A Hope That Does Not Disappoint: Making The Transition From Works To Faith

Checklist 

Tell me if this situation sounds familiar to you. You receive a promise from God, and you know with every fiber in your being that this promise is especially for you. To make sure that the promise will come to pass you begin to do the things that are required to see the promise come to fruition. 

1. Prayer
2. Fasting
3. Removing sin and living holy
4. Wait for the promise to come

But instead of the promise appearing, trouble comes instead so the list gets longer

1. Prayer
2. Fasting
3. Removing sin and living holy
4. Asking for others to pray and fast
5. Wait for the promise to come

Now surely the promise will make its appearance right. But no, frustration and doubt have stepped into the process instead. This causes the list for the promised manifestation to get longer still.

1. Prayer
2. Fasting
3. Removing sin and living holy
4. Frustration
5. Doubt
6. Repent for doubting
7. Wait for the promise to come

What if I told you that God's checklist may look a lot different from ours? What if the things required for the promise to appear in our lives requires an unexpected journey instead

1. Tribulation
2. Perseverance
3. Character
4. Hope
5. Faith 
6. Love
7. Promise

The Wait 

The apostle Paul in writing to the church in Rome used Abraham as an example of waiting on God for what appeared to be an impossible promise. Twenty-four years had passed from the time God first mentioned to Abraham that he would be a father (Genesis 12). By the time Genesis 17 comes around Abraham is 99 and Sarah is 90, physically there is no way that a child can come forth at this point. Just like them, in our lives, there have been promises that seemed absolutely impossible to come to pass from a natural standpoint. But what God asks of us is to believe in Him instead of ourselves. First God would change Abram's name to Abraham to reflect the promise of the father of many nations. Sarai's name would also be changed to Sarah the mother of many nations (Genesis 17). At this point, Abraham and Sarah had already gone through their promise checklist. Just like us, out of frustration of waiting on God to fulfill His promise, they decided to try and make things happen themselves by their own works. 

 Yes, it is good to pray and do all those things. But don't put your hope in the doing of the checklist to make the promise appear. The timing of all things is in God's hands, our part is to put our trust (faith) that what He promised, He is able to perform. So whether that be a promise of marriage, healing, a child or etc. God does not disappoint! "Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured, out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us (Romans 5:5).

God versus You 

When did Abraham finally become the father of many nations? Was it when Isaac was born or when he believed? Well, the word says this:

"I have made you a father of many nations, in the presence of Him whom he believed-God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist a though they did; who contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken. "So shall your descendants be". And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb. He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised  He was also able to perform (Romans 4:17-21)."

Who is able to make the promise come to pass, God or you? Your faith, your hope, your promise is all centered and founded on the belief that God is. Because God is good, because God loves you, because God is faithful to keep His word your promise will be fulfilled. Continue to pray and fast and seek God's face, but always remember that the promise is based on God's ability to perform not yours. "But without faith, it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him (Hebrews 11:6)."

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Is Masturbation A Sin? My Testimony on Freedom From Lust and Pornography

The Path To Masturbation and Pornography

This post is a little bit of a confessional for me and ripping away of the veil of pretenses. I have struggled with lust for most of my life. It was always my secret sin because as a girl growing up in a very strict Christian home lust was one of the worst sins I could possibly commit. I can’t tell you the number of times it was drilled into me at home and at church that I was to remain chaste, pure and a virgin until my wedding day. The only instruction that I was given was to keep my legs closed and I won’t bring dishonor to my God, family, and myself. This advice was extremely frustrating because although I and countless other girls were given the advice to keep our legs closed. The same due diligence didn’t appear to be given to the guys. There was this silent acknowledgment that boys will try and seduce me because at the end of the day boys will be boys. The problem is that this left me to be the sole gatekeeper to my chastity and didn’t address the issue of girls want sex too.

My experience growing up was something akin to living a double life. I had a heart for God and was very active in the church. I delighted in reading my Bible and learning about God and His ways. But on the other hand, I struggled at night alone in my bed with intense urges to masturbate. For the most part, I was able to keep the unexplained urges away until one night while watching tv in my bedroom I stumbled onto Cinemax at night. As I stared at the images on the screen I felt my conscience tell me to turn it off, that what I was watching was wrong. But at that moment something stronger than my conscience overruled it, and my body began to respond to what I was watching on the screen. That night led me down the path of being in bondage to pornography and lust.

Lambs to the Slaughter

I believe one of the biggest reasons why the instruction to just keep your legs closed fails to work time and time again, is because we live in a society that worships Love and Sex. In ancient times it was really easy to see what gods and goddesses reigned supreme in a society. Temples to goddesses of sex and pleasure were easy to find in times past. Although those societies have come and gone the spirits behind the deities still exist in our day. In today’s society, the worship of love and sex is saturated in our culture. Especially in American culture, the worship of love and sex is written about in our books, movies, songs, and fashion. In fact, it is not unusual for companies to advertise using a sexy model or actress because sex sells. The society we live in idolizes sex and as a result the spirits of lust and pornography reign virtually unchecked.

This is why giving a young girl or boy advice to just keep it in your pants or keep your legs closed never worked. Because even if on the outside a young person can refrain from sin, once you are behind closed doors like I was, the pull to masturbate (self-love) was always there. I was given physical natural advice to tackle a spiritual problem. Thus I never was told how to deal with this spiritual reality that was all around me. The more I watched porn and masturbated the more guilty and bound to sin I became.

Christian Watching Porn

I want to take a moment to talk about the corrupt nature of pornography in very real terms. When I first got hooked into pornography it was similar to the story of what you would hear a drug addict say about drug addiction. In my experience the initial climaxes I experienced when I was first watching porn were mind-blowing. But as time went on the intensity of the climaxes grew less and less. Which led me on a search for more intense pornography to get the same level of climax that I experienced in the beginning. This resulted in hours of watching pornography late at night and just like most drugs I couldn’t go to sleep at night until I masturbated. As I opened myself up to spiritual darkness each day, it led me down a path where masturbation wasn’t enough. I had to experience sexual interaction with another person. This led to phone sex on late night chat lines with complete strangers. The end result led me to want to meet and fulfill my sexual fantasies with another person.

During my descent into darkness, God never stopped reaching out to me to repent. I was still “saved” but my sin was separating me from the God I served. As time went on the thoughts and intents of my heart were on sex all the time. The irony of all this is that sex is a sacred act given to man by God himself. It is meant to be enjoyed wholeheartedly in the confines of marriage. What I found was that the reality of having sex never lived up to the fantasies I had in my head. I was never satisfied with my sexual encounters. It was by the grace of God that I didn’t get pregnant or catch a sexually transmitted disease. There was a part of me that was still terrified of being labeled a Ho, so I never racked up a high body count per se. However, the spiritual darkness grew within me every time I acted out on my lust.

Lust and Marriage

When I got married, I stopped watching pornography. I had reconnected with God enough that I no longer watched porn on a daily basis. But the part of me that was supposed to enjoy sex was broken. I still masturbated when my husband wasn’t around out of habit and as a way to relieve stress. I couldn’t connect with my husband the way I was supposed to. In many ways, my ex-husband suffered from the same fate as me. The culture we live in today glorifies sex. So now there are two broken people in a marriage that don’t know how to be one flesh the way God had originally designed it. Because I never was completely delivered from the bondage of lust, thoughts of prior encounters or porn I had watched before would pop up during intimate times with my husband. Instead of truly connecting, my mind would wander to what stimulated me before, which ended up cheating both me and my husband of God’s gift. Fast forward almost ten years and my marriage ended because of infidelity and other issues. I was left broken and devastated and in this state, I attempted to reenter the dating scene after twelve years off of it.





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