ANTHEM: Strategies for Fighting Lust

Lust
A desire that we should not have because it is untethered from the purifying effects of Christ and is therefore directed to the wrong object or is so out of proportion or unsuited to its object as to disorder our thoughts or feelings or actions.

Christ centered, gospel rooted strategies for overcoming lust:
Avoid
No
Turn
Hold
Enjoy
Move

Avoid
2 Tim 2:19-22
But God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal, "The Lord knows those who are his," and "Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity."
Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.
So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

• What sort of situations have defiling effects on our desires?

Romans 13:12-14

The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on  the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh , to gratify its desires.

• Avoid the stimulus and associations that drag us towards lust. 

After Watching Porn - 001

We too often allow unattainable ideas to dictate what we allow ourselves to say.

God can and does act in that moment of regret.

It is often in the moment after the act that Satan spins his most eloquent web: menacing thinking patterns, bargaining with a distant and disapproving God.... It is in this moment that Satan does his finest work. It is in this moment that we need God to do His finest saving.

1. Know your enemy. Godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret; but worldly grief produces death (2 Cor.7:10). Recognize that you have a powerful personal agent who is singularly focused on your destruction. Do not forget that Satan is at work. If you do, it is easier to believe hidden, subversive, subtle, destructive lies. Evil gains power when it is forgotten. Don't forget: After you indulge, you are still mid-battle with a tenacious, evil person bent on stealing your life, and he has not yet gotten it.
2. Fight self-hatred. Porn is the twisted manipulation of innocence for the raw crave of erotic appetite. To have a grieved conscience is a good thing... [but] wallowing in self-deprecation and feeling like paying penance to God for sin is a sad and ironclad torture. It is false, and it is a wicked oppression. Not surprisingly, suicide rates are high among porn users. 
• No wonder David uses such deeply physical metaphors when he pleads with God for grace over sexual sin: 
• Blot out my transgressions;
• Wash me;
• Cleanse me;
• Purge me;
• Blot out my iniquities;
• Create in me a clean heart
• Scream that, with David. Replace the groan of human self-hatred with an unbroken war cry of divine love.
• If you are tempted to wallow, don't let your (good) intuitive hatred of sin lead you to hate yourself. 
• Be patient with yourself, because God is patient. He is fighting for your life. He has not forgotten you. He has not left you. Keep fighting with him. Keep gasping for the air of divine life - the Life-Giving Spirit.
3. 
   
4. .

By Their Fruits

(15) "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. (16) You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? (17) Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. (18) A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. (19) Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (20) Therefore by their fruits you will know them.  New King James Version

The description here is very apt—wolves in sheep's clothing. They appear on the outside to be something they are not. When Jesus uttered this, He was probably thinking of false ministers who would insinuate themselves into the church by appearing to be sheep within the sheepfold.
Jesus uses this terminology in regard to His relationship with the church. He was the Shepherd, and we are His sheep. Here we have wolves (false ministers) who look like sheep, but it is hypocrisy. They only look that way on the outside. He tells us we will know them by their fruits. The fruit that is produced will not necessarily appear quickly. But Christ guarantees that over a period of time the church will be stripped of its true spiritual vitality in terms of the character that will be produced within the flock, making the rise of wolves in sheep's clothing more likely.
What is He saying? The implication is that Jesus is connecting belief with practice. If we believe a certain set of doctrines, we will practice something because of the teaching. A religious creed or the dogma that a group is following will produce a certain kind of conduct by the people. Belief and practice, creed and conduct—Jesus is saying they are vitality connected. In other words, the teacher cannot hide what he is going to produce. Eventually it will come out. Their false philosophies, no matter how attractive they may appear at first sight, will in the long run be exposed for what they really are.

— John W. Ritenbaugh

http://www.theberean.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Home.showBerean/BereanID/4624/bblver/NKJV/Matthew-7-15-20.htm

The Fear of the Lord

Proverbs 31:30

	(30) Charm is deceitful and beauty ispassing, But a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised. New King James Version

When God describes the ideal woman, she is portrayed as one who fears God. In order to be deserving of this praise, she must possess this particular characteristic—and a lot of it! We must also assume that "what is good for the goose is good for the gander"! God is no respecter of persons, and if God praises a woman because she has the fear of God, then He will also praise a man because he, too, fears God.
I John 3:4 defines sin as "the transgression of the law," and John 17:3 defines eternal life as "to know God." Here is a Bible definition of the fear of the Lord:

The fear of the LORD is to hate evil, pride, arrogance, and the evil way. (Proverbs 8:13)

This is why the woman pleases God and receives His praise. The knowledge of God, which is instilled as a gift, compels or constrains one to depart from evil. In other words, it leads one to keep the commandments of God.
The person makes the choice to do what is right and good and thereby evidences his inward disposition, his inward attitude, proving what is in his heart by what others see on the outside—his conduct. He departs from evil. God is taken into account in his life in every circumstance, in every aspect, and in every situation, and he makes the choice to do it God's way. The person learns to hate evil and tolove to do what is right, good, and pleasing to God! Godly living is the fear of the Lord!
The obverse of the coin is true too. If the fear of God is to hate evil, then the fear of God is also to love a godly way of life. The fear of the Lord is filled with moral content.

— John W. Ritenbaugh

http://www.theberean.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Home.showBerean/BereanID/7257/bblver/NKJV/Proverbs-31-30.htm

Lessons from My Father

Leadership Lessons by Myles Jr. Chairo

• Leadership success is measured by the success of their successor.

Mentoring & Succession

• Succession is the effective transfer, conveyance and transition of a leader's:
• Vision
• Passion
• Purpose
• Intent
• Dreams
• Character
• Standards
• Values
• Morals
• Qualities 
• to succeeding generations of leaders
• It is reproducing yourself.
• "My father was dedicated to the mandate that God had given him and he was faithful to the vision."
• You cannot mentor someone who does not want to be mentored. 
• God places individuals in our lives to advise us. We may think that they are trying to hinder us from accomplishing what we want to accomplish; but they have gone through what we are going through already. There is no need for us to make the same mistakes that they made.
• Mentors are not overbearing to the mentees.

Mentoring & Succession

• Identify the mentee
• Wants to be mentored
• Aligns with the vision
• Sold out to the vision
• A mentor takes you out of your comfort zone because he sees something in you that you may not see at the moment.
• Pick a starting point
• Keys - Access (resources, finance, time...), Freedom, Correction, Recognition, etc. 
• My dad changes for no one because he knows who he is.
• It's important for a leader to be the exact same person they say they are, behind everybody's eyes.
• He met many people in this earth who rubbed him the wrong way - but he still loved the God in them.  
• As a leader, you can't make emotional decisions. You can't make irrational decisions. As a leader, your decision affects many.

Psychiatrist and the Corpse

"When we think of ourselves as fixed, unchanging entities, we then seek to act in alignment with that self-concept and are troubled when we don't."
Michael Neill

A man goes to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist asks him what's wrong.

The man says, "Isn't it obvious? I'm dead -- I'm a corpse."

The psychiatrist says, "But you walked in here -- can corpses walk?"

The man says, "Haven't you ever seen a zombie movie? Of course corpses can walk."

So the psychiatrist says, "But we're talking -- do corpses talk?"

The man says, "What kind of a question is that? Of course corpses can talk!"

Finally, the psychiatrist gets an idea. With a crafty look in his eye, he asks the man, "Do corpses bleed?"

The man thinks for a moment, and then says "No, no, corpses don't bleed. After all, we're dead, so we can't bleed."

Before the man can react, the psychiatrist reaches over and pricks him on the hand with a needle and a small drop of blood emerges from under his skin. The man stares at the blood in amazement.

"Well I'll be damned," the man says. "Corpses do bleed!"

When we see that our  character... is made up of the true constants of Mind, Consciousness and Thought, we are free to think anything, feel anything, and do anything in any situation.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-neill/the-fourth-principle_b_8219216.html

The Media Mandate of the Kingdom

1. There is nothing on earth as powerful as the human will. Even God cannot control it. The very nature of a will implies self control.
2. The will controls the destiny of man. God intended to use the will of man for His will. The will however gives man the power to choose.
3. The seat of the will is the conscious and the unconscious mind. The conscious mind feeds (downloads into) the unconscious mind. The key is to get something into the subconscious mind.
4. As a man thinks in his heart (sub-conscious mind), so is he. You are whatever is in your subconscious mind. Whoever controls your heart controls your life. Out of the heart comes forth the issues of life. 
5. The mind is defined as the heart. It determines the future and the destiny of a man. You are the sum total of the choices you make every day. You become what you are continually  hearing. You become what you are continually seeing.
• The issue is: how do you clean a hard drive? Born all over again. You gotta buy another program. Keep hearing and hearing 
6. It is a battle for the soul.  The mind is the center of the soul. The soul consists of the mind, will and emotions. The battle in life is for the soul of man. He that wins souls is wise.
7. The soul is the first component of media created by God. It mediates between the spirit and the body.
8. The soul receives from the senses and deposits into the spirit.
9. The soul feeds the spirit and also receives from the spirit.
• The only way to be completely free of any habit is to have a replacement of habits. Download new information.

The Purpose of God in All This!

1. Man is a spirit, lives in a body and possesses a soul.
2. Whoever controls the soul rules the man. 
3. The original purpose of God was to rule the seen world from the unseen.
4. The soul is God's media for Kingdom ruler-ship. I wish above all things that you prosper, even as your soul prospers.
5. The Kingdom of God is in the heart (soul). If it can't get into man's soul, it can never get into the earth. The first attention of Jesus was on repent.
6. God is battling for my soul. So is Satan.
• *Emotions

Media - Medium

• "This isn't entertainment it is containment."
• Medium/media is that which stands between the source and the object.
• It means to mediate. Jesus Christ is the Mediator between God and Man.
• Media can pervert, corrupt, clarify or protect the message.
• The media controls what the message recipient gets.
• Lev.20:27

Waiting and Dating-Part 1

• Habits and attitudes established during the dating years generally carry over into marriage.

Principles of Dating Readiness

1. You are not ready to date until you are fully aware of both the benefits and the dangers of dating. Human beings interact with each other in the spiritual, soulical and physical dimensions. Healthy relationships should always begin at the spiritual and intellectual levels - the levels of purpose, motivation, interests, dreams and personality. The physical dimension is the least important.
2. A good understanding of God's standards for relationships. This requires a certain degree of spiritual maturity.
• There are only 2 choices: either you will follow God's standards by deliberate choice, or you will follow the world's standards by default. Unless you plan ahead to keep yourself pure on a date, you probably won't.
• Dating is no place for trial and error.
3. Resolve in your spirit that you will not lower or compromise God's standards for any reason, even if it means losing dates. Standing firm on what you believe is a sign of both spiritual and emotional maturity. There are no second-class areas of life to God. He is after your best. He wants you to obey Him, follow His Word, and stand firmly on His standards. Anything less and you cannot expect to receive His best.
4. YOU ARE READY TO DATE WHEN YOU DON'T NEED TO
• If you feel that you need a date in order to be complete or fulfilled personally, you are not ready for dating. Need involves demand and implies that there is something lacking in life. As long as you perceive lack or incompleteness within yourself, every relationship you enter will be, to one degree or another, an effort to supply that lack or bring a sense of completeness.
• You are ready to date only to the extent that you feel whole and complete within yourself, apart from any other person (except God). When you regard dating as a matter of choice rather than necessity, you are ready.
• Before Eve came along, Adam was alone, but he was not lonely. Loneliness is a spiritual disease. Adam was alone because he was the only one of his kind, but he was completely fulfilled as a person. In tending the garden he had meaningful work to do. In his authority over the living creatures, he was exercising his God-given dominion over the created order. He enjoyed full and open fellowship with his Creator.
• The time you are most prepared for dating is when you don't need anyone to complete you, fulfill you or instill in you a sense of worth or purpose. You are ready to date when you have first learned how to be single.

Reflecting Character in the Kingdom-2

1. Character is the very essence of God. He is the same yesterday today and forever. Am I? 
2. God boasts that He never changes. That is why we can trust Him. He is stable. He says heaven and earth may pass away but His word will never pass away. He would sacrifice the universe before breaking His word.
• A good man swears to his own hurt.
• The first thing God gave man was not dominion but image. Character is more important than power. Do you have the character to contain the anointing of God? Power will kill you without character. God's priority is Character. Character is necessary before dominion. God is more concerned about my character than my dominating the earth. Character is God's prerequisite for dominion and ruler-ship. Character is God's foundation for Leadership.

• Three things will test your character:
1. Power;
2. Money;
3. Access to Sex.
• Given any or all of the above, a person's character or lack of it manifests.
• Am I gonna make it to the End? The race is not to the swift... it is to the one who endures to the end. Will I still be around, 10 years from now? Will I still be the same person? Will I outlive every storm and hurricane? Will I be still standing, when every temptation has passed?
• The only way to test character is by temptation. 
• Temper is to test for weakness. You will never have a time in your life when you are without temptation. Temptation will constantly be in my life to monitor my character.
• Your character is as strong as the temptation you fall for.
• Eve wanted to be like God i.e. Power.
• Satan will only test you with what you already are. So the greatest danger is ignorance of self. You cannot tempt me to be what I know I already am.
• Ignorance will make you disbelieve yourself.
• God gave character before power.
• I am a king just like my Father. My territory is on earth. God knew that without character the power will 
• Power does not corrupt. Power simply reveals corruption. You were already defective. You finally got a chance to show it. Power is pure. 
• The fall of man distorted the Image of God. Man became a defective character. His self worth fell. He didn't know what he was worth anymore.
• The principle trait of fallen man is unpredictability.
• You cannot predict a sinner. You don't know what he gonna do next.
• I am gonna get rid of things that can destroy my character. 
• All I have built could be destroyed in 5 seconds.
• I am as safe as my character!
• Morality is a product of my values. Morals inform ethics.
• You don't lead out of your position. You lead out of your life.
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Source of Values

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Great is Thy Faithfulness

Reflecting Character in the Kingdom-1

• Principles are laws. They never change.
• "The secret to my success (as a teacher) is that I only teach principles." You can never disagree with a principle. 
• A person with character does not live on what is popular. They live on what is principled.
• Character is that which is unchanging. 
• Am I the same person all the time? Am I consistent? Am I predictable?
• Leaders must have character. People will not follow you if they don't trust you. Character attracts loyalty.

Defining Character

1. Character is commitment to a set of values without compromise. Your values will protect you.
2. Character is dedication to a set of standards without wavering. My standards produce my character. I will never violate my standards. There is no excuse in life for breaking standards.
3. Character is self-imposed discipline for the sake of moral convictions. A person of character locks themselves up in the prison of their own convictions and throw away the key. They police themselves.
• Your future depends on your character, not  your charisma.
• The only thing that can protect your gift and talent is your character.
4. Character is a constant effort to integrate one's words and deeds.
• Integrate means to become one.
5. Character is sacrifice for principles.
• Who are you with, that you shouldn't be with?
• What are you doing, in secret, that you shouldn't be doing? Are you willing to sacrifice that to protect your principles?
6. Character is simply integrity.
• Integrity means that you are ONE with yourself.
• Holy: the root word for holy is One. The Hebrew concept for holiness is integrity. The number one confession about God is that The Lord our God, the Lord is One! Holiness means I'm integrated. I am One. I am not multi-personality.
• Be One. Stop being a hypocrite.
• The foundation for trust is integrity. When you are one, people eventually trust you.
• Don't be attracted to charisma. Seek out character.
• If what you teach does not work for you, it shouldn't be taught.
• Lead with your life. Your life is the weight of your words.
• There is no such thing as a personal life. There is no such thing as a private life. What I do in private is my family's and my community's business.
• A person of character doesn't need to talk:
• Nelson Mandela went to prison for close to three decades and never changed his conviction.
• Fathers, do not exasperate your children.
• Exasperate: frustrate because of instability.
• Character protects your words.

Image before dominion. (Gen.1:26).

• Everyone is born to lead, not just people, but in an area of gifting. Your gifting attracts people. 
• Your gift makes room for you and will bring you before kings. 
• You can have a PhD and not know your gift.
• Many educated people didn't finish school. Bill Gates and Steve Jobbs found their gift.
• Your culture trains you to find a job, not to find your gift. You are 50 and still don't know why you were born.
• Your gift is your leadership fruit. When a fruit tree bears a fruit, it never brings the fruit to you. You are attracted to the tree. True leaders never seek followers! Followers are attracted to true leaders. They are not attracted to the person/individual. They are coming to the fruit. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtwBBLrg9JA