. In spite of my sin, God has redeemed me and can do the same for you.

Promises are made to be broken?

"Promise Maker, Promise Keeper; you finish what you begin!" That's how a song by Kristian Stanfill called "Lord our God" starts. It helped direct me to a better answer to a question I had posited to some friends of mine a few nights ago. We were talking about the normal dialogue that arises almost every time we meet a new person and how we first almost always ask (or are asked) something along the lines of, "So, what do you do?"

In the sense that this question is inquisitive of a person's job I find it to be deeply troubling because we tend to equate it in some degree to the value of the person being asked. A person's worth does not come from the worldly position they hold! God is not partial that He would value an engineer over a janitor. However, if by asking what a person does we are speaking of the promises they make and keep we come much closer to finding out who they are. Indeed, I suggested that a good question to ask a person upon first meeting them would be, "Who are you?" So think about that. Who would you say you are?



A good defining answer (at least for the Christian) could be "a son/daughter of God" or "a new creation in Christ." Still, this answer is a bit ambiguous unless it reveals the character of the God that fathered and created us. God's character is revealed through promise keeping and promise making. I am reminded of Sanctus Real's song called 'Promises' in which we are admonished to "Just hold on to the promises [of God]" because "neither life, nor death could separate us from the eternal love of our God who made us!"

God's word is not weak that He would break it. As Numbers 23:19 proclaims:

God is not man, that he should lie,
    or a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Has he said, and will he not do it?
    Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?

God's word is His bond. So what does He promise to those who love Him? He promises to provide for our every need (Phil. 4:19); that His grace is sufficient for our salvation (2 Cor. 12:9); that He will never leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5); that all things work for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28). He also promises judgment for all who should deny Him (Numbers 14:22-23).


When He makes a promise, He binds Himself to the premise that nothing is more important than His word. Not even His life. The cross is our evidence that God does not simply make promises to us, but that He keeps them, though it cost Him all He has. How about you? Can you say with confidence who you are by the promises you make and keep?

Who is Satan?

Scripture speaks of how Satan hides his true identity from us. Think about that. Who would willingly follow Satan if they understood who he was? Does any person who believes himself good or has a desire to be so a professing follower of Satan? In Hebrew he is called Abaddon and in Greek he is named Apollyon, which mean destruction and destroyer respectively (Revelation 9:11). In Revelation 12:10 he is called the Accuser. He strives to present you in your sinful state before God so that you may be destroyed. In the same chapter he is called the deceiver of the whole world because he works to hide the glorious light of Jesus from the eyes of man. Here are some of his other names: The angel of the bottomless pit (Rev. 9), the beast (Rev. 14), the enemy (Matt. 13), the father of lies (John 8)... How can he get away with this? Why can't we perceive him as such? I believe the answer (and this is so important) is that he disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14) and, as humans, we tend to put our faith in things that are beautiful.

So after all these words, how does the world WANT to view Satan? We get an idea from the new Bible series which, though amazing in its own way, reveals Satan as some kind of love child between an 80 year old Obama and Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars. Check it out:



Do we honestly think a person this nasty looking would appeal to the masses? NO! Satan WANTS to be beautiful! He probably wants to be the most beautiful of all to behold. The queen in Snow White really nails this truth about Satan. She is beautiful in her allure and yet a picture of death. Like her apple. Like Satan's apple. This is because we desire to have that which is lovely. We largely perceive goodness to be synonymous with beauty. Meditate on this because now we get to see what the Bible says about Jesus.

Isaiah 51 states that:
...he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
    and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men;
    a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
    he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Compare that to his classic Renaissance depiction:



Their roles should be reversed. Satan should be beautiful and Jesus should not be.

Why in the world would God allow such a physical distinction to be drawn between His own Son (of perfect righteousness) and a wicked fallen angel? Well, God desires to show that His kingdom is not one of this world. God speaks this truth to His prophet Samuel when he is picking the second kind of Israel: “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature... For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” (1 Sam. 16:7)

On this Easter then, consider the works of Jesus and the works of His adversary, Satan. Consider the world of your own heart apart from every face you try to put up. How does it hold up to the works of the flesh and the spirit?

Galatians 5:16-24 states:
For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other... Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these... But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.