Every Young Man's Battle: Stategies for Victory in the Real World of Sexual Temptation: The Every Man Series by Stephen Arterburn Read Free Book Online

his
    office. “See that chair over there?” he asked. “That’s
    my counseling chair. Do you know what complaint I hear most often from married
    men?”
    “No, what is it?”
    “‘I’m just not getting any sex anymore.’ It’s
    overwhelming!”
    Marriage won’t free you from the coal mine.
    If you’ve been impure before your wedding day, you can expect it to crop
    up after the honeymoon. If you’re single and watching sensual R-rated
    movies, wedded bliss won’t change this habit. If your eyes lock on
    passing babes, they’ll still roam after you say “I do.” If
    you’re masturbating like gangbusters now, you’ll find that putting
    that ring on your finger won’t keep your hands off yourself.
    You
    see,
before
your marriage, Satan does everything he can to
get
you to have sex with your girlfriend;
after
marriage, he
    does everything he can to
keep
you from having sex with your
    wife.
    Do we need to repeat this point? If so, please read the above
    paragraph again.
    And so, in spite of marriage, don’t be surprised
    when your sexual sins keep spilling over everywhere just like they did when you
    were single. Joe told us he loves women’s beach volleyball:
    At
    night, I’ve had shockingly vivid dreams with these women. Some have been
    so exhilarating and so real that I wake up the next morning certain that
    I’ve been in bed with them. Heavy with guilt, I wonder where my wife is,
    sure she has left me over this affair and wondering how I could have done such
    a thing. Finally, as the cobwebs clear, it slowly dawns on me that it was just
    a dream. But even then I feel uneasy. You want to know why? Because while I
    know it was just a dream, I’m not at all certain it wasn’t some
    form of adultery.
    John wakes up early to watch those morning exercise
    shows, though he doesn’t care much about fitness:
    The truth is,
    I feel absolutely compelled to watch, to catch the closeups of the buttocks,
    breasts, especially the inner thighs. And I drool. I sometimes wonder if the
    producers doing those closeups are just trying to hook men into watching their
    shows. Every day I tell myself that this will be the last time. But by next
    morning, I’m right there at the TV again.
    Gary is a church music
    director. He’s married and has a three-year-old girl, and he and his wife
    are expecting another child. He teaches marriage classes and leads the youth
    choir. “I have a great job,” he says, “and a great life at my
    church. My wife says everyone puts me on a pedestal because of my dedication to
    the choirs and my hard work.” All is well, right? He’s escaped,
    right? Listen to what Gary had to say:
    All this, and you would think
    I’d be at least spiritually happy, but I’m not. I feel so unworthy,
    undeserving, and ashamed. I know in my heart that something is not right. I,
    too, look at those bra and lingerie ads in the newspaper as if they were placed
    there solely for my pleasure. I surf channels on the TV and stop and linger on
    the sexy shows. I pray and pray that God could take this from me, but yet I
    struggle to say no.
Baywatch,
swimsuit issues, secretaries wearing
    tight sweaters…it doesn’t matter.
    I know what
    you’re thinking.
These guys are perverts and weirdos!
But these
    men are not weirdos; they’re your next-door neighbors, your
    friend’s father—maybe even your father. They’re Sunday school
    teachers, ushers, and deacons. Even pastors.
    They are today what you
    will become tomorrow. Today, you’re making the same decisions they once
    made as teens. They’re saying, “Don’t do what we
    did!”
    Your sexual decisions now
will
carry over into
    adulthood. The biggest blunder you can make as a young man is to believe that
    you’re different from other guys and somehow stronger. You may think,
I’ll never do what these guys are doing.
All we know is that
    there are countless married men with lovely wives sleeping in sexy negligees in
    their bedrooms while they masturbate