13 Ways to Ruin Your Life, the FREE book from Jarrod Jones

TRUTH #7: Fight. For audio teaching (11/27/11) go HERE. Theme, truth statement, marriage work, and vow, go HERE.

My first marriage

Just launched a teaching series at Grace Community Church entitled, “7 Truths That Will Change Your Marriage.”  I hope you’ll take the journey with us whether by attending one of our worship services (you can choose from five!) or via podcast.

Each week I’ll try to post the link to… (To view more, go HERE.)

The other night I was in my camp “hotel” room in Texas following the camp’s worship gathering. I’d been in bed for about 20 minutes. Then I got a “bang” on my door. I’ve been getting those for two weeks. Students get wind of where my room is and they oblige themselves. So, basically, I ignore the “bangs.”

But this time, for some reason, I decided to get out of bed and answer the door.  It was a youth leader, a newly married youth leader.  He had my 13 Ways book in his hand. “I’ve got to talk to you… right now!”, he said.

Whoa.

So, I told him to give me a second where I could put on a shirt and my flip-flops.  We sat outside in 90 degree night-time Texas weather. Sweat running off our foreheads, he told me he was recently married but that he had another girl in his life that he’d been friends with for years who had just divorced.  He said that she had been emailing him a lot. And he was emailing her back. Then she started texting him. And he was texting her back. And then with those texts came pictures (I don’t think they were “sexting” pictures but he didn’t clarify).  He was walking headlong into emotional adultery.

“What should I do?,” he asked. He said he truly cared about this friend. That she was hurting. But he felt something wasn’t right about how things had escalated.  I asked him, “What does your wife say about all of this?”  His answer, “she doesn’t know.”

Uh-oh.

So I looked him right in the eye and said, “Dude. You need to end it… right now. Tell her not to email you anymore. Then don’t answer your emails. Tell her not to text you anymore. Then don’t answer her texts. And if needed, change your email address and mobile phone number.  This is serious.” Then I waited for the excuses to come.  But he really didn’t offer any.  He knew the answer before he even came to me. That’s the way it goes, isn’t it? We often know the right thing to do but don’t do it. It’s like we hold out to see if we can justify ourselves, or find ourselves justified by someone else.

However, he was pained at the thought of “abandoning” his friend. I said, “What would your wife, think if she read those texts? Have you let her see them?” “No,” he said, “I deleted them.” I said, “Bro, you are in dangerous waters here.  Tell your wife about the texts. Let her read the emails. Communicate my friend!  Keep nothing from her.  As a matter of fact, if you respond to further communication from this “friend,” copy it to your wife where your friend will see that you are willingly and joyfully including your wife on any further conversation. That should take care of lot it.”

I went on to say (and was a bit tough on him), “You are to love your wife as Christ loved the Church. There must be NO rivals! NO rivals. Does your wife feel honored, adored, protected, treasured, safe, by you? Bro, this friend that you have, you are not her “Messiah.” God doesn’t need you to help her or save her.  You, and your wife, can pray for her. Give your wife your email passwords and access to your texts. Don’t delete anything questionable without her reading it first. Let your wife read anything else your friend sends. Copy your wife on any emails you send to her but you even need to end that pronto.”

I told him to read Proverbs 7, then I prayed with him. I prayed that God would guard his heart from finding his “manhood” or “ego” stroked and affirmed by another woman giving him “attention.” And that He would do whatever it took to cut the relationship and honor His wife.

Are you finding yourself in a similar situation?  There’s one key word I gave him that the Apostle Paul gives us, that I’ll give you:

Run.

(1 Corinthians 6:18)

Happy April Fool’s day. I’ve learned the hard way that people actually take this day seriously. Below, is the intro section of a chapter I wrote in my 13 Ways book.  It is fitting for today. I left the bit of application at the end of it for context too.  Feel the pain…

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It happened on April Fool’s day my eighth grade year of Middle school.   Before school most of my friends would hang out by the outside doors of the gym.  As I was walking toward my posse they were all chuckling and looking at me. My first thought was “zip up.” But all was well there.  I walked up to them and said, “What’s up? What’s so funny?”  My best friend at the time, Lance, pulled out from behind his back an egg.  He slammed it onto my head.  I stood in shock.  I leaned my head over to catch the egg goop as it ran off my head.  But there was no goop.  Lance had pulled a glorious April Fool’s joke on me. The egg was boiled.

Once I shook off my instinct to pummel him I laughed and thought it was the funniest thing ever.  Then he took out another egg.  I was putty in his hands. I said, “Let me get somebody.” He gladly handed the egg over.

I was waiting for my other friends to come by. But none ever showed.  The first warning bell rang.  I didn’t want to miss out on the prank. I had to pull it on somebody pronto.  Most everyone had made their way to class except for me, Lance, and three or four of our friends.  The last kid to walk toward the door was a sixth grader hobbling on crutches and barely hanging on to his books under his arms.

I walked up to him and said, “Hey, would you like an egg?” Then I slammed the egg on top of his head just like Lance did me.  Problem:  This was a raw egg.

As the egg yoke ran down his face he looked at me in horror. I was speechless. I spun around and Lance was foaming at the mouth he was laughing so hard. My friends had taken off running trying to contain themselves.  I chased Lance around the building as the final bell rang.

Out of breath I decided to simply go surrender myself to the Principal and accept my fate. Consequences were inevitable. I walked into his office and confessed the whole thing.  As my story unfolded it was all my Principal could do to suppress his laughter.

Surprisingly the kid had yet to come to the office. I had a hunch he was in the hall bathroom by the office. Sure enough there he stood propped on his crutches swishing water over his face and head.  I felt so ashamed.  You should have seen me wetting paper towels and helping him clean egg off his face while he slapped at my hand as if it were a gnat.  I rambled on about how Lance had set me up, that he (the kid) was my last chance to pull the prank, and so forth. I told him I’d be his body guard the rest of the year.   He looked at me with fire in his eyes. You couldn’t blame him.

Unfortunately, I am still just as gullible.  Pranks pulled on me aren’t a difficult task. Actually I think fewer pranks are pulled on me now because it’s just plain boring. I’m too gullible, too easy a target.

It’s one thing to be an easy target for innocent pranks. It is an entirely different issue to be gullible in sexual temptation.  Upon further thought, gullible may be too soft a word.  Naïve is more like it.  To commend your emotions and issues to a woman outside of your marriage is a travesty. To entrust your heart and purity to just any woman before marriage can bring brokenness and regret.  It’s plain naïve.

Don’t be gullible.

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If you find I haven’t written on this blog in a while, check out www.jarrodjones.com.  Thank you for checking out this site. I have gotten so many comments lately (and suddenly!) I bless the Lord for how He uses this site although I haven’t blogged on the site in a while. Now that I’ve discovered that it’s ministering powerfully to many of you, I will try and do better.

Thank you so much for your encouragement!

Much love and power in Christ!

Follow me on Twitter at @jarrodjones

I’ve been pondering former New York State’s Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer’s interview with Matt Lauer today. I’ve already written two blogs about it this morning. See previous two blogs.

His comments are so dead on to what Proverbs 7 declares, and the content I expressed in the 13 Ways book.

The following is another statement Spitzer made to Lauer on TODAY:

‘Like most of us I suppose, I’ve had flaws…. I’ve tried to think about it deeply, address it. There are no excuses. I have tried to address these gremlins; confront them. What I did was an egregious violation of trust to my family, to my colleagues, to the state, and I’ve paid a price and appropriately so.’

We all have flaws. And we must confront them, deal with them, confess them, share them with a godly and trusted friend or Biblical Christian Counselor, and also pray for God’s grace to overcome them, and then by His Spirit through an act of our will fight them.  Our “flaws”, or “issues,” or our anger, or loneliness, or fatigue, or disappointment, or depression, or pasts, can haunt us. This is when we begin to lower our necks into the grip of sin— or in this case sexual sin.

As I say in 13 Ways, sexual sin can bring excuses or excuses can bring sexual sin.  The “flaws” above can fuel excuses to numb ourselves with sexual sin.  Don’t give in to the excuses.  Excuses for sexual sin can cost an exorbitant price for your family and testimony.

Elbow your way through excuses and burdens and run to the Cross of Jesus.  “Cast your burdens upon the Lord for He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7; Psalm 55:22).  You are not Superman (or Superwoman), so don’t try to be. You are free from an ego.

There is no shame or weakness in admitting you are burdened, heavy-laden, and at your breaking point. My wife feels closest to me, and greatly respectful of me and respected by me, when I share my burdens and heaviness of life with her. When I call a brother, or sit with him over coffee, and tell him I’m about to explode, I walk away feeling somewhat unburdened.  When I go to our Church small group and express the fears, burdens, and weight of life and marriage, I find great relief and encouragement.  I want to highly, highly encourage you to do the same.

To carry your own burdens can crush you. To bear the weight of life in silence can make you desperate for relief. That desperation cal lead to excuses for sexual sin. And excuses for sexual sin can ruin you.

I want to recommend an interview for all young men to watch. TiVo^® this if you have to…  Mom’s and dad’s be sure your son(s) see this.

On Friday, January 23, at 5:00pm EST (4:00pm CST) Dr. James Dobson (Focus on the Family®) will be on the new Fox News Channel® series “Glenn Beck®.  He will be reflecting on his final interview with renowned Serial Killer Ted Bundy just before Bundy was executed in a Florida State Prison.  The interview took place exactly 20 years ago tomorrow.

(If you want to see the Dobson/Bundy interview first hand, click here. For a transcript, click here).

In an e-mail letter about his appearance on Fox News tomorrow concerning the Bundy interview, Dobson states,

“My purpose in going on Glenn’s show is to discuss the reason why Bundy chose me for his final interview when every major news anchor at every TV network was jostling for an exclusive conversation. Bundy wanted to talk about the role media violence and particularly violent, hard-core pornography had played in his years-long killing spree, and he knew the mainstream media wouldn’t report that story.”

Dobson shares a portion of Bundy’s interview below from 1989. Bundy himself states,

“Pornography can reach out and snatch a kid out of any house today. It snatched me out of my home 20, 30 years ago. I’ll tell you, there are lots of other kids playing in streets around the country who are going to be dead tomorrow and the next day and the next day and next month, because other young people are reading the kinds of things and seeing the kinds of things that are available in the media today.”

Those are Bundy’s words stated 20 years ago just before his execution.  Prophetic? Dobson continues,

“Pornography has been found in the possession of almost every killer where sex has been the motivation, including two of the most notorious serial killers of the last two decades: Green River Killer Gary Leon Ridgway and BTK Killer Dennis Rader. No, not everyone who uses pornography becomes a murderer, but there are serious consequences to pornography addiction. Studies done since my conversation with Bundy have documented corrosive effects on marriages and families, such as increased marital distress and risk of separation and divorce; decreased marital intimacy and sexual satisfaction; and a devaluation of monogamy, marriage and child-rearing.

Consider also that Bundy’s comments were made before the Internet age and the easy availability of the most sickening kinds of pornography on the Web. He also spoke at a time when hotel porn and even cell-phone porn were not the problems they are today. The future predicted by Ted Bundy is worse than he ever could have imagined–and that’s the main message I hope to get across in my time with Glenn Beck this Friday.”

If you miss the show you can tune in to the Focus on the Family’s daily radio program on January 26.  The show will rebroadcast some of Dobson’s interview with Ted Bundy. You can find a station in your area or listen online by visiting FocusOnTheFamily.com.

Excerpts in this blog were taken from a subscriber letter from Dobson. To view Dobson’s letter, click here.

1) It sets up UNREALISTIC SEXUAL EXPECTATIONS. You are putting unwarranted and unrealistic sexual expectations on your wife (or future wife).  She is not a porn star.  What if you expect a sexual relationship with her like she is? And she won’t or can’t deliver? Filling your mind with porn can bring you serious disappointment with your wife sexually and cost you your marriage in more ways than one. It will lead to emotional distancing, more porn viewing, and potentially take you to untold heights of other sexual sin that will ruin your relationships, family, career, indeed your very life.

I read a booklet recently that shared how a man would lay porn photos and magazines on the pillow next to his wife so he could look at them while he had sex with her. He fed his mind so much porn that it was poisoned, warped, and calloused to sexual enjoyment with his wife alone.  Porn on a pillow was the only way he could get sexual “fulfillment.” Imagine how cheap and degraded his wife felt?

It doesn’t have to be as extreme as laying porn images on the pillow either. It can come from you gazing at and lusting after a woman at your office, Church, School, and fantasizing about sex with her while making love with your wife or masturbating.  This is sexual sin, degradation of your wife, and a severing of “oneness” with her.

Why do that to yourself then? Why feed your mind with porn and lust only to make fantasy as “normal” and set your marriage or future marriage up for failure?  Stop feeding your mind this poison.  And instead do as Solomon encouraged His son, Rehoboham, to do (And Rehoboam may not have been married at the time either).

Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you.  Rejoice in the wife of your youth.  She is a loving doe, a graceful deer.  Let her breasts satisfy you always.  May you always be captivated by her love. Why be captivated, my son, with an immoral woman, or embrace the breasts of an adulterous woman?

An evil man is held captive by his own sins; they are ropes that catch and hold him. He will die for lack of self-control; he will be lost because of his incredible folly.
Proverbs 5:16-23 (NLT)

Porn is a big deal. It cheapens sexual intimacy and “oneness” that God gifted to his creation between man and wife. Porn is fantasy that displays intself as “normal” and will set you up for major disappointment. It devalues and degrades your wife or future wife. And it only serves to feed animalistic lust and make porn filmmakers millions.

Sexual sin is like ropes that that can hold you captive and put a noose around your neck. Get control man.  Reflect on what porn is doing to you (or will do to you) and how it will affect your marriage. And most of all, repent.