mail to a young man

Church is not supposed to be about people that don’t do this or don’t do that, people who make you feel as if you live on a different planet. Church is supposed to be a place where people can share where they have been and give advice that can help a person learn to avoid things that trip everybody up.

I have been where you have been. There is little on the internet I have not seen – perhaps I can warn you about the dangers of being there. Being there doesn’t make us make us any worse than other people. What you and I face daily, with the things people show us, and the magazines we see at every shop, are things that every man today faces.

Some things are not easy to deal with. Some things look nice from the outside, but once you’re in them, they suck you in deeper and deeper. All men are curious. You’d have to be blind not to see all the things the world wants to throw at you. People we know make us feel as if we are not normal if we don’t do what they do, and some things happen that we believe we have control over – that we could stop at any time we choose – but it doesn’t work that way.

What you’re facing now is a temptation, one of hundreds you will face in life. The difference about this temptation is that it will change your view on everything in life – you will train yourself to look at people as being things you can get something from, and things you can use, and everything you don’t like about yourself gets stronger. It makes you angry. As you go along what was a thrill last week becomes normal this week, and you get dragged further in. It doesn’t take long to own you, and it is very hard to get out of.

The Bible speaks of unclean spirits, and how they try to control your life. One of these spirits, the strongest, is the spirit of lust. If you carry on playing with the temptation, you train yourself to see only the things you have focused on, and you will find yourself attracted to other people who live their lives like this. The most horrible thoughts go through your head, and the language you use becomes worse and worse.

Spirits never come alone – once one spirit has a hold on you, you will find other spirits have a hold on you. Soon you can’t think of anything without anger (spirit of rage), and everything irritates you (impatience). The people you need most you push away. You can remember good times with people you love but you can’t get there anymore. In the Christian world they call these “footholds”, places where the spirits know you are weaker.

It depends on which spirit you listen to. Spirits suggest things: we all, everyone, listen to spirits. There are bad spirits and there is the Holy Spirit.

Listening to the spirits of the world will make you become like Galatians 5:19-21; you start off with quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, and hostility; but soon you find the rest come along too:

19 When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, 21 envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other things that drag you down like these.

Everything you find yourself doing makes you feel worse, but it’s as if it owns you; you believe you have to do these things. Whenever you say “No!” to temptation, it will just get twice as tempting, and you will give in sometime. Everyone would. The trick is finding something that can break that power.

The Bible teaches that the name “Jesus” has power. It has. When you are faced with something you are really pulled to, it helps to say the name Jesus. Sometimes over and over. Very often when we get there the last thing we want to say is “Jesus”, and so there’s another thing it helps to know: learn to control your thoughts. Paul teaches in the New Testament something that has helped me amazingly. He says that we should capture every thought and think about it before we just do it. Is it going to make me a better person or is it going to feed that angry thing that wants to own me?

Where you are at is a hard place to avoid. Everything screams it at you, but you will find that grabbing the thoughts is way easier than stopping the actions.

Thoughts themselves are not the problem – the problem comes in when you do what the thoughts tell you to do. Learning to stop each thought and think about what it will do to you, or lead you to, takes time, but is really worth it. If it is hard to say the name Jesus when we are already there at that place, it is wise to avoid getting to that place, and this is where stopping and checking out the thoughts really helps.

Learning is a process that can take you a long time. If you find it is harder than you can manage, you will find that God has the power to do what you cannot do. It isn’t easy asking God – not that God makes it hard, but the spirits don’t want you to.

What really helps me is asking the Holy Spirit each morning, before I hit the problems, to help me recognize the problem areas, and give me the strength to deal with them, then every night I tell Him what I know I did wrong, knowing that telling Him keeps me clean, and He teaches me to get it a little more right next time.

The Holy Spirit will make you become like Galatians 5:22

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control.

These are the things that will give you true friends, the people who love you for who you are, and not for what they can get out of you. I hope you choose wisely, and I know you will. It takes a while to beat it.

Just remember that “for men things can be appear impossible; but with God all things are possible!”

Dennis