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 Page A

at the computer.
    What makes you so
    certain you won’t do the same?
    Growing older won’t free you
    from sexual impurity, and marriage won’t free you either. Sooner or
    later, you’ll have to commit to purity if you want a true relationship
    with Christ and with the women in your life. Why not now?
    Before we get
    into an action plan, we need to talk further about the roots of sexual bondage,
    which we’ll do in the next two chapters as we take up Fred’s story
    once again.
----

    PART II
how we got here
----
five 5
stopping
    short
    Let’s return to the rest of Fred’s story.
    A couple of years into my wonderful new life in Christ, I began
    experiencing something every Sunday morning during our church worship service.
    I’d look around and see other men with their eyes closed, freely and
    intensely worshiping the God of the universe. Myself? I sensed only a wall of
    separation between the Lord and me.
    I just wasn’t right with God.
    As a newer Christian, I couldn’t imagine what was happening. Everything
    had been going well, and I had changed so much.
Maybe it’s a
    temporary slump,
I reasoned.
After all, relationships ebb and
    flow.
But time passed, and nothing changed.
    The true reason for
    that distance slowly dawned on me: In spite of all that had changed, there was
    still a hint of sexual immorality in my life that surfaced each Sunday morning
    when I settled into my comfy La-Z-Boy and opened the Sunday morning newspaper.
    I would quickly find the department store inserts and begin paging through the
    colored newsprint filled with models posing in bras and panties.
    The
    models were always smiling. Always available.
    I loved lingering over
    each ad insert.
It’s wrong,
I admitted to myself,
but
it’s such a small thing, a far cry from porn.
So I
    continued peering through the pages, fantasizing. Occasionally, a model
    reminded me of a girl I once knew, and my mind rekindled the memories of our
    times together. I rather enjoyed my Sunday mornings with the newspaper.
    As I examined myself more closely, I found I had more than a hint of sexual
    immorality hiding out in my life. Even my sense of humor reflected it.
    Sometimes a person’s innocent phrase—even from our
    pastor—struck me with a double sexual meaning. I would chuckle, but I
    felt uneasy.
Why do these double meanings come to my mind so
    easily?
    I remembered that the Bible said such things
    shouldn’t even be mentioned among the saints. I was worse…I would
    even laugh at them! And my eyes? They were ravenous heat-seekers searching the
    horizon, locking on any target with sensual heat.
    Young mothers in
    shorts, leaning over to pull children out of car seats…
    Foxy
    babes wearing tank tops that revealed skimpy bras…
    Joggers in
    spandex, jiggling merrily down the sidewalks…
    Smiling
    secretaries with big busts and low-cut blouses…
W HAT H AD H APPENED TO M E ?
    I was left
    wondering, because I knew I’d started out so well. You see, I’d
    found a church home and began attending a wonderful marriage class taught by
    Joel Budd. Except for that embarrassing no-performance night with Janet that I
    mentioned in chapter 3, I didn’t date during that year under Joel’s
    teaching. I might have been the only man in history to attend a married
    couples’ class for a whole year without even having so much as a single
    date! But just before the twelve-month mark, I prayed this simple prayer:
Lord, I’ve been in this class for a year and have learned a lot about
    women, but I don’t know any Christian girls. Please show me a woman who
    embodies these godly characteristics.
    I wasn’t asking for a
    date, girlfriend, or spouse. I just wanted to meet someone with these godly
    characteristics so I might understand them better.
    God did far more
    than that. One week later, He introduced me to my future wife, Brenda, and we
    fell in love. Shortly after we began dating seriously, Brenda and I decided to
    stay pure before marriage, out of our