W hy is it that so many men struggle with sexual temptation, even in the church? What can we do in helping others and ourselves in this struggle over sexual temptation?
There are many ways that we can resist temptation, particularly sexual temptation. I know of a man who when he watches TV he automatically turns the channel when something sexually suggestive comes on.
He stops it at the source. This must mean that he changes the channel frequently because so much of what you see on television is steeped in sexually suggestive images. Sex sells because it stimulates the mind and it also fixes the viewer on the commercial.
Job made a covenant with his eyes…the moment that he saw a virgin or woman who tempted him, he covenanted with himself to immediately look away. Sin in the heart is just as bad as sin that one commits in a physical way. For example, the Tenth Commandment which forbids us to covet is the only sin that cannot be seen.
It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. What Jesus was saying was to take the most extreme measures possible to prevent falling into sin. To have an accountability partner you can trust is a great way to make yourself be held responsible for your actions.
Is having the Internet or having an unprotected browser worth the risk of being addicted to pornography? Remember that Jesus said that we can even lust and commit adultery in our heart Matt There are some important points here that we can apply to avoiding sin.
Men are hardwired differently than women. Generally speaking, women are more stimulated by words than by images. I am not saying that men are that much more susceptible to sexual temptation than women are but men are more easily driven by visual images and these images can more easily produce lust. This might explain why, traditionally, more men cheat on their wives that women do their husbands and also why more men have addictions to pornography than women do…although that gap is closing fast.
One way to overcome sexual temptation is to stay in the Word of God on a daily basis. Goode lived in Fairfax, Va. Goode, who was called Si and whose last name rhymes with food, was best known for his cross-cultural analysis of marriage and divorce and the consequences of divorce for women.
His work also covered basic issues in sociological theory focusing on social control systems of prestige, force and force threat, and love. Goode wrote 20 books and was best known for his pioneering work World Revolution and Family Patterns.
The book, which included data from more than 50 countries over a half-century period, analyzed the impact of families on societies. Thirty years later, Goode published a cultural analysis of divorce, World Changes in Divorce Patterns , which laid out the conceptual basis for analyzing and predicting patterns of divorce. It revealed anomalous patterns in some societies, said his wife, Lenore J. Weitzman, the Clarence J. Goode Award, a prize for the best book on family sociology that was first established in Goode's honor in According to Inkeles, Goode also took a keen interest in general sociological theory, on the development of which he wrote several insightful essays.
The fact that men are legendarily wary of marriage is stranger than it first appears. Both men and women benefit from marriage, but men seem to benefit more overall. In addition to being happier and healthier than bachelors, married men earn more money and live longer. And men can reap such benefits even from mediocre marriages, while for women, the benefits of marriage are more strongly linked to marital quality.
Logically, then, men should be the ones pursuing marriage: they seem to view it as desirable, and they are more likely than women to gain major benefits from it. So why would men hesitate to tie the knot? Three sources lend support to this theory: 1 qualitative, focus group research by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe presented in ; 2 the findings and conclusions of sociologist Steve Nock; and 3 the work of my colleagues and me on sacrifice and commitment.
Young men associate marriage with increased responsibilities and with a greater possibility of financial loss. The two drew on discussions they conducted with sixty never-married, heterosexual men, who came from a variety of religious, ethnic, and family backgrounds and ranged in age from 25 to These men reported that the main reason they resist marriage is that they can enjoy many of its benefits without actually getting married—that is, through cohabitation.
Further, they reported experiencing almost no social pressures to marry; not from family, not from friends, and not from the families of the women they live with. They associated marriage with a number of increased responsibilities and with a greater possibility of financial loss.
I cannot imagine that such beliefs are any less prevalent now. On a lighter note, men said that one benefit of not marrying was that, if they were to marry, their girlfriend-now-wife would tell them what to do. This could be evidence of an inner view that, after marriage—but not before—their partners have the right to tell them what to do.
Second, according to the work of sociologist Steve Nock, marriage changes men in fundamental ways. These changes in identity are associated with behavioral changes.
Causality can be argued, but research strategies designed to account for selection effects suggest that on at least some of these measures, marriage does have a causal impact. The data are more scarce on how women change when they get married; however, there seems to be less reason to believe that women have a similar sense that they or their responsibilities will change dramatically when they get married.
You can call them addictions or disordered attachments, but this same basic thread runs through them all. Idols promise instant relief from pain or give us some measure of control.
The idea of letting them go and trusting God evokes agitation and anxiety. We resist and want to hang on to them. Walking with God is not a formula or an agenda item. Intimacy with Him means choosing to walk into the unknown. It means choosing to surrender everything.
It's always all or nothing and always into the uncharted. So when God summons us to walk with Him, we respond with fear.
We feel threatened. What might He ask us to do?
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